EVEN though this is old news, many South Coasters still seem to be scratching their heads about exactly who Ray Nkonyeni was.
That’s the guy our new, amalgamated Hibiscus Coast and Ezinqoleni municipality is now named after.
However, many are still asking: “Who the heck is Ray?” (‘Heck’ being the more polite word, of course.)
Although his wife’s name is Peggy (and not ‘Alice’), even people living next door to him might not have realised it at the time.
Sadly, Ray is with us in name only now, but those who did know him say he was quiet, unassuming and a real gentleman.
A former school principal, he was widely regarded as the ‘peacemaker’ in the bloody political battles in this area around the early ’90s.
Far be it for us to question the wisdom of naming the new municipality after such a well-loved hero of the people, but one does have to sympathise with those now tasked with marketing the new Ray ‘brand’.
Let’s be honest here. ‘Hibiscus Coast’ had a much more sexy ring about it than ‘Ray Nkonyeni’.
But where there’s a will there’s a ‘Ray’. Marketers just have to get a bit more creative and we can turn this new name into something really c(Ray)zy.
We can create a whole set of ‘Rayisms’. For example:
* ‘Ray-bans’ – dark glasses;
* ‘Sun-Ray’ – an area blessed with good weather;
* ‘Ray-on’ – a cloudless day;
* ‘Ray-beam’ – a smile;
* ‘C(R)ay-on’ – when one has caught a crayfish;
* ‘Ray-dais’ – on the stage in the Civic Centre;
* ‘Ray-zzle’ – a night out on the town;
* ‘Ex-Ray’ – someone who has left the coast.
The possibilities are endless. Maybe we should take a page out of Mandela marketing initiatives and have our own ‘Ray-day’.
Feel free to come up with your own ‘Rayisms’ and, if everyone starts using them, the Hibiscus Coast will be f(Ray)mous once again.
There’s no point in fighting it as the new Ray Nkonyeni Municipality has already been inaugurated. So live with it!
Regardless of what party or candidate one voted for, we were rather fortunate to escape the ugly rhetoric that bedevilled the more closely contested municipalities.
Some were zapped with a ‘Ray-gun’ (OK, enough now) and are ‘hung’, as they say in political parlance.
Not so here and we still have our Cynthia Mqwebu at the helm as First Citizen. No real squabble there as Cynthia (as she is quite happy to be called during informal gatherings) is well liked by many, regardless of political affiliations.
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