Kommetjie, the beginning of the end.

As the warm summer evenings stay lighter longer I sit outside listening to the birds and watching the sky change.  It is idyllic here in Kommetjie and I am so blessed to have been able to call this village my home for the past twenty years.  There is a dark lining on the pink clouds though.  Kommetjie is threatened with development.  Development in the form of one hundred and seventy six duplex and simplex housing units, a retail park, the infrastructure that goes with it and that is just for starters.  When all this began, I wrote a carefully worded objection stating all the obvious, to me, reasons why this form of development should not be allowed.  I wrote about the existing traffic problems, the influx of people and their impact on the amenities, the environmental devastation, which is inevitable, including the destruction of the 'green lung' which has happened around the world and which nobody, clearly, has learned from.  I thought at the time that nobody in their right mind would approve this.  I, being an avid and passionate nature lover, did not factor in those who are simply not, those who are apathetic and those who are plain and simply, greedy.  I was shocked and dismayed when, a few weeks ago, the news broke that an environmental study group had approved the go ahead for the development.  No, no and no.  How could this happen?  Anyway, sentimentalism aside.  Let us look at the hard facts.  Money talks and it will probably win.  Those who stand to make money do not care about the objections, the signatures, the flora and fauna we fight so hard to preserve.  It is a case of bums in houses and hand rubbing, Fagin style, at how much money is in the bank.   No amount of reasonable discussion will sway the decision and I feel impotent that I cannot do more to fight this.  My home, my village is going to become another casualty to the corporates, ruining it forever.  I call on those who are like-minded to consider becoming eco-warriors.  Put up posters, write letters and when then time comes, stage a 'sit-in' in the face of bulldozers.  Will you?