There was a time when Gqeberha sold itself on sea air, blue water and the sort of coastal charm that made visitors forget the potholes.
These days, the potholes remain, the allure is strained and the air over some of the city’s most beautiful locations smells unmistakably like failure.
Along the Wild Side, where the smell of sea salt should be carried in the air, the whiff of sewage is delivered on a southeasterly wind.
Golfers at Humewood no longer talk about the breeze off the Indian Ocean but have to apologise for the smell to tourists.
Patrick Grewar said his group often experienced a sewage smell when playing at the Humewood Golf Club.
“I used to love the scent of the sea you got long ago when you were walking down the fairways.
“But now often, when the wind shifts to a southeasterly, the stench comes.”
Lodge owners issue refunds not because of bad weather, but because guests cannot open a window.
Conservationists and residents have learnt to read the wind.
The municipality says this particular stench is temporary.
A power outage, high temperatures and infrastructure under strain are to blame.
They are fixing it.
But those who live, work and play near the Cape Recife Wastewater Treatment Works say the odour is not a recent visitor. It has been a regular, unwelcome guest for years.
On a visit to the area on Thursday, The Herald started at the treatment works, which is situated in the Cape Recife Nature Reserve.
At the gate on the south side of the property, there was no smell, but around the superintendent’s office, the stench was unbearable.
Further into the reserve, there was effluent flowing onto the beach and into the sea.
The tragedy is that none of this is surprising any more.
Gqeberha has become a city where breakdown is the default setting.
Roads crumble. Pipes burst. The lights go out. Now even the air joins the list of municipal casualties.
Too many things are broken and fixing them is no longer treated as an emergency.
