It is with ut­ter dis­gust that I wish to state that at 10 pm on Wednes­day, May 2, I, Ed­ward Mood­ie, con­sul­tant work­ing out of the Nid­co Out­reach of­fice in Debe, and my fam­i­ly, ex­pe­ri­enced one of the most gut­tur­al acts of hooli­gan­ism. While my fam­i­ly was asleep, our home was fire­bombed by per­pe­tra­tors who very well knew what they had to do to avoid be­ing caught.

I am al­most sure that these in­di­vid­u­als are amongst the same per­pe­tra­tors who just five months ago pro­ceed­ed to van­dalise my home dur­ing a very spir­it­ed protest in sup­port of the rerout­ing of the high­way.

But why I ask you? It is very well known that I am amongst those who must re­lo­cate due to the build­ing of the high­way. My fam­i­ly was very much dis­tressed when faced with this re­al­i­ty, but we were able to move past this and come to terms with the fact that it is cow­ard­ly to stop progress, and that some must bear the stress­es as­so­ci­at­ed with ad­vance­ment more than oth­ers!

It is be­cause of this rea­son that I made the res­o­lu­tion that I should put my­self in a po­si­tion that would en­sure that I could lob­by for the very best treat­ment for those that had to un­der­go the same bur­dens of re­lo­ca­tion as my­self and my fam­i­ly. And that is ex­act­ly what I have done! I have fought for the very best of com­mu­ni­ty con­di­tions for those be­ing re­lo­cat­ed.

The neigh­bour­hood that is steadi­ly com­ing in­to for­ma­tion to ac­com­mo­date these cit­i­zens will boast of a church, tem­ple, mosque, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, all geared to­wards pro­mot­ing the very best fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it pos­si­ble.

I have done my very best to en­sure that those be­ing re­lo­cat­ed are pro­vid­ed with pre­mi­um pay­ments for their prop­er­ties-and these have in­clud­ed cit­i­zens that some might re­fer to as "squat­ters"-they have no le­gal right to the land on which they present­ly live.

It is with­out a doubt that those re­lo­cat­ing will ex­pe­ri­ence psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress as a re­sult of leav­ing homes that they have spent years build­ing their lives around. Nid­co has gone as far to pro­vide full time psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port for these cit­i­zens.

Many peo­ple have been com­ing in­to the of­fice seek­ing these ser­vices and have pro­vid­ed feed­back that in­di­cates that it has been ben­e­fi­cial to them. Yet, due to a few cit­i­zens who can't seem to look at the big­ger pic­ture I have had to un­der­go per­se­cu­tion.

I am de­clar­ing now that I am de­ter­mined more than ever to do what­ev­er I must to en­sure that even those who see me as the bad guy, ben­e­fit and are pro­vid­ed with the very best of cir­cum­stances to en­sure that they are com­fort­able in the fu­ture, de­spite their fright of re­lo­cat­ing.

I un­der­stand their fears, but I now urge them again to look at the big­ger pic­ture and in­stead of us­ing their en­er­gy in a neg­a­tive man­ner, that they seek to ac­cept progress and the re­al­i­ty that their lives can be of a very high qual­i­ty in the fu­ture.

Ed­ward Mood­ie

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