Ismail Mahomed, in his column “Honouring the dead, honouring our heritage” (in Grocott’s Mail 2 March) identifies the valid and desperate state of some of our graveyards but unfortunately slips into a supercilious slagging-off of the Makana Aesthetics Committee hardly a new whipping boy!

What Mr Mahomed fails to realise in a number of his Johnny come lately armchair observations regarding Grahamstown is that most are not new revelations but in fact matters that the Aesthetics Committee has addressed and pursued relentlessly.

These include the rejuvenation of the old railway station as a bus terminal, the preservation of architecture and heritage sites (including churches) in Grahamstown East, and the pedestrianisation of Church Square, to name but a few.

And yes this is in addition to inappropriate ‘modern’ hit-and-run developments slap bang in the middle of the historic conservation area!

Also clearly escaping Mr Mahomed’s purported fresh perspective is that while all is not perfect, and some aspects of our built environ are certainly sullied, if it were not for the tireless efforts and interventions of volunteer members of the Aesthetics Committee things would undoubtedly be dramatically worse.

The committee has definitely struggled within a formal municipal structure, with an unsupportive and dysfunctional directorate, and without the political will of a City Council  to apply its own by-laws and enforce them legally.

Despite this  scenario there are countless success stories that go unpublicised for example we could have had  illuminated box advertising on all the lampposts in High Street, the infiltration of large billboards intoresidential areas, permanent informal trading at the NAF level in the CBD, and public toilets on the  middle traffic island in High Street.

The suggestion of a new style heritage/ aesthetics action group is also  not entirely new but many members of the existing structure have felt that it was better to work within its  statutory framework, however frustrating.

I concede though that maybe the time has now come for such  an initiative and so I wish to publically resign my position on the Aesthetics Committee and offer it to Mr  Ismail Mahomed.

I challenge him to get off his own “glorious arse” and accept it and kick-start the process  of transforming the structure into the gnarly public private partnership he envisages. Perhaps a yapping  canine corgi may achieve better results?

Dominic Thorburn, Ex Aesthetics Committee member