By David Macgregor

The alleged neglect of national monument buildings at Grahamstown’s iconic Old Gaol Backpackers is the main reason why the South African Heritage Resources Agency (Sahra) wants to shut it down.

After weeks of behind the scenes legal wrangling – and little public comment – Sahra finally released a statement on Friday accusing owner Brian Peltason of doing “very little, if any, maintenance” to the property.

They claimed the 186-year old buildings had allegedly “fallen into an appalling state of disrepair” since the Old Gaol opened its doors for business 13 years ago, and that no maintenance had been done by the tenants.

Sahra said an “official review of its properties at the beginning of this year” by a team of architects had concluded “the backpacker’s facility was in a very poor state with refuse strewn in the public places”.

“This is a situation that Sahra as a responsible heritage body cannot tolerate indefinitely.”

The allegations have however been vehemently denied by Peltason who said he had saved the building from being “totally destroyed”.

He accused the Sahra appointed architects of only photographing “anything negative” – like the backpackers’ “garbage area” – and not the rooms or bar area.

“Sahra has never shown any interest in the Old Gaol until now. They did not even know of which spaces I rented from them.”

According to Peltason other tenants – including Sahra – had also occupied some of the buildings over the years and he had to recently show them what buildings he was actually renting. “Even though they are in the building they still did not know what was happening in the building.

“Not once did they send me any notes on what they felt needed to be fixed or that the building was in need of repair.” He accused Sahra of wanting “me out without even negotiating with them”.

Quoting Sahra chief executive officer Sibongile van Damme, the statement said the buildings would be turned into a Heritage Training Centre that would benefit “greater Grahamstown” through skills development.

According to Van Damme “the main focus of the centre will be to activate and maintain community participation in cultural resources management”.

The statement said the Old Gaol was “currently experiencing serious physical and infrastructural decay”.

Sahra said it had rented 26 rooms to Peltason for “less than R3 000 a month” on condition he maintained the interior and exterior of the building “in a good order and condition”.

“Its present desperate need presents an opportunity to be a physical resource to teach architectural conservation and restoration skills for the built environment and respond to extreme poverty issues that are bearing heavily on a peri-urban area such as ...,” Van Damme said.

The statement said Rhodes University’s Environmental Education Unit would be “instrumental in assisting Sahra to develop skills for re-packaging the heritage content offered and other content from tertiary institutions into training support materials and tools that will be required for the technical training needs of provinces and municipalities.”

Sahra said it had already entered into a memorandum of understanding with Rhodes University.

Peltason denied he had maintained the buildings.

“Not once did they send me any notes on what they felt needed to be fixed or that the building was in need of repair.

“As the business has grown we have never been against paying a higher rental … Sahra wanted me out before even negotiating with them.”

Source: Daily Dispatch