As I was invited to comment, and as a resident of Virginia as well as business owner, I would prefer to pass compliments, but alas, cannot.
When I moved to Virginia in the Seventies it was a beautiful, well kept, well managed up and coming town.
I started at the (then) local Mercedes Benz dealership and was indeed a proud resident.
Proud enough to invest. I built my very own house. Later on sold it and built a bigger house. Established businesses, saved businesses, helped the local municipality where possible.
We were proudly one of the first towns in the country to invest in a refuse compacting station. (Built approx 500 metres from our family business. (Est. 1966
This has become our municipal dumping ground. The toxic smoke and flies are a health risk.
I have contacted various health officials in Welkom as well as local ward councillors, sent photo’s, made phone calls to no avail.
I had a delegation of 20 European delegates during early 2020 that were supposed to visit our workshop. I CANCELLED, being too embarrassed to allow them to drive through our dirty, overgrown little town, virtually through a rubbish dump to visit our fly infested workshop.

The most recent visit were members of an International Company wanting to invest in Virginia. Although our facility presented itself well, we still had to travel through the town, through the rubbish dump garbage lining the road to Almo Engineering.
Surely the current municipal management cannot expect any investment in this town……or am I wrong ??
Sincerely
Frank Mac Nicol.