I opened the July 1995 archive expecting to find people. Instead, I found this week’s headlines written 31 years early. The Helderberg moves in circles.

Sometimes it moves clockwise: the same problems, beat for beat, three decades apart. Sometimes it moves anti-clockwise: history echoing back in the most unexpected, opposite ways.

Let me explain…

In 1995, a municipal workers’ strike in the Cape Metropolitan area left Macassar without services for two weeks. Striking workers littered the streets with rubbish, drawing shock and anger from residents.

As DistrictMail & Helderberg Gazette news editor Jamey Gordon reports this week, 31 years later, the same underlying issues remain: systemic failures in municipal waste management and service delivery, with residents bearing the consequences.

Both events paint what elderly residents of Macassar usually point out: a community trapped in a three-decade cycle of inadequate waste management, where the form of the failure changes but the consequence remains painfully consistent – residents living amid rubbish, health risks and official inaction.

This is clockwise. The Helderberg giving us the exact same story, word for word.

News cycles come and go, but the Helderberg also traps us in another kind of circle: the same heartbreaking stories that force the same difficult editorial decisions.

On 18 July 2011, a 23-year-old motorcyclist from Robertson was killed when his motorcycle collided with a truck at the R44/R102 intersection in Somerset West. Then DistrictMail journalist Deliah Brinkhuis reported the story, and a page-two photo showed two covered objects: the deceased’s body, torn in two by the impact.

Some readers accused the ‘paper of insensitivity on Facebook. Then-editor Marli van Wyngaard explained the images were not published for sensationalism, but as a deliberate public safety measure to make drivers more responsible. Ombudsman George Claassen defended the decision, concluding the newspaper struck an appropriate balance between truthful reporting and sensitivity.

This echoes what intern Leevasha Reddy wrote about her time in the newsroom: that true journalistic integrity is the quiet, everyday choice to protect sources, verify facts and sometimes kill a good story to avoid harming people.

As someone who makes these decisions daily, I am guided by Claassen’s view that “it is not the duty of reporters, producers and editors to comfort consumers or protect them against cruelty; it is to give the facts”, balanced with Van Wyngaard’s reminder that “as community journalists who live in and care about the same community as our readers, sales and sensation are not what drive us to publish a shocking photo or article”.

The basin keeps giving us these moments. The same accidents. The same intersections. The same impossible choice between truth and comfort. When faced with them, I hope to summon the courage of Brinkhuis and Van Wyngaard.

Then there is anti-clockwise: when the Helderberg repeats itself in the most unexpected way.

In July 1995, it snowed in the Helderberg. In July this year, it barely rained. Opposite extremes. Same month. Same basin. Different crisis.

While these cycles can be nerve-racking, I find myself going through the archive and appreciating it.

My favourite route to drive is down Beach Road in Gordon’s Bay, turning left onto Faure Marine Drive and overlooking the Helderberg. It has brought me much solace in dark times.

To my surprise, I discovered that if just 25 out of 325 registered voters had opposed the construction of Faure Marine Drive in 1951, I would not have my road of reflection. The vote passed by a margin that narrow.

In the same year, locals were upset when rent in Strand’s Beach Road increased from £10 to £12,10. I wonder what they would say if they found out you couldn’t get an apartment in the same road for under £314,07 today.

Some things change. Some things stay the same. Some things swing to their opposite.

I guess we’ll have to wait for the to clock strike 12:00 in the basin again, to see if it has moved clockwise or anti-clockwise.