IMESA’s coffee table book, Reflections, was launched at last year’s conference to coincide with the institute’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. Last month IMIESA featured Part 2 of a series overview of the book.

The book provides a comprehensive history of IMESA from its founding through to its standing today. The author, Prof Johannes Haarhoff, has combined his 35 years of experience in engineering and his passion as a historian to outline, in great detail,various insights into the history of municipal engineering.

This article is the third of a series outlining the content of the book.

Hosting the conference

After Johannesburg in 1921, the venue of subsequent meetings was determined by invitation. Two or more towns would issue an invitation for the meeting of the following year and the executive committee would make the choice. The conference venues were often selected to coincide with some other commemoration. The 1954 venue, for example, was Durban, chosen to coincide with its centenary celebrations, while the 1955 venue was Livingstone – the only conference ever held in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) – to coincide with the 100th anniversary of David Livingstone’s first visit to the Victoria Falls.

The hosting municipality carried the financial burden of the annual conference. When the annual conference started in 1921, the only source of income was the voluntary contribution of the delegates who attended. Thereafter it was agreed that individuals would pay to attend the conferences. By 1950 members had to pay £1 and non-members £2. After 1950, a sliding scale was adopted where municipalities with an annual revenue of less than £200 000 would pay £3 per delegate and larger ones £5 per delegate. In 1959, the conference fees were increased, but the principle of a sliding scale, based on the annual revenue of the local authority, was retained.

The duration of the meetings varied from two to six days, but most meetings were conducted over four days. Until 1948, the usual conference format was four days, from a Tuesday to Friday. For the 1947 conference in Salisbury the format was extended when the delegates adjourned for the weekend and reconvened on the Monday in Victoria Falls. The 1948 annual conference in Pietermaritzburg was held over four days, but from the 1949 annual conference in Port Elizabeth, the pattern permanently switched to a five-day format lasting a full week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Prof Johannes Haarhoff, author of Reflections, signs a copy of the book for Debbie Anderson of IMESA head office at the 75th IMESA Conference and Exhibition