African National Congress
Apartheid’s Architect sends Jacob Zuma a letter from the grave.
Dear Jacob Zuma
It is with exceeding pleasure that I write this letter. As you know my government has endeavored at its time through the pohibition of communism act and other efforts to suppress your ANC and groups like it from existing. But your continued existence has brought a victory beyond that I and my apartheid government could have ever hoped for.
My goal has always been a simple one: Perpetual discrimination and permanent domination of South Africa by Whites, The Population registration act classified blacks from whites so that it is obvious to who the greater benefits of the country would go to. The skilled employment would be for the whites and blacks would work in menial employment and in servitude to whites. However what your economy has done is more genius. The whites and the blacks work at the same place and bring the same level of skill now, yet the white earns four times as much… your economy continues to perpetuate my legacy of white domination more elegantly than before.
This earning gap means that most blacks, even if they are working skilled individuals, continue to stay in townships and out of working areas as intended by apartheid’s group areas act. meaning they spend more time and money traveling to work than whites further solidifying my efforts, continuing my legacy even beyond my death.
When those miners at Marikana underwent a protest for a wage increase and police where called to the scene with live ammo to shoot them to death, I had to check the dates on the news, I was pretty sure that was old footage from my era.
The makeshift means of transport, that is the taxi industry that formed out of a need to transport blacks into cities is still the chief mode of transport? Incredulous! between that and the disastrous train system that has 1500 people injured and 300 dead in a year, incidents that occur usually when they are late and stranded in the middle of the tracks, these same under paid people are forced to buy cars they cant realistically afford and doom themselves to staying at their township home in the places of my design even as adults as they cant afford to move closer.
This leads me to your greatest service to me yet; the magnificent E-toll system, irrational inefficient expensive. Who do you think its going to affect more? The whites who stay generally closer to their working areas, earn four to six times s much and have enough disposable income for the latest iPhone or the many blacks who drive from places like Vosloorus passing two E-toll Gantries to get to work? The geographical displacement of blacks from city centers means they will pay more in E-tolls, falling further behind from the lines of equality with whites.
Had I known that the final service of the ANC would have been such a grand display of what I considered good neighborliness, I would have long stepped aside and allowed for your party to rule much earlier.
Perhaps Dimitri Tsafendas would have had hes crazy eye on you instead.
Your friend from the grave,
Hendrik Verwoerd
E Tolls Go Live – Why South Africans Hate them
Even as I write this in my coffee fueled annoyance, I cant believe the audacity and just sheer ‘go-stuff-off’ attitude of the South African government. I have been quite for sometime on this blog and I appreciate those many ears that have patiently listened to my belly-aching about how kak trasport is in my country in earlier posts. You have feigned sympathy and scrolled down as I recounted the atrocious level of service and the daily battle many face in the simple exercise of going to work. You laughed with me and at me as I recounted tales from the metro-rail and Zulu wars with taxi drivers and mocked vigorously at my simple dream to own my own vehicle.
It seems, However that our ministers are not satisfied until every single person who commutes is properly plagued by the simple task of going to work. As of midnight today, Monday 03 December 2013, the E-toll system is now live.
From 2007, this storm has been brewing. It began with a consultation, or should I say a joke thereof that appeared obscurely on a corner of an October 2012 Gauteng Gazzete. Yes. right! because that’s our periodical of choice in the morning while we drink tea and eat magwinya. That and an add in 6 news papers was all the communication this project received. 3.5 million registered vehicles, and only 28 responses was the feedback from this notification! hm! ya! no! That was more than enough transparency and consultation to go ahead with spending R 20 billion of our money on a pointless colossal display of misspending and maladministration…. 20 BILLION!
For the first time ever, white conservatives would phone in to talk radio shows and vehemently say shocking statements like, “Ya! I agree with COSATU!”. Yes, COSATU, the hyper-communist union body. They planned a mass demonstration and every one, in a glimmer of solidarity between Black, White and other miscellaneous races, as in the rugby worldcup of 1995 unified as one and said “voetsek ETOILET!”
Not only was this System sprung on the public, it makes not sense on a number of levels, Ill touch on a few.
- The gantries will be paying for old roads.
- A simple fuel Levy would have sufficed in paying for the claimed costs of roads.
- A foreign company has been called in to construct and manage the system, meaning most of the money wont filtrate back into our economy.
- There is no alternative transport or alternative routes outside of the Highways that will be tolled.
OUTA, the civilian organisation plagued the plans of SANRAL with court cases and lawyers, but judging by the tone of my blogging here, their efforts did not save the day.
The secretary of COSATU Zwelinzima Vavi, the champion behind the Civilian fight against E-toll is caught in a Clinton Lewinsky esk scandal that saw him suspended effectively slowing the mass action leg portion of the fight.
Even after generous financial support from the DA, The official opposition party, OUTA’s legal leg of the battle that went from the boxing ring of the constitutional courts to the karate dojo of the Supreme Court ended in bitter defeat. Even after rematches in the form of appeals.
Which brings us inadvertently… here.
Here is whats going to happen: On top of your car payment, Petrol, and insurance costs,you will be paying some oversees company for installing and operating the fancy E-toll system, number one.
Two, you will soon realise as stated above that there are no alternative roots and after a brief read of my previous post, that there is no alternative transport.
You are going bend over and take it politely, and on top of the already breaking point of your living expenses, pay more in continued funding of blatant poor administration.
Or, you will not get the E-toll tag, you will not pay the fines that follow and stand together with other non-pansy South Africans, and collapse this system by way of non participating.
What will be? Is this a democratic country or not?
I told you, we can change this!
The Hated Blog About Transport And The Commuter's Plight In South Africa. 