Evidently a number of motorists are filling up and then speeding off without paying. Fin24 says so… so believe it coz it’s true! Peter Morgan, chief exective from the Fuel Retailer Association (FRA) said that there were at least 10 similar incidents in the past month.
The latest one involved a Durban man driving into and knocking down a 29-year-old petrol attendant, causing injuries to his spine and hand. In a related incident, a man from Pretoria stole R2 570′s worth of petrol at a petrol station on Hans Strijdom Avenue in Waterkloof Ridge.
Now Morgan (from the FRA) tries to empathise with the consumer, stating that “People are doing this because they have no choice…”. I applaud him for his desire to see the situation from another’s perspective, but there is always a choice. Each incident has a unique set of circumstances. Given that there are only “about 10 similar incidents” a generalisation is especially foolish. Even if there were a greater sample to draw from generalisations only serve to neglect certain elements in a sample.
or Here’s an interesting new way to deal with the problems SA: When you’re done whining and ranting do something.
For those that don’t know, Niemand is a South African rock band whose members are all Christian. I’ve received two mails from Joe in light of the ‘Xenophobic attacks’ in Johannesburg. They are truly powerful and one of the few non-humorous mails I feel are worth forwarding.
Hi Guys
We have just returned from Jeppe Police Station in town where approx 2000 refugees are crammed into the backyard. This is just one of many stations swamped.
Thank you for the incredible response in terms of donations and volunteers.
You have once again proved that people just want to know how they can help to make a difference and get involved.
Seeing as Government has not responded on ground level with any plan to resolve this crisis, it is up to volunteers and donators to feed these people. The police who are already stretched beyond their limits are doing their utmost to care for these people in terms of toilets, food and blankets. They are overworked and with no end in sight, the situation can only worsen.
It just started raining.. That is going to be a big problem for all these people who are outside in this cold weather.
For the few of you upset by this initiative, I apologise if one of these mails slips through to you. On that point, when we arrived at the police station on Wednesday a child had just passed away. That child did not choose to be there.
There are babies, children, pregnant woman, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants and criminals all bunched together, they are all being treated the same. We are not there to pick sides or say who is who. The fact of the matter is that there are surely those who were attacked for good reason, but blind hate has been poured over many, many innocent and legal foreigners as well.
The circumstances around the xenophobic attacks are so complex, that anyone trying to pin it down to one thing is being presumptuous. The fear, frustration and hate that broke out into violence like this can be traced back to many factors. People are unsafe, unemployed and leaderless.
We are not there because we feel that illegal immigrants should be allowed in this country. We are not there because we have a political angle on this or because we don’t feel that foreign syndicates are a problem. Our reason for getting involved is purely because we came together on Monday night and as a band decided that seeing a man being burnt alive in our city is not acceptable.
No matter who he is.
We don’t have the time to discuss this with people who say that many people are murdered, why jump at helping the foreigners?
My only answer to that is that I personally have removed myself from what is going on in this country for long enough. For long enough have I avoided the news because “it’s always bad.” We have become so detached from our reality that it took the photograph of a man burning alive to make an impression on me. So if it takes the attacks on foreigners in this way to ignite us into action, so be it
On a practical note:
Feeding people is great but we feel that actually moving people out of danger and back to their countries is the only way to resolution. We can’t force people to return home and we can’t do it on our own. So because the Mozambican government has an initiative to move their people we are working with them. We are still volunteering with food and relief and the response of people that want to help has been overwhelming. We will use RAOK as a rally point for initiatives and resources. We will make and take suggestions and do what we can where we can.
We have to start somewhere. We have to start sometime.
We have to snap back to reality. Get out of our Playstation, DSTV, Facebook lives that only amount to us trying to escape boredom.
There is more to life.
We started moving the first Mozambicans last night in cooperation with the Mozambican Consulate General in Johannesburg. Please keep everyone on the ground in your thoughts and prayers.
We will send out updates on needs as they arise. Currently there is a desperate need for:
Purity
Water
Toilet Paper
Nan 3
Blankets
Black bags
Cups and paper plates
Please do not call us, we don’t have the capacity to take all the calls coming in. Mail us at istell@niemand.co.za if you want to volunteer or donate.
Loadshedding(n): Describing the state of being load-shed. Rolling blackouts, beurtkrag (directly translated: turn-power). Also commonly referred to as “An economy-crippling, job-destroying nightmare of galactic proportions initially thought to be only due to government and Eskom’s short-sightedness regarding the retention of skills.”
I say “initially” because Carte Blanche has opened a nice big, juicy can of worms tonight with their insert entitled “Eskom’s darkest hour.” For those not in the know, Eskom is South Africa’s only electricity-providing utility.
Now to be fair, I don’t regard Carte Blanche as a shining star of investigative journalism. Sometimes they’re just another hype machine, but sometimes they deliver blogworthy stuff ;-D.
My stance today is that while there is likely a major skill-shortage in Eskom (and various other businesses/sectors in South Africa), that is not what has lead us to the point where rolling blackouts are an every day occurance. Once again it’s profiteering gluttony. Capitalism gone mad. Now don’t get me wrong:
Dirk Hermann from the Solidarity trade union said that South Africa is becoming increasingly race-obsessed. This was reported by Fin24 almost a month ago in reference to the responses to Jimmy Manyi’s call to have white women removed from the “Previously Disadvantaged” list in Affirmative Action (AA) legislation.
I’m going to cleverly avoid the topic of white women in affirmative action by picking some related topic and focussing on that.
First I was going to disagree about the choice of the word ‘obsessed’ and argue that very few South African are, in fact, obsessed about race. That only those with a roof overhead, food on the table, running water and electricity have the luxury of obsessing about race.
But then I saw a fantastic opportunity: Nitpicking about the word ‘race!’
The title of this post is a term coined at the MyBroadband forums.
Unlike most of the broadband-deprived masses of South Africa I’m not a Telkom basher. Allow me to qualify that, lest I be misunderstood. I’ve received bad service from them before and complained. But I haven’t ever delivered statements like “Telkom is crippling the small business and hampering economic growth.”
Up until recently I argued that the cost and restrictions on broadband in South Africa were necessary due to the limited market and infrastructure. In a country where everyone doesn’t even have a landline and the minority use the Internet at home how can you expect broadband to be cheap? That said, I never quite understood why the cost of normal telecommunications (fixed-line and mobile) is so expensive. Another nagging thought was that even though not everyone had access to a fixed-line service, nearly everyone in the country (including beggars) have a cell phone.
Mbeki slammed town planners for “applying apartheid policies” when demarcating land for residential use, placing the poor on the outskirts far away from jobs. Read all about it here (but then you have to promise to remember to click back and read further ).
Some days Mbeki can really make me proud to have him as president. Why can’t he take on his staff (I suppose it’s fair to refer to the local governments as part of his staff) more often?
The problem is a bit more complicated in already settled areas, however.
I work with someone who obtained his degree in town planning from the illustrious University of Pretoria. Illustrious, because that’s where I got my degree in engineering. Of course, he’s now working as a business analyst. Makes sense? No? Well evidently the business of town planning is quite a political one and you can’t have white Afrikaner males involved there. Make a bit more sense?
Anyway, this qualified but inexperienced townplanner told a story of urban density, a theory put into good practice in Sweden. The reason I know is because I’m in Sweden, and we spoke to a Swede about it last night.
Basically what you need is a lot of people living close to their jobs and other necessary facilities (schools, shops, public transport hubs) in urban centres. What Mbeki says is true, and a definite problem, but not one so easily solved by moving poorer folks ino ‘richer’ areas and/or closer to ‘employment.’
Firstly there’s the natural South African tendency towards the suburbs. There are probably many factors that influence this tendency but I know one of the greatest is the amount of crime in the city centres. Businesses and people have been vacating the CBDs of our cities for quite some time.
Next let’s examine the concept of ‘employment.’ While I am no expert on the topic, I understand we have a bit of a joblessness crisis on our hands in the good old R of SA. And once again while I’m no expert on the topic I have a theory as to the nature of the crisis. From what I’ve seen there’s no shortage of work, especially in the professional fields. Especially if you’re black (whoops, was that out loud). Oh well it’s fair enough, I believe. I also believe that if things continue to develop as they are now (and I see no reason why they should not) there will be no need for so-called affirmative action when there are enough black professionals to fill the quota of positions because there’ll be enough work and they’ll be of equal competence and training by then. Right now, however, it (affirmative action in its current shape and form) serves no purpose other than removing employment opportunities from whites, fueling racism, and propagating self-doubt in blacks that are awarded positions when there are whites applying for the same position. Anyway, this is a debate and rant for another time, but relevant background to the job situation in South Africa.
So there’s a joblessness crisis, but more than enough work, and sometimes blacks who are not qualified for a job get the post over obviously qualified whites. (I’m not talking about ‘better qualified’ or ‘more experienced’ because in those cases it is more than fair to give an opportunity to someone who had been denied such opportunities because of his skin colour. I’m talking about cases when a candidate is awarded a job that he has no qualification or experience for.) Now why is that? Education, simply. And there’s another rant for another day — the state of education.
Moving poorer black people closer to the centres of towns does not necessarily bring them closer to employment because most of them have, quite frankly, been disqualified from performing the functions a modern job requires thanks to the colourful past of the country. This does not mean that those who truly want to can’t uplift themselves… The contrary has been proven countless times by brave souls. But it takes amazing effort on their part and great humility to put themselves through school or great dedication to learn how to work something as foreign as a computer. I have not heard stories of those that don’t have a command of English. If you have an uplifting story, please share it, it would make a wonderful example.
In the end the problem is complex and vast, ranging from our depleted urban centres, to the (now denied and racialised) crime problems, to a legacy of poor education. It’s a difficult juggling act, so many issues that need to be dealt with, yet surely it must be becoming clearer that you can’t eliminate the country’s problems by tackling them from one end. Certain issues must naturally receive priority but for the most part trying to resolve one problem and not the other will result in nothing being achieved at all.
One thing the government’s affirmative action policies have resulted in is more scholarships and other funding for black students (this doesn’t mean that everyone has equal access to education yet but it’s a start). This means that in time the education problem will be dealt with. I can’t see why a higher level in education will not result in reduced crime and why reduced crime will not result in our CBDs flourishing once more.
I just fear that the government gets more impatient in feeling the pressure to show results and succeeds only in perpetuating the problems rather than resolving them. Here’s an interesting but scary video that should illustrate what happens when change is rushed (or the president is a madman, whichever comes first ). South Africans be warned that this is a 9.77MB clip.
I can only hope that more patience is shown than has been in the past because the truth is that the damage done by decades of apartheid can not be undone in 10 years.
If you’re South African it is more than likely that you’ve heard of Sheldean Human, a girl that went missing a month or so ago and “De la Rey”, a song by suddenly popular Bok van Blerk.
People’s propensity for jumping on the so-called bandwagon irritates me.
I only really have something to say about Sheldean Human’s kidnapping and murder and the South African populace’s reaction to it. If you really have no idea what I’m on about and would like some background, just hit Google.
My first reaction to stories such as those of the kidnapped and recently found dead Sheldean Human is “Why her?”. I would’ve loved to quote a statistic here about how many children go missing every year but I couldn’t find a reliable resource on the Internet. It is a little known fact however that not every child reported missing makes it onto the front page in South Africa. One might even go so far as to say that the minority of missing children do. So why Sheldean? Why the two or three other missing children that get the attention they need in order to be found, their cases getting the attention they deserve to bring their kidnappers and murderers to justice?
This picture by Mynderd Vosloo that appeared in the Beeld (an Afrikaans newspaper) last week Friday (9 March 2007) said it all for me.
I caught myself getting angry at everyone who climbed on the Sheldean bandwagon. Some pushing their own (however noble) agendas.
Yet why should I be angry at those who choose what news to tell for having to choose the news? Would anger not be better directed at those who kidnap and kill children in enough numbers that there are not enough front pages in a week to do them all justice?
Loadshedding (n): Describing the state of being load-shed. Rolling blackouts, beurtkrag (directly translated: turn-power). Also commonly referred to as “An economy-crippling, job-destroying nightmare of galactic proportions initially thought to be only due to government and Eskom’s short-sightedness regarding the retention of skills.”
).
