Cape Town works

OVERlunch on Sunday, the conversation turned to the relative capabilities of Joburg and Cape Town to deal with municipal problems.

One of the group, who relocated to Cape Town from Joburg a while ago, mentioned that her parents had suffered a burst pipe near their house and were without water for at least three days before it was finally attended to.

Coincidentally, not 15 minutes after we had returned home, I heard water flowing past our house. We ran out to see a muddy river making its way down the road, detouring into our driveway in the process.

Within about 10 minutes of my call to the municipality, they were on the scene and the flow was arrested. Hardly two hours later the fault was fixed and at no point was our water cut off.

Bravo City of Cape Town! does not make ignoring the sign a criminal offence, but rather allows Mr Gottschalk (and other consumers in a similar position) to report this prohibited activity to the National Consumer Commission (NCC). In theory the NCC would then investigate the matter and issue a “compliance notice” which would prohibit the junk mailer in question from placing more junk mail into his mailbox (ignoring a compliance notice is a criminal offence).

In addition the NCC is empowered to levy an administrative fine on the junk mailer. In practice it may be difficult to get the NCC in its currently dysfunctional state (the website at http://www.nccsa.org.za/ is still “under maintenance”) to take action but perhaps if a sufficient number of people were to complain this law may actually be enforced.

Cape Town

Surely no law can compete with the divine reality and power of love and no ecclesiastical conglomeration has the right to thwart any individual’s Godlikeness in experiencing and living in love?

Lust is another issue.

Fish Hoek