Metrorail at point of no return after protest
TRAIN services on Metrorail’s Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Bishop Lavis lines are set to remain suspended today due to extensive damage caused to property during service protests earlier this week.
The damage caused on the central line during the height of the Langa protests on Tuesday has resulted in services along the train line being suspended for a second consecutive day.
Metrorail technicians need time to assess the full extent of the damage and only after their assessment can repairs be prioritised and timelines be confirmed to reinstate a partial or full service, said Metrorail spokesperson Riana Scott.
Metrorail regional manager Richard Walker said no tickets would be sold until further notice. Walker said the rail operator has reached the point of no return after nearly 12 months of being under attack.
He said he hoped to have clarity and an estimate of resumption of services today, adding that it was regrettable commuters have been left stranded, and advised commuters to make alternative transport arrangements.
Damage to trains followed protests in Langa. Hostel residents were up in arms about a lack of services and wanted their hostels renovated or rebuilt.
Police spokesperson Andre Traut said of the 41 people arrested in the Langa protests, one was charged with possession of a petrol bomb. .
The suspects, three of them juveniles, were released at the Bishops Lavis Magistrate’s Court on R300 each.
Traut said the situation in Langa was being monitored.
Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Janine Myburgh said the city “cannot afford the massive disruptions caused by protest actions that keep workers from their jobs”.
“Metrorail service carries about 150 000 people to work and many of them arrived hours late while many more were unable to reach their places of employment,” said Myburgh.
“The protests were about housing problems in Langa, but the people worst affected were workers simply trying to earn their daily bread,” she added. She said the real victims were the workers and the businesses which employed them.
“Money that could have been used to improve conditions and transport now has to be used for repairs and replacements, so we have gone backwards,” Myburgh said.
Transport and Public Works MEC Donald Grant estimated the damages to run into millions of rands.
Transport mayco member Brett Herron said the impact on commuters, should rail service continue to be destroyed, would be catastrophic.
Herron said an additional 555 commuters travelled on the MyCiTi N2 Express service between Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and Cape Town yesterday morning.
REFERRING to the letter of Farouk Cassim, the following:
I partially got what I was hoping for when I pencilled a letter probing the psyches of politicians! Yes, I was hoping that politicians with integrity would come out of the greedy jungle of politics to state and proclaim their intentions and their actions to better the lives of millions of people, and not by enjoying a decent living style that we all inherently want.
Thank you for your letter. It is inspiring. I would vote for guys like you if you could find ways to turn gullible voters away from cheap promises so that a humane society, a moral South Africa, can at last start to actively help hopeless, struggling, clueless people to have a decent life, too.
The problem, Farouk, is that we are still not yet dissimilar to the regime of the apartheid times. They had only eyes, minds and hearts for their own kind. They structured society for the well-being of an “in-group”.
They provided tenders shamelessly, like today, to cronies. They kept their voters conditioned to their portrayals of a “‘righteous” agenda.
Politicians then, broadly speaking, toed the party line. They had wives, children, neat houses, a decent car and a pension to watch out for, so it was only the very brave who practised an integrated moral way of being human, and not reside in a selfish lifestyle.
The activists for a new beginning were by far, understandably, the havenots, the people experiencing the complete disregard for their being, the ones angered by unrighteous, unscrupulous politics, economics and the structuring of society.
And you are right, I will be forever shamed about my lukewarm protests on the behalf of people taking the full brunt of a one-sided rhetoric, and the practical implementation of hurtful, devastating laws and ordinances.
But, Farouk, what I really wanted to achieve with my letter was to get to politicians that somehow gradually have forgotten the suffering of their people and have, quietly, become the propagators of a greedy lifestyle and new ways of thoughtless one-sidedness. Once again, history is repeating itself. We get more and more enmeshed in a cancerous one-dimensionality of mere materialistic ways. Like then, like now.
May parents of today teach their children to become involved in a true, well thought through justification of a society. May ethical politicians look around them to gather like-minded people to stand up to the power guys corrupting parliament, the business world, society at large, and start to be our real heroes. We had them, there are some of them still around and we need new contributing moral leaders.
Farouk, we need to “cope” with complexities; all you moral guys need to give us real hope and steer us away from all the messiness that lax morals and plain greedy people apply in the sinking of society. And a country. Wim van der Walt Bellville