Fine job if roads fixed
I WAS very angry and upset when I read “Nowhere to hide for fine dodgers” (DD, December 23). After Buffalo City Metro has collected these fines could they please fix our roads? There are potholes everywhere – and we also can’t hide from these anymore!
We need to send a strong signal to the authorities to stop twiddling their thumbs and fix our roads. — Thembu Mthembu, via e-mail
WOULD the BCM authorities allow the people of Gonubie to help fix their roads, because it not true to say BCM applies a strict policy, which does not allow people to do any maintenance on BCM “assets”.
If I travel towards the East London airport past Orange Grove I always see youth of that area busy fixing roads and collecting money from motorists for it, because they are doing a good job – one that BCM is not doing.
And I have never seen a single official trying to stop them, be it from law enforcement or traffic department. So please BCM, let the people fix the so-called “assets” of this metro because you have dismally failed to do so. — Mzwandile Mqotyana, via e-mail ly on black people – was proof the threat should be taken seriously.
But the so-called “struggle” was a propaganda windfall to the apartheid government.
Given the intolerance of the black-on-black violence, the voice of moderation was drowned out. MK and Apla did more to validate the concept of “total onslaught” and “swart gevaar” than any other single cause.
My puzzle, Advocate, is why? Why try to defeat a white government by killing black people? Ultimately it was self-defeating.
The violence did not end apartheid. Like many third world countries, we were pawns in the Cold War. When Russia finally gave up in 1989, it was no longer politically expedient for the West to sponsor South Africa and the De Klerk government realised the rules had changed.
What the violence did was merely reinforce the idea that there was no viable alternative.
After 22 years of ANC rule, South Africa is the murder and the rape capital of the world. We have become a bankrupt, banana republic ruled by nepotism, corruption and cronyism. Long after the demise of apartheid, violence is so common that it is “normal”.
Now it is not just white people leaving South Africa, but also black people – those with the skills and intelligence to make our country prosper. They leave because they see no hope. That is the legacy of “the struggle”. Was the violence worth it? — Dave Rankin, Cambridge
IT IS high time our elders tell us the whole truth about the oppressors and the killing of innocent people during apartheid.
Regarding the arrest and sentencing of Washington Bongco, which Donald Card wrote about, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report Bongco was arrested in February 1963 and beaten by the security branch.