Waiting to die on Moloto road as uncaring government dithers
ON Tuesday we woke up to the news that the R573, also known as the Moloto road, between Pretoria and KwaMhlanga in Mpumalanga, had once again claimed lives. I am a regular user of this deadly road and, like all KwaNdebele residents who eke out a living in Gauteng, I have no choice but to use it because it’s the only road home.
Upon learning of this heart-wrenching accident I called my family and friends. To my relief, no one I know was involved, but the fact remains that the Moloto road is one of the deadliest roads in South Africa. The thought that I or someone I know could be the next casualty torments me.
Monday’s accident is one of a litany of collisions that could have been avoided if our government really cared. What’s even sadder is that the road continues to claim lives, but there is no sign that our government is doing anything.
In March 2008, after completing a feasibility study, the government approved the R8.6-billion Moloto Rail Corridor development initiative.
Mpumalanga’s finance MEC at the time, Mathulare Coleman, promised that this initiative would be high on the government’s agenda to lessen travelling time and reduce the number of accidents on the Moloto road.
Five years later we are still waiting — and burying parents, siblings, relatives and friends while we do so. Every year has its own body count. It’s horrible.
There is no denying that reckless driving and a disregard for the rules of the road are part of the problem. But that doesn’t absolve the government of its responsibility to provide us with safer roads and alternative modes of transportation.
It is hard to find anyone from KwaNdebele who doesn’t know someone who has died on that road. Something really needs to be done. — Sana Mabena, Mbinane
Lotto must close party doors
IT is with great sadness that I read in “Sports bodies go begging as bigwigs whoop it up” (November 10) that the South African Sports Awards ceremony will be costing R65-million. But hidden among this wasteful expenditure is another tragedy — the National Lotteries Board does not have a category for science.
The board’s R8.5-million contribution to Fikile Mbalula’s party could have given many of our best and brightest young people a chance to experience science and have an opportunity to show their talents. And this is a small amount compared with some of the incomprehensible expenditure by the lotteries board, such as the R40million to the South African National Youth Development Agency to host the World Festival of Youth and Students in 2010, or the R64.1-million awarded to Makhaya Art & Culture Development, which stages South African exhibitions in Serbia and other Eastern European countries.
South Africa has science talent. We need to find it and nurture it, and Lotto funding could go a long way to achieving this. It is time the board opened its doors to the sciences and closed them on parties. — Case Rijsdijk, Wilderness
Expect graft if cops get peanuts
IN “Top cops probed for rampant corruption” (November 10) you quote a senior police officer as saying: “Most of those officers drive big BMWs. I don’t know how they afford those cars.”
Are senior police officers supposed to own small Chinese cars? If so, how much must they be paid monthly? And I suppose noncommissioned officers will earn a salary that allows them to own a bicycle that they will pay for five years to own. This clearly shows that our cops are earning peanuts. How do we expect our cops to do their job without being corrupt? — Ben Lekalake, Roodepoort
India’s Hindus a lot less touchy
I HAVE read the exaggerated expressions of outrage by Hindu letter writers over the Zapiro cartoon with amusement, “Offensive Ganesha cartoon was a direct insult to Hindus” (November 3).
In India, Hindu cartoonists have regularly caricatured their deities without causing any unhappiness. Even Indian corporations and manufacturers are not averse to using images of Hindu deities to market their products.
I suggest that Ashwin Trikamjee of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha and Mick Chetty from the Africa region of the International Movement for Tamil Culture approach leaders in India to learn why Hindus there do not take umbrage the way their South African counterparts do when their deities are caricatured.
The Zapiro-aggrieved South African Hindus must bear in mind that cartoonists are iconoclasts whose task it is to provoke and amuse. For cartoonists there should be no holy cows — not even an anthropomorphic Lord Ganesha. — Gunvant Govindjee, Ormonde
Let the god defend himself
THE correspondence about the Zapiro cartoon has disappointed me, because I thought Hindus tended to be more tolerant than most other religious groups.
Furthermore, why should it be necessary for mere mortals to defend a figure such as Ganesha — surely this implies that the deity lacks the necessary power to protect his own standing?
Having followed Zapiro’s cartoons for a number of years, I can’t help but wonder how many other angry deities are waiting to have words with him when he passes over. — David Lawson, St Lucia
Living on less than prisoners
IF, as stated by Correctional Services Minister Sibusiso Ndebele, it costs about R10 000 a month to keep a prisoner, then we should all become criminals. My family has to survive on R6 000 a month. Who said crime doesn’t pay? — GM Short, by SMS
Bad Czech a danger to us all
THE law-enforcement agencies have to take control of the situation with Czech fugitive Radovan Krejcir. Not only is this state of affairs dangerous for South Africans, but it makes a mockery of our security apparatus. — SJ, by SMS
Just the colour of fear changes
FROM the swart gevaar of apartheid, we have moved to the wit gevaar of democracy with Cyril Ramaphosa’s warning that “the boers will come back to control us”. The more things change, the more they remain the same. — Logan Naidoo, by SMS
Practice, not theory, the threat
MATHEW Blatchford’s comments on fascism in his letter, “Sorry, but the EFF’s Malema is no Mussolini in the making” (November 10), are every bit as open to argument as those of Imraan Buccus’s, which he finds “extraordinarily inaccurate”. But there is no single way of seeing fascism any more than there is of communism, socialism or anarchism.
Nazism in Germany was fundamentally racist — but fascism in Italy was not.
In power, fascism in both countries coopted big business and was hostile to organised labour because it was hostile to any interest outside the supreme, allembracing state.
Unions that played ball could get by, as could Catholics and Lutherans.
In so far as any of this relates to Julius Malema in South Africa today, it is because the commander-in-chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters is clearly a revolutionary and a nationalist who uses any old issue and ideology at hand to muster support. Your two correspondents at least seemed to agree that Malema is also no democrat.
It is not theory but how the revolution works out in practice that people need to worry about. — Paul Whelan, Umhlanga