DA should not stoop to associating with thieves

There is a saying in my language: Motswalle wa leshodu ke leshodu (a friend to a thief is also a thief).

In politics, coalitions are a kind of friendship motivated by a common goal. The 2016 agreement between the DA and EFF was premised on the need to dislodge the ANC from the Johannesburg and Tshwane metros.

A report on the state of the DA, conducted by a review panel after the party failed to increase its electoral support in the 2019 general elections, suggested that entering an agreement with the EFF was a mistake.

This came as no surprise. The EFF is known for its confrontational politics and anti-white and anti-Indian rhetoric, the antithesis of what the DA stands for. The EFF champions illegal land occupations and expropriation of land without compensation, which makes them incompatible partners with the DA.

People should learn from their mistakes. But new DA leader John Steenhuisen suggests that the DA is prepared to prolong its mistake of associating with the people he also refers to as “VBS looters”.

Being indebted to the EFF or dependent on its support to pass legislation, the DA will find itself having to turn a blind eye to the EFF’s excesses.

This would make them complicit and guilty by association as friends of “the VBS looters”.

Nathaniel Lee, Klipspruit

Good driving starts at home

The festive season is upon us, during which there will be more road fatalities than at any other time of year. According to the Medical Research Council statistics, an estimated 18,000 people are killed on South African roads every year and about 150,000 more are severely injured.

Most crashes are caused by human factors: drunk or reckless driving and drivers who disobey traffic laws. There is a blatant disregard for speed limits.

All road users need to change their behaviour. Roads are a shared space and it is critical to observe and obey all the rules of the road. Education and awareness are critical elements that drivers and pedestrians need to be taught at an early age. This starts in the home and sets a good example.

Let us work to fix transport and grow South Africa together. Arrive Alive.

Cassius Selala, deputy director: stakeholder management, department of transport

Let Buchan have his covenant

Regarding Angus Buchan’s controversial utterances about Jewish and Afrikaans covenants with God, and Twitter hate speech against Buchan and his flock: throughout recorded history there appear to be several examples of religious groups enjoying a covenant with their chosen deity.

As a secular individual I may not agree with these beliefs but as long as they are not imposed on me I tolerate the right of individuals to hold them, however bizarre they may appear to be. What I do not tolerate is politicians inciting people to bomb prayer meetings.

David Lawson, St Lucia

Nuclear’s false arguments

In “New energy resource plan rightly includes nuclear as a complementary source” (November 17), deputy directorgeneral Zizamele Mbambo and colleagues are at pains to employ the charge of “mitigating climate change” to justify an unnecessary further investment in nuclear development. They lean on the outdated South African energy policy of 2008 by way of further justification.

The irony lies in the long-standing claim of the nuclear power industry that it provides the “cleanest environment in terms of carbon dioxide emissions” and is “gaining global recognition as a clean energy source”.

This argument emerges from the contaminated undergrowth of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of 1986 and the subsequent meltdown in demand for nuclear power. Advocates for the industry latched on to the 1990s climate-change debates as a means of rescue.

The truth of the matter — as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown — is that nuclear power production is not “clean” and is also unsafe, especially if you add routine emissions of strontium-90 and caesium-137, as well as the long-term problem of managing spent fuel for hundreds and thousands of years.

Small modular reactors are no safer than any other, as was demonstrated at Hamm-Uentropp in May 1986 when a pebble-bed modular reactor had its graphite fuel “pebbles” stuck in the flue and suffered a meltdown. This is the technology palmed off on Armscor.

Mbambo concludes with a plea that we refrain from “polemical debates”, but it is the department of mineral resources & energy that thrives on polemic and radioactive steam rather than business science and common sense.

Mike Kantey, Plettenberg Bay

‘Unemployed’ of the SOEs

Re Peter Bruce’s “We have no more time, but the ANC thinks we do” (November 17), unemployment is published at 29%, which is understated because state-owned enterprises such as SAA are used to generate employment.

Let’s acknowledge that unemployment is realistically 60%-70% and that everyone employed in a nonexistent SOE “position” is in reality receiving “unemployment” state payment at 100% of the average wage.

Combining these people with the officially unemployed will take away the unfairness of some “unemployed” getting 100% salary and others only 40%.

Ray Leonard, Dainfern

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