Hey, S’bu, tell those horrible thugs to take a hike, boet
OPEN letter to City Manager S’bu Sithole: Howzit S’bu, I hope all is well. I see you’ve had a trying week, boet. What with the damn elephants, the Hawks raid and missing the public accounts meeting, you’ve had a bit of a time of it all.
Don’t worry; when Michael got into trouble he just became more quarrelsome. Do the same. Maybe you can start with the minibus taxi drivers who are revolting, very revolting.
S’bu, these okes are thugs, plain and simple. Perhaps among them there are a few decent chaps just trying to earn an honest living, but en mass they behave like criminals. The chaos in the city centre is evidence enough.
Daily newspapers carried big photographs of terrified commuters fleeing while taxi drivers threw bricks at minibuses defying their strike.
It’s inconceivable that they meant to protest peacefully to bring about change. They went on a rampage, gridlocked the city and scared everyone.
In the process they massively inconvenienced the passengers from whom they derive their daily bread. They wanted to show the city police the middle finger, and they did.
In the unlikely event that they meant to endear themselves to the public, they failed monumentally – we despise them more. I think that’s a widely held view.
We routinely interview taxi passengers, who live in terror of reckless drivers who gaily ignore the rules of the road in their mad pursuit of a buck.
Other motorists are gatvol and the hawkers whose stands were overturned by the drivers this week are equally unimpressed.
So why the riot? Why smash windows, wield knobkieries and scare everyone? Well, it’s simple: taxi drivers don’t like roadblocks, paying fines or being brought to book when they stop without warning, wherever they like.
S’bu, they say if you don’t respond to their demands (to stop enforcing the law), there will be another strike.
In the words of their leader, Jerry Sibisi: “If we are not satisfied with the response after seven days, there will be a strike involving all taxi drivers”.
What a jerk! Who is Jerry to speak on behalf of all taxi drivers? I wonder if he has a mandate. The same Daily News article quoting Jerry-the-jerk quoted Dalisu Sangweni, a spokesman for an umbrella taxi association and Eugene Hadebe, a spokesman for the KZN Taxi Alliance. Both denied knowledge of the protest.
Well, somebody’s fibbing. How else do taxi drivers bring the city to a standstill if they aren’t organised? The protest prompted the city to halt the bus service.
What to do about the mess? I’ll restrain from a politically incorrect Top Gear- type comment that will cost me my job. Suffice it to say: tell them to go to hell, S’bu. These people believe they are above the law. I’d love to find out who the big mobsters are in the taxi industry and hold them to account.
Think about it. Running taxis has to be one of the tidiest rackets in town. You have carte blanche to break the law; all your income is cash and difficult to tax and you can use taxis to smuggle all sorts of things all over the show.
It offers the ideal network for criminals. The cherry on top is having them untouchable by the cops. S’bu, I’m not condoning bully-boy tactics on the part of the city police – your men in blue weren’t exactly covered in glory last week when we ran photographs of their adventures.
I hope villains in the police are exposed and rooted out. We don’t need bullies in the city police.
But this doesn’t detract from the fact that if you are aggrieved, as the taxi bosses claim to be, there are peaceful channels to express protest – you don’t have to go on a bloody rampage.
On a different note, S’bu: what do you make of Zwelinzima Vavi’s reaction to the DA march?
Half of me reckons Godzille looks ridiculous trying to play the comrades at their own game. The other half feels a grudging admiration.
If she meant to drive home the point that the opposition is more than a bunch of lily-livered liberals, I suppose she did.
Most interesting for me were Vavi’s words after the march. He urged comrades to do their best to address joblessness or the number of protesters would grow.
He warned against being preoccupied with “palace politics while Rome is burning”. Well said, Vavi, though I fear the Roman senators are too busy stabbing one another in the back to pay any heed.
I wish they weren’t distracted. They might take time out to deal with the nutcases that Cosatu incubates.
Numsa’s Irvin Jim springs to mind. Imagine in this day and age seriously proposing nationalising the banks, mines and the telecommunications sector without compensation.
Talk about delusional – not even the lunatic from Limpopo went so far.