We need to win this war, fast

AHUNDRED thousand rand is a big sum to pay for an anonymous – successful – tip- off about who is crippling one of Cape Town’s most important public service providers, Metrorail. But it’s not an outlandish proposition; the scale of our transport crisis is that big. When a metropolitan commuter company fea- tures on its website, GoMetroApp.com, an “Email my boss” service for its more than 700 000 daily pas- sengers (to explain why he or she is not yet at work, or was an hour late yesterday), you have a madden- ing clash of sophisticated modernity with – well, what? – criminal greed, loutish unionism, organisa- tional insufficiency? The answer is probably a combination of all three, doubtless a reflection of the difficult place our society has reached, halfway to the promised land of better lives and a mutual, civil participation in the greater commonwealth, the hope for which is strong, the delivery not so much. Arguably, we’ve become perilously accustomed to insurrectionary impulses – when we don’t get our way, we burn paintings or trains, or refuse to pay e-tolls or, if we are really serious in our greed, we simply steal from the public coffers or rip up copper cabling at the expense of fellow citizens. In an almost alarming characterisation of the crisis, Metrorail regional manager Richard Walker drew on military terminology – “siege” and “open warfare” – to define the past week’s difficulties aris- ing from the burning of trains and other equipment and cable theft. In Cape Town’s finite fleet of 89 train-sets to serve those more than 700 000 commuters, 32 have been lost since October. Replacement costs are ris- ing and extra security will cost more. There’s no easy answer – except everyone in- volved being focused on finding one and the rest of us insisting on it.