23rd August 2010
Nothing
cracked my maternal heart as much as the fatal accident in Blackheath last week
in which ten children died as a train ploughed into the mini-bus taxi that
illegally crossed a railway line. The taxi driver allegedly overtook a number
of cars and tried to slip through the boom fully cognisant that a train was on
its way. MEC Robin Carlisle is rightly angry about the lawlessness of our taxis
but he and government generally are not doing enough to curb the anarchy on our
roads. Just travel to work on the Main Road going to Cape Town on any given day.
Taxi drivers routinely jump red lights, overtake left right and centre, defy
the rules of the road and have the cheek to threaten others when one indicates
annoyance. They have no respect for any road rules because they know very
little law enforcement applies to them. Instead, energies are concentrated into
making easy money by fining drivers in the suburbs for exceeding the speed
limit by a paltry 10 or 20 kms.
A recent Financial Mail reported some
road accident statistics which blew my socks off and explains much of the
anarchy we see on our roads. Of the 9,2million vehicles on our roads, only 8.2
million are licensed, and up to half of the drivers have obtained their
licenses fraudulently. Worse, the average annual road accident rate is
850 000, of which 350 000 account for injuries and/ or fatalities.
With political will this carnage can be curtailed but politicians are too busy securing
their power bases to care about the citizens. Citizens, on the other hand, are
apathetic and not even the deaths of these children move us into action.
Lawlessness
has become a way of life because the SA government, too, is lawless. It started
with the travel scandal in Parliament and the ANC knew that had all those implicated
MPs been charged, we would have had a constitutional crisis, simply because so
many of our legislators were involved. This lack of respect for the rule of law
is also evident in the current public sector strikes. While the grievances of
teachers, social workers, nurses and others are legitimate, trade unions fail
us when they disregard emergency health and security services with impunity.
Where is the leadership? Instead school children are beaten up, babies and the
sick are left to die.
On
another front, journalists stage a sit-in in Parliament to protest against
secret Portfolio Committee hearings into the embattled SABC. Judge Olivier
rules in their favour and our legislators and the Board simply ignore the
ruling. SABC board member, Pippa Green, who lodged a complaint against me with
the Ombudsman for criticising the appointment of CEO Solly Mokoetle refuses to apologise
to me for my constant prophetic exposés of her beloved
basket-case of a SABC. The public broadcaster defies transformation and current
board members are vain to think they can stand up to the ANC and clean out this
sewer of perennial stench.
And
as for our Minister of Defence, Lindiwe Sisulu, she is lawlessness personified.
Repeatedly showing Parliament ‘the finger’ by refusing to open up her report on
Defence to Parliament, she a liability to her brother, Max Sisulu, speaker of
Parliament, and a disgrace to her parents. She runs one of the most dishevelled
ministries in the country, trading on her political pedigree to get her off the
hook.
Lastly,
the Arcellor Mittal/Imperial Crown Trading deal that catapulted the Guptas, Zuma’s
children and relatives into the billionaire echelons, is the surest sign that
Zuma knows he will be a one-term president. Spreading the state’s largesse to
his ever expanding progeny has become a presidential priority if the YOU
magazine is anything to go by. Zuma’s family modestly hold more than 130
directorships or memberships of closed corporations. The vampire state under
Zuma exasperates even Vavi, his one-time closest alliance partner:
“We are heading rapidly in the
direction of a full-blown predator state in which a powerful corrupt and
demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state as a
vehicle of accumulation.”
Whether
it is children killed through reckless driving, corrupt MPs, an unruly SABC,
Lindiwe Sisulu, and irregular mining deals, they all point to one thing – a
creeping anarchic state where things fall apart because the Centre is out of
control.
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