Strike action strikes a bad note
The very institutions from which we demand our free education are destroyed, resulting in no education being provided there at all.
Our newspaper group’s annual awards ceremony, the Caxton Excellence Awards, was held in Johannesburg a month ago and it was our privilege as Highvelder journalists to attend the glamorous event.
Alas, we didn’t win any awards this year, but the trip and overnight stay at a larney hotel may well be a reward in itself.
Our trip coincided with the first week of strike action by employees of the refuse removal company Pikitup. It is contracted to the City of Johannesburg and is responsible for the removal of the city’s trash, unlike smaller towns where it is still the task of the local municipalities.
What we saw there was shocking. The streets in the city centre were littered with garbage of every imaginable kind and garbage bags were piled up on street corners.
Bear in mind that this was the first week of the strike that lasted at least four weeks!
One shudders to think what the city looked like after all that time.
The bits of footage we saw on TV news provoked me into uttering a dirty four-letter word understood in any language: SIES!
I fail to see the logic of forcing oneself to live in absolute filth to resolve an issue that involves filth.
Logic seems to be in short supply nowadays.
Schools are burnt down, because there aren’t enough schools. Universities and colleges where young adults supposedly want to further their education are wrecked. The very institutions from which we demand our free education are destroyed, resulting in no education being provided there at all.
We are unhappy about poor municipal service delivery. The powers that be tell us it’s because of lack of resources and shortage of vehicles.
We conveniently forget it is the public that wrecks the meter boxes, steal the copper cables and manhole covers, all of which add to the problems.
Then, sure enough, municipal officials are barred from entering certain areas to attend to the problem and then again, the available vehicles are burnt. So now we have an even worse service delivery problem.
We complain when the police say they do not have enough vehicles. Then, when they respond to emergencies, the vehicles are torched and this causes further shortages.
The logic, or lack thereof, is baffling.
Wouldn’t it be great if Simple Logic was to become a compulsory subject at all high schools?
