Government’s attempt at pretending that Joburg is still the shiny City of Gold when G20 leaders land on our soil will not work.
The weekend of 24 to 26 October was unambiguously a slap in the face of the residents of Joburg.
Days before that weekend, a “coalition of traffic management agencies” announced that as they would be facilitating the “movement of dignitaries” during the G20 summit to take place on 22 and 23 November in Johannesburg – and “while minimising disruptions to everyday life for citizens” – they would be conducting a “dry run” to “test the traffic management strategies across the three metropolitan areas of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni”.
These dry runs were conducted on major travel routes over three days, from 24 to 26 October, from Friday to Sunday inclusive.
The mind boggles as to why the “coalition of traffic management agencies” chose the exact same weekend when the city was closed off for the widely pre-advertised Ride Joburg cycle race that took place on Sunday, 26 October.
Why “traffic management strategies” have to be “tested” in the first place is a mystery.
If traffic management strategies had to indeed be tested, then why have such similar dry runs never been undertaken before?
It is only when the world’s political elite descends on the City of Gold that government finds it appropriate to conduct such dry runs.
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Government is clearly telling tax-paying and ratepaying residents that they are not as important as foreign political leaders.
In all the years that I served in the transport portfolio in parliament, I spoke at every budget debate every year, about our horrific road safety record, which remains one of the worst in the world.
Only two months ago, the UK-based Compare the Market, which analyses road safety in countries, ranked South Africa as the fourth-worst country to drive in, languishing from high road deaths, poor-quality roads, above-average speed limits and high levels of congestion.
Our road death rate has been through the roof and keeps on rising every year, while government sits on its hands doing nothing to remedy the situation.
Why have dry runs never been conducted in an effort to reduce road deaths and carnage, for example?
The decades of neglect, crime and grime is now simply too much to be swept under the carpet.
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Government’s attempt at pretending that Joburg is still the shiny City of Gold when G20 leaders land on our soil will not work.
In fact, residents on social media describe this as nothing more than fraud on government’s part.
On that weekend, traffic and law enforcement agencies were running around like Keystone cops while cyclists, many of them from all over the world, were using the very roads that were being “dry run”.
I have no doubt the ANC don’t get the importance of events such as Ride Joburg, which is one of the world’s largest timed cycle races that attracts an estimated 20 000 to 30 000 participants every year.
The positive economic impact on Johannesburg, Gauteng and the country’s economy at large, appears to escape the ANC.
While Joburgers work hard daily to make ends meet, the unproductive and clueless so-called “coalition of traffic management agencies” frustrated, inconvenienced and stifled productive, hardworking and decent Joburgers.
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