The weather gods of Cape Town don’t like the EFF. Big sideways rain and heavy gusts were the settings for the start of the much feared or anticipated – dependent on which side you were on – national shutdown writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
The only red on the roads yesterday morning was from traffic lights. All of them working because there was no loadshedding. There were more law enforcement vehicles than taxis – one stationed at every major intersection and off-ramp.
If the EFF’s objective was to force our government out of its slumber and to actually deliver services for citizens, then it succeeded. I doubt the cause was that noble. Like me, South Africans don’t respond well to threats, intimidation and rhetoric.
What a pity we can’t see this ring of steel every day to protect law-abiding citizens in a country where you’d sooner be murdered than win the lotto jackpot.
What a pity that Eskom and our government can selectively make loadshedding disappear if only to prove a point.
What a pity that the full might of law enforcement is on show when the protagonists are in Teletubby red and not Smurf blue.
The optics are not great. At best, it is deeply cynical. At worst, possibly racist. A swart gevaar. On the whole, it is a gas-lighting of South Africans that is poorly disguised. Well, at least we still have gas.
But away from our useless government who is so out of touch with reality, we are in danger of losing a bit of our own humanity. This Human Rights Day 2023 feels a little bit different. Hollow. Nothing to celebrate. We’ve lost our way.
I am thankful to have worked from home because I am employed by an organisation that really does put the well-being of people first. But I found myself on the road anyway. To take someone else to work in what is often a hotspot when there is trouble in Cape Town. Come to work or else, was the message.
I don’t want to be too harsh in judgement. But most businesses have well-established business continuity plans thanks to the experience with COVID lockdowns. Big companies make money hand over fist. What about the welfare and safety of the most important part of your business: the humans?
Businesses and the broader society should not be held to ransom by the EFF’s threats to shut everything down. Their aspirations to be a governing party have been dented because it is clear they have a lot of growing up to do. This is not how a democracy works, Julius and Co.
What bothered me more deeply this weekend was on a sporting field. Hanover Park Cricket Club removed the covers they had fashioned themselves for their pitch for a match and found the playing surface to be waterlogged.
This particular club has lobbied (perhaps begged, more appropriately) their ward councillor, the city, the province, their cricket league, Western Province cricket, Cricket South Africa, the national Minister of Sport and more. It is a sports club that literally saves the lives of youth at risk in Hanover Park. It has a successful women’s cricket side too when it can ill afford to accommodate more teams given the limited resources.
Despite the challenges the club has excelled, reaching three Newlands finals in five seasons. Often clubs with much better resources outright refuse to play at Hanover Park citing safety reasons. It is a great shame because sport is the catalyst to change the fortunes of the suburb.
Hanover Park CC managed to get a match reduced to 20 overs underway at around 2.30pm, with their chairperson Ashraf Allie rolling up his sleeves and personally helping to drain excess water off the pitch.
Have all of these organisations, who claim to prize common humanity, lost their humanity? Where are the buckets of cash made from that recent T20 cricket tournament? Are there no clubs that can spare Hanover Park CC a spare set of pitch covers to shield the playing surface from the elements? Are the City of Cape Town and the ward councillor only delivering when there are media cameras around? The Sports Minister, WP Cricket, Cricket South Africa: isn’t this your constituency?
The Hanover Park experience and the EFF shutdown illustrate how our leaders abandon the most vulnerable and fail their mandate to uphold the constitution and the Bill of Rights. They can keep the lights on when it suits them. They can protect us when they choose to. They can accommodate the hundreds of kids who can’t be placed at schools each year but don’t. Yet, as citizens, we are constantly reminded about our responsibilities. Even by Eskom; the bloody nerve!
Billions of rands stolen by those meant to uphold our democracy and that Bill of Rights proves that humans are the losers this Human Rights Day.
I don’t feel all that human today. This day, is meant to celebrate all we’ve overcome as South Africans and to commemorate the people who died in the name of the rights we are supposed to enjoy.
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Picture: Unsplash
