Some thoughts in a highway gridlock
Yet another overloaded truck has jacknifed, and overturned spilling its load all across the highway. Is this the tenth one this week or am I hallucinating? Has this daily Lemming rush to the city finally tempted my remaining sanity or is this no more than a pause in the melody? I think- I am a modern person- I have car radio, I have newspaper, I have fax to modem whatever laptop with wireless thingy, I park here amongst the multitude wrapped up in my canned world apart from those next to me and can conduct business here on the highway while nothing moves- I can catch a thought or thirty-
!
1. The long awaited report on our beloved leader's 'Peer review' mechanism is still long awaited. According to rumours the SA Gov't which dreamed up the idea of the African Peer Review mechanism in the first place is unhappy about their report card from the eminent crowd of 'untouchables' who came to South Azania [SA] from elsewhere on the continent to check us over for political credibility.
2. Allegedly they made some 300 unwanted recommendations and were critical among other thing of our unrelenting crime situation and our equally unrelenting Black Economic Empowerment [BEE] programme. We don't know why: our beloved leadership has rested on the report for months now - brooding- we are told..
3. Could it be possible that these alleged wise and eminent persons saw in us the seeds of what had led to their own destruction and are attempting some form of damage control? 'Don't do what you are doing you will burn the toast'- Surely not?
4. Is our gov't's reluctance to accept unwelcome advices prompted as much by lust as good sense. We all know don't we that the absolute worst time to think of putting on a condom is in those tumultuous moments in love making when both parties cannot wait another moment to experience full-on penetration- And we are in 'full fuck' mode in our wonderful traffic saturated place aren't we?
5. On another tack: Does the strange reluctance of the South African rugby selectors to use Luke Watson, son of 'Cheeky' Watson, a man who was 'blackballed' by the rugby fraternity for consorting with 'darkies' during the days of the Dispossession indicate a fatal flaw in the emotional makeup of the coach Jake White?
6. If it is bad for a politician to interfere in sport by threatening the SA rugby squad [for the impending world cup] that he will withdraw their passports if the team does not contain a significant quota of colour laden humans,[ the BEE thing] or by passing legislation that somehow 'interferes' with sport [in promotion of the BEE thing] then why is it 'good' for Australia's politicians to interfere in sport by banning the Oz tour to Rumbabwe?
7. Is it possible now that the government has proclaimed itself official boss and final arbiter of all sporting decisions over team selection that we will gradually get to have less sport and more braais? After all we are often told that obesity is a rising national problem and must be fed.
8. The civil service is going on a go-slow. How does one go slower than slow?
9. Some enthusiastic person has suggested 'Hugathons' as a route to re-establishing our common humanity with others- 'Hug someone today make them feel loved and wanted'- How would this idea square with the current ethic that to touch someone other than one's significant other is to invite a sexual harassment suit?
10. Question: Why do the new presenters on SAFM's morning live show [AM Live] constantly insert a gratuitous 'uh' sound in-between words, which are otherwise unpunctuated.
11. Answer 1: they can only read one word at a time off the script.
12. Answer 2: they can't remember more than half a word ahead on the script.
13. Answer3: the words they must speak are relayed to them via earphones from our beloved leaders and they can only hear one word at a time off the script.
14. In fact why is it that in our supposedly democratic society no one on the radio seems to ask the obvious questions anymore since Perlman left- come back Perlman all is forgiven, surely?
15. Given that 300,000 soccer frenzied young mainly male humans visit our country in 2010 to alternately watch the world cup, get drunk and get laid [and maybe, visit the Hector Peterson memorial]: then, against whom would said horny visiting World Cup tourists have recourse, should they decide after their visit here in 2010 to sue the organisers for not warning them that shagging SA's unlicensed, unregulated, non-health checked army of day to day prostitutes, would send them home with a death sentence dose of HIV [Henry the fourth]?
16. In other words do we intend to issue health warnings to unsuspecting foreigners that a significant proportion of the thousands of prostitutes [aka sex workers] who will flock to town to take advantage of the 2010 gold rush should be used at the tourist's own risk?
17. Isn't history deliciously ironic- In 1948 the white Afrikaners in our beloved country concluded their struggle to regain 'their' country just in time to be ambushed by the rising tide of Indigenous Black Nationalism. Today the victorious Black Nationalists have concluded their struggle to regain 'their' country just in time to be ambushed by Global Warming.
18. One notices that not much energy seems apparent in the sauntering journey through the vagaries of the new ENatis car registration and licensing system that has been dysfunctional for a month or two now. One notices too, the equal lack of apparent urgency over the Bedfordview three day power outage, the complete apparent absence of concerted action to solve the Khutsong rebellion, over the unwelcome transfer of those citizens from Gauteng to a lesser province. When one also adds to that the non-performance of Home Affairs where citizens have to resort to 'rolling mass action' just to get the correct forms to fill out, never mind not getting the correct documents in under a year or five. Toss in the weaselling over the electricity REDS and a ho hum list of underperformance generally. Would it therefore be fair to ask if all the movers and shakers in the Government are so busy being involved in the business of business and cutting deals to get rich quick before all the loot evaporates that government itself is on its way into long term recess?
19. I listen regularly to UJFM and have commented over time at how they play great music, how their continuity is at a level of the ingénue and their news reading is so bad it raises conspiracy theories- Recently they celebrated their 1st birthday and most of the presenters have now had a considerable amount of practice. So how come their performance hasn't improved- Is it possible that people do not improve their performance with practice: rather they perform badly with improved perfection?
20. If I extend this idea outwards to society at large: how come, in a place [SA] that is only growing rather slowly [by world standards] and in which opportunity is part of the new ethic, are so many people so completely unable to proactively lift their game, that we are faced with increasing frequencies of societal infrastructural breakdown?
21. I loved the story of the new Jozi to Soweto monorail in the press this week. I kept checking the date at the top of the page thinking that maybe I had overslept badly and that it was suddenly April again. But the story persisted even on Friday and so I had to accept that someone had come up with a most sensible idea, all correct bribes are apparently in place, and I wondered why we hadn't chosen to do such a sensible thing with the awfully disruptive, inherently problematic Gautrain.
22. I was particularly impressed with the idea that the 'Soweto Express' will move 1.5 million passengers a day. I think that it will be wonderful for the citizens of this mini city [Soweto]who have to leave town every day in search of revenue. I see [from the artist's impression in the paper on the seat next to me] that the 'train' is around about two taxis wide and about six long and will carry 107 passengers [Star Thursday 17/5/07]. According to my Sansui financial calculator, with which I am playing in the traffic, one train every three minutes carrying two hundred and fourteen passengers, plus some overload, running 24 hours a day would at most shift about two hundred thousand people both ways over a single day. Presumably though most people will still expect to go to work only in the daytime.
23. On the reasonable assumption that a massive proportion of the 1.5 million commuters need to be at their destinations within a simultaneous period of time: eg when whatever happens starts at the beginning of the day and again later when it's afternoon rush hour, [as we're all doing right now in this immobilised gridlock] then it seems that some 14,000 carriages will need to be moving almost simultaneously along the rail line, with commuters disembarking at particular stops and crowding onto escalators, which if they are anything like those at my local shopping mall will work only intermittently.
24. In other words the length of the train would fill the monorail nearly four times- wouldn't it. [14,000 coaches x10 metres long each without a gap: that is about 140 kms of train on a 43 kilometre track]. Every workday I experience Taxis moving along every road I travel. They are all around me now as I write this. They are often in lines forty deep and driving two and often three abreast as they race and struggle to meet their daily load. Undoubtedly the Soweto Express will move a number of people and it will cost that smaller number, more than ten rand a ticket. BUT moving 1,500,000 people a day - bullshit.
25. How can a single file pedestrian little two car monorail train move along a meandering 43 kilometre line with more than 30 stops, travelling at three minute intervals, hope to even remotely compete with the ubiquitously nimble taxi?
26. Look at it another way. The rush hour is called the rush hour because it's about an hour long and everyone is in a rush. If the train makes it to the main station every three minutes [according to the Star] with 214 citizens disembarking then that means twenty trains per hour with a full load: or 20 times 214 passengers per hour. In other words allowing for the usual over loading, about 5000 people an hour. Now while that is a useful contribution I hardly see it denting the alleged 1.5million commuters who apparently hurtle at the city daily from that particular source.[Or alternatively 750,000 each way home and away] {who counted them anyway?}
27. So I find I am puzzled by the fantastical figures being tossed out by what could perhaps be innumerate vendors, stakeholders, and politicians not to mention disingenuous journalists and spin merchants. Of course I could be misled by the artist's impression, which shows each 'train' set consisting of two coaches. Perhaps in reality the trains will be ten or twenty coaches long with about ten escalators per station, but I didn't get the impression this was intended. That would boost the infrastructure requirements and that was not indicated in the report. Perhaps the Malaysian promoters assume that our apartheid legacy turned us all into innumerate morons.
28. So I think that if I were a taxi operator with a hundred taxi fleet, like the fellow at the café the other day who proudly told me he grossed seven grand a day from his taxi chain, lived in a shack and spent his spare time boozing and fucking a succession of young chicks, I would not be losing sleep. And I do feel that the fact that the intended investor[Jeyakumar Varathan of Newcyc infra projects: Malaysia] is about to go bankrupt in Malaysia should not lead us to believe that their apparent innumeracy is at fault: or should I?
29. The present schedule of development projects looks impressive: a load of Stadia, and access roads, Gautrain and now The Soweto Express, bridges, highways all being pawed over by a happy handful of players with diminishing supplies of cement, steel and human skills. And all aimed generally at about 36 months from now as the completion target. In the meantime we hear daily of rioting, stoning and boycotting and general civil unrest by disaffected residents of poor communities over failures in service delivery. One can't help remembering that it was the Romans who devised the idea of a diversionary circus to take our minds of the immanent day when the payment must be made.
30. Can we manage all this I think in a place that takes about a year to issue a passport?
Aaagh- we move- the day returns to normal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment