By Neil Fraser
July 25, 2005
IT IS August 2010 and by World Cup soccer final standards, it has been a humdinger. Two sides, perfectly matched, have thrilled tens of millions of viewers throughout the world.
Even more thrilling is that one of them, against all odds, is the home side. Now the capacity crowd at the stadium has fallen silent, the 40 000 gathered in front of the giant screen on Mary Fitzgerald Square are tjoep still.
Brilliant saves by both goalies have the penalty shoot out at even. There is just one last shot at goal left, the determinant of who will be the Soccer World Cup champions.
The last penalty will be taken by the South African captain. A hard look at the goal, a glare at the goalie, a nervous jiggle, a step back ... and the power fails.
Only kidding. I actually think our electrical problems will largely be dealt with by then but I am not that positive regarding some other issues.
Positive comment
Almost every week for the past few years I have been able to find positive progress to reflect on regarding the City's revitalisation programmes. But as I look back over the countless issues covered, nearly all the positives have related to projects, tangible evidence of the commitment of both public and private sectors to regenerating the city. Last week's
Financial Mail highlights the outcome.
However, there are still a number of major problems or downsides - aspects that have not kept pace with the many physical initiatives and interventions.
These largely relate to various aspects of service delivery, especially refuse removal, and to a lesser extent, electricity supply, enforcement, taxis and informal trading. Instead of long-distance viewing using the City's 2030 Vision as our target date, we need to be deliberately myopic, using 2010 as the unique opportunity it is to accelerate programmes and projects.
The 2010 World Cup is just around the corner, 59 months to the first game, and just look at how fast the first seven months of this year have flown!
A number of experiences this week stimulated my thinking in this direction. The first was attending a short meeting at Sunnyside Park Hotel at lunchtime on Wednesday, 20 July.
Power outage
A major power outage had paralysed the hotel; one group badly affected was at the hotel on a course that required constant computer usage. They were not impressed about the delay to their programme.
Then, driving back to office, there was the usual nerve-wracking process of outguessing the other vehicles at dead traffic lights.
The second was at about 8pm, driving from Doornfontein to Newtown, an east-west bisection of the inner city. The third was continuously experiencing the sheer rudeness, arrogance and selfishness of the majority of minibus-taxi drivers.
I will deal with this latter issue first.
I have been delighted to see metro police deploying motorcycle cops on the motorway most mornings to stop and fine minibus-taxis that thumb their noses at law-abiding drivers as they hurtle past in the emergency lane.
Minibus taxis
The problem is that as soon as the police officers are absent, the drivers revert to form. So we are not curing the problem, just treating the symptoms.
At two intersections that I regularly drive through - the bottom of Katherine Street and at the first Houghton Road intersection when coming off the motorway - taxis use the straight-through third traffic lane to create their own right turn lane.
This holds back vehicles wanting to travel through the intersection, while delaying and cutting off those who are legitimately turning right. I am sure that this scenario occurs all over the city.
At the intersection of Rissik and De Villiers streets at peak hours, minibus-taxi drivers travelling east up De Villiers block the north-bound Rissik Street traffic in their obsession to get to the Park Station rank before their competitors.
Normal drivers, realising that the traffic on the other side of the intersection will not allow them to progress over the intersection, will hold back to let cross-traffic flow through the intersection. Not minibus-taxi drivers. If the rest of the world is inconvenienced, it is not their concern.
Metro police cannot have someone at every intersection in the city and, even if they could for short periods, the drivers would either ignore them or simply return to form when they are not present.
There is a far more deep-seated problem that no-one appears to be dealing with. It is that the taxi industry de facto rules the roads, not local government, nor provincial nor central.
A Citichat reader writes:
"The number of illegal taxis does not diminish even with the government's drive to rationalise the industry. The driving standards are miserably low and the way they have taken over our streets for parking destroys the value of the houses on the streets.
"One particular street is Hunter cnr De La Rey in Bellevue East, where they have taken over the street, which is a bus route, willfully double park, litter the street, encourage the local prostitutes, urinate anywhere.
"Metro has raided sporadically, but complain that as soon as they impound the taxis, the owners happily pay the small fine and put their taxis back on the road to cause more havoc.
"We have been canvassing for higher escalating fines for repeat offenders(prostitution is included in the escalation of fines.) 2010 is closing in on us and these pockets of criminality are working against getting the City on track for what should be a momentous event for tourism, with its employment potential.
"We would hate to see the City cave in to the criminals. Is there any scheme to reward legally registered taxi drivers for good driving habits, in other words not punish but incentivise?
"Can somebody like SABMiller take this idea and turn it into a public relations exercise for raising the standard of driving and improving the roadworthiness of the vehicles?"
Recapitalisation
I don't know the answer but we are constantly told that the recapitalisation programme and the introduction of new subsidy arrangements will be the panacea to cure all these ills.
The recapitalisation programme must have had the longest gestation period of any of our new laws - the country's democratic negotiations were sorted out quicker. But I very much doubt that it will change drivers' attitudes.
I also very much doubt that it will change the mafia-type control of the industry.
A report in the Mail & Guardian last week on the strong-arm tactics used by taxi bosses to "wrest control of Cape Town's taxi ranks from authorities" quotes the deputy director-general for transport as saying, "Taxi ranks are owned by municipalities, but they are claimed by associations, who levy all sorts of fees. We need to break that.
"Routes are owned by commuters, and regulated by the government, yet associations claim to own them too. The government must take control away from the bosses that currently control the industry."
Words are cheap and without action they just pass the time.
Litter
Secondly, large parts of the city centre are filthy. I have had a couple of phone calls recently pointing out that the cleaning in the city appears to have got worse lately.
Driving through the city east to west, I was appalled at the sheer quantum of refuse on the streets, in the gutters, on the pavements and overflowing from refuse bins.
There are a number of basic reasons. Most city users don't care, there are not enough refuse bins and the base off which cleaning has to take place is in itself uncleanable. Pavements are filthy, broken, badly patched, covered in grease from informal trading, manhole covers are missing and the resultant pits are filled with rubbish.
Cluttered with broken seats, tree wells host filth. The trees are long gone - have a look at the bus shelters in Eloff Street, the pond in Oppenheimer Park. Ugh!
Oppenheimer Park is fast approaching the dubious honour of being the number one public-space sinkhole in the city. The city's credibility at tackling sinkholes is questionable when one walks past this cesspit.
Compare most of the city to what has been achieved in Braamfontein, Gandhi Square and Main Street by resurfacing the pavements. New paving has breathed fresh life into the public environment and has made cleaning so much easier.
Pikitup
I was in Jeppestown a couple of weeks ago, when Pikitup workers were loading refuse bags into their vehicle but ignoring stinking piles of rotting detritus all around them that had accumulated on private properties that had clearly been abandoned by their owners.
By doing this Pikitup is guilty of precipitating health hazards all over the city.
The Johannesburg Heritage Trust building at 90 Market Street has a refuse bill of over R70 000 outstanding. For 18 months we have written letters, made phonecalls, met with Pikitup inspectors (who have agreed that we have only one bin and not the five that we are being charged for), have agreement that we must be credited for the outstanding amount - to absolutely no avail.
Pikitup must surely get this year's prize for the worst City agency.
Another Citichat reader writes:
"I am very interested in the revival of Johannesburg for two reasons, firstly I was born here and can remember the CBD before shopping malls and, secondly I own property in the CBD and Berea.
"I get very embarrassed by all the beggars who seem to live on the streets of Joburg and was thinking that if the council could collect them all off the street on random days and pay them to do easy projects like cleaning up a street or an abandoned building or a park, et cetera.
"This would firstly separate the lazy ones from the desperate ones and it would clean up the environment from all these beggars which is surely not a culture nor an image that we want to encourage.
"How can we get an idea like this to the correct people to debate, improve upon and set in motion?"
Solutions
I don't know, but in other countries that have had similar problems, the authorities have come up with innovative solutions.
In Jakarta the Tiger's Eye Project was fundamental to a change of attitude by providing mass education of the citizens; in Curitiba, the urban poor are encouraged to collect refuse which they exchange for clothes and food.
In Zurich draconian rules, fines and recycling have reduced the amount of refuse by 40 percent. In other parts of Europe "you pay as you throw" has been successful but the best, for me, is undoubtedly Japan.
A United Nations environmental spokesman, commenting on Japan's exemplary refuse regime, which is governed by lack of space and culture, says, "In Japan there is a long tradition that there are things you do because they are good for the community even if they are inconvenient for you personally."
In our case just simply providing sufficient refuse bins would be a start, plus using 2010 to motivate and educate citizens.
The Pikitup marketing department might be smugly delighted with its "clever" slogan of "It's a collective effort" but, like many marketing catch-phrases, it is so far from the truth as to be laughable.
Let's do what we have to do - clean up for 2010, and beyond. It is 59 months and counting.
Regards, Neil
