I don't know how many of you have seen the ridiculous furore caused by FNB dropping their proposed anti-crime ad campaign. Of course government delegations should have pressured them into dropping it. I mean, God Forbid anyone should venture to suggest that there is anything even vaguely not brilliant in our country that the government could possibly be doing anything about and isn't! Anyway, the text of the proposed ad is available on Real South Africa , and seems to me to be pretty innocuous. It doesn't in any way lay blame for our current high levels of very violent, scary crime at the government's door, but simply requests that our president take into account the concerns of many South Africans, and actively, publicly and vocally prioritise crime-fighting in this country. I think I might fill in the letter and send it off anyway.
One letter I have sent to government recently, is one to Trevor Manuel. I think the tips for trevor email address is a really good idea. (Hell, even if he never reads 90% of what gets sent, at least you feel you've had a say). Well, my tip is to try to economically advantage companies that prioritise telecommuting for their staff at least one day a week. I figure we have some major problems with road congestion and greenhouse gas emission, and simply improving our transport infrastructure ain't going to cut it. I think it will take years and years to convince car-driving South Africans that to take public transport is a safe, reliable alternative to driving their own cars (certainly I'm not going near the Gautrain until it's been running for a least a decade - with a brilliant safety record...) and I'm not sure that the planet really can handle everyone willy-nilly driving for that long.
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We had a welcoming thingummy for our new students the other day. One activity was to divide into groups by home province and say what was best about their province. "Well, we have the Gautrain," says the Gauteng representative. Derisive hoots of laughter from rest of class.
Then, they had to divide by degree programme, so the civils say "we want to improve the country's infrastructure". "Like the Gautrain?" comes a catcall.
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