Forty years ago, I knew Eskom supplied electricity and a neighbour worked there as an engineer. That was all I needed to know.
These days it is assumed I need to know the names of every director who is appointed to keep the lights on.
I have to be told on a daily basis whether or not we will be fortunate or not to have power in our homes.
The same with the Joburg Municipality. When I worked there, each department did what it was paid to do – supply water or gas or electricity or build and maintain the roads.
Incidentally, the highways around Johannesburg were completed in 1985 and our taxes were sufficient to maintain them for 20 years.
Now we have to pay tolls for these “new roads”. Please Google “Completion date of Johannesburg ring roads”.
These days we have to phone the municipality to tell them to do their job.
Then we have to escalate the problem a few months later because nothing has been done and then we must be so thankful when a pothole is filled.
Have you noticed the huge pothole on the corner of Bellairs Drive and Hythe Avenue was tarred a few months ago and this week the hole was reopened?
Unemployment is worsening and so is crime, so is it any wonder people are leaving the country in droves? Besides the fact we lose all that expertise, experience and knowledge, that leaving creates another problem.
Those who leave had paid tax on the money they earned, while employed in RSA.
With the mass exodus, somebody else has to pay that lost tax – you and I?
Remember, this tax money is required for eatings!
This is a word which has been misconstrued for meetings apparently because according to City Press, on January 28, 2020, an amount of R174-million was allocated for drought relief by the Eastern Cape administration who allocated R74-m to drought relief and R100-m to catering!
Do you have any concept of what could be done for the country with one hundred million rands?
I never realised the road to Zimbabwe would happen this quickly. God, help ons asseblief.
Ian Barry
