Mbalula rewards those who survived December… by following them on Twitter

Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula is well known for his social media presence and has been using the platform to try and steer his followers away from drinking and driving.

Now, he has now come up with a new way to reward those who have managed to make it out of the December holidays alive.

“I LIVED BEYOND DEZEMBA,” he exclaimed in all caps on Twitter.

“Retweet if you were safe on our roads and Arrived Allive [sic] in 2020,” he added, before promising to follow the first 400 people to retweet the post-December message.

He then tweeted that he’d made good on his promise.

“Followed 420 people… thank you. Will follow more later,” he said.

“Good morning and a shout out to all of you who were on our roads this Dezemba and heeded our calls to Arrive Alive. Our work isn’t complete – we are still on the streets monitoring compliance,” he said in another tweet.

On December 24, Mbalula said a total of 589 people had lost their lives on South African roads so far, a decline from last year’s figures.

Some 489 fatal crashes had been recorded at the time, marking a 25% decrease compared to 656 fatal crashes recorded over the same period last year.

“These crashes have resulted in 589 people dying on our roads so far, compared to 839 last year. This represents a significant 30% reduction in fatalities. The majority of those who died were pedestrians at 39%, followed by passengers at 34%, drivers at 26% and cyclists at 1%,” Mbalula said at the time.

Updated figures, which include stats from December 25 to January 2020, are not yet available.

(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)

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