In SA, we do need to sweat the small stuff more, please

The huge, one-metre-high articulated metal sign must have weighed more than 100kg … but when I’m angry, I’m strong.

So I grabbed it and dragged it, much to the bemusement of the motorists around me, and dumped it on the grass off the side of the road.

Had I not done so, the sign would probably have caused a smash.

That’s because it was put right in the middle of a traffic circle just outside the Northcliff Country Club on Saturday morning.

The owner of the sign, an auction business, has been demonstrating scant regard for both the law and the safety of residents in this area for more than two years.

The auction signs – expensively printed – go up once a month on street signs around our suburb and those who put them up do not care where they go.

Apart from the fact that it is illegal, in terms of not only the SA National Roads Act, but also the Joburg City bylaws to put any such advertising material on street signs, there is also a prohibition on erecting anything within 50m of a road intersection.

The auction signs, though, go up on stop signs, street signs and – most horrifyingly – outside the Northcliff Primary School.

I think that, if your child were run over because a motorist was trying to read an auction sign instead of paying attention to the surroundings, you would be somewhat miffed.

In other words, I am not merely being a “grumpy old git”, but I am a community activist (call me a vigilante if you want, I don’t mind) who is acting in the best interests of all in the community.

But even by the auction people’s shockingly low standards of giving a damn, the effrontery to stick up a sign in the middle of a traffic island was breathtaking.

I had plenty of chores to do on Saturday morning, so I didn’t have time to do anything but remove to clear and present danger.

I’ve thought about taking spray paint to push home my point but one crime doesn’t justify another … What worries me, though, is that most of my fellow residents don’t seem to care.

Don’t seem to care that the proliferation of these ugly, illegal street signs is spoiling our area, but could also result in someone getting seriously hurt (or worse).

I have long since become used to businesses (and many individuals) breaking the little laws, using the reasons that if the ANC breaks the big ones, and its members loot, then who cares?

That’s why you see creeping lawlessness. Parking in a disabled bay today, going through a red robot tomorrow.

It is a sad reality that people like me (and to be honest, there are others like me in the streets around us, judging by how quickly illegal posters are ripped off stop signs and deposited in rubbish bins) have to do this.

Our law enforcement agencies should be doing this. I hear you saying: but the cops have got much bigger things to deal with.

Leaving aside that you can’t get much bigger a thing than a child dying outside school because an illegal sign obscured the road, let’s point to the example of Bill Bratton, one-time police commissioner in New York.

He supposedly brought crime down dramatically with his “broken windows” policy of hitting the so-called petty offences hard.

His argument was that you stop the little stuff, it sends out a message: don’t mess with us. And, don’t mess with me.

Next month, I am going to make it my mission to remove as many of the auctioneer’s illegal posters as I can.

Brendan Seery.

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