LETTER: Why potholes are a good thing …

• Anonymous writes:

I am sick to death of all the gripes about the potholes in and around Randfontein.

Can’t anyone other than me see that the municipality is doing everything in its power to create wealth in this place so many of us call home?

And to make sure the drivers in this town remain alert at all times? And to increase road safety in a very special way? For those citizens who are raising their eyebrows in a decidedly perplexed manner, let me explain.

Potholes are absolutely essential to wealth creation, there is categorically no doubt about it!

First of all, they provide jobs and the vast majority of South Africa’s citizens as we all know, desperately need jobs. Let me give you a very practical and eye-opening example. Some time ago (actually a long time ago) I watched a gang of workers allegedly repairing potholes on the Ventersdorp Road near Sungate. No less than 12 people, yes 12, were gainfully employed on that task.

One flag-waver at either end; one stop/go operator at either end; one supervisor (standing around looking very important); one driver (asleep in the service vehicle); four men working at laying the tar etc.; and two very exhausted-looking workers taking what was obviously a well-earned break by sleeping in the grass alongside the repair gang.

But, we must also remember that there is a large office-bound infrastructure dealing with the pothole situation, so here we have some more job creation, both direct and indirect, an infrastructure perhaps too big to even attempt to quantify.

Next, potholes certainly increase turnover and profitability at local businesses, especially at companies that supply and fit new tyres and shock absorbers to cars and trucks. Nothing like having your tyre shredded in some random pothole to boost the sales of replacement tyres. But what about the other businesses that also benefit? Like panel beaters that have to repair the damage to vehicles that have crashed into other vehicles or driven off the road while swerving to avoid a huge pothole?

Also, one must take into consideration the fact that people are now buying vehicles with large wheels to handle potholes, so the sales of big expensive bakkies and SUVs are on the up while small car sales are clearly declining.

The various banks are also doing a roaring business in shelling out high interest loans to pay for these larger vehicles. Because of pothole-phobia gripping their customers the sale of booze at local watering holes is also no doubt on the rise while home consumption of this nerve-calming liquid has various liquor outlets doing a roaring trade right now.

In my quest to keep my pothole-phobia at bay, my alcohol consumption has certainly provided large financial gains to both pubs and off-sales. One must also bear in mind that the local medical profession is doing well from visits by pothole-related stressed-out patients while our pharmacists’ sales of anti-stress medications are reportedly going through the roof!

Potholes have caused road safety to improve exponentially as well. Let me tell you why. My 83-year-old mother has given up driving at long last, thanks entirely, she says, to the pothole situation. To be honest, mom should have given up driving 20 years ago because even then her eyesight was somewhat dodgy, her reflexes almost calcified, her gear-changing tactics noisy and erratic at best, and her use of turning signals non-existent.

But the other day she said to me, “My child, I am too scared to drive in town these days to do my shopping because I fear my little Uno will completely disappear into one of those big holes in the road, so from now on you will have to take me.” So you see the roads are now so much safer because mom isn’t driving along them any more. A heartfelt thank you to the municipality for this small mercy!

Now that I rather reluctantly have to take mom shopping once a week and have no choice but to use our dodgy roads, I am not just alert, I am doubly alert, no, actually super-alert thanks in no small way to the potholes. It’s bad enough banging into a pothole when you are alone in your car, but when you have your beloved mom whining and groaning away next to you, you don’t want to have any undue bumping taking place, trust me. So I really have to concentrate along those stretches where I know potholes are strategically lurking to trap travellers unfamiliar with the road.

And also on those stretches where there weren’t potholes yesterday, because the chances of a new pothole or two appearing overnight are always there.

Having to drive contraflow on our suburban roads can at times be somewhat scary but there often is no choice open to us but to do so if we want to avoid whole nests of potholes with the potential to create so much wealth for local shock absorber, tyre and wheel alignment businesses.

And finally, I would like to thank the authorities for your sterling efforts in actually sometimes improving our beloved potholes! Yes, your turning our rough-edged and fairly shallow potholes into neatly squared-off and very much bigger, deeper, sharper-edged and even nastier potholes is definitely wonderfully considerate of you. Furthermore, to leave them in that state for a day or two so that we can admire your handiwork is certainly praiseworthy indeed.

So there we have it! Will the belly-aching pothole critics please at least try to see the very many positives arising from what you perceive to be a negative situation? Come on, give the municipality at least some credit instead of constantly bewailing the state of our roads.