Dear mayor Patricia de Lille,
With the local elections about to start, I thought a few comments relevant to your standing and that of the DA would be pertinent.
It would be of real interest if you took your bubble bath a tad earlier in the morning, say, before 8am for a change, and then jumped in your car (or dragged your chauffeur out of bed) and drove down to the main road – any main road in Cape Town would do.
Look carefully at all the bakkies that pass you, generally ladened with building materials and with half-a-dozen brave souls clinging on for dear life on top of the load. Those bakkies represent a very large slice of life in Cape Town, all belonging to individual builders keen to start work for the day to earn their daily crust and put food on the tables of all those merry and good-humoured employees perched on top of the loads. There are hundreds of those men trying hard to eke out a living, to do a day’s work for a fare return.
So, what on earth gives you the right to put every obstacle that your minions can think of in their way? From totally inefficient subcouncils to overbearing and self-important officials, all taking their lead from you, the life of those humble denizens of Cape Town is fraught with delays and minefields put in place with no thought to their well-being.
Put a sign on the kerb advertising your work and, bang, it’s confiscated and a fine issued. How to avoid that? Go and spend a few hours waiting in line to get a “sticker”, then go and try to get your sign back and endure the lecture and where you may put it (I’ve seen and heard some serious advice from builders as to where the inspectors can stick it). Do a small job, say, put in a pair of doors on to a patio. Bang, up pops another inspector demanding you stop work and submit a plan. Sure, it’s the law, but the plans take a few months and cost more than the door.
When I say a few months for the plan approval, I’m talking a serious amount of time; I’ve got plans sitting for close on 12 months already.
These are but two of the myriad circumstances all designed to stop those hard-working bakkie owners from contributing to the economy, from employing other men, from spending monies at the builders supply shops.
Do you and your council ever give thought to those hard-working, industrious men?
That’s a rhetorical question, by the way, you don’t have an answer to it. Even your opposition, Tony and Marius et al, really don’t give a damn; beyond the waffle and politicking, there’s nothing of substance behind them, beyond a desire to kowtow to their Luthuli house masters. But that’s a whole different story, the crux of this possibly long-winded tirade is you and your attitude.
Incidentally, as an aside, most of those bakkies are unlicensed, for a good reason, the owners are working men who cannot afford to take off from their livelihoods to spend the three hours-plus it takes to stand in a line to register. Or even to spend the frustrating time trying to licence on line, that’s a whole other ball game trying to battle through the dealings for weeks on end – all to no avail.
In short, dear Patricia, you’re not doing your job, you’re hiding behind platitudes and grand-sounding statements, “This City Works for you”, etc. It doesn’t, it stands in the way and regards itself as more important than the people it represents, and puts staying in power at a higher level than actually doing the job you were elected to do, for the people, and I do mean all the people, not just the ones you are trying to win over from the ANC.
I do know you and your army don’t read the Cape Times, well, JP Smith does because he’s always moaning about it, because you never respond to criticism, or, more importantly, do anything about the issues raised.
Once upon a time, it was a sure-fire way to get Helen’s attention, but those times are long gone, I’m afraid, you’re obviously more important, or busier than she was, but you can’t be – you’re always happy to chat to that bloke on the radio in the morning, can’t remember his name.
Anyways, enjoy your bubble bath and good luck with the elections, I have a feeling you’re going to need every bit of it.
That’s my rant out of the way, now, back to trying to get a licence for my bakkie.
Frank Allewell
Bergvliet