Cape Town - Since Bikers Against e-Tolls were taken to task by readers because their previous Protest Run was totally law-abiding – and as such did not qualify as activism in the New South Africa - we’ll merely tell you that this weekend’s BAT Run, starting from Keizergracht in Cape Town’s CBD at 9am sharp on Saturday morning, 22 February, will be a purely fun activity.
It’s intended to bring likeminded bikers – and other motorists who enjoy having fun but who have absolutely no intentioned of being bludgeoned into paying tolls to use roads already paid for with their hard-earned taxes – together for a pleasant summer ride (purely coincidentally, on the roads which are in most immediate danger of being gantrified) to a place where food and drink will be made available.
FLAGS, BANNERS AND STICKERS
If, however, participants would care to make their opposition to e-tolls more visual by means of flags, banners and stickers featuring the BAT emblem and all manner of scurrilous Cape Flats references to the immediate ancestry of the persons responsible, they will be encouraged to do so.
Large processions of shiny, noisy motorcycles always draw attention and attention is what needs to be drawn to what has already happened to the bikers of Gauteng (and all the other road users, including the more than 80 percent of minibus taxis that operate illegally and thus do not qualify for exemption) and will inevitably happen to Capies (and Natalians and Vrystaters and everybody else) unless they get off their BAT and start having some fun.
But seriously, the groundswell of support for BAT, a political movement without a political agenda, is based on sending a powerful message to the powers that be: tolling in general and e-tolling in particular is bringing together South Africans across the board, and Sanral and its tenderpreneur cronies are on the wrong end of the stick.
Be there: the more the merrier and the stronger the message.