THE Taxi industry, taxi drivers, Taxi owners and taxi associations are all a bunch of thugs. It is an organised crime syndicate that holds the rest of the country and the communities it operates in, to ransom.
They do not care about their customers (the commuters), other road users, or competing taxi drivers/owners/associations. They are, by definition, a mafia-esque organisation. They disobey the law at just about every turn, especially when they are unhappy about something.
These protests inevitably turn violent. The government and the police should treat them like the mafia – get rid of the leadership in the industry (racketeering, intimidation, etc could be the initial charges) – they are the real hoods in all this – and start implementing and managing strict regulations and controls as with all other transport operators.
The taxi owners and drivers are a menace and a stain on the daily efforts of law-abiding South Africans trying to earn an honest living, and are regularly a hindrance to all of our freedom of movement! They, like our government, mistakenly believe they are above the law and have the right to force, coerce, bully and manipulate the rest of us to their will. They run their “businesses” through fear, not on sound and ethical business tenets. There is no place for these cretins in our society.
Edward Dale
West Riding
Durban
Creating a union is really good business
I read Dr Jo Seoka’s letter in the Business Report of June 30, with interest. His opinion, in my opinion, is biased in favour of the workers, because he was involved in the happenings at Marikana. It is furthermore biased because the management of Lonmin did not heed the warnings of the organisation he serves.
To simply say that the management of Lonmin should have listened to the miners’ grievances and thereby prevented the killings would be tantamount to saying that no one was killed at Marikana prior and subsequent to the “massacre”. The problems at Lonmin, and the entire mining sector are multifaceted and there is no simple solution as he alludes to.
The problems begin with the fact that a large percentage of the mine employees are migrant workers. They leave their families in their places of origin and move to the mining areas for work. While there, they establish new relationships and breed second families. This places a burden upon them to maintain two households, the one at the mine and one at their place of origin. And it results in them needing more money than what they earn.
This again leads to the next problem. They go to microlenders, who charge exorbitant interest rates, and borrow money that they can’t afford. This creates a vicious circle where they end up borrowing as they pay. The only solution they see to this is to earn more money.
And this caused the biggest problem in the country and unions. A certain Joseph Mathunjwa, who was himself a rock driller at Lonmin, saw an amazing business opportunity in the misery of his colleagues. He decided to open up his own union. A union as a business opportunity?
The organisation I work for has roughly 200 000 employees. They pay union membership of R45 per month. This works out to around R9 million per month in subscriptions only. That is R108 million per annum turnover without doing anything, just pure subscriptions. I am not saying that unions don’t look after the interests of their membership, this is just to illustrate what a business opportunity having your own union is.
Back to the erstwhile Mr Mathunjwa. Having seen the business opportunity, he now had to canvas for membership. How did he do this? Remember the miners of the country were mostly affiliated to the National Union of Mineworkers.
He came up with a most ingenious plan, he promised his members a ridiculous salary increase that was unprecedented in the history of this country, that elusive R12 500 per month.
The gullible ones fell for it, but others were still sceptical. This did not fit into his plans, because without a certain percentage of the worker support, he would not be recognised by the mine, let alone be allowed to negotiate for salaries and working conditions. So he resorted to the age-old ploy of unions that goes back to the days of the very first unions in the world, intimidation. Threats of violence did not work, so the actual violence began.
This resulted in the police being summoned to the mine. The police function at any crowd management event is to ensure the safety all the affected stakeholders, irrespective of whether they are active participants, opposition parties, spectators or simply innocent bystanders.
What happened then? The police became the “enemy” and the miners decided to vent their anger on the police.
Dr Seoka states that the “police collaborated with the government and used live ammunition on the indefensible and peaceful strikers…”.
Remember at least 10 people were killed prior to the police shooting, two policemen, two security guards and six miners. Who killed them? What about the images in national and international media of strikers armed with an array of weaponry, including factory made firearms? Who colluded with whom to create those images?
The good doctor should remember that a policeman is a human being like he is and the miners too. What about the policemen’s rights? And the security guards’?
None of them were involved in the wage dispute per se, they were just there to do their jobs of protecting property and lives. Why were they killed?
As long as there are migrant workers, as long as there are unscrupulous people who thrive on their misery and as long as there are self-righteous people, who have never actually been in the firing line, the blame for everything that goes wrong in these strikes will always be laid at the door of the employer and the police.
While it is common sense that a person should not lose his/her life while engaging the employer for better working conditions, there is also a proper manner in which to do this.
As long as the worker chooses to use violence to state his/her case, then history is bound to repeat itself.
Suraj Ganas
Johannesburg
The climate change debate is now over
Andrew Kenny claims that Mike Brown (There is no planet B) has written “nonsense” as he supports the findings that man-made greenhouse gases are the main contributor to climate change. This attack aims to show that the climate change debate is still on. It isn’t.
Supporting Mike Brown’s view are not a few conspirators but the overwhelming majority of competent scientists, National Academies of Science, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the many national climatologists who are members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The opposing view has the backing of a minority of scientists, comparable with those still supporting the Flat Earth Society and the merchants of doubt who continue to question that cigarette smoking is harmful.
Phillip Morris funded the merchants of doubt who defended cigarette smoking, the millionaire Koch brothers and Exxon are funding the foundations which are denying that climate change is mostly man-made. The debate amongst climatologists is over.
Joachim Zimmer
Noordhoek