Fake fruit

On the whole South Africans have big hearts. When there is a call to donate or to help others we are very quick to give of our time and money. A few things come to mind: Highveld Stereo's 'Christmas Wish List' is overwhelmed with people making donations, the recent 'Shout' campaign got over 10 000 donations of R20 each on the first day, and many South Africans actually went to Haiti to help look for survivors. A generous heart is a wonderful attribute and one that we should continue to foster.

Anyone living in Johannesburg will know that we currently have a dire pot-hole problem. In response to this, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has donated R200 000 to the city of Johannesburg in order to help fix the roads. It costs around R400 to fix ONE pothole, thus KFC’s donation can fix up to 500 potholes. Furthermore, KFC have challenged other businesses to do the same. Another example of the overwhelming generosity!
Well done KFC?
No, I don’t think so! It's a publicity stunt that's covering over serious underlying problems in our government. I would discourage other businesses from following their lead. You may ask why.

I call this ‘stapling fruit onto dead trees’. If a tree is bad and is not producing fruit, the answer is not to staple good fruit onto the tree, but rather to fix the tree, or in dire circumstances, uproot the tree and replant it. Too often in this country we want an immediate fix and people are called on to help when in actual fact all the goodwill is misplaced. Our money and time would be better used to improve the system and put people in place who can actually do the job.

According to the City of Johannesburg’s website, on average, there are 25 potholes reported per day! Some of this can be explained by the heavy rainfall that we have had, but if you look closer at the figures you see that during the rainy season up to 100 potholes get reported per day. This is the same every year but nothing seems to be done about it. The reality is that Johannesburg’s roads have been poorly maintained and as a result the potholes are reaching crisis proportions. There is enough money in the country to solve many (note, I say many, not all) of our problems but this money is poorly spent on luxury government cars, legal fees for the President (Over R10 million last year alone) and exorbitant salaries.

Just the other day the head of the Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) was paid a performance bonus of over R700 000. Now this is the person responsible for making sure that our roads are well looked after and maintained! Anyone other than me have a problem with this? Many of our roads are in a dismal state, yet the person responsible gets a performance bonus(I would like to know what the criteria were) enough to fix over 1800 potholes. Added to this, the JRA only spent 70% of its budget for last year.

Another example of ‘stapled on fruit’ is the government's attempts to ban labour-brokers. As I stated at a public hearing in Germiston, the problem is not with Labour Brokers per-se, the problem is that Labour Law in South Africa is too unwieldy. Employers are not reluctant to hire due to the inhibitive legislation, so they outsource their labour to experts known as Labour Brokers. In an attempt to fix the labour issues in our country calls for a ban of Labour Brokers. This is rash and seems a desperate attempt to get trade uniions off their back. Rather than sort out the root of the problem, they try and make it look good and hope the problem will go away. 'Stapled on fruit' quickly goes off and starts to smell and the tree is still not bearing fruit.
I am not saying that our generosity should stop, but it should be guided in the right areas. When there is a financial short-fall and the government is responsible, our efforts should be guided at asking where the money went rather than throwing more money at it.

Let us continue our generosity but make sure that whatever we do, it is sustainable.

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