This was one of many things that black people inherited from whites in 1994, when whites voluntarily handed over political power to blacks. Clean, safe trains. By the middle 1980's more than half of all the rail tracks in the whole of Africa - the largest continent on Earth - were in South Africa, and daily in use too. On those rail tracks ran decent passenger trains with cheap train tickets, and cargo trains that transported large quantities of cargo for cheap.
Photos above are the vacation photos of an amateur photographer, a pensioner at the time as I understand, taken of the Trans Karoo train. Look at the perron, no litter. Look at those green faux leather seats, no holes, not torn up, no graffiti. Quite the exact opposite of how it's today.
After blacks took over the management of South Africa, the Trans Karoo was renamed Shozoloza Meyl, and went from there into the dumps. Rail tracks getting stolen. Trains set on fire. Trains breaking down with every single journey because of incompetent maintenance. No railway police anymore, thefts, robberies, assaults, and even murders on trains becoming common.
Large corruption throughout the railroad departments of South Africa, so large that even Spanish trains that cannot go underneath South African bridges were ordered and paid for. Spanish trains yes, because under black management South Africa lost its ability to build its own trains. (Apparently a train building yard was put up fairly recently outside Pretoria; expect large corruption there.) The first real high speed train in Africa, the gold-painted Gautrain in the Gauteng province, came to screeching halts several times because subhumans stole electrical cables. What a message to tourists. The same happened several times to the world-famous Blue Train, leaving tourists that forked out 5 000 dollars or more for the world's most luxurious train holiday high and dry.
Beginning of 2020 the Shozoloza Meyl's safety certification was revoked, immediately halting all train trips across the 25th largest country in the world. What a disgrace when a country cannot even operate a few remaining trains safely! That while a competent railroad system forms the backbone of every successful economy in the world.
As a result, for almost two decades since the railway system started collapsing, companies had to resort to expensive trucking companies to haul goods, instead of using cargo trains like under apartheid, because the black-managed train system proved itself to be unreliable and not up for even the basics. So trucks are driving roads to snuff, causing accidents when not congesting traffic, and making every product in shops cost more.
Instead of doing something about this, you know what ordinary South Africans are doing? Fighting about hair! And how, by going the legal, decent, civilized route through the legal system? Oh no, they're doing the same as what they did to the train system: Burning down - even petrol bombing - and looting and destroying a national pharmacy chain of stores that is majority black-owned and with 85% of employees being black too, just because a small team of less than ten people in marketing screwed up.
In short the background, for my seven international readers: A national chain store called Clicks operates something like 880 stores across South Africa, selling pharmaceutical and beauty products, including for hair.
Clicks placed an advertisement on their website for the American haircare product Tresèmme (not certain about exact spelling now), that compared the hair of two women - that happened to be black, and whose hair was depicted as being dry - with that of two white women, whose hair was depicted as pretty. Racist, certainly, for a country like South Africa where everything gets measured in racial terms. Not racist in countries where people don't notice race. Of course the advertising company - which wasn't Clicks - chose two women with dry hair, and two women with pretty hair, as illustration for their advert.
Some black person with a crooked weener then ran to Twitter with the advert, and it blew up. Not his weener, the story. Severe backlash on social media followed, which was right.
But then an anarchistic political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) - that called for the killing of white people before on several occasions, and with evidence on the scenes of some farm murders indicating the message hit home - hijacked the matter to call on its members to physically close the whole chain store down for a full week. That during a period of economic angst in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, where businesses already struggle to keep people employed.
The corrupt party - both its leaders are accused of large-scale corruption, their latest hatred-mongering shitshow is perhaps a way to deflect attention from their part in VBS Bank that stole billions from many poor black pensioners - is known for its intimidation tactics and incitement of violence against whites and Indians, and its silence about more urgent matters.
Meanwhile the levels of violence against white and black women - by black men - have reached astronomical levels, while the EFF can barely get itself so far as to do some lip service against it once every twelve blue moon. Every so often their real colors come out, when its supporters threaten to - and indeed do so too - rape, torture and kill white and black women in the most brutal way. But then they cannot understand why so many white people the world over compare black people with baboons. It's not about skin color, it's about behavior and intelligence, is what I understand from observation.
After the call to violence from the EFF, its supporters then went on a looting and carnage rampage since Monday 7 September 2020, with tens of Clicks stores practically getting destroyed. Some were torched in an attempt to burn it down, with South African police officers doing a Kristalnacht by just standing by and watching and not arresting the scum responsible. Racist cops? Keep in mind that most Clicks stores are in shopping malls, meaning a fire will endanger and destroy other shops too.
Naturally Clicks followed the legal route as per the hard-fought-for constitution, and attempted to obtain a court interdict from a South African court to prohibit the EFF from interrupting its business activities. A reasonable request, and many lawyers expected it to be granted.
But, lo and behold, the South African legal system was called incompetent, inconsistent, and some other nasty descriptive terms before, and a judge out of touch with reality proved it loud and clear again by denying to grant an interdict, and having Clicks pay the huge legal costs to protect itself against a party that proved before that almost all its rallies turn violent. What can go wrong? And the judge chawed another KFC happie while pondering this important question for a lengthy three seconds.
The judge was correct in emphasizing the public right to protest, however, he most certainly know how EFF protests look like, and he should have allowed only protesting outside Clicks head office, instead of allowing a bunch of looting losers to storm inside hundreds of stores countrywide. In his flawed judgement he effectively sided with a black Nazi-like political party against the rights of millions more citizens. Even before the week's carnage everyone knew what would happen, so why did the judge forsook his duty to take the safety of people and property properly into account?
Frankly, that judge and his previous judgements should be investigated. But that won't happen in a corrupt country like SA with its haphazard legal system, it's virtually impossible to remove an incompetent judge from the bench once his fat ass left its oily stain on there after the first trial. Remember the racist, drunk judge that drove well-gesuip with his Jaguar into a white man's fence, and then went all racist in front of an audience, around 2008? It took ten years to get his black ass fired, and he received a huge salary every month for 120 months while sitting at home petting his gray hair with Maybewhite.
Back to the story: Due to extensive damages the Clicks chain with its more than 800 stores are likely to downsize, with many black people that will be losing their jobs, and products on shelves becoming more expensive to pay for those damages. Insurance only goes so far to cover some losses.
Who ultimately loses? Black people. Black customers, black employees, are the victims at the hands of other black people. Directly and indirectly. Due to the carnage some international companies suspended potential investment in South Africa, and will rather open shops and create unemployment in other countries.
Meanwhile South Africa's GDP shrunk with an eye-watering 51% in the second quarter, with millions of blacks losing their jobs, but blacks like Julius Malema just don't care. The white taxpayer pays his gigantic salary as politician, so he can attack and vilify them and make them feel unwelcome in a country where their forefathers arrived before his. Oh the irony.
Those that orchestrated the past week's anarchy as well as tens of thousands of participants probably knew all this, they likely knew or were told they are shooting themselves and other black people in the foot.
Yet, they continued, the primitive urge to destroy boiled up like they are bloodthirsty primitive cavemen, and it just had to spill out. Just like with national public assets (trains, hospitals, universities, libraries, you know, stuff to help them up in life) they had to destroy it, to burn it, to vandalize it. They* have no pride, no morals, no decency, only the urge to return to bush-level status they feel comfortable with. And, as always in pathetic Africa's recent history, they will blame the white man when their failure to manage a once sailing ship gets that shop, agh I mean ship, to sink.
*With 'they' I do not say all black people, because it will be factually untrue. Many millions of blacks are as concerned as me about the status quo in South Africa, and want to see a better country there that's true to the spirit of ubuntu. (Ubuntu is now vrek, though.)
With 'they' I do mean the alarming large percentage of blacks on the opposite spectrum, millions too, those that you see during the 51 daily protests (it's statistics) that takes place every day across the country, those desperate losers that cause shit, destruction, and crime wherever they find themselves. They are the real problem, not Jan van Riebeeck or any other dead person or even the past, the real problem is half of the people alive today in South Africa.
And that's why you cannot and will never have nice trains again.
No comments:
Post a Comment