THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

To help the poor, it is imperative
you do not become one of the poor

I’d like to remind Eskom, along with our esteemed President Thabo Mbeki, our esteemed members of the ANC as well as esteemed executive of Cosatu of a very wise saying once put forward by a Minister of Religion: He said: “In order to help the poor, it is imperative that you do not become one of the poor.” He went on, in the same sermon - at which I was present - to say: “Prosperity is not a bad thing for nowhere in the Bible does it say money is evil. What it says is that the love of money is evil.” He then consolidated what he was saying by using a simple argument: “To help poor nations, it is essential for the world to have rich nations.” I point all this out because it seems to me that so many decisions are being made by our so-called leaders to “protect” the “poor” without giving consideration to the effect such decisions are having on the “rich”. 

Take President Thabo Mbeki’s statement when replying to question in the National Assembly in March around the power crisis. Quoted in The Star newspaper at the time, he argued that the lack of competition to Eskom was the result of government efforts to keep electricity prices down. He explained that companies had refused to invest in power generation unless electricity prices were raised: “We said ‘No, it is important for the poor of our country – it is important for our industrial development – that we keep the price of electricity down.” Admirable motives but with disastrous consequences Mr Mbeki – both for the poor and for our industrial development. What has happened by only considering the poor is that South Africa is now facing a situation where both the rich and the poor are getting poorer. The uncertainty of our electricity crisis has chased potential investors away meaning that South Africa as a whole, which needs as much foreign investment as it can to add muscle to our local efforts to grow the economy and generate jobs, is getting poorer. So much for Mbeki’s statement of low prices also being “important for our industrial development”. One only has to look at the mines to see how this statement falls flat. And now we’re going the same route with Eskom. In seeking a 63 or something percent tariff hike - I suppose the final figure will depend on the size of bonuses to be granted to Eskom executives – Eskom is saying that differentiation of tariffs will be made between the rich and the poor with the ‘rich’ having to bear the higher increases. So once again we see the ‘rich’ being knocked without any thought given to this action making the ‘rich’ poorer and eroding their ability to help the “poor”. 

The trucking industry, which employs many thousands of formerly ‘poor’ people, has been hard hit by the current negatives of low confidence, high interest rates, high fuel prices, high steel prices and the negative effects of the electricity crisis. Now, a sector which is already paying the highest diesel prices ever seen in the history of this country, is going to be paying the highest electricity prices ever seen in the history of this country. Without doubt, all this combined will result in many of the smaller trucking companies going to the wall with hundreds of people being put out of jobs and joining the ranks of the poor. It just does not make any sense and indicates to me once again that South Africa lacks astute and visionary leadership. I bring you back to that Minister of Religion’s statement: “In order to help the poor, it is essential you do not become one of the poor.” What part of that logic do our politicians and Eskom cronies not understand? 

Njah to Eskom!

I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to all our advertisers and readers for the abysmal communications you have had to endure with FleetWatch offices over the past months. It all started with the ‘Black Week’ in January when Eskom shut off the entire country’s electricity supply. As if that were not bad enough, it was soon after that the telephone cables in our area were stolen which left us without telephones for a full three weeks. We had to try running the business using cell phones and all in-coming calls were redirected to one cell phone number. I apologise sincerely to all those who tried to phone in and battled in doing so. It was out of our control. During that time, Eskom switched on the power - then switched it off again – then on – then off and just as we thought it was all going to be OK, the cable thieves switched their attention from telephone to electric cables which were then stolen in our area meaning we were once again incommunicado with our clientele. Just recently, the telephone cables were once again stolen leaving us without phones for close to two weeks.

Given all this, and after listening to a presentation by an Eskom representative on the road ahead, I realised there would be no guarantee of reliable power, despite load shedding schedules and the like being issued. It was then I decided to bite the bullet and buy and install a generator which would give us reliable and full power in the event of load shedding as well as cable theft. I am therefore pleased to inform all our advertisers and readers that FleetWatch has now installed a 40kV generator to keep us up and running during any power outages. We are now also investigating a Telkom-less, wireless telephone system to get us out of the hands of the cable thieves. We've done all this because we have experienced – from a business point of view - the worst of South Africa’s current anti-business thrusts, namely, Eskom and the Government’s bungling of electricity supplies along with the Government’s totally inept polices for fighting crime. It’s such a pity because we’ve had superb service from Telkom over the past 15-or-so years. The criminals have stolen that good record just as they are stealing so much else that is good in this country. FleetWatch cannot, however, allow those negatives to impact on our client service and we hope – now that we’re getting things into our own hands - that we’ll all be able to talk to each other again whenever we want to. 

Patrick O'Leary
Managing Editor

Steven Johnson our diligent electrician installing FleetWatch's grudge buy!