One of the most depressing events of the political week was the photograph of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez embracing Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe under the sneering headline “Brothers in arms”. Chavez — a genuine anti-imperialist leader with a genuinely popular programme and genuine popular support — deserved the sideswipe. He should know better than to make common cause with that brutal old charlatan on the strength of his anti-imperialist rhetoric.
The incident bears out a point the Mail & Guardian has made repeatedly: a pernicious side effect of United States President George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq is that it has enabled Mugabe to project himself as a parallel victim of American and British imperialist aggression. But Iraq is not Zimbabwe, and Chavez should note the hostile stance of both Zimbabwean and South African trade unions towards Mugabe’s government.
Chavez suggests Mugabe has been pilloried for “taking land from those who were not using it and giving it to those who need it”. This is a curious way to describe the destruction of commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe, a direct cause of the chronic foreign exchange shortages that now prevent the country from meeting the basic needs of its citizens — fuel, electricity and food. It takes no account of the 200 000 farm workers thrown on to the streets by land grabs, or the urban hawkers robbed of livelihoods by Operation Clean Up Trash. It also takes no account of the beneficiaries of “land reform”, many of them senior party bigwigs, army generals and party-connected business magnates. Far from passing from rentier drones to productive small farmers, much land formerly under cultivation now lies idle.
Mugabe likes to pretend that the hunger stalking his country — aid organisations say nearly half of Zimbabwe’s 12-million people will need food aid this year — stems from Anglo-American sanctions. In fact, the only sanctions in force are “smart sanctions”, which restrict the travel and other freedoms of the Zimbabwean elite, imposed by the US and the entire European Union. In addition, there are the interminable violations of human rights and democratic and governance norms, including the state licensing and regular prosecution of journalists, the banning of newspapers, the routine banning of opposition rallies and the rape, assault, abduction and murder of opposition supporters by ruling-party militia.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair deserve to be publicly flayed for launching a war in breach of international law, in defiance of the United Nations, on a lying pretext, and which has only deepened the misery of Iraqis. But Mugabe is not well placed to point this out, given his large role in the immiseration of his own people.
Doomed to the vroom
As a newspaper which decries the roll back of the state in the fields of health, education and transport, our instinct was to support No Car Day. But hardly anyone did.
How did this happen when the idea is laudable? South Africa is car crazy and the obsession is one reason we are now ranked as the world’s worst polluter. Weaning us from our cars on to public transport would benefit the environment, but an efficient public transport is an elusive goal. The taxi recapitalisation programme, the revamping of Metrorail and even the Gautrain have all remained stuck in policy paralysis.
The reality is that we simply do not have an effective public transport system, and the only people who use public transport are those who cannot afford any thing else. If existing users of the system are dissatisfied with it, it seems unlikely to attract new users who do have other options. Why swap your car for a bus when you will have to wait ages for it to arrive, take longer to get to where you are going and put yourself in danger?
Surveys of commuters using public transport show that our buses, taxis and trains are dangerous, expensive and overcrowded: 64% of commuters use taxis (which are on average 13 years old) and 67% of taxi passengers surveyed by the Department of Transport said they were concerned about reaching their destinations safely. Commuters using cars spend, on average, 25 minutes travelling, while taxi commuters spend 49 minutes, excluding time spent walking to and queuing at ranks.
The department’s research also shows that 76% of respondents have no train stations, 38% have no bus stop and 9% have no taxi rank within walking distance of their homes. Commuters often fall prey to criminals on trains, or while walking to stations and ranks.
Working-class people spend up to a third of their income on public transport. They often have to leave and return home in the dark, and face disciplinary action at work when transport lets them down. How ironic that on No Car Day trains from Khayelitsha didn’t run, leaving passengers stranded. It comes as no surprise that commuters regularly torch trains that don’t arrive on time — the levels of frustration about public transport are combustible and, in this atmosphere, a no-car policy is never going to get into gear. In fact, most people will probably save for a car before a house, so urgent is the need to get off, rather than onto, public transport.
September new-car sales showed a 25% increase on last year, and a recent study by investment bank Merrill Lynch found that there is a potential market of 1,5million new entry-level car buyers out there.
Peak traffic periods, which used to begin at about 6.30am, now begin from as early as 4am and continue up to 9am. It’s going to take a lot more than No Car Day to create a sustainable transport future.