Toto Konco, Gugulethu
I have read a couple of open letters addressed to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The common denominator about them is the acknowledgement that millions of poor South Africans have been left stranded.
The assistance the government is offering mainly covers the registered and compliant businesses. Granted, you should be paying your taxes, but this is not the time to address these wrongs.
A case in point is the issue of the taxi drivers, which is a real frustration. They find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
We can’t turn a blind eye to their plight, bearing in mind that public transport is essential for the general public. We need to talk about it and find possible solutions. We need them, and they need us – for now at Site C taxi rank, they are loading full trips out of desperation, which is wrong and putting people’s lives at risk.
They say loading seven people at the current cost of diesel just does not make financial sense – we understand that, but risking people’s lives is also not acceptable.
How do we address this matter? Unfortunately, we can’t resolve it on our own; government should be involved as well.
I hear Covid-19 has reached Khayelitsha as well, interestingly, so they cannot continue doing what they are doing there, even though they also need to make money so that they can buy bread for their families.
We are really living in some interesting times. Sometimes the scenes I see out there resemble some movies that depicted the end of the world.
For me, this is the time for intense prayer.