Rea Vaya - not so much!

 

Gosh - another sudden, unannounced bus strike.

For the third time in four months the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit system failed to operate this morning.

Nobody from the transport department knew why. Nor did anyone from the City of Joburg, or the Rea Vaya Communications office. Not even the Metro Trading Company - the business set up to manage the Rea Vaya stations knew what was going on.

I called them all back just before my late morning deadline and was told the strike action was all to do with a dispute relating to station staff employment contracts set to expire at the end of October.

I dunno, but it doesn't seem to me that going on a sudden strike is the best path to job security. But then again, these BRT workers have gone on illegal, unprotected strikes twice before and got their own way, so maybe it is the thing to do. I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in reaching anyone with authority who can tell me what they plan to do about this situation.

I heard that the Rea Vaya workers were toyi-toying and causing problems at the Thokoza Park station in Soweto and headed out there to speak to them. Dozens were gathered there, most of them lounging on the grass under trees and unwilling to speak - sure that they were not going to work, not so sure about why. The few groups of emotional people talking agitatedly about what other actions to take would also not speak.

A group of us stood in the sun and watched them. A photographer translated the shouts of one of the security workers who was complaining that his salary of R2000 was not enough for him to afford a life policy and that if he got killed on duty his family would be left with nothing.

So - none of the bosses knew what was being demanded of them. None of the workers was saying what exactly they wanted.

I have had to hand this one over to the late shift reporter in the hopes that maybe by sundown or later there will be a voice of reason or some kind of explanation of what happened.

Today was day two of this illegal strike. Still the buses were not running. And still nobody was fired. I called around and discovered that the reason for the strike was now clear. Apparently all the workers' contracts expire at the end of October and they all want to be immediately given permanent employment.

The glitch in the matrix, however, is that the Joburg City Council has apparently promised 40% of these jobs to the taxi industry.

Eish. Caught between a disgruntled worker and the taxi mafia!

So we wait to see if the city's shiny new buses will run tomorrow.

 

Rea Vaya mystery

At long darn last the Selebi trial is beginning to wrap up. The defence has closed its case. All we wait for now is final arguments as the long-long-long awaited light looms at the end of the tunnel. I am so happy. Now I can work on some other stuff. For a change.

But - not so much fun as I anticipated today. A miscommunication mix-up saw me stuck in the office today and not hightailing it off to the metropolis of Ventersdorp for the bail application of one Chris Mahlangu who stands accused of hacking one Eugene Terre Blanche to death with a panga or some kind of farming implement.

And so from my desk I covered this morning's mysterious Rea Vaya bus strike. Mysterious, I say, because nobody seems to know how or why it simply happened. Everybody was cross about it, the council pointed fingers at the union, the union denied involvement or responsibility - and somehow every bus driver stayed away from work today in an impeccably organised strike action. I tracked down the cell number of one of the bus drivers at lunch time, shortly before the 2pm deadline that would see the whole thing declared illegal.

Me: Hi, are you a bus driver. One of the guys on strike?

Bus Driver: Yes. How did you get my number?

Me: Never mind. I just want to know, are you on strike?

Bus Driver: Yes. But if I speak to you, you may not mention my name, okay.

Me: Okay. So why are you striking?

Bus Driver: Ummmm. It's a complicated situation that I don't really understand.

Me: Oooookay. So you don't know why you are striking. Can you tell me who called on you guys to strike? Who is behind this?

Bus Driver: I don't actually know. But everybody is in meetings with management and we are going to go back to work now.

Ja. Well. No. Fine. Enlightening indeed.

I think I would rather have gone to Lolly Jackson's funeral!

Another possible strike and correctional service.

So in the latest wave of strikes, Eskom workers are now threatening to embark on protest action if their salaries are not increased considerably. This seems to be a raging fashion and how each week starts. Same story, same old scenario, just a different bunch of workers saying we refuse to work anymore until you pay us more. And then they fight and negotiate. We've seen it with the municipal strike, the 2010 construction workers, doctors, emergency services, pharmaceutical workers... I lose count. Today I wrote about the possibilities of strike action that could see even more Eskom power outs than we already experience.Tomorrow we will hear whether or not it will go ahead.
And then an anonymous caller phoned in a tip-off that had me hairing off to the Roodepoort Magistrate's Court with Chief Photographer. Apparently our country's Top Detective was appearing in connection with a domestic violence charge. This was unbelievable stuff. We got there, I found him and discovered that it was actually Top Detective who was the applicant, and he was granted a protection order against his wife who had allegedly taken to abusing him. *sigh*
But the BEST development of the day just absolutely has to be the official response of the Department of Correctional Services to reports of Schabir Shaik having been spotted joyriding round Durbs with only his kid in the car, stopping even to buy balloons from a street vendor. It seems they don't believe they made any kind of error in releasing the fraudster from prison on grounds that he was in the end stages of terminal illness. He is entitled, they maintain, to leave his house on public holidays and "certain times" according to his parole conditions.
When it was pointed out to them that Schabir was driving around on his own without a doctor or nurse, in what seemed to be miraculously excellent health for one deemed soon to pop his clogs, they claimed:
"As a department, we cannot force one to die..."
Indeedio!

What will happen to all the dead people?

Day two of the municipal strike and day two of the inner city blackout.
First task I landed was to get the latest on yesterday's tunnel fire and the resulting power outage. According to City Power guy, the undergound passages were no longer giant pizza ovens, and technicians were now able to go in, clean up and try and find what caused the whole expensive, chaotic mess.
I asked if it could once again be those notorious cable thieves and if the technicians were perhaps going to come across a couple of toasted copper cowboys down there. Indeed they did, he admitted, explaining that this would mean that the 40 street-block blackout could then officially be chalked up to the work of criminals rather than a technical fault. Ah. I am wondering if there are some jobs on the line here.
Mission two: the municipal strike is now in full swing, rubbish is piling up everywhere, protestors are kicking over dustbins, throwing stones and swearing. All angles of the story are being covered by journalists with briefs off all kind. And the delightful job I get? Find out what happens to people who die this week while all the gravediggers and crematorium workers are on strike. With luck like this, I should buy a Lotto ticket hey.
I make a bunch of calls and am reassured that Joburg City Council was on top of their game last week. They did anticipate the continued passing on of souls despite the strike, and they had made some sharp contingency plans. Enough graves have been dug to last at least until next week before they start running into problems. Their official line on cemetaries: we have skeleton staff on standby. Bwahaha! Honest-to-goodness, I could not have made that up!
And then, if people STILL have problems, they can always call the ever-efficient Joburg Connect call centre where they simply have to press all the prompts dished out by the voice commands that will lead them to the City Parks division where a cheerful staffer (they did not say if it would be a skeleton) will be delighted to assist.
So I tried it out. Followed the instructions to the T and, after a mere 10 full and complete minutes of Ode to Joy played on a toy xylophone or some such melodiousness, my call did get answered. In my role as an objective journalist rather than highly annoyed ratepayer I cheerfully asked to be put through to City Parks for assistance with a death-related crisis.
"Ag no, ma'am. Those people are all on strike. You are not going to find any of them here today, okay," I was told by a stressed out man who mistook my reply of "Oh dear" as "Goodbye" and put the phone down on me.
Charming.

A bus strike and a broken window

This past long weekend break - a very much needed, hard-earned bit of timeout following last week's manic elections - was quickly shattered early this morning by a Metrobus strike.
I got into work early this morning, rested and ready to run. Very quickly Supergirl and I were put onto the story. For some or other reason a crippling bus striked destined to leave thousands of commuters stranded all over the city this morning had been slashed into a brief in the early edition. But a whole lot more information was needed for the afternoon edition.
We started on the phones - but as is often the case in the very early morning, people didn't answer. We left messages, we sent e-mails, we Googled up a storm. The striked story started coming together.
I managed to get hold of a call centre operator at Joburg Connect who seemed to know a little bit. She knew that Metrobus normally had over 500 buses driving all over the city every morning, but today there were none. If I wanted more info than that, I had to phone Metrobus head office which did not open until 8am. A time that, as fortune would have it, coincided with my very deadline!
Then one of my many early efforts paid out when the Metrobus spokesperson responded to one of the messages I had left. Yes, there was indeed a strike on the go he said. The courts had ruled on Friday that they could legally go ahead with a bit of strike action. All 510 bus drivers employed by the city were not working today.
"They belong to two different unions. The guys from the one union said they were happy to work as long as we could offer them protection. Obviously we couldn't do that, so nobody's driving buses today," he said. Hmmmmmm. Obviously! Last year three diligent non-strikers got killed, so I figured he had a point.
So what's happening? Is there any kind of trouble or violence anywhere?
"Erm ... ja. There are some guys who are blockading the street to my office. They aren't letting Metrobus people through. I had to do a helluva fast u-turn and now I am parked in some side street in Braamfontein talking to you while my phone battery goes flat because people haven't stopped calling me for hours," he said.
Oooookay. I took what info he could give me and offered him a desk in our newsroom to work from for the day. He chose not to take me up on it. I suspect he realised intuitively that I might possibly harass him constantly. *Sigh* At least I tried.
The story was done quickly. Supergirl had charged out to bus stops all around and spoke to commuters. Diva had paired up with a photographer and managed to get some cool stuff with the blokes at the barricades. We were THE team!
By 9am we were all done and seated in the newsroom for the day's genteel diary meeting. The peace was shattered - literally - when a missile of sorts came crashing through the window, sending glass shards hurtling down mere metres away from us. We jumped up and figured that a towering crane and busy builders on the high-rise construction site across the road were the cause of this mysterious distraction.
We peered down to the street below and saw a guy with a bakkie looking seriously perplexed by the serious dent in the roof of his vehicle. Discussions mounted as we tried to figure out what had smashed our large tinted window, leaving a hole bigger than a tennis racquet. And how had it come hurtling at such a speed, a good three storeys above ground? We failed to work it out. A chilly wind now whistles through our newsroom.
Life can indeed be strange.