Columns - 02 February 2009
South Africa is littered with opportunities to put people to work
I earned a double F for math’s in matric, could not quite grasp logic during my year of philosophy at the University of Natal and have never studied Anthropology nor social engineering so I have no idea why there are so many jobs to be done and so many unemployed and hungry people not doing them. Take for example the solid wash of revolting litter on Muizenberg beach.
Anyone who has taken even a few short strides say from Sunrise Circle west towards Gordon’s Bay, as thousands of strollers, joggers and dog lovers do each week, will tell you that that the high tide mark is strung with plastic bottles, bits of plastic cups, plastic bags and all manner of indescribable, sticky, disgusting, unsightly stuff.
Not too far away in the settlements, as novelist, JM Coetzee might describe them, are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who, I am sure, would love to earn enough money to feed and clothe themselves.
How difficult would it be, I wonder, to take some of the money that ratepayers give to the council buy some plastic bags and implement a scheme that each day has a row of people walking along the beach filling the bags with litter? Each person in the row gets paid for every bag they fill. At the end of the day a council truck arrives to take the bags to the nearby dump. As the scheme takes hold the litter would decrease to the degree that the clean-up crew may only be deployed once a week or so but the take-out, as they say in the marketing world, would still be a distribution of funds to the needy — fewer starving beggars on the streets — and a cleanup of a much-loved public space.
Multiply the scheme into other public spaces and it would not be long before we have crowds of people with money in their pockets and more public spaces free of litter and the rats, cockroaches and nasty disease-laded bugs that garbage attracts.
I imagine self-serving union bosses, bleeding heart liberals and others of their ilk, may object to this. I am sure someone, from Rondebosch most probably, will find a reason why this idea violates human rights, contributes to global warming ort wont work for one reason or another. Some may say that teams of casual cleaners would rob fully employed cleaning staff of their jobs. Heath unions may argue that a mass clean-up could provide a safety hazard, and demand gloves; uniforms and other paraphernalia for the cleaners and other unions may have all the arguments in the world about why it would not work. But not one single one of those arguments would, I suggest, provide any money for poor people to feed themselves and at the same time contribute to a cleaner healthier environment for all of us.
In his inaugural speech, the Princess Di of the USA, President Barak Obama said it was time for everyone in the US to roll up his or her sleeves and get to work. Perhaps we might want to do that here too. Imagine the good that could come out of simple public works jobs that give people money in their pockets, put food on the table and contribute to the well being of the country as a whole. I’d sure vote for that — then go for a walk on a litter-free Muizenberg beach to celebrate.
This column appeared in the Cape Times on 2 February 2009.
BACK TO TOP
