02/26/2006
Dogged contender makes his mark on poles
Political animal: Posters taking the mickey out of the March 1 municipal elections have appeared on the streets of Cape Town. Photo: Sophia Stander, Saturday Argus
Checkout this funny article about some pranksters who are putting up posters such as the one above all over CT. (hat-tip African Houseit)
06:45 Posted in Farcical | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this | Tags: South Africa
Comments
Mickey and I were talking about the problems with our democracy.
We feel that a major problem is the fact that changing the municipal, provincial and national administration every 4 years is seriously and adversly affecting any potential for developement and delivery.
With the Ministers playing musical chairs, (ex. Minister of Sport becomes Minister of Correctional Services, etc), We have experienced that nobody is responding to our request (which was passed through public protector...) because every time we inquire about our request, there is a new Minister dealing with our problem. It takes a few months for this particular application to be processed, but due to ministers chaning their portfolios, they never ever respond. How can we hold ministers accountable if they keep changing their portfolios..
It's really driving me crazy..... I'd love to know a solution to this problem. In the meantime i'm off to london to find a new life for myself and to stop paying this evil government my hard earned tax money.
Posted by: africanix | 02/27/2006
Sorry for the slow reply there africanix, moving house at the moment (what a nightmare). I'm not sure to what extent our cabinet musical chairs is any different from what happens internationally, but I do get your point. I think, the fact that you are having problems getting a response from a ministry due to Ministerial change is totally unacceptable. If you think of a corporation, if a customer has a complaint against that company, the process of solving the customers problem does not come to a stop just because the CEO changes - that is why it is called a bureaucracy (same as our government).
Besides anything, the argument that you cannot hold a government minister accountable because he has "changed portfolios" is just plain wrong because you are not demanding accountability from eg. Mr T Manuel, you are demanding accountability from the Minister of Finance.
Could you give us a bit of details about what your particular request was?
Posted by: someamongus | 03/01/2006
Right, I understand your point about not holding a minister personally responsible.
The request is with regard to a housing development project which requires a license from the Agricultural Reseach Council. The ministers which we would like to meet are absoluetly untouchable. They are 'ghosts' as such. In the past five years they have merely replied to our proposals and applications with invalid and incomplete reports... neither giving us an approved or a denied status. It appears that they don't actaully read the proposal before replying with absurd statements and questions which are addressed within the application.
When one believes in a potential practical and viable solution, there is only so much one can do before getting totally annoyed and losing interest because of incompetent leaders who refuse to even consider cooperating... I'd love to know how many solutions have been dismissed due to lack of interest on the part of the officials.
Posted by: africanix | 03/01/2006
That is a shocking state of affairs, that I really hope works out for you. The two suggestions I could make (but I'm sure you've already looked into them), would be to alert someone in the Media about what's been going on (the more details and evidence you have the better - they love a good story of incompetence) or go the nuclear option and approach the courts for a solution.
Good luck!
Posted by: someamongus | 03/03/2006
Our solution is to raise R100 000 to take government to court, for unconstitutionally not responding adequitely to our request.
So far we are waiting for our NGO papers to be processed which we submitted over 4 months ago. We have an NGO number but we can not apply for a bank account until the full NGO application has been processed. We can not raise funds until we have a bank account.
Thanks for your support :) We appreciate your blog !
Posted by: africanix | 03/03/2006
The comments are closed.