According to an article on an online motoring website, some 15 000 people lost their lifes on South Africas' roads last year. That's 42 people per day! I've written about governments dismal failure on road safety and their so-called Arrive Alive campaign.

A valid argument is that government tend to concentrate on what drivers shouldn't do instead of educating the masses on what they should do! Speed does not kill. Get over it! What does kill is inexperienced drivers in high powered (and not so high powered) vehicles. Unlicensed, unroadworthy and plain idiots. That's what we have on our roads. With a traffic police force that concentrate more on speed trapping than attending to general motoring issues, it's no wonder there are so many accidents on our roads. There are by far more moving violations than anything else. Government officials get away with murder, what's the issue then if I should skip a red traffic light or don't stop at a stop sign?

A group of people threatened to sue the Johannesburg Metro if they don't do something about traffic lights that are constantly out of order. Guess what, Metro is now spending a couple of million in fixing this long neglected problem. A great pity that many people already died because of malfunctioning traffic lights.

The Automobile Association and the Committee for Active Road Safety gave some solutions to the problem -

# Survey all roads and establish where the most collisions occur – and what causes them. '"The change of attitude by road users towards safer road use applies equally to the authorities'. Just blaming speed is not good enough - the real problems must be addressed.

# Step up the training of traffic cops and improve their pay and working conditions.

# Make traffic cops visible and put them on patrol. Speed traps and hidden cameras don't prevent bad driving, they merely punish offenders after the damage has been done.

# Put somebody in charge at government level.

"There are many other points," Auret added, "but these four could start the process of addressing one of South Africa's major problems."

With a country (re. government) that insists on laws and rules empowering the already empowered elite black, it came as a surprise that old "Terror" Lakota (Minister of Defense) moaned that not enough white South Africans are prepared to enrol in the Defense Force. Out of 2 435 new recruits only 2% were white. 350 White South Africans joined the British Forces last year with only a 144 joining the SANDF. Perhaps Lekota should look at his policy of putting high ranking white officers on early retirement to find the problem. There is no future for white soldiers in the SANDF.

And those returning to South Africa, about 400 familes are being assisted by the Homecoming Revolution with returning here. Of course the only thing these families can do once they return is to start their own businesses - as long as it's "black empowered". According to the woman in charge, 10% of South Africans won't return to South Africa, 42% plan on returning in about 5 years time and 28% plan to return this year still. Of these, most are located in the UK. 25 Thousand South Africans applied for a holiday / work visa last year alone to the UK. Only two and a half thousand were turned down. Another website (South African Worldwide - sorry, haven't checked it myself) has South Africans from 169 countries registered for their newsletter.

There are 30 000 South Africans in Dubai and about 2 000 South Africans work in summer camps in the States every year.

What's the bet that more than 80% of these South Africans are white?

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