OVERHEAD BRIDGE IN MATSAPHA

Sir,

They stand like gantries as if they were sentries keeping an eye on the traffic flowing below. Nay, they perform the vital function of offering a safe passage to pedestrians and residents of the slums and shanties of Mbhuleni and outlying areas next to the MR3 over the motor vehicles driving at phenomenally high speeds underneath them.

This service, the one near what we used to call ‘at the Robinsons’ (whose homestead still subsists) in the 60s and 70s, has been unable to fulfill after it was put out of commission by a truck bearing a high and heavy load, we heard.

It’s been two weeks since then and users of this facility have had to take circuitous routes with law enforcement agents keeping an eye on would-be chancers who might attempt to run and jump over the concrete barriers separating eastward from westward bound traffic, a potentially fatal exercise. Are they as well fed as their colleagues manning the facile partial lockdown roadblocks because we would be hard-pressed to offer them any morsel for their alimentary canal as jobs and livelihoods in these neighborhoods were decimated by measures taken by government to mitigate COVID-19? And we appreciate that the self-same politicians are hamstrung by procurement and logistic challenges, while we go to bed on empty stomachs and worry about mice consuming the donated food supplies in the various storehouses; not to mention the bags of goodies that fall-off the delivery trucks en-route to distribution points because the adage that no one charged with the dispensing of food goes hungry holds here.

However, we hope to receive the largesse of the Kirshes and the Friedlanders etc or what is left after looting in time for a little Christmas cheer. In the absence of information on updates of how far or near the ship from China (red China, not ‘our’ China – our China would have sent it by plane) ferrying this crucial piece of ferrous metal to fill the gap, as if the footbridge was a dental arrangement in a homo sapiens’ mouth. 

Rumour

The rumour mill has been in overdrive, working overtime, aided and abated by a certain rotund parliamentarian who shall remain nameless, with all sorts of conspiracy theories of why a bridge that could even be repaired by backyard welders within an hour has taken so long to mend. All we asked for was that our miserable lives of quiet desperation in squalid conditions be back to the new normal which is not normal at all with new buzz-words like; social distancing (which we ignore), sanitation (not again) and face masks (I’m surprised there has been no marked upsurge in robberies since half of our faces are covered).  The mandarins drive nonchalantly under this overhead crossing without so much as a glance. They don’t give a toss. After all, ‘why don’t they own cars like us’? they mutter under their Dom Perignon-laced breath (alcohol is banned remember). Buy a car on less than E2 000 a month? Marie Antoinette would have been proud of our bureaucrats who live above the cake-line.

Protest

Thursday evening saw a violent protest by residents affected by a pace that would make a chameleon green with envy. Then Friday evening, hey presto, we found workmen fixing the thing. And the big chief who had the temerity to make the pronouncement that it would take another fortnight, still has a job. It would seem that repairing a simple walk-bridge over a motorway was a bridge too far for our minister. In democratic countries he would have fallen on his sword or got the sack; resigned or fired.

Jwi Umsa waMabhebha.

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