Hi everybody!
My name is Jasper, and I live in Cape Town, South Africa. This is just a quick post to show a few photos...
Over the last week there has been a massive strike of our mini-bus taxi associations here in Cape Town. The strike has become violent with the major roads blocked and people being injured or even killed. For the large bus companies that have tried to operate over the last week, several of their busses have been stopped and burnt...
You can get a bit of a feeling for the strike from this News24 video:
What it has meant is that it has become difficult or even dangerous for people to travel to work, and even for food deliveries to grocery shops to happen. I am lucky in that I could work from home this week, and it has just been announced that the City of Cape Town has come to some sort of agreement with the minibus Taxi Association, and that the Strike will end...
Below are a couple of pictures of how life in Cape Town quickly changed...
When I go to the office on Monday, I often like to treat myself to a small burger for lunch from a local fast food franchise. This was not possible last Monday because none of the staff could travel to work and the Steers was shut as a result.
These empty racks are supposed to have bread. They were empty by about Wednesday. Here in South Africa, Woolworths is considered to be quite a fancy supermarket equivalent to Marks & Spencers, but that didn't help them at all...
Around the corner, these fridges are supposed to have vegetables. As you can see these were also running out without fresh stock to replace them...
So, even in my quite nice and upmarket part of Cape Town - things can start to fall apart in a week! I can only feel very sorry for the poorer parts of Cape Town that were actually effected by the real fear and violence! At least my immediately family and I were safe from that!
It is definitely food for thought. Here in South Africa, we have significant powercuts (called loadshedding) to try and prevent the national electricity grid from collapsing entirely. My understanding is that if the grid does collapse, it would probably take a week or two for it to get up and running again.
I imagine that the results would also be very dire if all houses, businesses and shops didn't have electricity for days on end! Even the cellular phone tower back up batteries only last for a few hours! A lot of pressure would be put onto petrol/diesel logistics to supply generators to keep vital services at hospitals and grocery store fridges running!
I guess it is much more difficult and slow to build up a smooth running society, and it can all be destroyed in a short amount of time! So, no matter where you are in the world, if things are going well - please don't take it for granted!
There are also many people on HIVE who come from countries that have significant economic issues like Venezuela and Nigeria - the things I have described are probably pretty normal for them!
THE END