Johann Marx writes: These are pictures I took of wheelie-bins within a 1 000m from my house in Weltevreden Park. What do you see? Must be a bunch of hooligans living in this suburb.
If you look at the state of their wheelie-bins, don’t you think?
Isn’t it just amazing how all of these wheelie-bins are cracked in exactly the same spot? Is this what the home-owners in Weltevreden Park do over weekends? Kick their wheelie-bins?
No. This is not how we live and what we do… This is the doing of the company called Pikitup!
The company that’s constantly in financial difficulty, whose workers constantly strike, threaten, demand… and stand at our gates in December… holding their hands out for “X-mas my boss…?” Then – and only then – am I their “boss”.
The rest of the time I’m the capitalistic, imperialistic, racist white bastard oppressor! And they take their hatred out on my wheelie-bin!
Some of these bins say “RM” (Randburg Municipality), when Randburg was still run by whites, and everything functioned (that’s why these bins lasted).
Nowadays nothing lasts, because the Pikitup workers see how hard they can throw a wheelie-bin into the street, the operator of the truck sees how hard he can jerk the hydraulic levers that lift these bins into the truck… and then how hard he can throw them back out! The truck gets driven like a Formula-1 car, and the destruction and damages come out of my pocket.
Well, not mine only, but all of you who read here too. You are ultimately paying for this destruction. You are ultimately responsible for your property (and a wheelie-bin forms part of your property).
Many years ago we bought these out of your own pockets. Nowadays, there’s a charge on your municipal bill and when you query it and ask what it is for – since you’ve paid for your own wheelie-bin – the answer is “that is an insurance policy for when or if it gets stolen or damaged”.
Damaged by who? By Pikitup? So, I’m paying Pikitup an insurance premium against damage to my wheelie-bin so they can replace it when they damage it, with my insurance premiums? Huh?
Have you read in the newspaper how Pikitup doesn’t make it “financially”? Are you surprised? If they could just reduce the cost to replace damaged wheelie-bins and repair costs to abused vehicles by 50 percent, they’d already make a profit!
Have you read in the newspaper how the Pikitup Manager gets “performance bonuses”? And how the staff get “bonuses” and salary increases? Have you noted the increase of “refuse removal” on your municipal bill? One hundred and twenty-two percent in five years. Are you surprised if you look at the condition of your wheelie-bin?
Why does this happen? Is it a question of lack of self-respect? Don’t care attitude? The world “owes” us everything? We can do whatever we want and we’ll show you?
What happened to “pride” in whatever you do? What happened to “if I look after the wheelie-bins I handle every day, Pikitup won’t have to replace so many, and they will make a profit and I won’t have to strike to get an increase?
Or does this happen because the municipal manager’s brother from another mother got the contract to replace wheelie-bins, without ever having produced a wheelie-bin himself but rather procures it at an inflated price from the real wheelie-bin maker, who didn’t get the contract because he’s white??
The way Pikitup employees work with wheelie-bins doesn’t just stop there, it goes right up to the highest echelons of government – who have a “turn-around” strategy for almost 90 percent of every project or semi-government institution they’re involved in, and they spend huge portions of our tax money that was supposed to uplift this country, to fix what they broke, simply because they couldn’t give a damn!
I am sick and tired of this bullshit. I am sick and tired of reaching out, lifting up, sharing knowledge, empowering and reconciliation. I am sick and tired of being bullied, called a racist, capitalist, imperialist white dog. I work my ass off for what I have and the harder I try to maintain it, the more I get punished for it, by my own municipality.
Why do we need a municipality anyway? Ooooooohhh yes, so that the fat cats can get fatter, without being prosecuted or denied that income.
I think it’s high time we effectively remove all municipalities from all suburbs, and get the suburbians living there to start small businesses and remove refuse, clean parks and recreation facilities, control movement of pedestrian traffic, enforce by-law and maintain infrastructure. Each suburb to its own, by themselves, and then see whose suburbs function and whose look like a pig-sty.
Currently my suburb looks like a third world squatter camp, if you see all the broken wheelie-bins out on the side-walks on a Monday morning.
Oh sorry, I forgot – we live in a third world squatter camp!
Editor’s note: Letter published unedited.
