Munierwent to the Green Point Urban Park on Saturday morning.
It’s a fantastic place to take the family for a picnic and a clean, safe environment for kids to play.
It’s easily the biggest and best park in Cape Town, and does get very busy over weekends and holidays.
As we pulled up - the parking lot was full - a traffic cop was hovering and inspected the licence disc on our windscreen.
Munier, feeling quite irritated, took a picture of the female officer, who went from car to car, checking discs and writing up fines.
Imagine how upset those mense must have been, after a lovely time in the park, coming back to their cars to find they’ve been fined a few hundred rands for an expired licence.
Really now.
Does the City’s Traffic Services with its limited resources have nothing better to do over weekends than bust people going to the park?
And for what? Tardy admin?
Let’s face it, paying R475 for a new disc (on a car) is even more pointless than forking out for your TV licence.
What exactly are you paying for?
They don’t check the roadworthiness of your vehicle.
Hell, you can drive your car down Chapman’s Peak into the ocean and still renew your disc - on time - for years and years.
But fail to update your sticker and you have to k** en betaal.
It’s easy money for the City. The park is mos only 2km from the Green Point traffic department.
It beats having to deal with drunk drivers, reckless taxi drivers and dice koppe, right?
Speaking of which, it was another weekend of mayhem on the Cape’s roads.
According to traffic chief Kenny Africa, there were six fatalities from Friday morning to Sunday morning, and several motorists were arrested for driving under the influence.
So Munier went on Twitter and asked the City: “Is it a priority to have traffic officials posted at Green Point Park to check licence discs and write up fines?”
The City responded: “Hi (Munier). You could make a suggestion by emailing your suggestion to [email protected]. Thank you.”
Well, here’s a suggestion: Go catch padvarke!
It seems with many of our city and our country’s issues, government has its priorities deurmekaar.
Point in case: long-suffering residents of the Cape Flats and politicians have for years been pleading for the army’s help in tackling gangs and high levels of crime.
Police minister Fikile Mbalula had requested the deployment of SANDF troops in the Cape and in Gauteng.
That letter has been collecting dust on the Presidency’s desk for two weeks.
Jacob Zuma must not have seen the latest crime stats.
Meanwhile, it was reported this week that the army is on standby to step in and monitor the Cape’s water supply, should our taps run dry.
While both are critical issues, if Zuma does sign off on water security first, it will send out the message that the lives of our people is less valuable than our water reserves.
Let’s see what happens, if anything at all.
In other news this week, Munier noted with shock that according to finance minister Malusi Gigaba’s mid-term budget announcement, government’s emergency fund has been cut by R22 billion.
In other words, no provision for the drought crisis.
There wasn’t any funding for desalination plants either.
The City and Province have plans for “Day Zero”, but they are starting to panic because National Treasury has not yet approved the money for this.
Ai... priorities, priorities.