Day 72 - Road Gang Strikes Again

 

Lockdown Day 72 - Level 3 Day 6 - Since the National Coronavirus Lockdown started 72 days ago the Johannesburg Roads Department have been operating on skeleton staff even though the other Johannesburg Municipality departments such as Water and Sanitation have been fully operational. As for the roads well here we are, our roads are full of potholes that the general public have to repair the roads themselves.

Today the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch got volunteers together and started repair the really serious potholes, the ones that were damaging cars. Thank you RNW for doing what you doing and showing the local government how to do their work.

Huge Storm

 

My Vespa is back in the mechanic's shop because it started its nonsense again on my way in to work this morning. I had limped her to the mechanic to get her fixed and then used my pickup to drive to work, late.

It took me a long time to get home due to being in a cage but thankfully I was in my pickup as a huge thunderstorm hit Roodepoort while on my way stuck in traffic. By the time I got to Roodepoort the storm was just about finished but it had caused so much damage with a large number of trees and walls fell over.

The Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch members were already in action, so I joined them. First I went to the intersection of Wilgeroot and Amaryllis Drive to help Brenden with getting the rush hour traffic safely through. When the electricity was restored, I then joined other patrollers to check up on all the streets in our areas for fallen trees and boundary walls. The RNW members worked late into the night cutting up fallen trees, and removing rubble lying in the roads. As you can see on the volunteer's posture above it was an exhausting job.

Watching over our neighbourhood

 

 Does anyone remember Squad Cars, a radio drama brought to our South African radios from the late 60s to the early 80s by General Motors. "The story you are about to hear is true. Details are supplied from the official case files by the South African Police. Only names and places have been changed to protect innocent people involved." These words that caused my dad to turn up the radio on a Friday evening.

Today we hardly see any police cars patrolling our streets anymore and local Community Police Forums have filled that gap of our neighbourhoods safe. Here are 3 locals we keep watch, AJ one of the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch patrollers, Marga from ER24, and Sam from the RNW Ops Room.

Martin's Meeting

 

I think the camera on my cell phone is getting worse as this is the result. The light was fluorescence which could be the problem. Anyways here is Martin holding our first RNW Patrollers meeting in the RNW Boardroom upstairs from the RNW Ops Room. The turn out of patrollers was good as was the wors rolls afterwards.

Baptist Under Fire

 

Yay it is long weekend with tomorrow being Women's Day, the day women in South Africa stood up for their rights and we now get to have a public holiday to celebrate, no wait to pause and relax. 

Anyway my day was not over until the fat lady sang. First is was a Kloof Security meeting in Kenmare. On the way to the meeting, I heard on the short wave radio the call go out for volunteer firefighters to help relieve the out of control veld fire burning on the ridge slopes by the Baptist Union church. When my meeting was over, I radioed into the Ops Room to ask if they still needed help with the fire. The City of Johannesburg's Fire Department still had not arrived and yes they still needed help.

Arriving on the scene I found the few Roodekrans Neighbour Hood Watch members that had responded to help get the fire under control were getting medical treatment of fresh oxygen before heading back out to the firing line. These few brave men and women did a good job keeping the fire at bay until the fire department arrived, which thankfully they finally arrived.

"I was gonna fight the fire until I got high. Yeah, hey because I got high"! Oh that was the Afroman song that I tried to sing when smell of dagga wafted out of the flames towards us. There must have been some marijuana plants or holy weed in the veld below the Baptist church that went up in smoke.

MMC Sun

There is bi-elections coming up next week, so the leading political party for our ward, arranged for the MMC for Public Safety, Michael Sun, to come address us. It is all about votes, but before I write further, what is a MMC? 

Well a MMC stands for Member of the Mayoral Committee and Michael Sun is in charge of Public Safety for the City of Johannesburg. So here he was addressing the community about the lack of fire tenders, and how well they are doing in fighting crime. 

Crime is up everywhere, the South African Police Services are slashing R6 Billion off their budget and how are we the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch are going to to keep out neighbourhood safe. So far we the RNW are doing our best and MMC Sun is very impressed, so much so that he wants to send others to us as an example of doing it right.

Rose for Suzanne

Matthew is home for studies, and the first duty that I got him to join me is for the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch's special trip to the late Suzanne's home where we handed over a rose bush to her family. Suzanne was our councillor for our ward and sadly she past away a few weeks back after a battle with cancer. The rose bush variety is aptly called South Africa.

Power Stance

Okay I did not take this photo but I am there in the crowd doing my power stance during the briefing of the Joint Visibility Operation in Mogale City this evening. There just off centre to the left wearing a blue shirt with an open luminous reflector jacket.

Lynda and I joined the few from Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch  to represent the RNW at the Joint Visibility Operation along with Mogale CPF Sectors 3, 4 and 5; Muldersdrift Sector 3; Randburg CPF; Security companies APCAN and EPR; Intellidrive; Netcare 911; Mogale City Community Safety, Disaster Management and the West Rand Fire Department along with the South African Police services. Yip there was a large number of groups represented, although I wonder what happened to Sector 7, Sector 8 and the other Security companies.

Well that's my Friday over.

Monday Madness

Eish what madness has this Monday been. My day started off by sitting for 2 and a half hours in grid locked traffic to work in what normally takes 1 hour, madness. I had to use the pickup because my Vespa is in need of some loving care and sitting in a cage for hours in traffic is not my cup of tea.

After work I dropped my Vespa off for a service then it was me time but that is what I thought, little did I know that the Monday's manic madness would not stop here. I had just climbed out of the shower and was getting ready for bed when the call went out for volunteers. 

On Sunday there was a concert which was held at the Botanical Gardens, the Jozi Tese Festival, which did not comply to the contractual agreement and made so much noise late into the night that I even heard it loud and clear at my house 2km away. I believe the police were called in as backup to try stop the event. The Bot Gardens' security even cut the power but that did not stop the concert as they had backup generators. The wildlife in the gardens just fled and one duiker found itself in the Roodekrans neighbourhood streets. For the whole of Monday the duiker was petrified, it fled from house to house avoiding the dogs and people. By the evening a call went out from the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch to launch a rescue attempt to get the duiker back to the Botanical Gardens. 

About 30 Roodekrans neighbours answered to call for help. We managed to corner the duiker in a cul-de-sac. Luckily it next to the green belt so we cut open the fence to make a way for it to escape to safety. But we had lost the frightened buck because it had forced it's way to the rear of someone's home. When looking for where it was hiding, it got spooked and caught itself in the same gate it used to get in. The whole neighbourhood must have been woken up by traumatic squeals as the poor creature cried out for help. We safely managed to get it loose from its entanglements without anyone or the buck getting injured and released it back into the veld. 

Hopefully this will be the end of this Manic Monday.

Okay but still I have some unanswered questions:

1. I know that the Botanical Gardens need to raise funds but why are such loud concerts allowed to be held in a nature area?
2. Will the organisers of the Josi Tese Festival be held responsible?
3. Why was the rescue attempt only held late on Monday evening? The buck was 1st reported in the Kruin Community Voluntary Association WhatsApp group when it was first seen early Monday morning. Why did the KCVA do something about it then? 

Where's Mike?

Where's Mike? Well here's Mike wearing a shirt not quite un-similar to Wally's shirt the cartoon puzzle book's Where's Wally?

So here is Michael aka Mike sitting in the morning sun outside the 24/7 call centre of the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch where he does shift duty manning the OPS Room. With a membership of over 1,800 households of which there are 700 radio users, it is quite a task to operate a OPS Room for 24 hiurs, 7 days a week. And from my interaction with Mike, he is doing a good job, give the man a Bells!