SmilingSouth

By Sue Maclennan

The Makhanda taxi industry says men who want to speak out against gender based violence are welcome to join them in an hour-long stoppage centred around the Border Alliance Taxi Association (BATA) rank in Beaufort Street on Thursday 28 April. Lungisa Sixaba, drivers’ convenor of the joint BATA/ Uncedo taxi forum, said taxis would convene in the area from 10am to 11am tomorrow.

The BATA taxi rank is metres from the Grahamstown Police Station and Sixaba said a delegation would be taking a petition to the station commander.

“We want the station commander to say how they are planning to deal with the crime in this town.”

Sixaba said they were concerned about increasing incidents of gender based violence, as well as the proliferation of drugs in the community. “Those drug dealers have now run away from the township and are now operating freely in town,” Sixaba said. “We need the police to be more visible.

“We as men in the taxi industry, we feel we must speak out. Enough is enough. The taxi industry is big, but we do not want to take the law into our own hands,” Sixaba said.

He said as a group that has contact with so much of the community regularly, it was important that people felt safe and were safe with them.

“Tomorrow, we will be wearing black. We will stop from 10am to 11am, but otherwise the day will be normal,” Sixaba said.

He said taxi association members had been delegated to monitor the situation in case criminals try to use the attention on that part of town as an opportunity.

“This is going to be a peaceful protest,” Sixaba said.

Sixaba is one of five councillors sworn into the Makana last week to replace five MCF PR councillors sworn in after the November 2021 local government election. However, he emphasised that tomorrow’s demonstration was not a political event.

“This is non political,” Sixaba said.

SOUTH AFRICAN WEATHER SERVICE

Thursday sees an upper trough starting to develop over the south-western sector of South Africa, expected to promote isolated light showers and thundershowers over the Cape provinces. The remainder of the country is expected to remain dry, although the Lowveld of South Africa and Eswatini may see a few showers or thundershowers.

Weekend weather for Friday through to Monday:

On Good Friday, the upper trough is expected to intensify further, resulting in the development of an extensive band of isolated to scattered showers and thundershowers over much of the central interior (Fig. 2). Consequently, North West, Free State, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are likely to experience the return of thunderstorms, along with the risk of localised flooding and/or occurrences of hail and strong, damaging winds.

Saturday sees scattered to widespread showers and thundershowers persisting over the central provinces (Fig. 2), spreading to include the eastern and north-eastern provinces, where further significant to heavy falls may occur at places, especially over North West, Free State and Gauteng.

Sunday and Monday will see rainfall persisting over the central and eastern parts of the country (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Rainfall probabilities for the Easter Weekend. Source: SAWS

The South African Weather Service acknowledges the unconventional naming of the low pressure that has caused devastation over KwaZulu-Natal earlier this week, however this low pressure is not expected to cause any further impacts over the country as it is forecasted to move away from South Africa.

The South African Weather Service will continue to monitor any further developments relating to this weather system and will issue subsequent updates as required. Furthermore, the public are urged and encouraged to regularly follow weather forecasts on television and radio. Updated information in this regard will regularly be available at www.weathersa.co.za as well as via the SA Weather Service Twitter account @SAWeatherServic

Compiled by Kevin Rae and Elizabeth Viljoen

Edited by Ezekiel Sebego