By Mike Smith
3rd of March 2017
You know, my grandfather was a great man. He was a military engineer during the war in Abyssinia and North Africa and after the war he built bridges, schools, hospitals, old age homes and a lot more in South Africa. He was well travelled, never touched alcohol, never smoked and never used to swear when the children were around.
As a young boy I sat on his lap in his study pouring over blueprints and he showed me how to read them. I often accompanied him to his various building sites and just for the fun I used to help the boys mix dagha and carry bricks. To this day I still have a fascination for architecture and buildings.
Nevertheless, there was something of a mystery that I could never explain. My grandfather literally employed hundreds of blacks who built the most stunning buildings…yet when one drove past the townships, those exact same boys were unable to replicate what they built for my grandfather. They stayed in tin shacks that were not straight and always on the verge of falling apart.
The same with my grandmother’s garden…The black gardeners who worked in the white people’s gardens were unable to replicate in the townships what they did for the white people’s gardens. Where were their manicured lawns, rose gardens, etc…?
It was only years later when I decided to be owner-builder of my double garage and I employed three black bricklayers that I realized what the missing component was.
These guys had to build the new garage square onto the side of my house. Of course the foundation trenches had to be perpendicular to the existing wall. These guys urged me to go buy a set square so they could get the lines straight. I asked them why don’t they just use the “3,4,5” principle of Pythagoras’ triangle? They looked at me as if I was from another planet. I took a piece of rope and a measuring tape and within a few minutes had the lines exactly 90° to the wall. They looked at me as if I was a magician.
That was when I realized that these guys were good for digging trenches and piling bricks on top of each other, but without my brain that wall would have been horribly skew and the whole structure a danger. They were basically just cheap manual labour.
It is like when you plough a field with a donkey. Did you plough the field or did the donkey?
Just about the whole of South Africa was built on this principle.
So yesterday the roof of the Johannesburg General hospital (ANC renamed it Charlotte Maxeke hospital) collapsed and according to the doctors it was due to stupidity.
'Stupidity' the reason for Charlotte Maxeke hospital collapse‚ says doctor
Contarctor removed from site with immediate effect
I honestly do not know why they just fired the poor contractor. Roofs do not just suddenly collapse due to stupidity.
2012 report. Doctors warn Hospital is terminally sick
When an accident like this happens you find there is a whole list of things going wrong. Planned maintenance not carried out, budgets cut, warnings ignored, etc. It is always the same. An accident starts at the top of the (mis) management and works its way down. Procedures not in place or not followed. Risk assessments not carried out properly. Permits to work treated as pieces of paper only, etc...In the end the poor contractor gets fired.
In this case it starts at the top of the ANC with their bullshit racist policies of Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment. The whole system is rotten.
You can see from that 2012 report how the ANC destroyed a once proud hospital through stupid policies and neglect.
Doctors forced to play God and decide who lives and who dies, a shortage of blood transfusions bags, heart surgeons having to use camp lights because theatre lights are broken and 153 nurses resigning in six months. It is just horrendous what is going on in the once proud hospitals of South Africa.