City bus company under fire

 

• 28 Mar 2013
• Cape Argus
• Murray Williams STAFF WRITER

Mayor accuses Golden Arrow of acting against poor

THE MAYOR of Cape Town has accused the Golden Arrow Bus service of sabotaging its efforts to correct apartheid’s impact on the city – and has lambasted the leading figures behind the bus service.

PICTURE: RYAN JACOBSFOR THE PEOPLE

MyCiTi buses will benefit the poor of Cape Town, says mayor Patricia de Lille

In an extraordinary attack yesterday, Patricia de Lille said the bus service was acting against the MyCity bus service – and thus against the interests of Cape Town’s poorest citizens.

De Lille said the city was using its MyCiti bus services to help undo the impact of apartheid on communities which found themselves strewn across greater Cape Town, with virtually no transport networks connecting them. This was “the physical expression of the apartheid system mapped in urban geography”, De Lille said.

The first phase had been rolled out in time for the 2010 World Cup, followed by the CBD and up the West Coast. There was also a public commitment to provide the service to Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha by the end of the year.

De Lille said the city had engaged with stakeholders, including Golden Arrow, to bring various modes of transport together into one coherent network.

But Golden Arrow had thrown a spanner in the works by taking the city to court a fortnight ago, in an attempt to guarantee a role for their bus service.

“I am astonished that that a company like Golden Arrow is seeking to block an initiative that will directly benefit the poor of this city, especially given the ownership of Golden Arrow.”

She said the bus company was owned by Hosken Consolidated Investments, which had the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union as its majority shareholder.

“Indeed, many of its directors are from Sactwu or are former unionists. Does Marcel Golding, the executive chairman of HCI, support Golden Arrow’s action?

Mr Golding is a former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“Does the CEO, Anthony Copelyn, a former general secretary of Sactwu, support it?” (It is assumed she meant Johnny Copelyn.)

“(T)here are few contradictions more apparent, or greater ironies, than the fact that a union-backed company is opposing one of the most profoundly socially transformative projects of a generation, one that will change the lives of poor people in Cape Town.

“It is a brutal reality for the poor that their would-be champions choose to be brave only when behind a megaphone and not when making financial decisions behind the closed doors of the boardroom,” De Lille charged.

Golden Arrow was last night studying De Lille's attack, but had not yet responded.

Nor had Golding or Copelyn responded to De Lille's challenge.