Missing The Point!

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/most-black-sa-kids-live-in-poverty-study-1.1405705 

... most black children live in poverty, and many go to sleep hungry!

Municipalities are the interface to the poor masses.

Yet much of the municipal arrears are made up from consumers of impoverished households.

Classical debt collecting, taken to the extent of summons, default judgements and warrants of execution against these households is tearing the fabric of community, and is no longer a solution (if it ever was) for creating municipal sustainability.

All it does is enrich classical debt collectors for the process of tormenting the impoverished. We are feeding service providing disciplines that are predatory and scavenging instead of feeding the hungry.

There is a need for a new age in ensuring municipal sustainability and the armies of jackboots and gruff voices should be seen as the fossils that they indeed are.

Municipalities need to take a fresh look at how they go about collecting revenue and not be seduced into continuing with practices that are not only far outdated but contrary to the spirit of '94.

After all we only need to look at places like Syria and other zones of conflict to be reassured that what we achieved in conflict resolution as South Africans was, and remains, historically outstanding, despite the tragedy of Marikana.

Syria spawns death tolls twice that of Marikana every day ...

Much of the rest of the world has little to offer as examples of what we achieved ... so it is ironical that we still do have jackboots and gruff voices in municipal revenue collection.