What is happiness? Philosopher Aristotle tells us that happiness is about goodness that we find in life, including wholesome health, wealth, knowledge and, by extrapolation, good governance.
The last few weeks since March, we have watched with gladness and pride the mandarins at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) refurbishing vandalised railway infrastructure, relaunching and reviving the railway services the commuters have missed for the past few years. During that period, the rail services had been badly damaged by vandals.
Several commuters interviewed by several television and radio stations last week were all smiles, ululating and jumping with joy that “our trains are
finally back in action”, a far cry to the moribund state in which the people’s facility had been subjected to by all kinds of criminal elements, including vandals who had stripped to the bone this important infrastructure.
This should not come as a surprise: a great number of people in our country had expressed disappointment that Prasa had failed them by not keeping a hawked eye on those who vandalised the rail infrastructure. They wondered why such vandalism would be carried out with such impunity without detection from the security cluster. What were the police and other security agencies doing?
Transport costs have been escalating steeply, and citizens, most of whom earn meagre wages, and some not even employed, have been feeling the pinch of the economic downturn.
We salute Prasa and the government for working painstakingly to resolve this problem. We trust lessons were learnt.
This should never happen again. Any government elected by the people is duty-bound to take to heart the wellbeing of society. A government that fails to recognise this imperative is not worthy of the name it carries on behalf of the electorate.
We doff our hats to both the government and to the leadership at Prasa.
