Bree Street blast: Public Affairs descends into flies and farts
|Published
In establishing who the culprit is, probability games abound.
For instance, in the Sesotho folklore a king’s delicacy was devoured by one of the wives and none was coming forward to declare.
So, the king decided that for establishing who amongst the wives ate his tortoise delight he ordered for the construction of a bridge with a tight rope. On this rope the wives would each walk singing that, “I did not eat the tortoise, but if I did let me fall in the pool infested with crocodiles below”. And, therefore, the one who ultimately falls in the pool will be the culprit.
The tango moment captured on video between a duo of man and machine on the pavement in Bree Street, central Johannesburg CBD, was nothing short of spectacular last week.
The stunt of the duo is a scene reminiscent of a well rehearsed Hollywood Oscar category film. Only that it happened in the heart of Johannesburg. But it was not a film. It was real.
A moment that turned deadly with people scrambling to save their lives.
In the one video clip I saw. The person in this scene is working on something on the pavement, suddenly there was a blast from hell and instantaneously a taxi was airlifted and in motion coming to land on the spot he was on a moment ago.
However, the person, instinctively, without thinking twice, or looking sideways or backwards, in nanoseconds abandoned whatever he was doing. Before the word dash could be said the taxi landed full force on the spot he once was on. Nothing beats that dash to safety and escape from death. He ran for safety away from the geography of the source of the blast.
When it happened there was commotion with people running in all directions along Bree Street while others went to see the cleavage or crater that the blast left in the tar road. There was no semblance of an evacuation procedure. Not that I expected such as people were going about their normal business on a busy day. And, indeed, therein lies the trouble because who knows, a repeat might be on the horizon. Not that many people can have the instinctive nerve to run for safety like our taxi stunt survivor.
The instant news that followed the Bree Street incident in downtown Joburg was that it had been caused by a gas leak from Egoli Gas. And three days later the city engineers were still investigating what the cause of the blast was that cracked along Bree Street.
But three days later the Egoli Gas had advanced compelling evidence that the blast was not from their gas pipes. In fact, they argued that their gas pipes are laid on the servitude and not in the road where the blast emanated from. This compelling evidence was supported by yet another evidence that the pressure on their gas pipes has remained constant and had the gas pipes broken and leaked the pressure would have dropped.
But the king unfortunately still does not know who ate the tortoise.
In fact, at one point, new evidence pointed towards the power of our collective fart from sewerage. This is another probability game played by younger age mates. When we were younger in order to establish and pinpoint the source of the fart, we played a probability game, whereby a fly was instructed to descend from the mountain to finger the one who farted. The participants put their fists forward and the orchestrator who was also a participant through a recitation like rendition touches each fist commanding the fly to point to the owner of the fart.
The reciting in Sesotho language goes by - “ts’ints’i theoha thabeng o tlo bona ea itseng koi ka komiking ea ngoana lekhooa, bare ke ena enoa.” This translates into “fly, fly descend from the mountain to tell us who has farted in the cup of a white child. They say it is this one.” The last word “one” is the decider of who farted.
The whole of Johannesburg carried on in this fashion as it took days to come to the formal conclusion. Speculation and conspiracy theories were sounded by all. Zama Zama’s tunnelling and mine shafts and blasting under Bree Street too were dismissed by the Department of Minerals and Resources.
On Friday, finally the City of Johannesburg officials confirmed the cause of the blast in the CBD was caused by gas. Technicians on the scene had uncovered an old gas line, believed to be an old Johannesburg Gas line. But even then officials were reluctant to draw a definite conclusion, saying they “suspected it could be” the cause.
Many of our policies are decided upon by a game of probability from the onset. Public officials act like the queens who devoured the king’s tortoise or a game of little kids. It is not from systems design and design thinking where the act of assigning probability is attached to the likelihood of risk and success instead of establishing the ducking and diving offender hiding behind the broad collective.
There are many Bree blasts waiting in our public edifice. The king and his troupe of queens will have a field day with the queens walking on a tightrope over a crocodile infested pool while the lads and lasses will tremble in the face of a fly establishing who the offending one is.
When accountability is based on the royal “we” public affairs will be managed by the fly and the tightrope.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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