Higher fares, worse service. Sounds familiar?

Fortaleza and London don’t have much in common, but a mutual grumble is that commuter train services have got worse in recent years, while fares have soared way above inflation. Interestingly, the public response has been different in one important way. Whereas train and tube commuters in London continue to squeeze into carriages in ever larger numbers despite the price hike, the local rail company here, Metrofor, has seen passenger levels drop 30 per cent over the past four years. People have taken to walking or using the bus instead.

London’s Northern Line commuters have long called it ’The Misery Line’, and here in Fortaleza the Metrofor passengers call their service ‘The trains from Africa’. Given the state of some of the rolling stock, the rust and grafitti, they would indeed not look out of place in Kinshasa. However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Plans to upgrade the service with new metro lines had been put on ice for a while, because of cost constraints, but they were resurrected last year. Both the trains and the track are due for a dramatic upgrade. But there’s one small hitch, so we learnt today: the upgrade will need a lot of steel, and China seems to have bought up the lot on the world market!

 

Absolutely Not The Time to Wait

South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, has an unfortunate habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. His earlier comments about AIDS not being related to HIV are notorious and may well have cost many lives, though fortunately now South Africa’s health establishment is using more scientific analysis to govern its strategy. Now, though, Mr Mbeki is reported as saying that this ‘is the time to wait’ regarding the Zimbabwean presidential elections, whose results have still not been announced nearly 10 days after the polls closed. How wrong can anyone be? Lumbered with a ghastly megalomaniac as their President, Zimbabweans might at least have hoped for some solidarity from its big neighbour South Africa (to which a subtantial percentage of the Zimbabwean population has fled to escape poverty, hunger and oppression at home).

It’s all so sad. I was in Zimbabwe immediately after Robert Mugabe came to power, and there was such a feeling of hope in the air. At first he seemed so promising, but power had gone to his head. I started to worry when he appointed North Koreans to train his security services. Then the campaigns against the Shona people, white farmers and the democratic opposition began, while his henchmen looted the country and Zimbabweans were reduced to penury. No, Mr Mbeki, this is not the time to wait. This is the time for men and women of principle, in Africa and elsewhere, to stand up and say enough is enough. The true election results in Zimbabwe must be released without further delay or prevarication. And if Mugabe is out, good riddance.

Link: www.avaaz.org/en/democracy_for_zimbabwe