GlassPearl.co.za/blog

For a while now the Mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, and the DA led coalition in the City of Cape Town have been trying to pursuade taxi drivers to accept the proposed Integrated Rapid Transport System.

Not everything’s been going as planned.

Taxi drivers protested, sometimes violently and all but held the city to ransom because they did not like the idea of formalising a lucrative informal industry.

After three days of watching the mayhem caused by our local pirates of the road, I imagine Mrs Zille called her subordinates to a brainstorming meeting.

The brief: How to get those unruly murdering criminals (as she likes to call them on radio) to see the light.

After many a late night of healthy snacks, cucumber sandwiches and tea with cream, the spectacle wearing, nervous looking clerk, sitting quietly in the corner, came up with a stroke of genius.

Show them a presentation! Everyone loves a presentation!

For the next few days, including during lunch hours, everyone got in on the act, plotting graphs and making intricate animated graphics.

Until eventually they came up with a brilliant presentation that anyone could understand. Even those taxi drivers who needed to be spoken to in one syllable sentences.

So one lovely Cape Town Summer Sunday afternoon the mayor invited the taxi drivers to cake and tea, in the guise of a meeting to discuss the mountain of traffic fines owed by taxi associations.

Before they realised what had hit them, the presentation started rolling across a large white screen.

I imagine at first the unruly murderering criminals thought they were being shown a new Vin Diesel movie, but soon realised what was actually happening.

They arose as one man and left.

The mayor and her team stood at the front of the room in shock. How could they not be mersmerised by that presentation.

Had they not walked out, those criminals would have seen reason. They would have seen that Mrs Zille only has their very best interests at heart.

They would have realised that the mayor knows best and would have immediately raised their tea cups to her and named her the best mayor to ever have lived on this planet and any planet anywhere.

I imagine that she told her staff to not give up hope.

The day will come (she might have told them) when all taxi owners , drivers and passengers will thank her for showing them that amazing presentation.