SimonB

The Saroadlink / Intercape saga currently brewing in South African media recently caught my attention. There seems to be a raging media war between bus companies with passengers caught in the middle. The saga is blown on by traditional and social media and the question I ask is, are we biased? Is competition in South Africa so fierce that you cannot even trust the media to report unbiasedly?

I was intrigued to read how excuses like this make their way into the whole picture.

“There was a Translux bus going from Cape Town to Johannesburg at about 3.30am…it had mechanical problems and was issuing smoke that clouded the vision of the [Intercape] driver.” IOL news

I mean what kind of a excuse is that? Did the intercape driver not have a K53 license? When your vision is clouded why don’t you slow down and once the vision has improved then proceed cautiously? Why were these questions not raised in the media?

After the recent Saroadlink bus crash in which 11 people were killed, news24.com reported that “a great portion of the body of the bus was made of fibreglass and did not have any reinforcing such as roll bars”

What they did not report is that “pound for pound fiberglass can be stronger than steel and sheet metals” which is what they use to make non fibre glass vehicals. Also why bring up the whole roll bar issue, making it look as if Saroadlink has inferior buses to Intercape.

Media reports went on to report that  “SA Roadlink has a history of accidents in the province and several of its buses have been declared unroadworthy by provincial authorities in the past two years.”

What they did not say was that Intercape also had accidents during the 2008 period and that several of Intercape’s buses were also inpounded for being unroadworthy.

Intercape: 1 July 2008, 10 October 2008
SAroadlink: 3 June 2008, 28 June 2008, 16 December 2008

Media agencies were quick to report though that Intercape’s lawyers wrote “a letter to the authorities arguing that SA Roadlink is illegally transporting passengers on its Pretoria - Cape Town route.”

So is this a monopoly? Since when can this be my route? Where is the competition?

They were also quick to shout the word “Unroadworthy” the question that begs to be asked though is weather or not the Saroadlink bus involved in the accident was unroadworthy or not?

The more news articles I read, the more it looks like a biased witch hunt.

Everyone know’s that the bus industry in South Africa is in need of a huge facelift, especially when it comes to safty issues. The question I ask is why is the media industry only picking on one of the bus companies, when clear evidence suggests that all bus companies need attention.

If Saroadlink looses it’s lisence then so must Intercape, Translux, and any other bus company found to have unroadworthy buses on the roads.

Here’s an interesting idea - lets do a poll and see what South African’s have to say: