Does anybody else take the time to read the Metrobeat magazine? It's a free mag that gets delivered every month to ratepayers in the city; and while I consider myself a beer mug half-full, good-news-kinda-guy who loves Durban, I still find Metrobeat's blindly cheerful and unfathomably optimistic editorial to be borderline government propaganda.

Please don't get me wrong – I like reading great things about the city, and hearing what the councillors are up to, but it worries me that the eThekwini municipality finds it necessary to put together an entire publication to seemingly drive the happiness into our skulls. Is it a knee-jerk reaction to the conventional media, who are always accused of publishing bad news and ignoring the good? Or is the Metrobeat mag simply eThekwini's way of pacifying us, when other evidence seems to indicate that they're not doing their jobs properly?

Let's take a look at this month's magazine, in which Michael Sutcliffe writes his column “20/20 Vision”. He's the city manager in case you didn't know, and in his piece he talks about how Durban was voted SA's most courteous and helpful city, and follows with this:

“Our difficulty though is that sometimes we don't translate this into positively promoting our city. Some seven people get mugged out of over 3500 delegates to a recent conference and the media seem to get into siege mode: headlines scream out for a week about one Mexican delegate who was mugged. Whilst one mugging is one too many and we must address this, we also seem to go overboard in running down our city and not looking for the positives.”

Mike, (may I call you Mike?); if people are running down Durban then I agree they've got it wrong – they should be running down the council and yourself; for it's the exact problem of rampant, shameless crime that you and your department seem unwilling or unable to solve.

Don't make out like it's “just a few muggings” or try and offset the impact of crime by suggesting we think about how courteous the good citizens are. We know that law-abiding people of Durban are great; it's the rapists, hijackers, housebreakers and murderers whose manners I find a bit lacking.

He continues by talking about the Durban film industry, and how all the various departments, including SAPS and Road Traffic Inspectorate, make exceptional effort to accommodate filmmakers. Great! How about them making a big effort to sort out crime before rolling out the red carpet to film stars?

Crime in Durban is so far out of control that it's become incredibly tedious to write or even read about it. And yet, when I hear of my good friend being hijacked and held hostage for three hours, or my parent's house being cleaned out by burglars, I feel the overwhelming need to direct the anger at eThekwini.

The next article in the Metrobeat comes from the mayor, Obed Mlaba. He starts off by quoting Fidel Castro (hmmm... off to a shaky start there, Obie), but then continues to produce an article which can only be described as rubber-stamped, generalised politician-speak, laced with acronyms and overall an incredibly pointless read. Some gems that are thrown around haphazardly, for your enjoyment:

Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) (I pronounce it Ass-kissa)
Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE)
Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIIPSA)

All he basically says in his couple of hundred words is that these things are going to help achieve government's goals of correcting the imbalances of the past. That's great. But it's useless without specifics, isn't it? At the moment, it's just the mumblings of a man with no real idea of what actually has to happen in order to turn our situation around. Then my personal favourite from the article:

“South Africa has not yet taken the matter of skills to a skills revolution level.”

Huh? Skills revolution level? Like, revolution, as in the French Revolution? I wasn't aware that there was a specific 'level' called 'revolution' which we were aiming for. I thought it would be simple – create a crime free, safe environment for people to live in, then attract skilled people nationally and from abroad into Durban, so that jobs are created for those without skills who can then learn the tricks of trade.

I didn't understand this 'revolution level' he was talking of, so I did a Google search, and low and behold it emerges that the entire last paragraph of his column is actually a direct quote of Phumzile Mlambo-Ncguka's speech! Click here for link.

Was I onto something? I searched Google for words from the preceding paragraph, and what do you know! The entire second-last paragraph is word-for-word taken from a speech by Mbhazima Shilowa, April 2005. Search this link for the opening words "we are mindful of the fact".

I would not be surprised if I found out the entire column was a mish-mash of other people's work. What a puppet old Obie has turned out to be!

My dear Mayor, instead of regurgitating national government policies word-for-word from other's speeches, let's hear what YOU are personally doing to sort out the problems in the city. For let's face it, if Durban really was a bed of roses, we wouldn't need a Metrobeat magazine to cheer us up, now would we?

The rest of the magazine tells of the Soccer World Cup, a festival called Celebrate Durban and gives reviews on all our favourite restaurants like Spiga and Taco Zulu.

All good and well, but will my car still be parked where I left it after attending this festival in the CBD? Will a gang of armed savages storm into the restaurant where I'm eating and attack me and my friends, as has happened far too many times in the past? Will my house get broken into by criminals who rape, murder and steal?

It's time you guys dropped this silly propaganda act, the people who read the Metrobeat are not tourists. We live here, and it's painfully obvious what's going on in this city. Fix it, dammit, it's your job!