Crime (as usual): Why South Africa should look at new national number plates for cars
Video & Audio: Loving Life: Jans personal discussions with President PW Botha
In 2006 as a result of my book, Government by Deception and my website AfricanCrisis, I made contact with former President PW Botha. He was very nice to me and he began phoning me. I published articles of things he told me about. He was so impressed with my accuracy when I wrote on my website what he told me, that he later invited me to stay at his house for 5 days. In this interview, I discuss some of the things that PW Botha and I discussed, and what he told me.
[The money we waste because of a crime ridden society. Jan]
South Africa should look at the introduction of national number plates to help clamp down on corruption and provide assistance in tracking criminals, says Zurika Louw, chief executive of the South African Number Plate Association.
Louw gave input to parliament this week on proposed changes in the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill, which will see greater regulation around the manufacturing and embossing of number plates in the country.
While a key aim of these new regulations is to stamp out criminality, Louw said that there was a greater issue with the enforcement of the existing rules and the vast number of number plates currently available in South Africa.
Louw explained that when a vehicle is used in a crime, it usually has a cloned or stolen number plate. However, she said that typically no action is taken against the manufacturers of illegal plates and the legitimate industry needed assistance in this regard.
She pointed to specific issues in Gauteng where number plates are made of plastic, have the wrong lettering or are the wrong size – all of which are against regulations.
She added that between the different sizes and provincial varieties, there were currently almost 400 different variations of number plates, which make policing very difficult.
These include different number plates and graphics for each province, four different sizes of plates, personalised number plates, and government plates.
A national number plate would go a long way to solving this problem, she said. Louw said that recent statements from the Department of Transport indicated that this could be a consideration going forward.
For the time being, Louw said that her association was looking at creating a booklet which would assist metro police officers to help identify fake number plates at roadblocks.
She said that this issue was compounded by the use of plastic number plates that were easy to clone by covering a sheet of perspex with vinyl. They are also easy to make and require no special tools or machinery.
While these fake plates do not have the reflective properties of a legitimate number plate, Louw explained that they still looked convincing enough from a distance. By comparison, Louw said it would be much harder to forge an aluminium number plate.
Wie is ons? Boere of Afrikaners? Antwoord van Dr Mike Du Toit
Ek het iemand gehad wat aan my geskryf het oor die onderwerp van Boere teenoor Afrikaners. Ek het besluit om Dr. Mike Du Toit te nader, wat die leier van die Boeremag was en ‘n professionele akademikus is wat baie goed ingelig is oor ons geskiedenis, om hierdie vraag te beantwoord. Dr. Du Toit weet nie net van ons geskiedenis in Suid-Afrika nie, maar ook van ons geskiedenis in Europa. Hier is sy antwoord.
