cars – praag.org

Black students burn 18 vehicles on Pretoria campus

Protesting students of the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), formerly the Pretoria Technikon, have set alight at least 18 cars belonging to the institution, police said on Saturday.

Several campuses shutdown as Tshwane University of Technology clamps down on violence Several campuses shutdown as Tshwane University of Technology clamps down on violence

“Cases of malicious damage to property and public violence have been opened,” spokeswoman Lt-Col Khensani Magoai said.

The cars were set alight at TUT’s Soshanguve campus on Friday night, as students continued with the protest action which has been on going for almost two weeks. Magoai said there were no injuries and no one had been arrested. She said police were monitoring the situation.

The protests have seen the closure of the institution on a number of occasions and the suspension of the Student Representative Council (SRC).The suspension was lifted on Wednesday, following talks between the two parties.

On September 17, it was agreed that the strike would be suspended and lectures would resume. Students were protesting against the lack of funds in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

TUT spokeswoman Willa de Ruyter was not immediately available for comment. She said the institution would release a statement. The SRC were not immediately available to comment.

Wheels reveal foreign policy choices

Joseph Stalin preferred the American Packard Twelve

The cars chosen by presidents, kings, prime ministers and other leaders of the world in the past and today, also reveal their tastes in foreign affairs.

The car fleet of the last Emperor of Russia Nicholas II in 1913 consisted of 29 vehicles and in 1917 there were 46. The Emperor’s main car was a French Delaunay-Belleville. It all ended badly for the ruler as well as the manufacturer, sadly.

When Vladimir Lenin became the leader of the Soviet Russia, strangely, he displayed a love of Western wheels, but apparently not ideology. In the 1920’s Lenin used a Rolls Royce 40/50 Silver Ghost and the only Rolls Royce-based sledge-car in the world.

Those discussions with Rolls about vast snowy landscapes with no roads for travel must have been long and interesting. Lenin famously erected the Gulags, similar to the concentration camps that the British invented in South Africa at the start of the 20th century.

Even more puzzling is that the next leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, preferred the American Packard Twelve. A man of slight stature, he stood very tall as one of history’s most prolific killers. But he may not have had the only responsibility.

Stalin’s grasp on the Soviet Union featured many atrocities, including purges, expulsions, forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, torture and good old-fashioned acts of mass murder and massacres.

Actually, most of the deaths are today attributed to Lavrenti Beria, head of Stalin’s Checka, and amounted to some 20 million lives, on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War, for a total tally of 40 million. It was not called the Red Terror for nothing.

Both amoral psychopaths, acting like true gangsters, Stalin and Beria eliminated anyone and everyone who was a threat to their absolute power. Beria eventually killed his instrument of power (Stalin) too, new studies have shown, by poisoning him.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong had a Russian ZIS-110 which he got as a present from Stalin in 1949, although he managed to do a fair amount of killing himself.

Other Soviet leaders stuck with domestically produced cars. Nikita Khrushchev was driven in a ZIL-111 or a ZIL-111B convertible when he visited Berlin in 1960.

Leonid Brezhnev and the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were both driven around in a ZIL. The latter had up to 20 of those on each of his foreign visits. This required seven Il-76 transport planes.

Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin changed to an armoured ZIL-4105 when he became president in 1991. Later he changed it to a Mercedes S500 Pullman Guard (W140).

From then on German wheels seem to have prevailed. Russia’s current President Vladimir Putin is driven in a Mercedes S600 Pullman Guard (W-221).

John F. Kennedy, US president 1961-1963, used a Lincoln Continental. At the time of the assasination in Dallas, Texas, he was in a convertible Lincoln Continental SS-100-Х.

A man of the people, Uruguay’s acting President Jose Alberto Mujica spends almost all of his income on charity and his most expensive belonging is a powder blue VW Beetle, circa 1987.

No rattling along country roads for POTUS to meet fellow Americans, though. US President Barack Obama is transported in the armoured Cadillac One, also known as The Beast. The Bama took no cues from the Batman, clearly. His motorcade counts up to 40 vehicles transported on three Boeing С-17 Globemaster military transport planes.

British Queen Elizabeth sticks to the Bentley State Limousine, created in two copies specially for her in 2002 and British Prime Minister David Cameron still uses a Jaguar XJ X351 which he damaged in a road accident.

French President Francois Hollande changed from an armoured Renault Vel Satis to a Citroen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel drives an armoured Audi A8 L Security. She also has a BMW 760 Li E67 and a Mercedes-Benz S600 Guard V221 at her disposal.

Spain’s new King Felipe has English tastes. He prefers a Rolls Royce.

Are cars in SA too pricey?

Not really, says Motormanpete

On the face of it, and certainly the emotional response will always be a resounding yes!

While SA seems expensive it may be because we are basing our opinions on misguided ramblings of people who have not done their research.

A Toyota Yaris costs less in some obscure country than in South Africa but when you have a look at the big picture, our cars are on balance, very competitively priced.

Don’t believe me? Firstly let’s get rid of the “cars are so cheap in America” issue. Cars are cheap in America because they sell upwards of 20 million of them per year – its simple economies of scale.

But have you looked at how much more cars cost in some European countries? Check out the pricing of the Mercedes-Benz A250 7 G-Tronic: South Africa: R450 900, Portugal: Euro 42 700 (R619 150), France: Euro 36 300 (R526 350), Germany: Euro 38 437 (R557 336), UK: GBR 26 640 (R717 681).

Cough, splutter! The Mercedes is cheaper in South Africa.

Granted, this a small sample, but the point is clear. There are simply too many manufacturers present in the market for there to be room for much pricing abuse.

With over 50 brands and thousands of models on offer – it’s way too competitive out there.

All things aside, did you know that the 70th percentile benchmark dealers are lucky to achieve a 3% PBT? That makes the business very, very marginal and frankly I would invest my money somewhere else.

So if you want to question whether we are getting ripped off, let’s have a look at a few other industries.

Our cell phone calls are some of the most expensive in the world. Don’t even mention Apple computers.

And a litre of coke by the way costs more than a litre of petrol or a litre of beer. Why? Both the latter have far more complex processes and to add insult to injury, a litre of soda water costs the same as a coke.

DSTV must rank as one of the bigger rip-offs. But then they do have an absolute monopoly so when they stop flighting movies on TV made this century and put all the good stuff on Box Office at extra cost – what can we do?

But the ultimate problem does not lie with the pricing itself. The harsh reality is that all these products and services seem so expensive because we earn so little compared to Europe and the US.

So next time you question pricing in South Africa, don’t immediately jump to conclusions about everybody being a rip-off.

It may be a case of confusing “expensive” with “can’t afford”. Not all of us are ANC-cadres.