It’s not often that all of us – broadsheets and tabloids – find ourselves putting the same kind of stuff on the front pages. (see picture >>)
And it’s not often that we – Daily Sun, that is – carry the same story on different days as the page one lead…
But this petrol strike is one of those…
The story’s implications are just too massive to be allowed to gently drift to the sidelines.
What’s at stake here, of course, is the glum possibility of the richest and most productive province of any state on the entire African continent… running out of petrol!
That’s ridiculous, you may gasp.
No it’s not.
Unless, of course, the employers are deliberately allowing that situation to turn from bad to worse to increase the pressure on the strikers…?
That’s ridiculous, you may gasp again.
No it’s not.
Such things happen. It’s how we roll.
Look at Murdoch’s writhings and rollings if you don’t believe me…
Back to the petrol…
Daily Sun has been pretty nose-to-the-ground on this one.
We have uncovered lots of dirty work at the crossroads by the unions. They have never stopped short of the most violent intimidation when nobody’s looking and they sure aren’t stopping now.
We have also discovered that the petrol delivery operators are as feeble as little kids poking a frog with a stick.
Every time it quivers at them they run away!
They’re too scared to let their trucks out of the depot gates because, they say, that would condemn their drivers to a horrible death.
What we found when we visited the depots in Jo’burg were police cars guarding closed gates, lots of trucks shaking in their tyres on the inside and little groups of middle-aged men bearing placards on the other side of the road.
It didn’t exactly look like rolling death to me…
It looked like a multi-billion rand industry being spooked into paralysis by middle-aged men with a few sticks.
Anyway, we’re putting it all in the papers…
Today we had a public opinion theme which, naturally enough, showed that lots of people don’t like their lives being buggered around by someone else’s wage dispute…and that neither the bosses nor the strikers are winning themselves many friends.
But it’s a fairly even split in parts of the country where the effect of the strikes has not been heavy yet.
They’ll learn as this thing rolls on.
And then we’ve had another story running on front page this week: Two babes of some small local showbiz fame, having a catfight on Twitter! (see picture >>)
Our own surveys have consistently shown that more readers are interested in this phenomenon than in the petrol story…
Umm…
Just goes to show, I suppose.

Regards

Deon du Plessis
SunPublisher