ETCETERA II

SANDY GRANT | Monday July 29, 2013 00:00

True, there are serious downs, negatives, if you prefer but there are also some very significant positives - and this bridge is very much one of them. So a recap. It can do no harm and may indeed raise a few spirits. The combined rail/road bridge spanning the Zambezi will be 923m long. Hopefully some resourceful person will tell us how this size of bridge compares with others elsewhere in the world.

Very obviously, it will be extraordinarily large, the Zambezi being of course a monster of a river. The cost of constructing the bridge will also be monstrous. The estimated figure of US$259.3 million can have meaning for only a relatively small number of people in the two countries, Botswana and Zambia, which are mounting the project.

What everyone will understand, however, is that with the new border management systems to be put in place, it is expected that the number of days taken by truckers at the Border will be reduced from its present, terrible six days to six hours. Understandably much is now being officially made not just of the bridge but of its meaning for what is being described as the north-south corridor which should certainly open up trade for the whole of Southern Africa.It will have been well understood by the planners of the countries involved, however, that the removal of this one major barrier to the movement of heavy road traffic will also necessitate the elimination of the other barriers which inhibit the movement along the long routes from Durban and Johannesburg to Francistown, Nata and Kazangula through to Zambia and the Congo.

By report, the official launch of the Kazungula Bridge Project is expected to take place in March next year. By and large, I am happier to watch these events on TV rather than attend them in person. But this bridge is something else.Give me a ticket for next year's event and means of getting there and I would be in glory land. But let me switch topics to two, perhaps three women. The World Championship in Moscow is now only two weeks away and Amantle must surely have every chance of repeating her earlier win.

It seems to me, however, that this very remarkable lady, obviously a world beater, gets relatively little acclaim here. Not only has she established a famous dominance over her long term rival, Allyson Felix but is way ahead in the Samsung Diamond League which she seems set to win for a second year. Perhaps it was because she didn't win that Olympic medal that she gets less publicity that should be her due - local volleyball and third division football being sometimes surprisingly preferred. Yet this amazing woman has run the rest of the world ragged.

But there is also another lady who rarely gets a mention here. Memooda Ebrahim-Carstens from Francistown you may remember, left the country four years ago to take up the job of Judge of the United Nations Dispute Tribunal. Subsequently she was then re-appointed for a seven year-term after she had secured 122 votes to the 61 of her nearest rival, having earlier been shortlisted from applicants from 55 countries. Years back when the gender issue was being heavily pushed, it was maintained that women were disadvantaged and that the differences between male and female needed to be reduced.

Now we have those two remarkable ladies both of whom have battled to overcome all the inevitable, earlier hurdles with neither quite achieving the acclaim that they so obviously deserve. Those who are older may indeed resent what they and others have achieved. But the young, less pulled down by such silly resentments, should relish those two contrasting ladies, take them as role models, recognise their motivation and personal drive and seek to emulate them.

Every society is in need of role models. Here we have two who are setting the finest possible example for young girls up and down the country, an athlete and a judge. A third lady who has also succeeded but in a very different field is Matida Mmipi of Water Utilities who was back in the news when reporting last week that the target set for the reduction of water usage has been far exceeded.

It is perhaps strange that a positive can come out of a negative but this achievement must show that the general public has heeded the call for some degree of self denial.