I have written previously about e-mails that I send, from time to time, about robots that are out of order, bad signage on the way to Lanseria Airport, or indeed grass that needs cutting.  Johannesburg calls itself a world class African city and at long last we actually have an application called the JRA Find & Fix, which you can download for your Smartphone and which allows you to report stormwater, grass that needs to be cut, potholes, traffic signals, traffic signage, manhole covers and even guardrails.  

It tracks your location, allows you to put in a description of the problem and takes a photograph of it as well.  I certainly think anybody who consider themselves a responsible citizen of Johannesburg needs to give the JRA the benefit of the doubt, and load up the application to their phone and use it to report problems from time to time.  I have loaded but not had a chance to use the application as yet, but I noted that it had a rating on Google, although I loaded it off the Apple Store of 3.1 out of 5, which is not too impressive and some of the complaints on the website have been met with responses that if nothing has been done about something that it should be e-mailed to find&[email protected] with a note – so that is another e-mail to use to get things fixed.  You must take a photo at the time and cannot use it for a photo that you already have.  

At the end of the day, if you don’t report something out of order, and always assume that somebody else has, you cannot complain.  I find that my complaints, although some of them are not acted on, but quite a few of them are, and invariably the relatively quick action, regard being having to when I complained, would tend to suggest that nobody else had complained about the problem before me.  That type of giving up before you have even started attitude, and just complaining to friends as opposed to somebody who can actually fix things, does not help to improve one’s surroundings.