u/justinSox02

Hi r/South_Africa,

I’m a university student at Wits working on a group research project examining how traffic congestion affects the natural environment (air quality, noise, road run-off), with a focus on Johannesburg but open to anyone in South Africa who regularly experiences congestion.

Details:

Purpose: Academic student research only

Length: ~3-5 minutes (short questionnaire)

Personal details: None required. The form is anonymous. No names, emails or phone numbers are collected.

Data handling: Responses are used solely for our university project, stored securely, and will be deleted once the project is complete. Compliant with POPIA.

Closes: 28 August 2026

I’ll post a short summary of the findings here after the survey closes.

Link: https://forms.gle/tN5sgnfuNs6KbEJc9

Happy to answer any questions in the comments. Thanks for considering it!

​Hey everyone,

​I’m looking to get some perspective on something that happened this evening (Thursday, 25 June 2026) in my community, and honestly, I just need to vent and see if anyone else has experienced this.

Premier Panyaza Lesufi and Ekurhuleni Mayor Nkosindiphile Xhakaza, hosted a public meeting at the Palm Ridge Community Hall to discuss electricity and load reduction. Because municipal issues and power cuts affect me just like everyone else, I made it a point to attend. I expected a public meeting hosted by the provincial government to be held in English so that all residents could understand. I wanted to be informed and participate.

​However, the entire meeting was conducted in Sesotho. I am South African Indian. I speak and understand English, but I do not understand Sotho. Because of the language choice, I sat through a meeting about critical local infrastructure unable to understand a single word. I'm genuinely irritated and disappointed. Katlehong/Palm Ridge is ANC-dominated, but that shouldn't mean excluding non-Sotho speakers from public participation.

Admittedly, I live in a predominantly Black area, but South Africa is supposed to be a multi-racial, multicultural, and diverse society. In a public government meeting dealing with essential services, shouldn't English be the default baseline language to ensure inclusivity? While almost everyone who speaks an indigenous language in these official settings understands English, the reverse isn't always true. It feels deeply insensitive to the minority residents who live in these areas and want to be active citizens. Am I being unreasonable or narrow-minded here? Has anyone else attended these "public" government briefings only to be completely locked out by the language barrier? I’d love to hear how other people view this. Am I being unreasonable? I'd really like to hear people's thoughts.

Thanks for reading.