PROFILE: Lorenzo Davids — champion of public participation and social justice
Train tweeter says commuting by rail allows people to get a sense of who else lives in SA. His goal is to get ‘ordinary voices’ heard
The Passenger Rail Agency of SA may not realise how many ticket sales on the Cape Town southern railway line are thanks to Lorenzo Davids’s public transport advocacy.Since the service was resurrected late last year, and with the easing of lockdowns, Davids has been urging his 12,000-plus Twitter followers to use the train, humorously celebrating a "200% increase" when two other passengers joined him at his local Plumstead station for the morning commute to the city.Davids has tweeted a steady stream of oft-retweeted posts over the past three months, noting the rail agency’s efforts to clean up its service, and the number of commuters on the southern line has noticeably jumped from scores to hundreds since late January.Having worked in the social justice sector in NGOs for almost all the 42 years of his adult life, Davids sees the train carriage as "the great social leveller". "It’s where we eyeball each other and get a sense of who else lives in this country."Cars, on the other hand...
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