To give you the other view – beyond natural beauty

click to enlarge image

This is a lengthy post but I hope to give all those who responded to the attack on my mom a cohesive view of some of the things currently happening in South Africa since many of you have indicated that you didn’t realise things were so bad. Consider it an attempt to redress the balance given the images of beauty I usually post. And let me also take the opportunity to thank you all for your kindness, concern and support since the blog post about my mother’s attack. I appreciate it hugely. It’s a strange and wonderful thing this blogging community of which we’re all part. It is truly a community we have going here - and that’s rather special.

It’s been a funny few days, with me worrying about my mom and her, after a couple of days of shock, tootling along as if nothing ever happened – it seems the trauma counselor encouraged her to just get on with it and forget about it all. Frankly, I find this a bit alarming – especially when I really need my mom to consider moving into a security complex of some sort. But this is what staggers me about living in South Africa – we’ve become so accustomed to crime that we just take it in our stride. Things that the rest of you find so appalling, we just cope with. I keep wondering if we’re living with our heads in the sand or if we’ve just been dehumanized by the brutality around us. I suspect it may be a bit of both.

Despite the spectacular natural beauty and the optimism of the majority of people, South Africa is a society that is soaked in brutality which started hundreds of years ago - even before the first settlers arrived here. But then I wonder, isn’t this just in the nature of humanity – all the battling for territory, position and power? Look at Europe, the East, the Americas. Our human history is riddled by it. In South Africa brutality took on new dimensions during the Anglo Boer war when the English held Boers (or Afrikaners – descendents of the original Dutch settlers) in concentration camps, and it reached vile levels during the apartheid era and now has gone on to something I don’t think anyone ever expected. There are approximately 17 000 murders every year, armed robberies are on the increase, we have the highest incidences of rape in the world and people are killed for no reason - whether they live in posh suburbs or ghettos. 50% of South African children suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and only 23% of children feel safe in school.

Of course, the years of brutality, and the impact of apartheid which ripped family systems and societies apart is much to blame. The endemic poverty that has resulted - and which has not been redressed doesn’t help. Drug abuse, gang culture, disempowerment, poverty, unemployment (despite a rapidly growing economy) have all played their part. The gradual erosion of other systems of government is not helping either. Education and Health are in crisis - did you know we import doctors from Cuba because of poor decisions taken by the Ministry of Health? Water Affairs have major problems on their hands with a water contamination disaster, much like the current power disaster, threatened. Land Affairs remains a huge issue with white farmers unwilling to sell or accept government prices so that land can be repatriated to the people it once belonged to. Everyone is affected in one way or another.

I, for example, having been retrenched from my position of marketing director of an actuarial consultancy in 1999 have found it impossible to find fulltime work – because I am the wrong colour. Likewise, I cannot get my novels published here because I don’t write South African based stories and I work in the fantasy genre. In the same breath, there are millions of unemployed black people who cannot find work because they lack the skills and the education system is shot to ribbons because of a “genius” move, between 1994 and 1998, to thin the teaching profession – something the present government is trying to reverse, without much success.

And aside from all that we have the incredibly disparate distribution of wealth - the staggeringly rich sitting alongside the bitterly poor. And yes, while there is a rapidly rising black middle class and a very wealthy black upper class, the masses, “the people”, still live in abject poverty, many in tin shanties with no sanitation, in ghettoes so overwhelmed with crime and gangsterism that it’s hard to know how anyone survives.

One of the ironies of the “new” South Africa is that Affirmative Action* policies and Black Economic Empowerment schemes were created in order to uplift “the people”. The trouble is only a handful has benefited and those who have, have no intention of sharing their wealth with those who do not have – there is far too much status and materialism at stake. I have, sadly, even heard people say that their lives were better off under the old regime – and that I find truly alarming.

To add to this picture, skilled labour – generally white – from whom others might learn, is fleeing the country for greener pastures, better opportunities and safer places to raise children.** One emigration expert has said his international moving business has increased by 50% in the last six months. Of course, those who leave or who want to leave are labeled as “whinging whites” and are actually encouraged to go. And ironically, South African companies are having to import skilled labour in order to fill positions.

Of course, none of the present situation is helped by the imminent election of Jacob Zuma to President of South Africa. He is, after all, a man dogged by scandal. In August 2008, he goes on trial on charges of fraud, racketeering, corruption and money-laundering. His principal financial adviser is already in jail for fraud and corruption. His current financial adviser, brother to the principal financial adviser, has as his body guard one of the most infamous gang bosses in South Africa. The masses view Zuma’s leadership with hope – will this man, considered a “man of the people”, with his strong ties to the trade unions and the South African Communist Party, finally be the man who fulfills their dreams of a better life? It seems unlikely, as Zuma is already showing himself to be a man who will say anything he needs to win over anyone who may be against him, even if it means contradicting himself. And it is worrying to think that whoever offers him the best deal, will be the one to set the path Zuma follows. Disturbingly, he has already called for a clampdown on the media.

Meanwhile division within the ruling party, the ANC is increasing and could result in the paralysis of the country’s development and reform process. Frankly, the fact that the ANC remains as a single party is remarkable, given the broad spectrum of opinions and political views that exist within it.

The problems that South Africa faces astound me. For the past14 years we have tried to build the Rainbow Nation, tried to believe that we could make this work. But now doubt is setting in with a vengeance. There has been a 20% drop in the peoples’ approval of government in the last two years. International investors and watchdogs are jittery, viewing South Africa, almost, but not quite in the same light as Iraq and Pakistan. It seems to me like we are on our way to hell in a handbasket.


* Jobs go first to black women, then black men, then so-called “coloured” (ie mixed race) women, then men, Indian/Asian women, then men and finally white women and then white men. You can bet that after that being white and male doesn’t leave you with many options which is why so many white, coloured and Indian youngsters are leaving the country to seek employment elsewhere.

** One of the difficulties facing many wanting to leave is that South Africa exercises a foreign exchange allowance. Thus one may only take a certain amount of money out of the country – anything else, including pensions, has to be left behind. For a single person this amounts to approximately $285 700.00, at current exchange rates, and for a family of two or more, it amounts to $571 500.00 - and these amounts shift and change depending on government decisions and daily exchange rates. There are also restrictions on the value of goods, such a jewelry, furniture etc that may be taken out. Thus many people leave the majority of their wealth behind and have to start completely from scratch – and for some the prospect of leaving that wealth behind is what forces them to stay – until things get too bad.

POSTSCRIPT: Having re-read this post several times it concerns me that I have not provided a sufficiently balanced view point and so, to this post I would like to add something I've just written to a friend who was bemoaning the "state of the nation".

"It's perfectly true that there is an awful lot of bad stuff going on but... There are those who would argue that for all the things that are broken and breaking, there are other things that are working. There are also those who would argue that the ANC have had a hard time learning to govern and are still learning. There are those who would tell you that millions now have rights where before they had none. They have houses, electricity and water where they didn't. They have freedom to move where they want. The economy has grown in leaps and bounds. People have careers where they were previously unable to do so. There is a burgeoning black middle class where before there could never have been - and their spending ability is huge.
I think the one thing we all forget is exactly what the ANC inherited from the old apartheid regime - fear of transparency, determination to exercise central control, huge amounts of debt, a massively distorted division of land and, public transport, health, education systems that didn't work. The aspects of those systems that appeared to work were all geared toward the white minority - they did not work for the majority. I'm not making excuses for the ANC but I think that in order to get a balanced point of view, which most of us whities forget, it is only fair to look at both sides of the coin and to accept that what the ANC took on was a huge process of reformation, a system in a mess and having to do it with little or no experience in governing.

click to enlarge image

Note: images contained in montages come from multiple sources and special thanks go to Andrew Hagen for the use of some of his beautiful shots.