From time to time Tonya got understandably
slightly peeved at my relentless haste to press on. I'd certainly left no margin for error when
calculating the schedule, and as such, there was little time at each of the
attractions. Foresight a more worthy
companion; hindsight infinitely wiser.
On the other hand, I wanted to fit in as much as feasible while still
affording us the joy of sleeping in most days.
Besides, Snoozy tried to catch up on her shut-eye every time we got in
the car, even when the scenery was the point.
I say 'tried to' at her insistence because very often, just as she
slumbered, I spouted something and she woke with a start. Poor dear scares so easily when drowsy.
I don’t believe I will ever live in South
Africa again. There are many reasons for
this. The country’s problems are
great. The weakening economy and rising
inflation make it difficult to get by, even for those earning a good living. The value of the Rand keeps falling, which
has a knock-on effect on so many aspects of life, not least of all the ability
of locals to travel beyond its borders.
Being an avid traveler, I can’t imagine being stuck on one tiny piece of
Earth, far away from everything else. Of
course, there are amazing places to see at home and in neighboring
countries. On the other hand, I had
planned to visit the Okavango Delta in Botswana on this trip until it became
clear that doing it on a budget would require lots of time, a willingness to
sleep basically and saintly patience. To
do it comfortably costs large amounts of American dollars.
Secondly, the top managers of the country, the
politicians and top officials, are up to no good. They hide behind apartheid, failing to do
their jobs properly, while raping the country of its wealth and security. The ANC still dominates because of its
history as South Africa’s liberator. But
the fact of the matter is that this party no longer serves its supporters. It is in the wholesale business of power
mongering, nepotism and corruption. One
clear example of this is the country's electrical woes over the past few
years. Having failed to maintain the
existing equipment or indeed plan for the future, the demand for energy outweighs
the supply, and blackouts are common and affect every corner of the vast
state. This phenomenon is fallaciously
named 'load shedding'. At first they
happened without warning, but nowadays communities are forewarned. The power goes out for hours at a time,
costing households and businesses millions in lost refrigeration and sales. (We were fortunately spared a first-hand
exhibition of this official incompetence - the lights only went out when we
were in the Kruger Park, which must certainly be off the country's main power
grid.)
Thirdly, crime is rampant. For the past 10 years, South Africa has
topped the list of countries for rapes per capita. The South African criminal is a particularly
savage animal, comparable to the drug lords of Mexico, and regrettably far too
prevalent. This is a country in which
Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of culpable homicide after admitting that he
shot his girlfriend dead through a closed bathroom door. This is a country in which the case against
British businessman Shrien Dewani, who is implicated in the Cape Town murder of
his new bride while on their honeymoon, gets thrown out of court, even after
Dewani is successfully extradited back to SA to stand trial. Now in 2015 I heard on the radio that, on
average, one policeman is killed every two weeks. Or was the average two policemen every
week? Regardless how accurate my quote,
the statistic is staggeringly alarming.
Life is cheap, what’s yours is mine, how dare you have if I don’t. The brother of one of my colleagues has this
attitude when something is taken from his house: “Hulle het dit kom haal,”
which translates best as “They came to pick it up,” thereby granting "them" de facto
ownership in the first place. In his
novel Disgrace, JM Coetzee calls it the great South African
redistribution.
When Nelson Mandela addressed the country from
the Grand Parade in Cape Town after the first democratic elections, I was right
there listening to him. I was proud of
my country. I was so captivated by that
experience that I went home and changed the message on our answering machine
(gosh, how times have changed!). I used
my best Bantu pronunciation to say, "Ahfrika hezz come to Kepp Town, and
Nienke and Malcolm are out sel-eh-brey-ting!" I left the motherland shortly after the end
of apartheid and initially I returned quite frequently. In those years, I did not notice the country
changing. My visits became steadily less
regular and I began to find a very different country on each return. Crime got worse, services started to crumble,
and racism did not go away. Instead,
me-and-mine became marginalized. I grew
to like my birth place less and less, and on my trip five and a half years ago,
I had the distinct feeling that I had lost my country altogether. I felt unwelcome and unsafe, stateless,
without origin, adrift in the world.
Despite all of this, now in 2015, I fell more
and more in love with the South Africa I was seeing. I once again found a completely new
country. I found a society that seemed
to have healed. Head held high. Friendly neighbours. Happy children. Racism gone!
I was overwhelmed. This is the
country I had dreamed of as a boy. I
hated the mistreatment of the disenfranchised when I was growing up. I hated that even my parents enforced in our
small realm the immoral laws of the land.
My hope for South Africa is that the ordinary people, the friendly,
warm, loving folk I met on this visit, that these people will prevail, that the
sullied politicians and inhuman criminals will perish and disappear.
