20 years

A lot happens in 20 years.
A lot changes in 20 years and yet so much is actually the same.
I have just realised in the last few days that it was 20 years ago that I graduated with a degree. The fact that I have one always mildly surprises me, but the reality is that I am “degreed” as is said nowadays. I had a very amusing email exchange about that word with a gentleman that I work for who probably figured that it was grammatically incorrect. Well, considering I was educated in three languages, I won’t be far wrong to say that in all likelihood I have better grammar skills than most on the planet.
20 years…. A lot has happened in 20 years and the reality is that I am nowhere in my life that I really expected to be and at the same time have done so much that I did not expect to do at all.
Most significant of all that I have achieved is being a father. I have always wanted to be a good father, but often fail at it and it now consumes me at all times to be a better father every day. A better man for the benefit of my children
The challenge is to be able to manage my own ambitions and dreams and be the father that my children deserve at all times.
I recently spent a month with them and for the first time since becoming a father some 15 years ago, I realised how much they do actually need me. My input, my love, my unconditional support.
To know that is, in itself, is the greatest achievement of the last 20 years. Nothing else compares to that knowledge.
The rest is irrelevant.

Prams & Pushchairs

England.... the land of prams and pushchairs..... pushchairs and prams. The land of barely adult people trying to raise yet another generation of more people in a land where no one is to blame and no one is prepared to accept responsibility for anything. A land where there is no authority, no discipline; where parents have become neutered by an overwhelmingly pathetic popular sense that discipline is bad. Young people who have been brought up with no moral or social compass, no guidance, no rules, no manners, all now trying to bring up yet another of generation of people who will be less......... well, just less of everything.
Pushchairs and prams, prams and pushchairs.
Horrendous bloody place it is. Rule Britannia my arse.

The truth

"The truth, like a cork in water, will always rise to the top"
My dear friend and former Chairman, Gio Cantarella, used to drum this in to everyone that cared to listen and indeed he is right. In the fullness of time the truth will prevail.
This applies to us all, in our private lives, our family lives and our commercial and professional lives.
No one escapes it.
Of course, the truth is not always what we would want others to believe it to be, but the truth is the truth and is inescapable.
About two yeas ago I was entertained on a number of occasions by a dear old retired General, the former Vice President of the country I was in at the time. He seemed like any one's wonderful grandfather or elderly uncle. His wife is grandmotherly and always insisted on serving cakes and snacks and some wonderful varieties of tea, the most notable of which was a Ginger tea that made one's hair stand on end.
People came and went and as befitting his status he was bowed to and all sorts of more junior people including ministers of the country in which we were would literally bow at his feet and touch his hand to their foreheads as a sign of respect as part of the local culture.
Now the truth is that this man was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. Literally hundreds. Not soldiers in combat as one may think, but hundreds (at least) of innocent people fighting and struggling for their freedom.
A truth.
A gentle old grandfather.
Really? A gentle grandfather with blood dripping silently and invisibly from his hands...
Were his actions justifiable? To him and other yes. To the remaining family members of those who died, no.
How will Nelson Mandela be remembered? What will his "truth" be?
Of course we know the obvious answer to that. However, no one should forget the entire history of the man...
And ultimately, the truth like a cork in water will rise to the top.

Boring Blogs

My own blog has begun to bore me!!! Not all of it, but it has become repetitive recently for which I apologise to the few of you who read it occasionally. Time for my own original thoughts here... watch this space.

The amazingly well educated traveling public...

THE following questions have been posed to tourism offices across South Africa.

Q: Does it ever get windy in South Africa? I have never seen it raining on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see elephants in the street? (USA) A: Depends how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Durban to Cape Town - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden) A: Sure, it's only two thousand kilometres, take lots of water...

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in South Africa? (Sweden) A: So it's true what they say about Swedes...?

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in South Africa? Can you send me a list of them in JHB, Cape Town, Knysna and Jeffrey's Bay? (UK) A: ....and what did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about koala bear racing in South Africa? (USA) A: Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific. A-fri-ca is the big triangle-shaped continent south of Europe which does not... oh forget it. Sure, the koala bear racing is every Tuesday night in Hillbrow. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is north in South Africa? (USA)A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into South Africa? (UK) A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA) A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is... oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys’ Choir plays every Tuesday night in Hillbrow, straight after the koala bear races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in South Africa? (France) A: No, WE don't stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in South Africa? (USA) A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in South Africa where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy) A: Yes. Gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in South Africa? (France) A: Only at Christmas

Q: Are there killer bees in South Africa? (Germany) A: Not yet, but for you, we'll import them.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Cape Town and is milk available all year round? (Germany) A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter-gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in South Africa who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)A: Rattlesnakes live in A-me-ri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All South African snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I was in South Africa in 1969, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Hillbrow. Can you help? (USA)A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA) A: Yes, but you'll have to learn it first.

Source: http://www.travelhub.co.za/

July 13 2008

A rare day with a family of cousins in one place together.
Ben and Dani.
Megan, Jesse, Jake and Wendy.
Ruby and Sylvie.
Teddy and Abi.
Surrounded by their parents (except myself and George Williams) and by the Leed grandparents on the occassion of Ben's 7th birthday.
I am sad that I was not there and I am sure that my brother-in-law George feels the same.
It may be many years until the children are all in the same place at the same time and I hope that they leave each other today with happy memories and that the "leaving" is not too rushed.
Love you all!!

An oldie but a goodie....

This plane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board but only 4 parachutes
The first passenger said, "I'm Zinedine Zidane, the world's number 1 footballer. FIFA needs me, I can't afford to die." So he took the first pack and left the plane.
The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, said, "I am the wife of the former President of the United States , I am the most ambitious woman in the world. I am also a New York Senator and a potential future President." She just took the 2nd parachute and jumped out of the plane.
The third passenger, Robert Mugabe, said, "I'm President of Zimbabwe and I have 13 million helpless people who always look to me for guidance. Above all I'm the cleverest President in African history, and Africa's people won't let me die". So he put on a pack next to him and jumped out of the plane.
The fourth passenger, Nelson Mandela, says to the fifth passenger, a 10yr old Chinese school boy, "I'm old and have lived a fruitful life, God will decide my fate, so I'll let you have the last parachute".
The boy said, "It's OK, there's a parachute left for you. Africa 's cleverest President (Robert Mugabe) has taken my schoolbag."

Pictures of the week

Megan Williams and Megan Kaitlin Leed

Megan Williams and Jesse Louise Leed

Jake Niall Sinclair Leed

Wendy Ladybird Leed

Hany Besada: Time of reckoning looms for African leaders

South African President Thabo Mbeki at the recent World Economic Forum

on Africa in Cape Town. Mbeki made a rare national address

to condemn anti-immigrant violence but faced criticism

for doing too little, too late after two weeks of unrest.

This article caught my eye this morning in Malaysia's New Straits Times:


AS South Africa bade farewell to the eight African heads of state who had attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town earlier this month, President Thabo Mbeki found himself having to answer yet more questions about last month's attacks on thousands of African migrant workers living in his country. Poor black South Africans accuse them of getting scarce jobs as well as government-subsidised housing.

This recent spate of xenophobic violence left more than 62 people dead, injured some 670 and displaced more than 100,000 migrants in the process. Although calm was restored on South African streets in the days ahead of the WEF, visiting African dignitaries looked towards Pretoria for guarantees of safety for their nationals.

As President Mbeki scrambled to find answers as to what had caused last month's mayhem, which sent shock waves across the rest of the continent, many migrants could be seen fleeing the country, while those who couldn't slowly tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

However, unlike their fellow Mozambicans or Malawians, for many Zimbabweans the option of going home simply does not exist. With widespread reports of violence ahead of their country's second presidential poll on Friday, the evolving social and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has contributed to an unprecedented exodus of Zimbabweans.

Although most Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa left their home country in hopes of finding better lives and opportunities in their more prosperous southern neighbour, thousands more have fled the political repression by the state and are determined not to return to Zimbabwe until political and economic conditions improve, perhaps with the departure of President Robert Mugabe.

The country is undergoing an unprecedented flight of skills from both the public and private sector to neighbouring South Africa. Up to three million Zimbabweans are estimated to be currently living in South Africa. The problem is exacerbated by South African visa requirements for would-be Zimbabwean travellers, issued by a corrupt South African Home Affairs Department, which makes it increasingly easier to obtain illegal identity documents and work permits.

To make matters worse, economic conditions in South Africa have also worsened considerably in recent months. Economic growth slowed sharply in the first three months of the year, dropping to a six-year low. The mining industry, a lifeline for the country's economy, saw its output plummet by more than 22 per cent this year - plumbing the lowest level in four decades. Meanwhile, the worst nationwide blackout in the country's history is destroying investor confidence in South Africa and forcing many industries to shed jobs as a cost-effective measure to minimise the negative effect of higher production costs and declining revenues.

The government stands accused of having done little to avert the crisis. Blamed for lacking a long-term vision and being slow to respond to calls from the private and public sectors to inject much-needed human and financial resources into this sector to upgrade the country's crumbling power infrastructure, the African National Congress government has been criticised for having millions of South Africans suffer daily blackouts earlier this year.

With unemployment unofficially estimated at 40 per cent, surging food prices, a crumbling health care sector, the heavy impact of the HIV pandemic that affects more than five million South Africans, and an ever-increasing crime rate, South Africans have come to look at African migrants as scapegoats for their socioeconomic woes.

The recent criminal violence has tarnished South Africa's image as a land of hope and equal opportunity throughout the continent. Critics contend that the government should shoulder some of the blame for the current crisis. Its market-oriented macro-economic policy, combined with affirmative action programmes designed to deal with the legacies of apartheid, has inevitably widened the gap between an affluent white minority population and a small but steadily growing black upper class with strong ties to government, and the rest of the population, many of whom live in abject poverty.

The government's policies have been undermined by a failure of service delivery at local level and, more importantly, by the severe skills shortage the country faces as a result of emigration. The question now remains how long poor South Africans' frustrations over the increasingly dire socio-economic situation will be targeted at their African brethren, before being levelled against their own government.

There may come a time when South Africans will start pointing fingers at their national leaders, asking whether their struggle to end apartheid 14 years ago was not in vain. In the meantime, Zimbabweans living in South Africa are preparing for more difficult times ahead.

Hany Besada is senior researcher and programme leader of Health and Social Governance at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada.

Picture of the Month

A Silvered Leaf monkey safe in the protective arms of his mother.The babies are born bright orange. Happy Mother's Day. Picture courtesy of TV Smith, my good friend in Malaysia - www.mycen.com.my

Easter 2008

This will be the last Easter that I do not spend with my children.

We apologise to the previosuly disadvantaged

We are sorry that our ancestors were intelligent, advanced and daring enough to explore the wild oceans to discover new countries and develop them. We are sorry that those who came before us took you out of the bush and taught you that there was more to life than beating drums, killing each other and chasing animals with sticks and stones. We are sorry that they planned, funded and developed roads, towns, mines, factories, airports and harbours, all of which you now claim to be your long deprived inheritance giving you every right to change and rename these at your discretion. We are sorry that our parents taught us the value of small but strong families, to not breed like rabbits and end up as underfed, diseased, illiterate shack dwellers living in poverty. We are sorry that when the evil apartheid government provided you with schools, you decided they'd look better without windows or in piles of ashes. We happily gave up those bad days of getting spanked in our all white schools for doing something wrong and much prefer these days of freedom where problems can be resolved with knives and guns. We are sorry that it is hard to shake off the bitterness of the past when you keep on raping, torturing and killing our friends and family members, and then hide behind the fence of "human rights" with smiles on your faces. We are sorry that we do not trust the government. We have no reason to be so suspicious because none of these poor hard working intellectuals have ever been involved in any form of corruption or "irregularities". We are sorry that we do not trust the police force and, even though they have openly admitted that they have lost the war against crime and criminals, we should not be negative and just ignore them and carry on hoping for the best. We are sorry that it is more important to you to have players of colour in our national teams than winning games and promoting patriotism. We know that sponsorship doesn't depend on a team's success. We are sorry that our border posts have been flung open and now left you competing for jobs against illegal immigrants from our beautiful neighbouring countries. All of them countries that have grown into economic powerhouses after kicking out the "settlers". We are sorry that we don't believe in witchcraft, beetroot and garlic cures, urinating on street corners, virginity testing, slaughtering of cattle in our back yards, trading women for cattle and other barbaric practices. Maybe we just grew up differently. We are sorry that your medical care, water supplies, roads, railways and electricity supplies are going down the toilet because skilled people who could have planned for and resolved these issues had to be shown the door because they were of the wrong ethnic background and now have to work in foreign countries where their skills are more needed. We are so sorry that we'd like this country to fulfil its potential so we can once again be proud South Africans.

Wounded Nation

AFTER bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of the Mandela years, South Africans today are deeply demoralised people. The lights are going out in homes, mines, factories and shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom - suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure to maintain power stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries - implements rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos.
Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts from China.
The currency, the rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it gratuitously violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged deals with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs.
Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state president-in-waiting, narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an HIV-positive woman last year, and faces trial later this year for soliciting and accepting bribes in connection with South Africa's shady multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German and French weapons manufacturers.
One local newspaper columnist suggests that Zuma has done for South Africa's international image what Borat has done for Kazakhstan. ANC leaders in 2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they learned in exile in pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously embracing capitalist icons - Mercedes 4x4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes and Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under countless tables - as they wing their way to their houses in the south of France.
It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions - a perfect storm as the Rainbow Nation slides off the end of the rainbow and descends in the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has warned foreign investors with millions to sink into big industrial and mining projects: we don't want you here until at least 2013, when new power stations will be built.
In the first month of this year, the rand fell 12% against the world's major currencies and foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years.
"There will be further outflows this month, because there won't be any news that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for the better," said Rudi van der Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa's Standard Bank.
Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, who warned the government eight years ago of the impending crisis, said: "The damage is huge, and now South Africa looks just like the rest of Africa. Maybe it will take 20 years to recover."
The power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others.
"The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented event," said Anton Eberhard, a leading energy expert and professor of business studies at the University of Cape Town.
"That's a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa's reputation for new investment. Our country was built on the mines."
To examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa's last best chance, arrived at this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the Scorpions (the popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a useful starting point.
The elite unit, modelled on America's FBI and operating in close co-operation with Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big successes of post-apartheid South Africa. An independent institution, separate from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy massive public support.
The unit's edict is to focus on people "who commit and profit from organised crime", and it has been hugely successful in carrying out its mandate. It has pursued and pinned down thousands of high-profile and complex networks of national and international corporate and public fraudsters.
Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the Scorpions' sting. A major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa's biggest foreign exchange earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as the result of a huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the Scorpions, whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too successful for their own good.
The ANC government never anticipated the crack crimebusters would take their constitutional independence seriously and investigate the top ranks of the former liberation movement itself.
The Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who falsified their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the ANC's chief whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that sold frigates and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent to jail for 15 years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state vice-president Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found by the judge to have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now the Scorpions have charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in August.
The Scorpions last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a close friend of state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating the ends of justice. Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a white police sergeant a "f***ing chimpanzee" when she failed to recognise him during an unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down pending his trial.
But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC - ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma - want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will send to the outside world is that South Africa's rulers want only certain categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and other politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets.
No good reason for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. "That's because there isn't one," said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential Business Day, South Africa's equivalent of, and part-owned by, The Financial Times, in his weekly column.
"The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that," he added.
The demise of the Scorpions can only exacerbate South Africa's out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its scale and violence only behind Colombia. Everyone has friends and acquaintances who have had guns held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM machines and hijack security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash.
In the past few days my next-door neighbour, John Matshikiza, a distinguished actor who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the son of the composer of the South African musical King Kong, had been violently attacked, and friends visiting from Zimbabwe had their car stolen outside my front window in broad daylight.
My friends flew home to Zimbabwe without their car and the tinned food supplies they had bought to help withstand their country's dire political and food crisis and 27,000% inflation. Matshikiza, a former member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre company, was held up by three gunmen as he drove his car into his garage late at night. He gave them his car keys, wallet, cellphone and luxury watch and begged them not to harm his partner, who was inside the house.
As one gunman drove the car away, the other two beat Matshikiza unconscious with broken bottles, and now his head is so comprehensively stitched that it looks like a map of the London Underground.
These assaults were personal, but mild compared with much commonplace crime.
Last week, for example, 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her A-levels with marks of more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor, returned home with her father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the geophysics department at the University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for the family. Inside the house, armed gunmen confronted them. They shot Professor Botha in the leg and pumped bullets into Razelle.
One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life and will never walk again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a laptop computer and a camera.
Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of ANC power in the country at the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in parliament, led by President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation address and apologised to the country for the power crisis.
Mbeki made only the briefest of mentions of the national Aids crisis, with more than six million people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions crisis. The collapsing public hospital system, under his eccentric health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, received no attention. And the name Jacob Zuma did not pass his lips.
Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who cannot stand again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing.
Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rape case, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that the notion of Zuma assuming next year the mantle worn by Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black state president would be so appalling to delegates, a deeply sad and precipitous decline, that his own re-election as ANC leader was a shoo-in.
But Mbeki completely miscalculated his own unpopularity - his perceived arrogance, failure to solve health and crime problems, his failure to deliver to the poor - and he lost. Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and ANC MPs in parliament must take its orders from him, while Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, ordering MPs to toe his line.
Greatly understated, it is a mess. Its scale will be dramatically illustrated if South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup is withdrawn by Fifa, the world football body.
Already South African premier league football evening games are being played after midnight because power for floodlights cannot be guaranteed before that time. Justice Malala, one of the country's top newspaper columnists, has called on Fifa to end the agony quickly.
"I don't want South Africa to host the football World Cup because there is no culture of responsibility in this country," he wrote in Johannesburg's bestselling Sunday Times.
"The most outrageous behaviour and incompetence is glossed over. No-one is fired. I have had enough of this nonsense, of keeping quiet and ignoring the fact that the train is about to run us over.
"It is increasingly clear that our leaders are incapable of making a success of it. Scrap the thing and give it to Australia, Germany or whoever will spare us the ignominy of watching things fall apart here - football tourists being held up and shot, the lights going out, while our politicians tell us everything is all right."
11:50pm Saturday 9th February 2008 - written for Scotland's Daily Herald

Pic of 2007

Belated Happy New Year

Happy 2008 everyone - may it be the best year ever for us all.

Of course it will have its challenges, some of which have presented themselves far too quickly for my liking already in the short two weeks that we have already had of 2008, but nevertheless we must soldier on!!

Have a good one!!!