Just some more ramblings which you might find interesting or not. The essay is far from finished. I’m tending to narrate the ideas from the inside-out so it gets a little gappy and convoluted at times but the extrusions are inverting which is good.
I believe that our reactive society prevents us from seeing the magic and any communication needs to somehow convey the message so that we can stop apologising and making excuses. Retrieving a Soul Quote: R. W. Emerson “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the Soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with all its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and ever more goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, “I am divine. Through me God acts; through me speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou thinkest as I now think.”
What is the difference between a culture and a civilization and what might unite them or fuse them? A Soul? For the purpose of this discussion or task let us assume that the collective consciousness of South Africa is united. What do we mean by collective consciousness? There have been many descriptions of this phenomenon mostly characterized by a group identity, sense of humour, negative sentiment (doomsayers resistant to change or progress), a state being where it is characterized by fear or paranoia (violence stats.) or sense of inadequacy especially when applied to the developing countries in relation to the developed world. We might have the luxury of describing this state as a consciousness in formation or in an early stage of evolution but making progress, hold that thought.
If we perceive this united consciousness as a single person and forget the complexity that makes up this person or psyche, then we may see that this person is evolving. The hardship or friction they may be experiencing at any one time can be seen philosophically (in retrospect perhaps) to be the only thing that could have happened at that time to make them grow or progress to their next stage of evolution. The only thing that prevents them from seeing this fact is that they can’t see. They are in fact a bunch of thoughts, opinions, fears, regrets, reconciliation’s. In fact with all these thoughts they can’t see what they are, let alone what they should do.
It could be said that this person through all their trials, doubts and fears was evolving into a new state of Being but perhaps only if they realise what is happening to them and behave in a way which allows this to happen. If they do this they might be able to become what they are supposed to become and actually evolve.This new state of Being displays some remarkable but familiar behaviour. Listed these may include humility, empathy, tolerance, which collectively might be summed up as a “State of Grace”. In fact these familiar emotions are not emotions at all, they are a state Being that we are evolving into.
A significant proportion of South Africans were surprised but relieved that when Nelson Mandela and others were released from prison there was not a rampage of revenge and bloodshed. Perhaps this new state of Being doesn’t need revenge. In fact not only did this new state of Being not take vengeance, they accommodated the “enemy” and bent over backwards to make them feel that they belonged. This is a peculiarly South African characteristic, we are, I believe, the most hospitable, accommodating nation on earth. This thread unites us, black, white and everything in between. There is a strange something that, only here, makes it possible to be truly cosmopolitan. Everybody who comes here is made to feel at home, like they belong. As hard as we try to behave in this way as individuals from all our different perspectives and fears perhaps there is something else that unites us. Maybe Africa is home, a place where we can put up our feet, be silent, rest and recuperate, regenerate. Maybe Southern and South Africa is that place where we can all come to regenerate, to realise that we are evolving. A place where we can in a sense shed our skin and accept graciously this new state of Being. It can only happen where we belong, in the wilderness, in silence. If we tell people this in the simplest way they may also realise that this place, home, is where they need to come to find relaxation and respite, the only real opportunity to regenerate, something not available elsewhere. Maybe the only way to explain it is to tell the world to come home. That this is the only place where you can come and experience this new state of Being, what it feels like to be human.
Throughout history the great civilisations have one thing in common. They gave everyone a chance to feel what it was like to be human. Maybe South Africa will be considered to be the next great civilisation….It won’t if we don’t see what we are and what we are becoming. Whatever we do and whoever we are we all need to go home sometime to understand what it feels like to be human because we are human for a reason. Not only are we human for a reason, but male and female, rich and poor, black and white for the same reason. As each individual must learn to know themselves through their own eyes, their own perceptions, naked and raw, they must learn to see, so must a nation or a country or a civilisation. At best the current perception of itself (SA) must seem psychotic if not schizophrenic. This quest for seeing or perception is how we must begin to find our relationship with the world around us, it is our navigational tool. As the individual must take stock of what and who they are to begin regeneration so must the civilisation. As the individual or civilisation begins to see they will also know how far they can see, who they can reach, and in context, their role in the order of things will extract itself. They see what they are.This perceiving quest is how we must begin to find our relationship with the world around us. As the individual must take stock of what and who they are (take back their power) to complete their own creation, they will see how far they can see, who they can reach and in context their role in the order of things will extract itself.
The responsibility to take that essence (SA = Healing and Regeneration?) and in turn complete its creation becomes a part of the perceiving quest and a new mythology is born, one in which we unfold our own myth. The responsibility in the context of SA is perhaps more about perceiving or seeing itself before others can see it.
The real cost of Aids is emotional and spiritual, that death is priceless. This is what we have to tell the world. Not that we’ve beaten it through science and technology or suppression or interpretation of the facts, but through understanding. The only price to pay for Aids is that of not understanding, then we fight the war of inflation and poverty on other peoples turf and terms.
South Africa is one of the only places in the world where you can cultivate understanding but we know as South Africans we can cultivate that in most climates. In the late 60’s while everyone was focussing on the USA going to the moon a miracle happened in SA. A South African showed how it was possible to fix things inside. A heart was transplanted. Some dismissed this as tricking God or cheating death but Chris Barnard knows that all he did was buy us a little time.
Lets not forget the other Chris, Chris Hani and Nelson and Steve. They all knew this too and paid a huge price to buy some time.
Time for a Soul transplant. In Jerusalem one man died so that we might live? In SA many men died and maybe the really big miracle is still happening. What is a miracle but a massive contradiction. In SA we are living a miracle daily, in fact SA is a living miracle. One day people might find a computer disc or clay pot which when interpreted will carry the legend of a great civilisation with great leaders who built things. This won’t happen unless we see what we are and then go tell someone. The lungs of the earth are the rainforests, the heart perhaps the U.K., USA or Europe, the remaining organs can be assigned but what is missing is the Soul which is in SA. We know what happens if the Soul dies.So if we are ever going to be proud to be South African, black or white, maybe all we have to do is see that we are in the right place at the right time, see what we are or what we have the potential to be and what we can do. You won’t believe how far that can reach.
We can guess at what the sixth sense is and it will have a different slant for each one of us. I believe that as humans we have a seventh and more senses but the seventh is that which unites us. It is a sense of Being Human and a sense of Belonging. Mother nature or the nature of the Mother can only really be universally experienced in South Africa. In the country where black women raised white children with no bitterness or malice, with no reward or recompense to speak of, at least not in this life, in fact with extraordinary devotion and love. Everywhere else in the world we are humbled by nature or we “humble” it. We are isolated or alienated from nature and only return to de-stress or unwind. There are many beautiful places in the world that we escape to according to our means, creating memories and leaving mementoes (mostly litter). Sadly there is a sense that nature is subordinate, such is the way of our various western egocentric consciousnesses (consciencelessnesses), we visit condescendingly and return home “renewed”. I think we are missing the point.
Regeneration is the goal and we can settle for nothing less. In South Africa lies the possibility of Regeneration. In South Africa there is a sense of Being Home, a sense, not of humbling you or of quieting your soul but of making you understand that you belong. In many ways this is not a holiday destination, nor should that be the intent of the traveller to these parts.We have the possibility of creating a civilisation, that is what the African Renaissance is about. We need to take the time and the care and have patience, some people have already paid a huge price. Our attitude must not be “how do we beat that” or “how can we compete with that”. We don’t have to if we create something new and unique, we have all the materials. Time is both our worst enemy and our best friend. Most of us will not be around (in the final sense) to see the real fruits of the work that must begin now. How do we start something knowing we may never see its conclusion? What is a miracle but a massive contradiction (would suffice).
In South Africa where we sit on the side of the road the secret is that we are regenerating. Come home where you belong, put up your feet, relax see what you are and let Grace serve you………..
The legacy, apartheid and oppression, the debt absorbed, the Soul retrieved. It is up to us to live the completion of creation.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The Hairy Book
In December 2008 the first words of a book were penned. Many have said that I should write a book and finally it is so that I am. Finally I am motivated enough to do so.
It will take some time to complete as the story will be a long one and will eventually encompass and represent all that I am as a person.
Its chapters will be varied and will tell a story that I hope will inspire anyone who reads it when it is ready to be read!
It will be a tale of dreams fulfilled.
It will be the truth of how quiet, buried ambitions can be realised with patience and persistence.
It will take some time to complete as the story will be a long one and will eventually encompass and represent all that I am as a person.
Its chapters will be varied and will tell a story that I hope will inspire anyone who reads it when it is ready to be read!
It will be a tale of dreams fulfilled.
It will be the truth of how quiet, buried ambitions can be realised with patience and persistence.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
2009 - have a good one everyone
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."
Something to think about as we start the year.
Or more simply put:
CARPE DIEM
Something to think about as we start the year.
Or more simply put:
CARPE DIEM
Saturday, September 27, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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.
Pushchairs and prams, prams and pushchairs.
Horrendous bloody place it is. Rule Britannia my arse.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
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.
Monday, July 14, 2008
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/
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/
Sunday, July 13, 2008
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!!
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!!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
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."
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."
Monday, July 07, 2008
Pictures of the week
Megan Williams and Megan Kaitlin Leed
Megan Williams and Jesse Louise Leed
Jake Niall Sinclair Leed
Wendy Ladybird Leed
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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.
Friday, May 09, 2008
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
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
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.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
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!!!
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!!!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
South Africa - some facts about a remarkable nation
Economy
1. The rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar between 2002 and 2005
2. South Africa has 37,000 high net-wealth individuals (holding at least US$1million in financial assets)
3. South Africa has the 26th biggest economy in the world, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$126 billion
4. South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)
5. Gauteng is South Africa’s smallest province but produces 37% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product
6. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is one of the fifteen largest in the world in terms of market capitalization
7. South Africa’s banking system is ranked 8th in the world.
Infrastructure
1. South Africa generates two-thirds of Africa’s electricity
2. Forty percent of Africa’s telephones are in South Africa
3. South African power supplier provides the fourth cheapest electricity in the world
4. Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto is the biggest hospital in the world
5. South Africa is one of only 12 countries with potable tap water
6. Durban is the largest port in Africa and the ninth largest in the world.
7. There are 22 million cell phone users in South Africa
Social
1. Ten million South Africans (a quarter of the population) have access to social grants
2. Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor and 1,000 houses per day have received electricity
3. Seventy percent of South Africa’s population is urbanized
4. Our population is set to stabilize at around 45 million people for the next 20 years
5. In the past 2 years, 300,000 people have moved into the middle classes and 500,000 have moved out of poverty, but we still have 20% of the population living in poverty
Tourism
1. The number of tourists visiting South Africa has grown by 116% since 1994
2. The Singita game reserve was voted the best hotel in the world by the readers of a leading travel magazine
3. For every seven tourists who journey to South Africa, one permanent job is created
4. The world's best land-based whale-watching spot is located in Hermanus in the Western Cape.
5. In 2002, South Africa was the world’s fastest growing tourist destination - for those of you that have read this far... under MY watch!!
Sport
1. The Cape Argus Cycle Tour is the largest timed cycle race in the world.
2. South Africa will become the first African country to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010
3. South Africa has the largest soccer league in the world
4. South Africa has two golfers in the World’s Top 10
5. In 1994, we won 11 medals in the Commonwealth Games. In 2002, we won 46.
SA Teaching the World
1. South Africa houses one of the three largest telescopes in the world at Sutherland in the Karoo
2. South Africa is the first, and to date the only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme
3. South Africa has the 8th best ratio of women to men in Parliament
4. South Africa’s Constitution is widely regarded as being one of the most progressive in the world, drawing from the experiences of the world’s most advanced democracies
5. South African Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967 in Cape Town.
6. The South African oil company Sasol has established the only commercially proven oil-from-coal operations in the world.
7. Two of the world's most profoundly compassionate philosophies originated in South Africa – Ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Gandhi's notion of "passive resistance" (Satyagraha), which he developed while living in South Africa.
Education
1. Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education
2. The University of South Africa UNISA is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students.
3. Our learner to teacher ratio has improved from 1:50 in 1994 to 1:34 in 2004
4. South Africa’s matric pass rate has improved from 49% in 1994 to 70% in 2004, but student’s receiving university exemptions has remained at 18%
5. The adult literacy rate in South Africa now exceeds 80%
Environmental
1. The Kruger National Park supports the greatest variety of wildlife species on the African continent
2. The Cango Caves near Oudsthoorn is the world’s longest underground cave sequence
3. South Africa is home to both the largest land mammal (elephant) and the smallest mammal (shrew)
4. South Africa is the only country to house an entire floral kingdom (fynbos), one of only 6 on the planet
5. In 1991, South Africa became the first country in the world to protect the Great White shark.
6. South Africa has the oldest meteor scar in the world, at the Vredefort Dome near Parys. The scar is 2 billion years old.
7. South Africa has the third highest level of biodiversity worldwide
8. The Cape Hyrax’s (dassie) closest relative is the African elephant
9. South Africa has embraced the concept of trans-frontier ‘peace parks’, linking ecological reserves across national borders
General
1. South Africa is the cradle of mankind
2. Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
3. The Western Deep Levels is the world’s deepest mine at 3777 metres
4. South Africa has the world’s largest deposits of gold, chromium, platinum and manganese
5. The only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace Prize winners is in Soweto. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West.
6. South Africa has the world's second oldest air force, established 1920.
7. South African Breweries ranks as the second largest brewing company in the world. It supplies up to 50% of China's beer.
8. South Africa has the second oldest film industry in the world
9. South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index, ahead of the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan
10. In 2005, Time Magazine hailed President Thabo Mbeki as the Most Powerful Man in Africa
11. South Africa’s population is approximately 46.8 million (2005)
12. South Africa is a middle income, developing country with well-developed financial, communications and legal services and excellent energy and transport infrastructures
Source: South Africa - The Good News www.sagoodnews.co.za
1. The rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar between 2002 and 2005
2. South Africa has 37,000 high net-wealth individuals (holding at least US$1million in financial assets)
3. South Africa has the 26th biggest economy in the world, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$126 billion
4. South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)
5. Gauteng is South Africa’s smallest province but produces 37% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product
6. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is one of the fifteen largest in the world in terms of market capitalization
7. South Africa’s banking system is ranked 8th in the world.
Infrastructure
1. South Africa generates two-thirds of Africa’s electricity
2. Forty percent of Africa’s telephones are in South Africa
3. South African power supplier provides the fourth cheapest electricity in the world
4. Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto is the biggest hospital in the world
5. South Africa is one of only 12 countries with potable tap water
6. Durban is the largest port in Africa and the ninth largest in the world.
7. There are 22 million cell phone users in South Africa
Social
1. Ten million South Africans (a quarter of the population) have access to social grants
2. Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor and 1,000 houses per day have received electricity
3. Seventy percent of South Africa’s population is urbanized
4. Our population is set to stabilize at around 45 million people for the next 20 years
5. In the past 2 years, 300,000 people have moved into the middle classes and 500,000 have moved out of poverty, but we still have 20% of the population living in poverty
Tourism
1. The number of tourists visiting South Africa has grown by 116% since 1994
2. The Singita game reserve was voted the best hotel in the world by the readers of a leading travel magazine
3. For every seven tourists who journey to South Africa, one permanent job is created
4. The world's best land-based whale-watching spot is located in Hermanus in the Western Cape.
5. In 2002, South Africa was the world’s fastest growing tourist destination - for those of you that have read this far... under MY watch!!
Sport
1. The Cape Argus Cycle Tour is the largest timed cycle race in the world.
2. South Africa will become the first African country to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010
3. South Africa has the largest soccer league in the world
4. South Africa has two golfers in the World’s Top 10
5. In 1994, we won 11 medals in the Commonwealth Games. In 2002, we won 46.
SA Teaching the World
1. South Africa houses one of the three largest telescopes in the world at Sutherland in the Karoo
2. South Africa is the first, and to date the only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme
3. South Africa has the 8th best ratio of women to men in Parliament
4. South Africa’s Constitution is widely regarded as being one of the most progressive in the world, drawing from the experiences of the world’s most advanced democracies
5. South African Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967 in Cape Town.
6. The South African oil company Sasol has established the only commercially proven oil-from-coal operations in the world.
7. Two of the world's most profoundly compassionate philosophies originated in South Africa – Ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Gandhi's notion of "passive resistance" (Satyagraha), which he developed while living in South Africa.
Education
1. Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education
2. The University of South Africa UNISA is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students.
3. Our learner to teacher ratio has improved from 1:50 in 1994 to 1:34 in 2004
4. South Africa’s matric pass rate has improved from 49% in 1994 to 70% in 2004, but student’s receiving university exemptions has remained at 18%
5. The adult literacy rate in South Africa now exceeds 80%
Environmental
1. The Kruger National Park supports the greatest variety of wildlife species on the African continent
2. The Cango Caves near Oudsthoorn is the world’s longest underground cave sequence
3. South Africa is home to both the largest land mammal (elephant) and the smallest mammal (shrew)
4. South Africa is the only country to house an entire floral kingdom (fynbos), one of only 6 on the planet
5. In 1991, South Africa became the first country in the world to protect the Great White shark.
6. South Africa has the oldest meteor scar in the world, at the Vredefort Dome near Parys. The scar is 2 billion years old.
7. South Africa has the third highest level of biodiversity worldwide
8. The Cape Hyrax’s (dassie) closest relative is the African elephant
9. South Africa has embraced the concept of trans-frontier ‘peace parks’, linking ecological reserves across national borders
General
1. South Africa is the cradle of mankind
2. Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
3. The Western Deep Levels is the world’s deepest mine at 3777 metres
4. South Africa has the world’s largest deposits of gold, chromium, platinum and manganese
5. The only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace Prize winners is in Soweto. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West.
6. South Africa has the world's second oldest air force, established 1920.
7. South African Breweries ranks as the second largest brewing company in the world. It supplies up to 50% of China's beer.
8. South Africa has the second oldest film industry in the world
9. South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index, ahead of the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan
10. In 2005, Time Magazine hailed President Thabo Mbeki as the Most Powerful Man in Africa
11. South Africa’s population is approximately 46.8 million (2005)
12. South Africa is a middle income, developing country with well-developed financial, communications and legal services and excellent energy and transport infrastructures
Source: South Africa - The Good News www.sagoodnews.co.za
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
