Okay Rowan,that was rather harsh.The economy is NOT crashing & there is NO chance that SA will turn into Zim.Black Economic Empowerment doesn't aim to victimise white folk although I agree that some are appointed purely because they're black.Mind you,I too cannot benefit from BEE as I'm not "black enough".
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Smurls (which sounds like smells!),the Goverment is composed primarily of black people.So the State and all it's subdivisions is controllf by black people.But the private sector (the most profitable & lucrative IMO) is still very much white-owned & run with 74% of senior management being white which I think is unacceptable in a BLACK country.It's times like this that I'm glad to be mixed,let them fight it out by themselves!
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Personally I find the notion of capital punishment totally abhorrent, but there is a small part of me that wonders whether I can only afford to think like this because I live in a rich Western European nation which has taken hundreds of years to develop its systems of justice.
The new South Africa is in its infancy and I suspect the pendulum has to swing around for a while before things settle down. As an outsider it would be easy for me to wring my hands and bewail the squandering of the brave and dignified legacy of the likes of Mandela and Tutu and as exemplified in the HRC. Clearly, any change to that document has to be looked at very carefully. Any erosion of the rights of the citizen would be a serious undertaking.
I don't know where South Africa goes from here. There is an enormous job still to do to put right the injustices of the apartheid years. Poverty, health, housing, education, communications and an incoming president who is alleged to have a dubious past are all very pressing issues. All of these do little to discourage increasing crime and violence.
Most people I know regard Nelson Mandela as a hero. South African leaders who followed him have had less of a profile here. I wonder if South Africans regarded the North's Mandela-worship with the same degree of incredulity that I did the Thatcher-worship of some French, German, Spanish and American people who came to supper a few weeks ago? My perception of the evil witch who divided Britain and used the apparatus of state to crush opposition was clearly at odds with their rather more positive, if ill-informed, point of view. I hope that's not too trite an analogy. It sounds as though the problems facing South Africa are enormous and far beyond anything I have been called upon to face.
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I'm really impressed with your knowledge of the current SA situation,marshlander.Indeed Madiba has a god-like status with us but as rude as it sounds,I'm finding him irrelevant in our dilemma.In the past,people knew who the enemy was (i.e apartheid) & they joined forces to fight it but today there is so much frakked-upness that South Africans don't know where to start.Unemployment>Poverty>Illiteracy>HIV>Depression>Crime.
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