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My name is Kenneth and I write cool Mac and iPhone software. This is my personal weblog where I post about stuff I find interesting. I usually write about Mac development, the business of shareware and the Mac community in general.
read more →South Africa, or “The Rainbow Nation”, as some call it, may seem like a beautiful country with amazing leaders. After all, 4 Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded to South African politicians.
But in reality, all is not well. Far from that. Here is why:
- Electricity shortages
Since mid-2007, Cape Town has been experiencing repeated power outages, sometimes lasting a few days. Now electricity shortages have reached the whole of South Africa, and every day there’s 4h without any kind of power. If you do the Maths, this means that a sixth of the time, there is no electricity. For a year, there will be two months without electricity!
Not only South Africa is affected, but all of Southern Africa. Countries like Swaziland, Botswana or Zimbabwe, who rely on South Africa for their electricity are also down. There are even rumors that Eskom (South Africa’s electricity utility company) is cutting neighboring countries’ power for every weekends.
In 1997, we were warned this would happen. An official document described that if the target economy growth per year goal of 6% p.a. was reached, we wouldn’t have enough power by 2007. The actual growth rate for the past 10 year was 5% p.a. They were warned, and yet the incompetents in charge did nothing. This is how corrupt the country is. The wealthy men in charge use their power for personal gain, and they of course are safe while the rest of the country is in a chaos.
No electricity sounds like a mere inconvenience. After all, our ancestors have lived without power for centuries. But it has far bigger consequences on the country as a whole. Car accidents are so common here that there isn’t a day going by where I don’t see at least one road accident. How much worse do you think not having traffic lights will make it? The road will be a total chaos. There will be traffic-jams everywhere.
South Africa is a dangerous place. Every home is equipped with an alarm system. But of course, alarm systems require electricity. Perfect opportunity for someone to break in. Garage doors and gates too are powered by electricity. If you’ve left your door closed when the power cut arrises (which, by the way, is the safe thing to do if you don’t want your car stolen), you’re stuck at home.
The biggest result of this that affects everybody first-hand is refrigeration. Food is kept in fridges and freezers for a reason. Otherwise, they rot, melt, or become inedible.
In Cape Town, during one of those power cuts that lasted 5 hours, more than a hundred tourists were stuck hanging on a cable between Table Mountain and Cape Town. 900 were stuck at the top of the mountain. For FIVE HOURS!
Entire businesses are going down. Any business that relies on computers now has major problems. No work is going to get done while the power is done. And on top of that, there is data loss, file corruption etc. Communication too is down. All modern wireless home phones rely on electricity, and thus and unreachable and unusable during the cuts.
Do I really need to go on?
This is supposed to continue regularly until 2013, when they will finally have finished building the first new power plant.
- Led by a rapist
As if the electricity shortages weren’t enough.
Have you ever heard of Jacob Zuma? He is president of the leading political party, the ANC, and soon-to-be president of South Africa. Problem is, this man is a RAPIST! And by rape I do not mean where the woman wakes up the next morning and realizes she’s hungover and probably shouldn’t have done what she did. By rape I mean violently forcing a woman into nonconsensual sex.That’s what Mr. Zuma did, and he got away with it. And now he is about to become president. You must wonder, how did this ever happen in a democracy? Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering too.
In court, he claimed that he took a shower after the rape, thus protecting himself from HIV/AIDS and other diseases. What a great example for his country…
To top it off, he is also facing corruption charges.
- Crime, Rape and AIDS
from South African political satirist, Zapiro.South Africa is ranked N°1 for number in homicide per capita and rape.
Statistically, a teenaged girl has more chances to be raped than to learn to read.
Combined with AIDS, this makes South Africa the most dangerous country for women. One in five South Africans is infected. By 2010, we are expecting a cumulative death toll of 5.7 millions due to AIDS. Imagine if everybody in both Durban and Cape Town died. That’s how many people 5.7 million is. Alternatively, picture everyone living in Los Angeles and Paris combined dying. (Note: City populations include only the city itself)
Due to the incompetence of our leaders, no effective action is taken to prevent the epidemic. Indigenous locals rape virgin girls because they traditionally believe that having sex with a virgin will cure them from AIDS. But obviously the only thing achieved is spreading of the epidemic.
DISCLAIMER: I am not South African, but I have lived here for more than 3 years, which is more than enough for me to be disgusted by this country forever.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 9:07 pm and is filed under English, Politics, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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you say you haved lived in south africa for 3 years. i do hope by now you have done our country the favour of leaving and going back to where you came from.
negativity creates negativity and that is the last thing we need right now. i am a south african living overseas, making good money and living safely, but i plan to return home in december for good. south africa is a beautiful, diverse country with so much potential and so many wonderful people. we have the greatest sense of humour, adapt easily to change, and i for one (having travelled the world on and off for the last nine years) would never want to live anywhere else. all my friends living overseas are slowly starting to make their way back home. rugby, braais, beautiful sunsets….you are clearly undeserving of it all. GO HOME.
lynn, you are of course correct when you say that I should leave. Indeed, I am living come the end of the year, for good. When I first came here, I had high hopes for this country, but as time went by, things became worse every minute. I have only been disappointed and disgusted by this country. The conditions of living are terrible. It’s good for tourism, but definitely not to live here.
Every country that is lead by tribal blacks is in Choas. Zimbabwe is a classic example of a nation that was lead by Ian Smith in which Zim economy was amung the best in the world. It is now a shit-hole. Uganda, Angola, all of west Africa, Sudan, CAR Congo Rawanda Zim and even SA. What was SA like 20 or 30 years ago? I do not agree with killing people black or White. If a person is to stupid, or honest to lead then leadership should be done by the ones capable of doing so. Having enough food and not having murder in the streets is a goon measuring stick ti determine who should lead.
I am an African -American Sales executive who has visited South Africa twice in 2007 and once this year with plans to return in the fall. I have fallen in love with the country, the people. I experienced the brown outs in Johannesburg this past April…and will be interested in how the problem gets resolved. I intend to retire to the country and operate a bed and breakfast there. While I also intend to have private back up generators for the comfort of guests, I have a direct interest in the power issue being resolved. I think that all who wish to live there or do need to work cooperatively to resolve issues central to the well being to the people.
It is a good country with great potential…and I look forward to calling it home.
we dont need wankers like you in south africa anyway, so thanks for the favour of not wanting to live there….what a jerk
One gets used to live in constant fear of being the victim of crime in South Africa. It was only when I visited my children in the UK that I realized what a normal society should be like. I enjoyed the long walks and the sightseeing trips without always having to look over my shoulder. Older people are seen everywhere on the busses and doing nature walks. They seem much younger than seniors in this country because here one is locked up because it is too dangerous to go out on one’s own.
How there you speak of South Africa like this!! I can bet you my last cent that you are from one of those European countries. I’m sure I am correct with that. That is why WE South Africans say that Africa is NO place for sissys.
Every country in the world has its own problems and I gues maybe thats why you ended up staying in SA for 3 years. We are proud of South Africa and what we have achieved and still to achieve. It is Persimists like you that we do not need in our country because instead of bringing growth, you try to let us down. I would be very much happy if YOU NEVER Set your foot in our beautiful country again.
What do you say about the racial abuses experienced by black players who are playing in Europe, especially Spain, Italy and The People’s “Favourite” England? Don’t you for a second realise that Europe needs civilisation more than Africans do? As for one of the other respondends, yes you should walk freely in UK as I also walk freely in SA since that is where I belong. Im pretty much sure that you have exploited South Africa for 3 years and now you are saying you won’t come back here.
We are trying by all means to be accomodative as Africans but It’s people like you that want to drive us into the mentality of Zimbabwe (would you like that?).
I have visited South Africa once and loved it. Of coarse there is going to be crime, just like EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. It realy all depends on how you look at things, if you want to see things possotivly, then you will, however, if you look at things in a negative maner (which to many people do these days) then you will see everything with a negative perseption. South Africa is the most beautiful country I have ever seen. Nkosi sikeli afrika!
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