South African Crossroads
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 7 Aug 2011 20:24
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Thursday 4th August 2011
Capetown, South Africa
My inbox is now starting to receive complaints
about the lack of blogging. It has been over two weeks since I have committed
any thoughts to keyboard. However we have been travelling quite a bit and I
have been gathering lots of thoughts and observations on Southern Africa. Two
weeks itself is barely enough to give one very much insight into such a
complex country as South Africa. However after wrestling for days to overcome my
natural shyness and retiscence I have finally mustered up the courage to offer a
rare opinion on a given subject ................
It may not be wholly correct, it certainly won't be
politically correct but having sacrificed several nights of sleep worrying
about voicing an opinion I really felt I should go ahead and share my
thoughts with you.
You see having taken an interest in most political
and economic systems around the world over many years, observing different
cultures and religions during extensive travelling, and reading much history and
biographies not to mention current affairs, I think I was coming to a
conclusion that Africa, at least central Africa, was perhaps a "basket case". So
I wanted to gain some insight into the country and the region that in many
people's view offers the best hope for a successful model of a modern
African country.
South Africa is at a crossroads in my view and it
is a living socio - economic and political experiment which asa foreigner can be
viewed from a ringside seat. The country has the ability to be all that
Mandela hoped for and be something great but it also has immense potential to go
down the drain.
First let me tell you what we have been doing for
the past two weeks and recap a little on our earlier travels and interactions in
the region. When we landed in Africa we travelled around Kwa Zulu Natal and met
many Zulu people as well as our white English speaking South African
friends and those suppliers we came into contact with during the business of
works on Rhiann Marie. We also travelled via Soweto (South West
Township), meeting many black Xhosas and Johanesburg to
Zimbabwe and Botswana where we met black Shona and Ndebele people as
well as white Zimbabweans (formely known as Rhodesians). While there, you
may also remember I met the Zambian diamond smugglers and also Congolese truck
drivers. All across our travels we have met and spoken with many ethnically
Indian 3rd, 4th or 5th generation Indian or Tamilese South Africans. On all
of our travels we have met the white Afrikaans people and on our travels over
the past two weeks we have spent a lot of time and enjoyed the
hospitality of Afrikaans in the Cape region. In addition to all the various
peoples of South Africa we have also met several emigrants from Congo and
Zimbabwe at first hand and we have seen many (we are told) Nigerian immigrants,
mostly in our limited experience, sleeping rough on the streets of Durban. South
Africa would like to be known as the Rainbow Nation. You can see
why. In fact the country has 11 Official National
Languages.
Many years ago, reading Mandela's "Long Walk to
Freedom", I could never work out what exactly was a "Coloured" person
though I thought I understood the term Black person. However I thought that it
might not be polite to refer to, or describe a black person as a black person
given that the Funda - mental PC brigade banned us from singing Ba Ba Xxxxx
Sheep. However it appears that in general the term "black" is OK down here, but
one must understand that there are many tribal ethnicities of blacks some
of which I have already mentioned.
By the way this is going to be a long one - so if
you are still hanging in there it may be wise to stop reading at this point
(especially if you are currently at work in the Public Sector - but
definitely if you are working at Gael Force ) and set aside some time this
evening to have a read and a ponder at my observations.
So the Coloureds, or the Cape Coloureds as they are
more fully known in this area. As I understand it, and of course I may have
misunderstood, the people ( they were "Bushmen") that were in the Cape area
before the Europeans arrived were always of a lighter skin colour than the
tribes further north. However if I understand correctly there were slaves
brought here in the Seventeenth and Eighteeenth century from Asia
specifically the Malay peninsula, and over many centuries the interbreeding
between the white mainly male Europeans (a few Portuguese but mainly Dutch
initially) and the asians that had been brough here as
slaves, created the Cape Coloureds who even today have Malayan
influences, for example in their cooking.
So there we have most of the main players that I
have come across in the mix of the Rainbow Nation. The nation that Mandela hoped
would be one of freedom, equality and dignity for all regardless of colour,
religion, political or cultural differences.
After our arrival in Capetown and getting our
bearings we hired a car and went on a road trip. First we headed south along the
Atlantic Coast along the foot of Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles before
negotiating the the spectacular cliffside road and mountain pass of Chapman's
Peak. We then turned east and dropped down to False Bay and Simon's Town where
we observed the Cape Penguins. Next the drive took us south to the Cape of Good
Hope which we had sailed round only a couple of days earlier. We encountered
many troops of Baboons along the way, the males of whose "Agulhas" were
blue. Must have been the cold I suppose. And South Africa can be cold at this
time of year, just yesterday there was snow in the morning on the top of Table
Mountain, several roads in the country have been closed due to snow falls over
the period of our stay..... The Cape is a wild place and from onshore, at the
landmark sign looking out to sea we had good reason to be thankful we had
reached Capetown safely and in good time. Just before the point we caught sight
of movement on the rocky shore and when backing up the car were amazed to see
wild Ostrich forraging on the foreshore. Baboons, Penguins and Ostrich in a few
hours just about sums up the magic of the Cape peninsula!
On the way to spend the night in the wineland
regional town of Stellenbosch, with its rarified atmosphere of privelige and
plenty we passed by the shocking; shocking, as in hardly being able to
believe your eyes at the scale of the poverty and squalor of the huge "informal
settlements" (squater camps or shanty towns) of Mitchell's Plain.
My estimate is that this area which runs almost all the way to Capetown
must occupy about 20km by 10km so 200km2 of ramshackle huts cobbled together
from any material that could be found and about 12 foot square, cheek by jowl
for as far as the eye can see. Rusty corrugated iron, old tarpualins, random
timbers and boxes, polythene sheeting and old car tyres representing a family's
home. Theirs together with, I am guessing more than a million other souls. It
is more than humbling to witness, it is actually shameful and humiliating
that we would be driving on by, to spend the night in the relative warmth of a
guest house. Trish who feels the cold had to request extra heaters and the beds
were layered with blankets and duvets as the outside temperatures fell to near
freezing. The older houses in South Africa seem to have been built to be as
drafty as possible to cope with the summer temperatures and as a result the
inhabitants at this time of year are ofter wearing coats, hats and scarves.
However what about the millions, millions of poor souls living in the shacks of
these enormous shanty towns?
Well it seems that the Government (ANC) have
ordered the infrastructure to provide power to all of these huts. There are
tens of thousands of "telegraph" poles with transformers dotted all through the
settlements with up to ten power supplies, like spiders webs, feeding each
hut. Also the pricing structure of electicity supply has been adjusted so that
everyone can get a supply and the first 50 rand of power is free. To balance
things out for the power company the larger consumers pay a slightly higher unit
price for the units used over a certain amount. I have heard some complaining
about this, as they feel they may be getting penalised ("us" having to pay for
"them") but to me it seems like an excellent policy. I am not a normally a
fan of redistributive economic policies, here however is a case which is
socially and environmentally sound. Surely those of us that can afford to
consume (and worse still waste) so much power, don't mind paying a small
premium so a family with nothing can have a minimum power supply
perhaps powering a small light, heater and cooking capacity? This type
of policy also has a positive environmental aspect to it, as the premium will
focus one's mind on the additional usage or wastage of power.
These settler camps are occupied by perhaps 1000
people per acre yet just across the motorway in Stellenbosh there are many
thousands of acres given over to vines for fine wines. These are generally owned
by Afrikaans or otherwise European decended families. Their ancesters in many
cases occupied these lands, perhaps some fought and died for it, but in any case
they have been very industrious and visionary in arriving at their current
position of relative wealth. Extreme wealth in some cases, and in fact in all
cases, relative to the lot of the people in the settlements and the
townships.
However, without going too deeply into it now it is
relatively easy to build wealth when you have a huge swathe of labour
available in some cases initially as slaves, then indentured labour and even
today we see that a quasi-indenture exists in that an employer may provide
"cradle to the grave" tied "benefits" to workers. This includes providing the
most basic of housing. Again this is a subject which one could debate
endlessly but on balance, while wrong in the long term, may just be
better than if the alternative is to have no job and to live in an informal
settlement.
Looking at the "big picture" in summary I see that
the whites have most of the capital. When they arrived here between the 16th and
the 17th century they already had ships and weapons. This same
technological development was a huge "advantage" to the Europeans over the
indigenous people and the same one which I referred to when writing about the
Aboriginals in Austarlia. What is still unclear to me despite hoping to gain
some insight while reading the heavy weight tome "Power and Plenty: Trade,
War and the World Economy in the Second Millenium", is how and why European
people and society developed technically so far ahead of those living in most of
the Tropical and Sub Tropical world. However it is indesputable that there was a
huge gap between the "developed" European colonists/invaders and the "primitive"
indigenous people found in the south of Africa (and many other areas too).
Similar to ther parts of the world this "advantage" was used ruthlessly to
dominate and occupy the subject country for the gain of the colonist. Again if
we estimate that perhaps the Europeans that arrived were from a society that
had by several measures "developed" say 300 - 500 years more than the
indigenous peoples whose lands they occupied, could we project that the
indigenous people, had they been left alone may have developed their own
societies significantly, ("caght up") in the 300 - 500 years since
they were occupied and effectively shut out of much of their own land,
education, administration and politics, urbanisation and industrial and
agricultural development? Though much of the rest of Africa gives us a
clue, we will never know for
sure.
What I do know is that the indigenous peoples in
the European colonists' targets were unable to participate in the benefits to a
large extent, in the the critical development period of the last three hundred
years. While the colonists accrued the wealth having siezed much of the assets
by force the indigenous people, shut out of education or experience of
admistration or governance fell further and further behind in relative terms.
In South Africa (as well as other countries - don't forget what was
happening in the United States right through the fifties) this exclusion from
the benefits of development and modernation of society were enshrined in
the Apartheid policies of the National party of South Africa from the
late forties till the early nineties.
Though the official policies of Apartheid are now
ended, the gap between the decendents of the colonists who "have" and
the indigenous people who "have not" is enormous. We'll come back to this
.........
After Stellenbosh we drove East
on the Garden Route to Knysna over stunning landscapes. Much of it
under crops in huge fields, sometimes 360 degrees to the horizon.
Knysna is quaint in a sort of New England kind of way and it seemed we were very
much in a seaside summer holiday town out of season as of course it is mid
winter here. Well worth the visit though, but looking at the bay I was
glad I followed the guidance of the pilot book and ruled out Knysna as a
possible stopping off point on the way to Capetown. Everywhere we went it was
always a pleasure to engage with local people and regardless of colour or
creed I engaged everyone I could and found only pleasant people, though they may
have been a little bewildered at my interest in South African life.
Every single person I have asked, and I have asked
many, what they think of Mandela, has a high regard and respect for him. Some
people now even appear to be elevating him to a religious, saintly or
spiritual status that I am sure he would be uncomfortable
with.
If I have my dates right, Mandela was released
in 1990 and Apartheit as government policy of the National Party of FW
De Klerk was brought to an end in the mid nineties before Mandela became
President of the Democratic Republic of South Africa in 1995. The African
National Congress, the ANC of which he was the leader, sometimes de-facto, have
formed the government ever since. The South African Constitution was written and
largely based for its influence on the Freedom Charter of the ANC of Chief
Lesuthu's leadership. Incidentally South Africa's struggles have produced four
Nobel Peace Price winners: Chief Lesuthu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
and Nelson Mandela and President FW de Klerk
jointly.
Many, particularly the privileged whites, predicted
and expected a spectacular collapse of South African society and economy when
white rule came to an end. Indeed there was, I have read, a 50 Billion Rand
exodus of capital from South Africa in the years between Mandela's release and
the ANC taking power and in one subsequent year there was a 30 Billion Rand
revestment of capital, presumably when the much predicted social and
economic collapse did not happen. The economy did however faulter but since
has seemed to stabilise and is currently growing at over 3% per year. Since
the end of Apartheit I have also read that 10million South Africans have been
raised out of poverty.
Our road tour took us west again on a more
northerly route through the Klien Karoo in poor weather through ostrich farming
territory. In Victorian times an ostrich farmer was very wealthy with one
ostrich plume selling for about £6 and apparently a passenger liner ticket from
Southampton to Capetown cost £4! On the remote highway, heading west I was
speeding along when out of the bush and scrub appeared "Ronnie's World Famous
Sex Shop". Though there was not another car to be seen for miles arounfd there
were half a dozen stopped at Ronnie's place. So handbrake turn it was and in we
strolled like lambs to the slaughter to meet the "world famous" Ronnie. The
place was basically a roadhouse bar. He explained to us that when he
was away on holiday one time, having started a small shop which was not
doing too well the local comedians added "World Famous Sex" to
Ronnies gable end sign which had said Ronnies Shop. However he
said "sex sells and business has been booming ever since so he has never
removed the addition. Which reminds me you can find the worlds best sex toys at
www.gaelforcemarine.co.uk
.
Further west we reached Robertson which is a
beautiful area famous for it's wines and we stayed at an old manor house on
a wine estate for a few days. We got on very well with our hosts and were
treated to a tour around the estate and abundant and exquisitely
homecooked food morning and night. Each day we toured the area doing
wine tastings at various estates and learing about the different wines.
Fasshinating ....
It was also our first extensive contact with
Africaans people and "old money". Like all other people we have met in the world
they were warm and kind and we had the owner of the wine estate and family visit
Rhiann Marie and the adventurous and capable (Jack of all trades - Master of
most! ) Carin our host at the guest house, is coming to stay aboard Rhiann Marie
next week for a night.
I think that most of the whites we have met have
felt that South Africa is deteriorating under the leadership of the ANC.
And for them it most probably is. However with about 80% of the land and
probably more of the wealth in the hands of less than 20% of the population
whose forefathers for a very long period of time had shut out the huge majority
of the non-white population from the ability to share the benefits of economic
development, it is inevitable that wealth redistribution policies must be
implemented. This may seem unfair however, for the current generation who
may feel they have acrued what they have accrued through the efforts of
their own labour. Nevertheless if wealth, or the ability to accrue
wealth is not redistributed sensitively then the result could be revolution
and land grabs as the have nots will understandably feel aggrieved. If harsh
redistributive policy is applied (such as in Zimbabwe) the whites who have the
capital and the know how and who have been highly productive (albeit on the
backs of cheap and plentyful labour) may simply up and leave, as threatened
before the end of Apartheit, and the result will be the collapse of the
country and chaos.
It seems to me that white South Africa must be
visionary, generous and magnanimous in accepting that blacks must be
patiently given opportunity and that it will take several generations till the
majority black population truly have anything like an even playing field. There
will have to be several generations of good education and lessons learned of
civil administration and good governance practice. Time and again I have had
black people asking me for work on the boat, cleaning or odd jobbing. They
are earning about 100 Rand per day and as they have no other option they have to
take this kind of pay. They are trapped. They can't afford anything other than
to just survive on this money and unless they can find a way to gain a good
education and sadly, most likely a government job in the medium term meantime
(till there is a more fair and equal society) then the cycle will continue on
for another generation. I could not tolerate to pay the guys that came to help
me the going rate and paid what I thought the job was worth and then having set
out the terms at the outset (charity is no good for anyone in the long term)
offered a bonus if the job was done well. With each worker I also took the time
to show them how to do the job and what was important in doing it well.
The difficulty, the dilemma with this
issue, is for the wealthy South African is to pay a fair wage for a job
that is done. The same rate as would be paid to a white person if they were
doing the job, making due allowance for productivity if that is an issue.
However if that is done maybe large numbers would not be able to afford to
employ a "gardner" a "housemaid" or a "nanny" then almost certainly overall the
situation for the black population would be worse. Nevertheless those that
"have" must try to fairly help those that have not.
Now in a situation where everyone in the population
has had a fair chance to have basic food and housing, be educated, to prosper
and succeed I would not advocate any of this redistribution and
policies should be targeted to "helping people to help themselves". However
that is not the case in South Africa and the "haves" must work very hard to
integrate the "have nots".
It also must be said that though not neccessarily
their own fault, as they have been lived it and taught it for generations, all
South Africans must make small and in fact big moves towards reducing and
ultimately removing colour based prejudices. It is staggering to witness as a
visitor just how almost everyone categorises everyone else by colour.
Interestingly during the recent presentation of the annual Nelson Mandela
Lecture, Mandela chose rememberence as his theme. I am guessing he is feeling
that people, all South African people are perhaps forgetting the direction of
the journey that was set out upon in 1995.
On the other side of the fair pay discussion,
militancy among unions are currently striking and demanding 12 and 14 per
cent pay rises for example among the miners. As I don't know for sure what
the base line is ( though I have been told second hand that the rates are
already quite high) I can only comment that if the unions are not
restrained they will chase away the international companies that are
providing employment and investment.
There is also a Nationalisation "debate". In fact
it is more a radical call by the outspoken firebrand leader of the ANC
Youth League Julius Malema to inflame the emotions of his members. Almost
certainly people who know nothing of the proven consequences of nationalisation
around the world but who are gullible enough to believe that if they vote for
Malema they will have all the wealth they desire delivered to them.
The ANC is far too powerful and in fact there are
calls for the clearer separation of the party and the government as,
dangerously, the lines are becoming blurred. I have no doubt huge numbers of
people who in fairness may have no political alternative and don't neccessarily
understand the issues will blindly vote for the ANC no matter what. It reminds
me that it used to be said, that in some areas of Glasgow that if you put up a
monkey with a Labour badge on it people would vote for it. Because the ANC
are going to win any election anytime then inevitably poorer quality candidates
can find there way into parliament and even government. The quality of the
government and the ability of many who are in power - perhaps even Zuma is very
poor. Accusations of curruption are becoming more common, as with Julian Malema
who on his 20,000 Rand salary is building a 1,600,000 Rand house and has
allegedly had hundreds of thousands of Rand deposited in a Trust fund in his
sons name by individuals and companies who have won contracts and tenders from
the government. If the ANC in my view, does not clean up its act and deal with
the likes of Malema and better still split into new political parties then
I fear for the future of South Africa.
I have had discussions with two ANC members who
were in jail as political prisoners in Robin Island at the same time as Nelson
Mandela and I ventured my view to them. They both agreed and said they had
already spoken about and floated this idea themselves though
apparently not actively involved in politics any longer. Another high profile
member of ANC recently dared mentioned the same subject and was shouted
down in the press as a traitor. If Mandela were in his grave perhaps he
would be turning in it when he sees some of the goings on, though one must not
lose sight of the fact that things are better for many people and at least there
is now freedom of _expression_. So to make South Africa work the ANC and the
government must get its act together or more importantly all others must form a
collective opposition to them to drive quality and standards up. A coalition
government may be of more long term good to the country than the current state
of affairs.
Also when travelling round Southern Africa I
have been surprised that when discussing issues with black people one does
not have to probe too deeply while discussing general issues to get tribal
hackles up. You may remember the brutal violence that broke out between
conflicting supporters of the Pan- Africanist Congress (PAC) and the
ANC when Apartheit was in its death throes. Zulu and Xhosa appear to be the
two largest groups in South Africa and it is important that they continue to
cooperate peacfully, as all across Africa tribalism still seems to be
an
issue.
After a four days in the wine region we came back
to Capetown as these very nice Discovery Yachts people came out to do some
critical work and inspection on Rhiann Marie before the last long hike North.
Here I have had discussions with many of the Cape region's "Cape Coloureds"
and what do you know? They in general seem to have a lack of respect for the
blacks despite also being subjected along with Indians and Asians to
the brutality of the Apartheit laws. So it seems that the blacks in general
have not been given fair treatment by any section of the population and within
the black population there is a sometimes fragile peace between tribal
ethnicities. English speaking South Africans and Afrikaans I think see
themselves as two distinctive groups and the the Coloureds who it seems were not
treated as badly as the blacks during Apartheit but nevertheless victimised,
seem to have less tolerance for the blacks than any of the white
groups.
As far I can tell so far they all seem to get on
fine with Scots so that at least is a relief.
The black part of the population, through the
ANC now has power, currently it would seem unassailable, which heroes
of real calibre and intelligence fought and died for and it would seem to
me that to win over the sceptics and earn the respect of all other sectors
of the population and set an example for the rest of Africa there is a huge
onus on the ANC to be above criticism in standards of governance and
calibre of politician and currently it is far from that. In my
(occassionally) humble view South Africa
is at a crossroads and every individual in the
country can do their bit to ensure the right direction is taken. For one
all sectors of the population must start learning to stop thinking of
people primarily in terms if colour. One chap I met in Stellenboch who
I asked to help me understand what a coured person and a black person was
and whether either term should be used to refer to different
people, patiently and gently explained to me the differences but
finished by saying that really his hope for the future was simply that in
South Africa that people would stop referring to others in terms of colour
but simply as fellow human beings and judge them on their human
qualities.
I will make a start immediately and no longer refer
voluntarily to the colour of any South African.
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