My country, South Africa

Firstly, I want to say something about the comments on Blogger. I'm not ignoring anyone. It's just that I am unable to reply to comments for some time now. There's apparently a work-around this bug of Blogger, but I have to go research it first. So in the meantime, thank you for all comments, and sorry for not replying. John, particularly thanx to you for the invitation on my previous post, and the link. I'm definitely going to look into that!

Today, it's not all about the kids. Today, this post is about me. Or rather, about my country. About South Africa. There's actually so much to say, that I think I'll split it over a few posts. So this one would just be an "overview", and then I'll go into detail into each of the points I make. Please remember that this is strictly only my opinion. I do not have any political analysing experience. I base most of my opinions on the intensive research I have done over a 6-month period, the experience I gained from living in this country for almost 40 years, and my own deduction powers. I have read many books, many blogs, many sites and many articles. I have looked at oposing positions. Liberals, right-winged, neutrals, from all races and interest groups. I've watched a few programs, and a number of Youtube video's. I feel comfortable that I have a fair understanding of what's going on now. Something I did not have 6 months ago. Because I was never, ever interested in politics. And up until 6 months ago, I preferred hiding my head in the sand because it was all too upsetting to deal with. To face reality.

I never wanted to know who and what each political party is about. It didn't interest me at all. I found it boring, deceitful, and had no desire to try and understand politicians' emotions or motivations. I voted, of course yes, because I was taught that that's the right thing to do. But I never really went into politics more than a basic, shallow understanding. Well, something caused me to look into some of the things happening in our country a while ago. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was researching not only current happenings, but history as well. I now have a very good understanding of the real history of all the different groups in our country. From different perspectives. I also have a much better understanding of our political past and current happenings. I understand where our government is coming from, and where they're heading. I also now understand how the world sees us much better. This last point shocked me. I know it's impossible for all people to learn the true history of every country on this planet. It's way too much. So I understand that most people would put an opinion of a country together from a few snippets he read in the mainstream news. I just never realised how absolutely wrong the world's opinion is of the white people in South Africa. Our history, what shaped us, our reasoning, and our current situation. There's very, very little truth out there. :( It really saddens me, because I have made friends all over this world in different countries, and to realise what they're probably thinking of us, of me, is shocking and hurts.

But that's also a whole other discussion. I'll get to that as well, at one stage. I decided to chronicle all of my thoughts, in different posts, as it will do a number of positive things. One is, to get the word out there. Second, to preserve it as history for my children. Third is, to organise my thoughts and feelings to make sense of it all. Fourth is, to create an understanding amongst people.

So back to our country and some issues as I perceive them personally (not in the whole, just what it means to me as an individual).  I'm going to list the points that worries me with a small description, and then tackle each point in a separate post in the next few months. Because there's so much to say about it all.

1. During September 2011, the white people of South Africa (less than 5 million of the total population of 50 million people) has been placed on level 6 (out of 8) on Genocidewatch's website. It is run by dr Gregory Stanton from the USA. Level 6 is called Preparation, and level 7 is when there's a full-blown genocide like what happened in Rwanda. Level 8 is the aftermath when the perpetrators are hiding the mass atrocities. There's so much more to say about this...but just imagine living in a country where they say that black, marxist youths are preparing to slaughter every white person in your country. And you're part of that minority. What would you do?

I'll leave this point with the following. This was posted a few days ago by a black SAPS (police service) investigator on his facebook page. I've decided to omit his name, I'm sure you'll understand. I'm not here to stir. I'm here to works things out for myself. I try to tell myself it's just an individual. But this person seems to be well educated (studied in Texas, USA), he's in a position of power and service towards all South African citizens (or supposed to be), and given the fact that we're on level 6 on GenocideWatch....it's difficult to ignore:

"Fuck this white racist shirt! We must introduce Black apartheid. Whites have no ROOM in our heart and mind. Viva MALEMA."

Four mintues later: "When The Black Messiah (NM) dies, we'll teach whites some lesson. We'll commit a genocite on them. I hate whites."

2. Onto my second concern. Crime in our country has taken on immensely wrong proportions. I'll discuss where it comes from and why it scares me in another post. Suffice to say that me and my daughter has a 30% chance of being raped during our lifetime. We live behind the best security we can afford. We are naturally trained already to always look over our shoulder and around us when approaching our car, our house, stopping at a red robot, slowing down at a "high hi-jacking danger spot", etc. The crime alone is not only what's chasing us away. It's the nature of the crime. People are tortured, maimed, mutilated and dehumanised in the most awful ways possible. I would not even have been able to wrote such horrible deeds into a script for an episode in CSI, but it's happening every week in our country. A decade ago, it was mostly men that were targeted. The past few years though, women and children has been treated almost worse than the men. This has made me realise it's not only me or my husband that's targets anymore, but my beautiful, innocent children as well.

3. Revolution. I think this point scares me the most as it's probably the most realistic scenario. I've read many people's opinions, and if there's one thing all seem to agree on, is that a revolution is most likely inevitable in South Africa. The political analysts seems to pinpoint this date as anything between 2013 and 2020. One person suggested on his blog that it will be next year (2012), but I'm choosing to ignore this. I can't deal with that scenario just yet. But I do acknowledge that it seems inevitable, and that we can do one of 3 things. Ignore the fact that it's coming, while hoping and believing that like always, the good in South Africa's people will pull the wagon through the ditch. You can thus choose to hide your head in the sand, because you're not interested in politics, or because the realities is too much to handle, or because you cannot face such negativities in your life. Or secondly you can decide that it won't "touch" you much. That you and your family are and will be safe. Some revolutions happens quickly, and only few people die. Mostly rebels and defence forces. You can hide out in your house and believe you'll be safe. You can even prepare as best as you can for such a happening. Maybe have an escape plan, or a hide-out with stocked supplies. Or, thirdly, you can take your family and run as far and as fast as you can.

4. Like I mentioned. I was never interested in politics. I knew our country fought the border war because of encroaching communist factions. Thus helping to bring the cold war to an end during the late 1980's. What I did not realise, was that even with the fall of communism, our current government did not fully renounce their communism goals. I never realised that our current government was not interested in a Western 1st world state when they took over power in 1994 from the apartheid government. They want a socialist state. Only when they started admitting this publicly, did I realise their intentions. Only when they started to openly talk about going back to the NDR (National Democratic Revolution) in 2007, did I understand that to them, democracy like we know and understand it in the Western way, is not first price. They want to achieve their NDR goals, where South Africa would end up as a socialist state. To achieve this socialism, things has to drastically change in our country. The changes would involve processes that, in my opinion, would crash our country's economy. I don't even want to think what that would do to our savings, our pensionfund, the value of our property.

5. My last, but not least point for now. When our current government took control of the country, one of the things they had to rectify, was the inequality between black and white job opportunities. I wholeheartedly agreed with this. What I don't agree with, is the way it was done. It has been 17 years, and instead of less unemployment, better education, better health, etc. everything is just going down the drain. Unemployment has reached unprecedented proportions. The health sector is in total disarray, and the plans to try and rectify this, will cause even greater chaos. Education has been a big failure the past 10 years, and our children are suffering because of it. Municipalities are on the brink of bankruptcy, service delivery is almost non-existing in some towns and an ever-increasing burden is placed on the shoulders of the 6 million taxpayers, to feed and take care of the population of 50 million. We're turning into a total welfare state. Because of these failures of the government, we're told that "transformation" isn't taking place fast enough. So not only do the powers that be intend to implement Affirmative Action indefinitely (in their own words), they also created BEE (Black economic empowerment). The result is an even more skewed economic society with a huge discrepancy between rich and poor. Affirmative action (reservations of most jobs for people from black ethnic groups) has had two results on a big part of the white population. Some people, unable to find employment in South Africa, had to emigrate. While others lost their jobs, especially those that previously worked in state departments. Quite a number of those people have been unable to find new employment due to Affirmative Action, and did not have the funds or means to emigrate. Currently, guesstimates say that of the 5 million white people that used to live in South Africa, about 1 million has emigrated during the past 20 years, and about 800 000 is living in squatter camps. Due to government policy (reserving it for black people), most of these 800 000 white people do not get food stamps, state subsidised welfare, state pensions or any support at all from the government. Some are even shown the door when they turn up at state hospitals in need of help. Even some churches acknowledge that even though their congregations are mostly white, that their policies are to help the black impoverished people, and not the white impoverished. Because that's the way it's always been done. To put this into percentages, Affirmative Action and other reasons like crime, has caused 20% of the white population to leave the country, and put 16% in squatter camps, living below the breadline. Crime has wiped out another guesstimate of 30 000-50 000 white people living in towns and cities, and about 4000 of the farmers. If this trend continues...what hope does my children have, in this country? There's even policies to restrict white kids from studying certain degrees in University. For example, most of the white matriculants that apply to study for medicine, gets turned down. A black student getting 60% in matric will be put first in the queue, before a white student getting 90%. So I can't help but wonder...will my children be able to study what they want to? Would they get temporary jobs, like I did, to be able to afford studying? Most bursaries are reserved for black students. Would my children get a job in this country, once they've completed their studies? Or will they need to emigrate to find a job? Should we rather emigrate now, to a country where they'll be assured of a tertiary education and a job, or should we stay in South Africa and most likely have to wave our kids goodbye 10-15 years down the line when they emigrate?

As you can see, our current situation in my beloved country, South Africa, is deplorable, to say the least. It scares me and it makes me wonder if, and what, we should do. What can we do. As I mentioned, I'll dig into all of this deeper over the next few months.