How little has changed. How much has changed

Now that my loved ones are safely in another country, I feel free to return to record the facts, fables, foibles and fantasies of surviving in South Africa.

I put blogging on TL on the back-burner eight months ago after threats on my life and my children from supporters of Jacob Zuma. My landlord has since painted over the graffiti spray-painted on my wall and the damage to my car has been repaired. I have a new watchdog — two in fact. The threatening calls stopped after I changed my number and a private investigator was able to supply critical information — “leverage” now in the hands of attorneys (should it come to that) and some “protection” (should it come to that).

In the past eight months or so I have also grown much wiser in what is happening just beneath the crumbly surface of everyday existence. Like an estimated 27-million South Africans, I close my eyes in fear each night. I no longer go to shows at night — at all. Two attempted hijackings and a break-in have put the end to theatre, clubs, music festivals and even Toastmasters. I am now armed. I only go where my safety can be guaranteed or where my dogs can accompany me — and only during daylight hours.

I have grown more despondent about this country’s ability to fight crime. Except for eight policemen and women I’ve met since January, I do not trust the police at all. I cannot trust the justice system either. Talk Radio 702 makes much of its laudable Crime Line and much good has been done by it. But not one single case of the more than 500 arrests made has yet to see a conviction. If statistics from our gangster bosses are to be believed, fewer than 5% of those arrests — that’s 10 criminals — will be convicted.

Hardly the stuff of sweet dreams.

The pandemic of corruption in the justice cluster, right to the topmost echelons, has become an accepted perk, like medical aid and funeral benefits. My friends in the SAPS tell me it’s becoming easier to catch more and more dirty cops and civilians than before, but firing them is almost impossible. And those that are fired are not replaced. In fact, yesterday we carried the news that the Indepedent Complaints Directorate is drowning in cop complaints and even the photographed evidence I have sent in is met with indolence and stoic silence — followed, eventually, by denial and lost dockets. If I was one of the thousands of tourists mugged, robbed or beaten up every month, I wouldn’t bother reporting. Visiting South Africa these days is like piloting a tanker with weapons around the Horn of Africa. Just make sure you have shit-loads of insurance and bite the bullet.

Hardly the stuff of warm fuzzy feelings.

A ragtag clamour of business people (did someone say “self-interest”), so-called researchers from the CSIR and other sheltered-employment havens and has-been politicians-turned-consultants got together about eight or nine weeks ago, ate a lot of doughnuts (one of the major food groups of crime fighters), drank expensive coffee and Power-Pointed their way through four days of over-hyped blather … and came up with nothing but a piece of paper they called a “charter” (yes, another meaningless one) and patted themselves on their collective back, then gave themselves another 75 days to come up with something better. Not a peep has been heard from them since.

Hardly the stuff of silver lining while hurricanes rage closer.

The economy has gone to crap in a credit card. A recent trip to the Drakensberg, a World Heritage Site nogal, cost me R2 000 in fuel alone. Medical expenses cost me between R1 500 and R1 800 a month because of our disgraceful medial aid system and the genocidal public healthcare system. I have had to stop all insurance policies (except for my friends the “heavies”) and make do with our own white-collar syndicates called banks. Food inflation has shot through the stratosphere — two litres of milk cost nearly R20 and a loaf of bread half of that and electricity (if it works) costs five times what it should.

Telecommunication in SA is 500 times what it should cost and delivers a tenth of what it should. Our roads are the best in Africa, but pale into animal tracks next to a British village lane. And journalists with numerous awards, more than 30 years of experience and several degrees or diplomas earn half of what a 32-year-old PA with a diploma from Damelin does.

Hardly the stuff to make you want to cheer on a bunch of fat-cats from the Business Trust stumbling along from Qunu to Jozi in jogging kits that cost more than your entire wardrobe.

Aah, this land of the grandiose gesture and misspent millions in mediocre marketing. This land where the national flag should always flutter upside-down; the international signal of distress.

One good thing has happened though. The ANC, that abominable agglomeration of greed and megalomania, home to hardcore Stalinists and dyed-in-the-wool tribalists, is falling apart. It is a thing of beauty to behold. And their clownish antics in shoving their stumpy fingers in the holes in the dykes are pure Funniest Home Video material.

Our economists tell us to brace for two more years of financial fuckups, one on top of the other. Of course, this isn’t our fault — and we should be grateful that at least there’s one fact of life that is not our fault — but it has yanked the hopeful heart out the 2010 panacea and held it up, still beating, like a Mayan sacrifice. What little hope the nation still held in alles-sal-regkom-kom-2010 has faded as quickly & decisively as another service delivery promise from government

Every day I scan the horizons for some faint spark of hope, but all that comes back is a blinding shimmering mirage of the desolation. SA is the shining jewel of the African continent only because the rest of the place is in such cataclysmic ruin.

I receive bucket-loads of mail from foreigners and expats every day — four days away from the PC in the Berg and I returned to 398 genuine emails (not the spam that the combined efforts of Telkom, Microsoft, Norton, McAfee and a dozen other protectors can keep out — kinda reminds me of our protectors). Then there are the Skype calls and the SMSes — all wanting to know whether it would be safe to visit or should they come for the soccer?

My standard answer is: I would not. For heaven’s sake, man, they have had to cordon off Robben Island because they can’t keep some bunnies from copulating themselves to crisis point. How the Watership Down are they going to produce a mind-blowing extravaganza of sporting spectacle?

How little has changed in a world that has changed so much? Even the Arch, oom Desmond, the pope of the rainbow nation, doesn’t think voting is a good idea next year. Halleluiah to that, Father! The rand has rocketed past 10 to 1 against the dollar — and we’re supposed to be doing pretty well. A good rugby player wants to chuck chunder on his Springbok jersey, oblivious to the tens of thousands of antidorcas marsupialis who wouldn’t mind burying him in bok kak if they weren’t so busy trying to survive in Namibia and Botswana themselves. TIME magazine recently celebrated scores of “Heroes of the Environment” from little old ladies in England to turbaned Sikhs in India. And not a single South African.

Hardly the stuff of pride now is it?