Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

Went right over your head didn't it?

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

There hasn't been a day that I haven't missed Zims since I left it in the 80's. The best place on earth to raise a family, bar none, in the old days of course.

Boiling frog syndrome is alive and well in S.A., nothing more, nothing less. Proudly touting, "It will never happen here, we'll not be like the rest of Africa" - without realizing that they actually are already there.

Sad, but true.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

How can you believe Zim started deterioration 5 years ago? I think you were wearing rose tints when you were there. 15 years ago I knew I guy in RSA who used to smuggle ZA rands mielie meel or Sudza and even matches because they were expensive. He was trying to get his family to come to SA.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

I saw this in the news yesterday:

Life in Zimbabwe is shorter than anywhere else in the world, with neither men nor women expected to live to 40

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?s...4484823236B251

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

I suppose you get maniacs everywhere, I just personally think there are more of them in SA and the majority of them aren't doped-up idiots, they're just cold-hearted bastards.

Sorry to hear about this mate - I'd love to invite you to come live Australia, but with your luck you'd probably run into someone with a Katana and a bad attitude. :eek:

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

Of course the deterioration started much earlier but was not significant to the working class - I was referring to fuel crisis, critical food shortages, black market trading etc. which have not been going on for the past 15 years - I did not even drive then and I have been in too many queues to mention.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

I love SA - I truly do. My dad was born there, all his family live there. Infact 3 of my cousins who moved to the UK but 2 have now moved back with their wives and newly arrived babies.....

BUT - they are insane to do it! As I say I love SA, have spent many, many good times there but all done under the background tenseness and fear.

Crime in the UK may also be prevalent but the average person does not have barred windows, security systems, electric powered gates and fences or anti-hijacking devices in their cars. Yes, in some areas of the UK people may use some of the above but in SA you HAVE to have it.

I worry about my cousins who have gone back - having left very good comfortable lives they both relocated because their young wives were making their lives hell coz they missed mummy! Now realisation has set in - they are trapped! No more holidays around europe or the states, no more decent education prospects unless you are willing to pay through the nose privately,
mummy may well be around to help look after the kids but their propects are gone.

When they lived in the UK they travelled to SA once a year, and then did a couple of other trips too, now they cant even afford to rent a cottage in Umschlanga! trapped inside a fortress of a house - I hope mummy was worth it.

I will be returning to SA next year to see them all, and again fall inlove with the 1000 hills, Doozie dam race and lots of other things - but I'd rather the UK than SA to live in any day (and I'd rather chop my left arm off than return to the UK so its saying something!!) - purely for the safety and future for my boys.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

Yup.

I hope that they come to their senses soon enough and move back to the UK or elsewhere, for the sake of their kids.

islandmom, the reason we left was due to the kids. Just to run one errand went something like this.

1. Make sure all the windows, doors in the house are secure. Open security door, and take kids to car, strap in, first ensuring no one is in the garage.

2. Drive away through secure gates, ensuring there is no one outside waiting to get me. Drive like a bat out of hell to the shops. Take kids out, looking around all the time making sure there are no suspicious people around.

3. Go to store, come out again, strap kids into the car, all the time being aware of my surroundings in order to ensure no suspicious person around to hijack the car with the kids in it (my biggest nightmare).

4. Go back home, drive through secure gate, make sure no one is in the garden, get out the car, lock it, go open security gate, open door, make sure no one is inside, go get kids who are sitting in the locked car a few metres away, take them in the house, get groceries, pack them away, (first having locked all the gates/doors), then repeat to run another errand if needs be.

Not paranoia. Reality of living in S.A. I couldn't take it anymore.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

depaite all protests to the contrary anyone living in SA has to accept it is a dangerous country and you are at a higher risk than the UK or Oz or spain or most other places infact. In many countries it will be localised (big urban cities) but in SA its countrywide.

When we arrived last (2004) we were warned at JHB airport not to walk outside alone to go down to the domestic terminal for our flight to Durban - we were told to wait for a group to go as it was starting to be a problem with people being targeted and robbed or kidnapped between terminals - especially if like us you had children with you.

When we got our hire car in Durban we stopped at a set of light and our car window shattered (exploded actually) and we physically immediately checked ourselves for gunshot wounds!! Funny in hindsight as it was a stone from a strimmer being used on the grass verge!! but it makes you THINK it could have been a bullet..... you just dont think that in most places.

I feel so sorry for my cousins kids - one who has now been diagnosed with a blood disorder and needs transfusions - they are now absoloutely paranoid about HIV infected blood getting into him, but cant return to the UK as left before their 4 years and passport was granted coz the wife was getting stroppy!

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

Oh gawd, how awful :(:( Do they not have ILR still?

Many S.A.n's now have a network of family/friends who are 'clean' to call in case of such an emergency. Maybe they can do that.

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

A friend of ours in South Africas was recently was diagnosed with cancer and had to have blood transfusions before starting chemotheraphy. What he did was get family and friends to donate blood that could be used for him for the transfusions. Suggest this to your cousin.

Re: Anyone moving to South Africa is MAAADDD !!
 

I'm quite sure Iraq has suffered more violent deaths than SA in the last three years. Have you seen the news? The bombings and mass shootings every day in Baghdad alone?

Also I've read articles by the MRCSA and Interpol and they've never said there's over 32,000 murders in South Africa.

Re: Anyone moving to South Africa is MAAADDD !!
 

Contested statistics

While government, through the release of these figures, claims that murder is said to be in decline, not everyone agrees. A recent report by the Medical Research Council (MRC) states otherwise. While police crime statistics show there were 21,683 murders in 2000, the MRC puts the figure at 32,482. The MRC's estimate is close to the figure from the Department of Home Affairs, which is 30,068. This is a third more murders than reported by the SAPS. A discrepancy of more than 10,000 murders is more than a "margin of error".

The MRC's revelation of serious under-registration and misclassification in the government's death statistics was gleaned from various sources, including the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System, a body supported by the Department of Health and the Department of Science and Technology. The system gathers information on "non-natural" deaths from 37 mortuaries in six provinces (note that South Africa now has nine provinces). The cause-of-death profile estimated in their study "differs substantially from the findings of the sample of death records processed by Stats SA for 1997-2001", the MRC reports reads (The Sunday Independent, Shock report doubles road death toll, May 25 2003).

http://www.gunowners.org/fs0304.htm

Re: Anyone moving out to South Africa
 

well - too late for my cousins now - went to collect their container and belongs and were held at gunpoint in the depot and releived of their car and some treasured belongings...

least they're alive.. know what I mean.

Re: Anyone moving to South Africa is MAAADDD !!
 

Yes, but the MRC themselves never said that, the website 'interpreted' the MRC figures to mean murders.

The Department of Home Affairs is another strange one as they don't appear to have claimed their figure either.