Rick b

I guess you missed the Mods post to you?

I think you have also completly missed what I have tried to say to you and that has been agreed and backed up by several others on here.

You want to warn people off SA - fine
You want to tell people there is a huge crime rate - fine
You want to tell people that they really have to consider their security in SA - fine

BUT - there is no need what so ever to be agressive, rude, patronising and chase people from the forum. That is not "offering your opinion" - it's being a controlling and agressive bully. There is a big difference - I just wish you saw it.

TouristTrap

And I wish you'd quit whining like a broken record. Capish?

Campbells

I am honoured that you became active in this forum due to my posts.

May I suggest to you that if that was your sole motivation you should become a moderator.

You have had personal attacks at me making reference to my marriage etc etc. So I don’t see you as any better or solving the so-called problem that motivated you to join this forum.

Rick b

And it has what exactly to do with you?

So you don't see a problem with the way he replies to people and his tone? I am "whining" as he obviously doesn't get it. Must be a slow internet connection or something.......................

Campbells

I see you are starting to upset other members here with your tone

Sue

Enough already. This is just going round and round in circles. Lets all take a nice deep breathe and step away from the keyboard, because this isn't helping anybody.

Then perhaps we can get back to the topic in hand which is the sharing and receiving of constructive advice and experience.

Tish11

I've read most of the postings and I am greatly disappointed. I am a south african temporarily based in England and I am moving back to SA in September.
Everyone is ranting about how many south africans are in the UK, I could do the same ...why are there so many aussie's in the UK?? is it because their country is bad?? Obviously not.
Dont get me wrong, I am not about to compare SA with Australia...but I think people live countries for different reasons, crime yes, opportunity, exposure/experience and in some cases adventure. Is it wrong for young and old south africans to want these things??
The crime rate in SA is quite high and I think most of us accept that and I believe the government is doing something about the situation. What makes London a safe city.. high police presence on the streets, CCTV's etc, but strangely when people see guards in a shopping centre in SA it is considered unacceptable. yes the police in London are never armed...
On the flip side, has anyone ever wondered why the crime rate is so high? I'm sure most people dont really care but I do and to those who care here is ONE reason.
Bearing in mind that the marjority of SA population is in fact black and largely without a decent education, obviously you are left with a large amount of unskilled people of employable age which obviously results with ridiculously high unemployment and a lot of poor people. Where there's poverty there's always crime.
Bearing in mind that most of those who did get a good education were mainly white and they happen to be in the minority so even if most stayed in the country that would still not be enough because you would still have the marjority of the population who are poor. Actually, the unemployment rate in SA has always been high if not higher, the only difference is that the large number of unemployed people have always been black and pre 94 this accounted for Nil.
I dont personally agree with BEE because I think it discredits a lot of intelligent and competent black people in SA, however maybe those who feel so strongly against it could make suggestions on how best to adress the vast levels of inequality in SA.
This race preferential treatment happens in most parts of the world even in England in SA it is magnified because in essence you are dealing with a large part of the population when in the UK it is rightly called the ethnic minorities. Such policies also apply in a different form in countries like Malaysia.
About salaries being lower in SA, I totally disagree. As an engineer, I earned more in SA than I do in the UK... the only difference to me is that I am able to compromise my current lifestyle in the UK..(by sharing accommodation etc)... in order to stretch the pound so that I can do other things in SA, like buy a really nice house while at the same time I get the benefit of travelling around europe quite cheaply and experience a variety of cultures (London is pretty diverse).
In terms of work permits and stuff, in no country in the world would a foreigner be allowed to work without a proper permit..(unless there's certain government agreements)..and the ease of obtaining one depends on the demand of skills and SA is no different.

After this very long posting, all I am really trying to say is that SA has problems like any other country in the world maybe worse than most but hey, the country has in my view been through a rough patch and i dont think 10 yrs is enough to change things. It took Nelson Mandela way more than 27 yrs just to fight for freedom so the next step is to change the mindset for both Black and White people in the country.
America, Britain etc they still have race issues even after all these years and I think in SA we have done remarkably better than most western countries on that front.

Campbells

Hi there and congrats on your first post on BE, welcome,

Your post has some very valid points. Yes, your point about poverty & crime being related is correct but what I (and most others) do not understand about most of the crime in South Africa is the mindless violence that goes with it.

I totally agree that crime is everywhere, but not violent crime to the scale it is happening in South Africa..

If you want to take someone’s car why do you have to kill them for it? As other members of this forum have pointed out, a lot of South Africans (or ex-residents as in our case) get angry when they hear of babies being murdered whilst hi-jacking a car (for example). In many of these types of crimes the cars have been dumped a few kms away later on. Poverty does not justify this type of mindless slaughter.

So whilst I do understand poverty & theft for survival I don’t understand the need to kill in the process.

TouristTrap

Violent crime = due to poverty argument is bollocks.

There are other extremely poor countries, both in Africa and other parts of the world, that don't have the sickening level of violent crime that the population of S.A. are exposed to. That argument carries absolutely no weight IMO.

The government is doing absolutely nothing about it. They obfuscate statistics because the true statistics are much much higher than the ones they release to the general populace. There is a very real reason that he is building a R90MILLION wall around his property. Have you ever stopped to think about why the previous apartheid regime did not ever feel the need to build a 90 million wall around their homes, even during the dark days of unstability and near civil war, and this one does?

The root of the problem is this. The ANC inherited a country which they tried their best to make ungovernable. They encouraged an entire generation of youth to burn down their schools and refuse to be educated, and today they are reaping the fruits of such call to action. (Note that they themselves were highly educated professionals. I did not see them denying themselves a first class education - such as at the LSE for instance).

The chickens have come home to roost. They only way they can take back control is through instituting a state of emergency and enforcing marshall law, which they will not do as the previous government did just that in order to control the country. But to do this, they first have to spend billions of rands in training up a proper policing and military force. It would take years. The next step would be to fix the justice system, which is non-existent. Murderers and rapists walk away from court by paying a few Rands to have their dockets 'lost'.

They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere to go but on the continuing spiral downwards - which is the way that the country has been heading and is headed. Every year that passes, the crime just progressively gets worse. There is utter corruption at the very top. How can the country function when the head of the beast is as corrupt as it is?

Pablo

A friend of mine grew up in the severe poverty of Wales in the 1930s. There was terrible poverty there. But there was no crime. The poverty causes crime argument doesn't hold, let alone that poverty causes the barbaric torturing that has accompanied some recent crime in SA.

Pablo

Tish11

I think that is exactly why I actually in bold said One reason, I am sure there are a lot more which are terribly unjustifiable too. And I agree, poverty is not an excuse. at least we agree on this one and yes the mindless killing of babies is actually is disgusting.
About your friend in Whales!!!I doubt very much if you actually understand the magnitude of poverty in SA. Its the sort that no white south african has ever been exposed to so I am not suprised you think it is comparable. In Whales, even though you were poor there was an escape route..Gracious me, there's the welfare system which actually provides and opportunity for people to get out of the poverty trap....in SA that is not available to vast marjority of its population.
The ANC destroyed the country you say.... Another issue for debate. My impression or rather understanding of what they are trying to do is to simply redistribute the wealth of the country...which has for a very long time been in the hands of a very small minority.... My question again, how do you suggest they address inequality.
Creating a fair education for all....that was a good start. And yes the justice system needs to be revisited in a big way and yes they should work a bit harder when it comes to crime and combating it and I am sure they trying.
I know a lot of people who came to England and made a conscious decision to go back to SA...For those who want to go, I dont think it is as grim as everyone makes it out to be. All you need is to be sensible and take the necessary precautions to ensure your own safety. And crime stats vary from place to place.

Pablo

Firstly, in WALES during the Great Depression of the 1930s there was no state welfare system. That came about after the war in 1945. Second, I am fully aware of the poverty in SA and elsewhere in Africa, having lived there for many years and being a SA citizen as well as a British citizen.

The poverty causes crime refrain is a well-worn line trotted out particularly by the left. It is nonsense. There is no poverty in the UK of the kind one finds in Africa and elsewhere. Yet crime in the UK is far worse than it was in the 1920s or 1930s. The argument just doesn't hold water.

Similarly, there are many places in the world, and in Africa, where there is equivalent or worse poverty than SA, yet far less crime.


TouristTrap is right. Much of the responsiblity for the barbaric lawlessness in SA lies with the ANC's decision to deprive a whole generation of schooling and render the country "ungovernable" during the 1980s. As you know, these people are referred to as the "lost generation", and they are handing on the habits they learned during those days.

Yes, of course one can point to reasons why the ANC felt it needed to do what it did, and one can argue whether it should have done things differently. But if there is one historical factor that was present in SA and not present in other countries, it was that decision of the ANC's, and the attendant culture of anti-learning, violence, and so on.

And now the ANC are compounding the problem by taking on all the "black cousciousness" nonsense that is coming out of America, debasing the education system by lowering the bar so that everyone gets to pass their exams, and couching every argument, and every criticism of their policies, in terms of race and racism.

Pablo

Campbells

Your story sounds familiar.

I guess by the re-distribution of wealth you mean is (I quote Nelson Mandela) the *elite black*. The re-distribution of wealth means that Thabo Mbeki can spent R92 million on a security wall around his house, buy *his own* private jet. Winnie Mandela has just lost jewellery worth R4 million with a title of *mother Africa*.

What about the children of today in South Africa that suffer the dire poverty there, the street kids that sleep in cardboard boxes and probably don’t own a pair of shoes. Most of these children are black so why if the past is so sore has South Africa (whoever is to blame) not learnt from the past and *improved*. The kind of re-distribution of wealth you are talking about doesn’t seem to have cured the poverty.

My question to you is – who will these children *blame* in the future, the white minority? If a move out of the blame & guilt and into the truth and transparency about the problems that *do* exist is the first step, otherwise the country will remain in denial and maintain its downward spiral.

It is so sad that millions believed that the *new South Africa* would bring hope to all including the children of today that suffer from poverty. A lot of the black people we spoke to in SA spoke of how they believed that the promises have not been kept and their own situation has not improved nor the facilities for them to improve.

Such a beautiful country with amazing people (of all races) going to waste when there is so much potential.

Some food for thought. You ever considered what millions of Jews were exposed to?

Pablo

All true. And just as it suited the Nazis to blame the Jews for everything, it suits the ANC politicians to blame the white population for all the ills of the new South Africa. Mugabe used exactly the same tactic, and elsewhere in Africa over the years one corrupt dictator after another has done the same.

As in Zimbabwe, the real test in SA will come when the ANC perceives that its position of dominance is threatened. Then 'die poppe gaan dans' as the Afrikaners say.

The ANC has lost control of the situation. They have driven the skills away, and they can't cook up new skills out of thin air. The departments of government they need to bring about any change for the better have become so inept and corrupt that instructions from the top are no longer implemented. Money just gets pocketed. Figures are falsified. Bribes are taken.

There will be no solution until people there are prepared to face up to the problems, rather than bleat on about racism or "staying positive" and all the other superficial rubbish.

Pablo

Tish11

I suspect most black south africans will disagree with you on this aspect.
Does the ANC deserve a vote today...maybe Not but depriving a generation of schooling was never an ANC policy. Have you heard of Bantu education? For those who dont know...My understanding!!! an inferior education system consciously designed by the SA government to limit skills development amongst races and black people unfortunately were at the hard end of the stick..(representing the majority of the population)..This I think, thats what rendering the country ungovernable was all about.
You mention that the ANC could have done things differently...Like??? which they had not tried before. The ANC was formed in 1912 by the way and they have fought for their liberation in various ways before they even got to the point of making the country ungovernable.
Historically as well, SA was the only country with institutionalized racism at that time..(well, its the only one I know of).
I have been privileged enough to be able to get in contact with young SA kids(both black and white) who attended the now mixed schools with a new curriculum and I think that an SA matriculant is in no way worse off than a british A level student or even an Aussie child at the same level...(based on experience)..
I work with a young black SA girl, she just completed her matric..(at the now normal mixed public schools).. and she is very competent. Thats not just my perception, everyone in my office seems to share the same view. By the way, she is very proud to be black.."black consciousness" or whatever you called it
If SA had treated everyone with the same level of respect...who knows, maybe we wouldnt be having such problems today.
At the back of all the evil that went on in SA and continues to do so...there is some good in that country...