Tegwyn

No, but keeping it in the same vein, every attempt that has been made to try bake koeksusters has ended up in a sloppy mess. I do in essence "kill" the recipe. Not to mention the kitchen being trashed. As for rooibos tea. yuck! Now if we are discussing melktert and pitco tea, well......

amb

Do they have rape gates on tents any chance? Otherwise I think I might be in trouble!

hatfield1

No but the rest depends on if your good looking or not.

amb

No worries there, my boyfs probably just with me for the passport anyway!

Daxk

Shees juggernaut, thanks for reminding me, did I ever tell you about the rooibos thief???

Juggernaut

Oh, now we got jokes.
thats fine red as long as your making the aniseed type ,doughy spinckled with coconut type and not the dreadfull drenched in syrup koeksusters.

hatfield1

What? You are wrong...

TigerOC

I am the kind of guy that makes a decision and goes for it and seldom looks back. Left Rhodies in '80 and never went back, despite having lots of $'s there. Had the same attitude with RSA. I made a decision, right or wrong, and got on with it. Life has been tough in the UK but would probably have been tougher in RSA.

Anyway, I was kind of forced to look the past in the face in April because my eldest daughter was getting married there. We went back not really knowing what to expect. Have friends who are kind of trapped there with no serious qualifications and no ancestral route out and they hate the place. Have a daughter that seems to have been sucked into the "rainbow dream" and won't have a word spoken against the New South Africa.

So we arrived not really knowing what to expect. Maybe we would be confronted with the biggest mistake of our lives or we made the right decision. Development in Jo'burg and the airport (which I spent many, many, many hours contemplating whilst waiting for flights) was dramatic. When the taxi driver asked for R80 to take us 2 miles down the road, I nearly fell off my perch. See, now I am spoilt by no or very low inflation. But doing some conversion from £ to R then the price is not that bad.

First impressions and an impression that lasted the whole time was the really excellent service we received from everyone everywhere. They are way better than anything in the UK. The trip from JHB to DBN in a VERY antiquated 727 was another eye opener. Have never been keen on 727's but an old 727 with its original interior made me very nervous. Anyway, we were royally entertained by a young white Zimbabwe lad who really had the gift of gab and did his best to sell hamburgers for R35 and Cokes for R5. Unfortunately my brain was still working in 1998 prices.

Overall impressions were as I said service everywhere we went was really great. We didn't need to use State services so cannot comment. The only comment I have was that the immigration guys in khaki didn't impress and the lone Customs guy standing there with a badge that looked something like a Burial Society Badge wasn't exactly encouraging anyone to declare anything. We spent a few days in the greater Durban metropol and things looked good. Everyone looked very happy and even relaxed. We ventured up into the Natal Midlands. That was a whole new ball game. Things were anything but relaxed. The open racial hatred was something I had never experienced even during the darkest days of apartheid. We went into Howick where we lived and nearly every house looked like Fort Knox. We asked friends that we had lunch with, what was up with all the razor wire and security and they told us that no, it was just the Vaalies retiring and not used to how quiet it REALLY is????

We head off into PMBurg and see my stepson who runs a bar out of town. He tells us that we can go here and down this road but not down that road and we mustn't walk in central town. So we give town a miss. We then decide to go see some old business friends of ours. They have owned buildings and run the supermarket in the suburbs for years. On arrival things look very different. Our friends are nowhere to be seen. Ask staff if they know where the boss is and we get some very blank looks. A customer turns round and recognises me. He proceeds to tell me how the old owners (husband and wife) were held up at gunpoint and their younger son was shot dead in the shop and Mum can no longer bear to set foot in the place. We later go over to their house to commiserate. These thugs were so devoid any humanity that they dragged the mother away from her dying son to steal a bottle of rum. I remember this couple telling me that we would soon be back to the lovely people of RSA and wonderful sunshine. I am now facing them again 8 years later, their lives ruined and their precious 18 year old son gone.

My daughter and her husband are both professionals, earn huge salaries and live in a magnificent home on Botha's Hill looking out over Hillcrest. Inside it is like a prison with security gates sectioning off the house so that they cannot be attacked in their sleep.

The final day there and I take my son into Hillcrest to get groceries for my daughter and son-in-law's return. Coming out I need to go into the Pharmacy to get some much needed items that we cannot get in the UK (see I said something really positive). I tell my son to wait with the trolley outside. Whilst in there a black gentleman comes up to my son and says to him "hey you white face. Why don't you f**k off to where you came from." My young son was somewhat shaken up.

Would I go back there? Not me. Everyone must look at the area they intend to move to. Ask questions and find out what things are like from the locals. There are no hard and fast rules. The people living there have not noticed the change because it has crept up on them but it is we who come in from a normal environment that can see things for what they are.


From a business point of view it is now Africa and I will quote some examples;

When we arrive I decided to phone my daughter to tell her we had arrived via a pay phone. Pick up the receiver to be advised by a recorded message that "your service has been suspended due to non payment of the account. Please contact your local Telkom office to arrange payment and to restore the service"

I had a pension policy mature in Feb 2005. Wrote to the company and asked them to arrange for the payout. 6 months later still hadn't heard anything. Must allow post at least 3 months to get here. I then contacted a broker online. He came back to me and with enormous energy and attention and got on to it. Seems my letter was still sitting in someone's in-tray as they had not be trained to deal with such requests. Said broker emailed all the forms to me and he advised that all was in order and we should be moving shortly. That was a year ago. He emailed me again in May '07 with a sorry litany of email correspondence with the bank. It seems that a year down the line he still cannot get an account orgnaised with the bank to remit funds to me because the bank keeps losing the forms.

If this helps anyone you are welcome.

None of the above is intended to be negative but is purely a narrative of my personal experience this year.

Tegwyn

Thank you for your input and welcome Tiger. All of that stress of slow business policy is liveable even if frustrating, but it's that constant threat of hostility and violence that destroys the psyche. People cannot fathom how much one lives on their nerves to go about their daily business. Not only that, having to lock yourself from room to room is beyond abnormal. The very sad thing about this mess is that everyone ultimately loses in such a beautiful country. Who knows if she will ever become a peaceful nation in the future. I know it will not be in my lifetime. I've been out of the country for a long time now so that my perspective of living life has changed. I see how my family and friends still there function and they really do not always see the abnormality of how they live. I do however recognize they have to do whatever it takes to survive another day.

Your comment about your friend's lives being shattered by the loss of their son highlights a very serious problem in SA. Sadly they have a lot of company in that club anymore. I suppose those that disregard the violence issue do not comprehend loss until it happens to one of their loved ones. A sad tragic mess for all concerned.

Tegwyn

As an aside, we lived in Howick for about a year when we first moved to SA. I remember the White House Hotel as we were stuck there for about 2 week. Oh man...... It was a sleepy dorp then but no bars and such back then.

Redlippie

How did you survive??!!!

Tiger, thank you for that post. It is sobering to go back and see how people live. I haven't been back for years - have no interest in setting foot in the place. The last time I went back, I'd been out of the country for 8 or 9 months, and saw it with 'foreign' eyes. What an abnormal society that is.

Campbells

I think it could be that you need electricity to get internet ?

TigerOC

I could not believe my eyes when we were there in April. The development in Howick is staggering. There are two new shopping malls and the number of houses has increased at least 50% over what was there when we left in '98. I believe that many pensioners from the Reef have come down for a quieter life.

Redlippie

True.

Juggernaut

Hi TigerOC and welcome .No gentleman would speak to a young boy that way .Asshole would be a much better description .

Youre right, because it happened so gradually we dont even see the extraordinary amount of security and surveillance measures we employ to our lives anymore .
Insurance companies provides quotes based on the following : If you have burglar bars on all your windows and doors, do you live in a walled complex , do you have automated gates ,do you live next to an open veld ,do your car have a tracking device installed ,do your car have a VESA level 3 or higher security system, is your car parked in a lockable garage or open carport, etc. Only the delusional will suggest that crime is only a perception. Barb wire is fast becoming our national flower.

Maybe I'm a dreamer but I do believe that we (S.A) have the means and political will to turn the corner on the crime situation . Our politicians and lets face it we will be ruled by the ANC for a long time to come, is realising that their own prosperity is intrinsically linked to the wellfare of the country. While deny ,deny, deny use to be the stance on crime .It is now a priority on a national level in government. They wont admit it but if theres one thing they've learnt from brother Bob to our north is how not to piss away a country in three easy steps.

You mention large developments in Howick ,thats the case throughout the country . In JHB /PTA were I live housing complexes ,shopping centres, business parks literally pop up daily .The middle class in S.A is growing at a astonishing rate. In my view that strenghtens the core of the country .Good news for hopefulls like me.

The growth above have caught ESKOM with their pants down . Poor forecasting and the inadequate maintenance on our ageing power infrastructure smacks of incompetence at the parastatal. Plans that should have been implemented years ago are only now being put in motion. Placing pressure the entire power grid and we the citizens have to carry the can. :curse:

Many here would'nt consider moving back to S.A .Then again many in S.A would'nt consider living anywhere else .So while it might seem "abnormal" to foreign eyes to our eyes it just seems like home I suppose.