Living in SA, My Thoughts & Opinions

There have been a couple topics that I struggle to blog about. I have made attempts to write them but I seem to fail in getting my thoughts down the way I want to, grr! I want to share these things with you and I know you would all be interested in them; my opinions of these matters of South African and its reality of living. So I will try my hardest to give it another go.

South Africa is a very beautiful country and I have experienced many incredible adventures exploring its landscapes, animals and people. I absolutely love the nature here; it’s just so beautiful and stunning. But there are other items of this country that make me sad, and even sadder. One of these sadder items is Apartheid, my opinion on this matter is that it was a very cruel period in this country’s history, but it happened and now they are still struggling with its after affects.

Growing up in a Mennonite Family and church, I am a pacifist; I don’t believe in fighting but would rather work to avoid conflict and develop peaceful resolution. How the black South African people were treated by the Afrikaner Government I find rather appalling, how they were segregated and forced out of their homes so that white people could build and live there and sent to live in harsh conditions such as shacks on the outskirts of the cities and towns. Families were destroyed; if a white family was thought to be a little dark they were classified as coloured and removed from their family. There were white only schools and no coloured child was allowed to study there. There were curfews set in place and they were to be home by a certain time. You had to carry your identity booklet with you and could only go to certain places that you were allowed, no blacks or coloured could enter a white only place. Most jobs employed by black people were domestic or working down in the mines. Education was limited and with very little material for the black children and so when they went to find work it ended up being low paid domesticated jobs. I am sure there are other things that happened during the Apartheid era that I did not mention.

I know my own country’s past treatment of the First Nations people is almost the same and it’s also appalling. I believe in equal rights and both these incidents we are all made in God’s image and we all should be treated as equal and enjoy all things together without hatred for each other.

Today as I walk the streets of PMB, the evidence is still here but slowly it is changing little by little. Quite a few black Africans have now moved into towns and cities where they weren’t allowed to live before, they are getting better education in most schools and now are able to get better jobs and careers the same as white. But most of the domestic jobs are still employed by the black citizens, but job creation is very evident, if they can create a job then the better. Even though some of the black people have moved into the towns and cities there are hundreds and thousands of black people who still live in the townships on the outskirts of the city. PMB is located in the bottom of a hollow and in the rolling hills around the city lies the many townships of black communities. The poorer schools that the black children attend, lack in government assistance for school material and educational aids. There are still sections in town where the large Indian population still live, and sections where the black people have moved into. I myself would not walk through these sections on my own for safety reasons. Muggings are very common in SA, as well as home robberies. This is why all homes have burglar bars and fenced properties and alarm systems just for added protection.

But this is how life is here. Some people here call it a 3rd world country and some call it a developing country, but they strive to become 1st world. I see lots of characteristics of 1st world thrown into life here. Lots of KFC’s more so than McDonalds (2 here in PMB), lots of groceries stores including a Woolworths store that sells groceries and I think clothing and other stuff too, a shopping malls like ours back home. And many other things of first world living. But you don’t have to drive far until you see 3rd world characteristics of homeless people or squatter communities/informal communities where people struggle for the basic things. Their homes consist of sheet metal maybe wood if they found it. They won’t have plumbing and so they would have to find water and carry it home in large pails, and they probably won’t have electricity unless they have been smart enough to hook up an extension cord to someone who does. The streets are often more littered in the black poorer communities compared to the wealthier sections of town.

When I drive by these areas I have felt very blessed of how I have grown up and not have had to deal with these situations like this. We grow up with a proper roof over our heads, a warm bed, food in our fridges and pantries and maybe most importantly clean drinking water. We aren’t usually concerned of getting mugged at possibly knife point for our wallet or cell or have our home burglarized because we were forgetful and didn’t lock the driveway fence and left the door wide open. We don’t go snooping through garbage bags set out on the street for pickup looking for maybe some food that is till edible to eat, worry about if it rains so hard that our homes will get washed a way. No we are very blessed.

I hope this has finally answered some of your unasked but pondering questions about how I find the living here. I really do enjoy living here, and even sometimes I feel very much at home here especially when I become a minority amongst the black Africans; as I make my way down to the Kombi (taxi rank) stepping over the littered garbage laying on the streets and walking past the many street vendors with tables set up selling fruit, candy/snacks, used clothing, cd’s or dvd’s, chicken kabobs cooking on a braai or maybe a soft hot meelie (corn on the cob) to get home for the day. So this has been apart of my life here and I hope I haven't offended anyone.

Signing off…