JW's Comments on SA

One of the peculiar things about South Africa is that you can describe it as being heaven on earth or hell on earth and be totally honest. I would like to give my perspective on some of the negative and positive aspects of South Africa. But first I want to make it known that our decision to stay was not based on not having other options. I like my job. The work is challenging, but not particularly stressful. I get to travel to Singapore and Australia a couple of times a year which makes me feel important. I just recently got back from a trip to Singapore. I got to stay in a 6 star hotel. I had heated mirrors so that they wouldn’t steam up when I showered, the drawers would somehow close automatically if left open, there was a TV in the bathroom mirror, and the shower had so many options I nearly had to call “the butler” just to show me how to turn it on. I wandered around the halls for a while looking for the ice machine. I then realized that such places don’t have public ice machines so I called the front desk. They informed me that the butler had already filled the ice bucket for me. Posh. It is sometimes hard to think about going back to Farmington where my one fringe benefit per year is a new pair of safety boots. There are things that do make me want to go back to Farmington. Crime is one of those things, but crime is random and statistically speaking I am no more or less likely to be hijacked in Johannesburg than I am to be hit by a drunk driver in Farmington. Racism is an issue, but I look at it like this: of voters 92% of African Americans voted for Barak Obama and 90% of Mormons voted for Mitt Romney. Birds of a feather flock together. In South Africa there is even more motivation to socially mingle with your own flock than there is other places because there are 11 official languages. So not only do people who look alike tend to interact more with each other they also speak the same language and share that bond. I can’t say that anyone of the racial or language groups are any more racist than another. I don’t even think they generally hate each other. They just find it easier to mix with their own kind. It makes for a challenging situation for us because we don’t fit into any of the language groups. So while we look like Afrikaners (minus the big Dutch heads and beef filled double chins) we don’t easily fit into that group because there is a culture there that we don’t relate to. The Blacks, Indians and Coloreds also have their own cultures that are distinct. As an outsider I enjoy learning about the differences between peoples, but realize that I will never be one of them. The differences between being a have versus a have not in South Africa is also something interesting to think about. It might be easy to assume that the Whites are the haves and the Black are the have-nots. And it is true that there are very few poverty stricken white people, but there are plenty of non-whites that fall into the haves category. The richest of the rich are typically black because the political system here facilitates that. I find it interesting to analyze why some blacks are ultra rich while others struggle to just get enough to eat. I think there are two main differences; the first is education. The blacks that made the most of their sometimes meager schooling opportunities do well. I have one coworker who tells me that he grew up in a village without electricity or running water. The only thing he owned was a school uniform and sometimes he had to go to school without shoes, but he always worked hard in school, and he later got one of the numerous technical based scholarships available to study engineering. Now he drives a Mercedes to work and I’m quite certain he makes much more than I do. The second key is that in South Africa, English is the language of business. Those who speak good understandable English do better. The Afrikaners under apartheid made sure that their people studied English and now 95% are fluent in English and most of the Afrikaners that struggle financially in the new South Africa are the ones with poor English skills. Another example is last November we took a trip to Durban. Durban has two large ethnic communities the Zulus and Indians. We sat in the aquarium while a number of school groups came by. The Zulu school kids would come by and the teachers would be speaking to them in Zulu while the Indian school kids would come by speaking English. The Indians of South Africa have lost all linguistic ties to India and they speak English as a first language. Both the Indians and Zulus where disadvantage under apartheid. But since apartheid, the Indians have established themselves quickly in the economic system. I have far more Indian coworkers than black coworkers. I think it can in large part be attributed to an English based educational system. Here is my conflict with the haves versus have not debate. If English is the language of business then to solve poverty you need to make sure the masses learn English, but I also believe that language is culture and if you take away a groups language than they will lose their culture. This is apparently an issue in the Indian community. It will be interesting to watch how culture preservation versus poverty elimination plays out. I would also like to give some examples of some of my favorite places in South Africa that I would also consider to be among my favorite places on earth. The Drakensburg Mountains: My Mom’s comment after seeing the Drakensburg for the first time was, “Just when you think you’ve seen every kind of mountain there is.” I think that pretty well sums up the uniqueness of the area. Lesotho: The Mountain Kingdom: In January the family took a little adventure into this primitive area. We slept in rondevals that didn’t have electricity. Corben was a big hit with the locals.

Cape Town: Possibly the most charismatic city on earth. After returning from a visit I told my boss that if they moved the office to Cape Town I’d emigrate.

Game Drives: The amount of animals in the game parks living free of human interference makes you wonder what the world used to be like. The nice thing about a game drive is that the first time you go you get so excited just to see a zebra, but it gets better.

The South African Coast: South Africa has one of the most diverse coasts in the world. From the warm beaches and coral of the Indian Ocean to rocky cliffs at the Cape of Good Hope in the frigid South Atlantic Ocean it is all spectacular, but I don’t recommend trying to go great white shark cage diving on a windy day. We had two very sea sick kids and a few adults that weren’t much better off.

Sometimes I struggled a bit with the idea of staying in South Africa, but most days I turn on the radio and listen to the news about South Africa and find it exciting to live in a country where the future is very much unknown. Will it become like Australia where people generally get along and laws are generally respected or will it become South Zimbabwe. I think it could go either way right now.