Spring in Africa

[Andy Rabagliati <andyr@wizzy.com>]

Folks,

  Last weekend I took my bike a few hours north, to the area known as
  Namaqualand. It is not the desert that Namibia is, but it is dry.
  
  There is a cold current that runs up the west coast, that precipitates
  any rain coming in from the west before it hits the land.
  
  On this sandy soil a fragile ecosystem has developed - because it
  is really only sand underneath. However, in the spring (as it now is)
  this variety of plants explodes as a carpet of flowers. It seems
  extraordinary that they should devote so much energy to producing
  these quite large flowers.
  
  Flowering plants arrived very late on this planet - well after the
  animal kingdom - so maybe their heyday is yet to come.
  
  Also in this area is a large nuclear power station, which I also
  visited. Frustratingly, their visitor centre is closed on weekends -
  a throwback to South Africas British heritage. Shops close at 6 or
  so, supermarkets at 9PM. And they are only open for a half-day on
  Saturday - they need their weekends too ..
  
  The visitor centre did have some large horned animal grazing its
  lawn though.
  
  The towns I went into spoke Africaanse almost exclusively,
  (white, colored, black) though they spoke English to me.
  
  The Non-Aligned Movement met in Durban this week - a collection of
  African nations trying to sort out the mess that was Zaire.
  
  We have to get past the undistinguished past of Zaire, with an almost
  unbroken history of exploitation, and look at its huge mineral
  wealth, the obvious prize everyone is grabbing for. They are not
  grabbing the copper - they are grabbing the tax base it represents.
  Large multinationals are the only ones who will make the investment
  to get the returns, so the government has to appear stable enough
  to be able to ask for taxes.
  
  Large multinationals are wary today of their image - where before
  they might turn a blind eye, now (I hope) they would prefer to
  close the mines for a while rather than pay a government
  that steals the tax revenue and suppresses the population.
  
  Surrounding countries gawped in amazement last year when Kabila
  simply walked from the east to the west of Zaire straight into
  the presidential seat. So he is being tested now .. Angola is
  still full of disorganised fighting units left over from the
  war with South Africa. Zimbabwe, the only country with two cents
  to rub together, is pitching in on the side of Kabila, an old
  friend of Mugabes. Rwanda and Uganda, the well organised Tutsi
  kingmakers that helped Kabila into power, are his foes again,
  though they deny involvement.
  
  South Africa, with an economy ten times the size of the rest put
  together, holds the moral high ground courtesy of Madiba - our
  president Nelson Mandela. Nobody has any solutions, however.
  Asking people to lay down their arms and negotiate is like
  playing a violin in an earthquake.
  
  No, I don't have any solutions either. Just don't pay taxes :-)

Cheers,     Andy!

PS. Valentin, our Hungarian friend, had to get a South African
Drivers licence yesterday. The Place of Issue of his passport was
listed as "White".

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