South Africa - Crime
Folks,
Much is made of crime in South Africa, both here and abroad.
Insurance is very expensive in South Africa. Johannesburg is the
crime capital. There, carjackings abound - and everywhere people live
surrounded by razorwire. Cape Town was full of it, it is unwise
to travel at night.
The White pessimists viewpoint is that now the black people are
allowed in the white areas, what can you expect ..
Ladysmith - Natal
Folks,
I am in Ladysmith - a rural town in Natal, and the start of the band
Ladysmith Black Mambazo .. I am camping in a superb campground in town,
very cheap, with mostly poor white trash as my neighbours.
Some are out of prison, all are afrikaners, I buy dinner, they cook ..
There is always the acknowledgement that whites and blacks will have to
work together to find a solution, because they need each other.
South Africa - Drugs
Folks,
Attending the festival this weekend, drugs were very much
in evidence.
Marijuana (dagga - pronounced dacha in RSA) is illegal. It
is used, however, by most black people, and my colored friend
in Clotesville, notwithstanding PAGAD ( .. against .. Drugs)
also used it. It is also used by many white folks. It is grown
in quantity locally, and is of excellent quality. The best appears
to come from Swaziland and the Transkei - a homeland (??) that was,
now a part of the eastern Cape.
Lesotho - Internet
Folks,
I am sending this mail from National University of Lesotho, as you
can see from the Email address sefika@macs.nul.ls “.ls” is the
toplevel domain for this small African kingdom completely surrounded
by South Africa. It has never been a part of RSA - it is a small
mountainous country that supplies most of the water for RSA. Very
third world, and its fortunes are inextricably linked to South Africa.
I am staying a beautiful lodge 2 Km outside of Roma, the University
town. Yesterday I climbed Thaba Bosiu - Moshoeshoe’s mountain
fortress from which he defended the country - and defined its people -
during the turbulent times at the beginning of this century, when
the Zulu started the internecine wars between the black tribes.
Agulhas - Southern tip of South Africa
Folks,
Can you believe it - I am sending this from Cape Agulhas, from a cosy B&B
hostel
that is the second most southerly building in South Africa.
Email as above - do not reply to me by replying to this message. Make
reservations
instead .. Meg will be happy to take them.
For sixty years it was the MOST southerly - but with the fast tourist
development there is now another place the other side of the point.
Snippets
Folks,
I took my bike through the Karoo - a semidesert area, and over
Bainskloof pass - a very beautiful part of the country.
Back in Cape Town - I ordered a made-to-measure motorcycle jacket last
week and I am to pick it up. However, when I arrived for a fitting they
had not started it yet - grrrr. They promise faithfully it will be
ready today.
I visited the South Africa museum - excellent. They have full size
dioramas of bushmen - from actual plaster casts made in 1911.
Clotesville - WCP
Folks,
I had planned to meet some theatre folk in Stellenbosch, but the
best laid plans ..
Out searching for interesting people in bars again .. I met Raymond,
a colored man (sorry to keep mentioning color, but it still is
crucial) who was buying electricity (actually, his son was, and
he was waiting).
We dived into politics straight away :-) and chatted for a while.
He was a card-carrying member of the ANC, and a member of a vigilante
group in South Africa called PAGAD - People Against Gangs And Drugs.
However, he could not stay long, and so he invited me to stay that
weekend and accompany him to church that Sunday. I of course, said yes.
Cape Point, Stellenbosch - WCP
I took my bike down to the tip of the Cape peninsula - not
actually the southernmost point in Africa, but close.
There is a nature reserve here that has such an amazing variety
of plant life that this part of the world is an entire plant kingdom.
It is suggested that this tip of africa has either escaped the last two
ice ages, of they were less severe here.
Guest farm - Worcester, WCP
Folks,
I stayed with a friend of Megan Owen’s at a guest farm about
130 Km north of Cape town (I now have a Honda CX500) and was
made very welcome. It is about a 80 hectare farm, growing
table grapes - now in the picking season.
They have about 80 resident workers on the farm - mostly
colored people. They have a creche for the children, the men
do the picking, and the women to the sorting, snipping of
bad grapes, weighing and packing.
Cape Town - Townships
Folks,
The townships are the areas where, during apartheid, the black
people and (separately) the colored people were required to live.
Pass-books were issued - like internal passports around the
country - if you did not have a job in town you had to
return to the homelands in the country.
Things are not like that any more … however, they all still live
in these areas, for economic reasons instead, and also because
their friends and families live in the same community.