Is the grass greener on the other side, away from South Africa?
74Toxic Weeds
Sometimes when the grass appears to be greener on the other side, when you get there you find that what appeared to be lush green grass is nothing more than toxic weeds.
While cutting up breadrolls on the morning of International Day at our school on Saturday morning, I was pondering the question, "Why do South Africans turn their backs on the country of their birth?" I suppose, when you are the only South African on the staff of the school who is prepared to admit they're South African, and you're faced with 200 breadrolls to cut open, this is the kind of thing you think about. As I cut open each breadroll to make boerewors rolls with my homemade boerewors (as you can't buy anything like that where I live), I felt myself becoming more and more patriotic. I'm proud to be South African. I'm quite happy to single-handedly represent my country and do all the work and man a stall by myself on International Day. I can't understand why the other South African teachers on our staff helped at the New Zealand stall. It pains me when they mock the Springboks and support the All Blacks. It kills me when I see their Afrikaans sounding names on our school website, with the New Zealand flag next to it. It hurts me no end when they tell all the other staff how bad South Africa is, how bad the crime is and that the country is going to the dogs. It upsets me when they make fun of me for staying a South African. I find it amusing, that these so-called Kiwis only stayed in New Zealand long enough to get a New Zealand passport.
South Africa has many positives and so much potential. It is a beautiful country with amazing scenery and vibrancy. Whenever I arrive at the airport in South Africa, I nearly cry with joy. People are friendly, helpful and smile at you. You feel welcomed. We did bad things in the past, but so did many other countries. We moved on from it. Other countries are trying to learn about reconciliation from South Africa. Where else can you fire a president and have a smooth transition a few days later.
I have found that many people who are negative about South Africa, are only doing it to try and justify why they ran away. They'll tell you the same horror story about a friend of a friend of a friend who was carjacked, that you heard three years earlier from somebody else. The same email about a baby being raped 8 years ago is still doing the rounds. South Africans are their own worst enemies and aren't doing a very good job of promoting South Africa to the media.
So, is the grass greener on the other side? After a messy divorce, I wanted to put a lot of distance between my husband and myself. I packed up everything and headed to New Zealand with my children. I left a vibrant country to enter a grey world. New Zealand, especially Auckland, gets a lot of rain. People wear grey and black. They call South Africans Jaapies and mock us even though we won the Rugby World Cup and they are the chokers. The children are rude and obnoxious. Teaching in South Auckland was one of the most horrible teaching experiences of my life. The standard of education is not good. Compared to South Africa, the cost of living is very high. Both partners have to work and you can't afford a mortgage on a single income. People are surface-friendly, but prefer to stick to their own, resulting in pockets of South Africans living close to each other and socialising mostly with each other. The houses are leaky wooden boxes that your furniture you bring with you won't fit in. I stayed there for six years as I didn't have the money to pack up and leave. Longer than the other South African family at our school. I have to be honest, I did get the citizenship forms. I couldn't bring myself to fill them in. I will always support the Springboks.
If you think you are safer elsewhere, think again. Every lawnmower I ever owned in New Zealand was stolen. I had my first break in after I had only been there for two weeks. They stole all my sons clothes and the TV remote and left behind the TV. The big burglary, the year before I left, they cleaned the house out completely. I opened my front door and all that was left was the dust that had collected under the furniture they removed. They have huge drug problems, domestic violence and you read about babies being beaten to death with toilet brushes. Crime is increasing. I was never a victim of crime in South africa.
Now I live in China. People are generally unfriendly, push you all the time, hoik and spit right next to you. I've had 2 cellphones pick-pocketed, a camera pick-pocketed, a laptop snatched while I was having lunch at Burger King, and a break-in where they stole my new camera, laptop and cellphone from next to my bed while I was sleeping. Oh, and they stole three meat cleavers which the police say they would have used on me if I had woken up. So, is the grass really greener elsewhere?
I know people in the UK who battle to make ends meet as the cost of living is so high. I've met many South Africans in New Zealand who want to go home but can't afford to. I know of South Africans in Canada who want to go home. I'm not sure about Australia, but then, they are clamping down on immigration. With this current global crisis, I think home might be the best place. So, is the grass greener elsewhere? I definitely don't think so. Every country has its problems, maybe South Africa has more than others, but why don't you rather work at helping to improve the land of your birth, rather than running away to a life that might end up far worse than you've got now.
Land of my birth
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub
Comments
Hope this helps!
Super, super Hub, cindyvine! I too love this country which we share and in particular the city of my birth, Cape Town.
Sure we have our problems here and the crime is too high. But what great compensations - the weather, the scenary, and most importantly, the people.
I have often thought, especially during the awful apartheid years, of moving, but then I've been out of the country and couldn't wait to get back.
There is an energy, and a vibe here that is not matched anywhere else, I believe.
The whingers would whinge anywhere, so let them go.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I wish you all the best in China, which must, for all its problems, be a fascinating place to be (at least for a while).
Love and peace
Tony
Thanks Tony! I'll be back in Cape Town for a month in June. Can't wait!
Have you not considered that your desire to return may just be home-sickness. Perhaps if you were here your horror stories would be a little more current and closer to home. My girlfriend was smash & grabbed 3 months ago and 2 weeks ago while parking her car had to duck bullets while police chased after robbers who'd carjacked someone else. Stories used to be a friend of a friend...nowdays it's me & you. You mention an email of a baby being raperd 8 years ago and a carjacking 3 years ago. Do you honestly beleive no baby raping or carjacking has happened since then. With our stats, one of each probably occurred while I'm writing this
I gather you're from Cape Town, please remember this is hardly typical of SA. It's one of the few towns not run by the ruling party. Why not embrace the true SA dream/nighmare and move into Durban city centre with it's condemned buildings, crumbling roads and filth which is getting worse by the day. You've been away 6 years, are you in for a surprise when you get back.
You seem really anxious to embrace a country that has little desire to embrace you. AA, BEE and political mutterings are constant reminders of this. Because you couldn't bring yourself to fill in the NZ citizenship papers is also a sign you never truly left SA and didn't embrace the country that extended a hand when you wanted it. Maybe this has more to do with not being accepted there than you'd realise.
The firing the president and "smooth transition" you mention may also be general apathy. Perhaps you've forgotten the constant administrative bungling, rampant corruption and the bottomless pit you'd be ploughing your taxes into, never to see much in return.
All your positives revolve around scenery, weather & (the very vague) "vibrant people". Call me a whinger if you like but I cannot be positive when I see no positive signs around me. As for the stick around and make things better notion...I wish you luck changing the world. Why not change the world where you are though, it may not be as much of a monumental task?
There's a monastry near where I live. They have an outreach program that schools & feeds the needy. You'd think this would earn them respect in the community and nobody would mess with a good thing. Guess again, after about a dozen armed hold-ups & roberries they decided to call it quits and closed down parts of their means of helping.
Call me whinger...I'll accept that, but you seem to whinge a fair amount too.
I accept what you say. The point I wanted to bring across, is that wherever you go there are troubles and no place is perfect. Some people go over to NZ believing that it's paradise. They get a bit of a shock when they realise that NZ isn't all it's made out to be. Every place has it's problems. You can move to the States and get shot in a diner.
Of course there are problems everywhere. If any place were paradise troublemakers would instantly flock there. Nobody expects paradise, but a home one can actually feel fairly safe in is a good start.
What you asked was whether the grass was greener. Crime-statistically it certainly is. SA has one of the highest crime rates on the planet. As for the weather, one can live with it, bullets are a bit harder to live with.
Before you return to live in SA, take a really long holiday, travel and marvel at the changes...whatever you decide, I wish you the best
Well, 'Up up and awaaaaay' if it wasn't for our horrid apartheid we wouldn't be in this mess. You will probably say to me 'oh blaming the past again, blaming apartheid, blaming the whites', but it's just a fact that apartheid brought about the social and economic imbalances that the new govt has to deal with. In the past white people lived safely in their suburbs being supplied fully by strong police presence to keep them safe and protected, had adequate municipal services, the poorest whites had housekeepers they didn't even often pay with money but other things like cigarettes or alcohol. Meanwhile, kids in the disadvantaged areas received poor education, didn't eat properly and farm workers in rural areas were abused, killed and raped by white farmers and nobody gave a damn. Nobody even dared take them to court or lay charges because case dockets would mysteriously disappear or the farmer or whoever it was would just somehow get away with it and go unpunished. Now those same starved and undereducated kids, who virtually received little chance to succeed in life now resort to crime to survive. Most people who get involved in crime don't do it because they want to, but for many it seems the only way. They are so dehumanised (a strategy of apartheid) that now they dehumanise other people and guess who the victims are.
You may hate me for saying this but karma is real. Crime is never right but remember apartheid was a crime against humanity and this a crime against the black (black, coloured, indian) people in this country. Even today in interpersonal relationships between whites and blacks, some whites still have a superior attitude and treat people of colour as objects without feelings.Saying this doesn't make me a racist as you might think, but it's simply true, because that's how their minds were programmed to think that way.
The new govt and SA society has a huge task in addressing the social and crime issues and it will take time for the economic scales to balance between the have's and have-nots.
When I watch international news, such as Al-Jazeera, and see all the political unrest, the poverty, war-torn countries, children forced to do labour or even forced into slavery to help supply the west with goods, I think despite the high crime we South Africans, even the poor, are damn lucky to at least have a stable society, and increasing opportunites for the youth to further their education. In countries like Columbia it's common for most tourists to get mugged, it's so bad there that women get forced into joining gangs or they die. It's not that bad here.
Let me tell you what happened to me. I took a trip to Nelspruit by bus earlier this year and had to go via Pretoria. I left my bank card at home and by the time I got to Pretoria I didn't have enough cash for a private taxi, with all my luggage. Being a female alone in a place I visited for the first time, with 2 large luggage bags, anything could've happened to me. A black car guard came to help with my bags and put it in his trolley to carry to the taxi. I tried to negotiate with a taxi driver after one refused to accept the R43 I had on me and wanted R60 instead. Then the car guard started negotiating with another taxi driver to accept the money and he settled for R50, and the car guard gave me the remainder R7 of his hard earned money. So where in the world will you get a complete stranger, a car guard, to help negotiate for a lost young lady of another race/ethnic group and still give her some of his hard -earned cash. He joked that one day when I see him again I can help him out also. I was SO lucky that day, it was like he was a guardian angel.
Domelia, I agree with you totally! I was catching a plane from Cape Town to Joburg, and when I was checking in, I realised that I'd left my handbag with all my money, cards and passports on the ground next to my car, where I'd put it when I was taking all the suitcases out of the boot. I raced back to the car expecting the worst. Imagine my surprise when I saw a car guard standing guarding my bag. "Thank God Madam!" he said throwing his hands up in the air in despair, "I was worried when I saw your bag lying there as someone could take it. So I guarded it knowing you'd return!" I quickly picked up my bag, checked the contents and all was there. Of course I gave him a tip which was worth every cent!
OK Domelia so basically what you're saying is injustices of the present are forgivable provided there are past injustices. Next time one of your friends or family gets mugged, raped or murdered just chalk it up to the evening-out scorecard. At 18000 murders last year, shame I didn’t realise it was the poor dehumanised killers who were actually the real victims.
Domelia you comment "if it wasn't for our horrid apartheid we wouldn't be in this mess", this is actually pointless speculation. How do you know this and who knows what might have been? It's very naive to think that before the white man came to Africa all the local tribes were dancing, singing and playing in joyous harmony. It just seems that much like other killings in Africa, when it’s black on anyone, there’s no comment. However, should a white even slander a black, that’s justification for a knife in the throat (which is what actually happened at a SA school recently).
In fact if one looks at the downward spiral South Africa is experiencing with unprecedented violent crime, one might say that if this is the situation apartheid was preventing, maybe our forefathers can be forgiven for their actions. As for your “Karma is real” idea, this is a load of clap-trap. If this were real then atrocities against blacks would have been because they deserved it. Try your karma theory on the Jews and Russian gypsies of World War 2, families of decapitated humanitarians in the Middle East or the parents of a murdered school kid.
If I as a white person am expected to take personal responsibility for atrocities performed decades ago by others with the same colour skin, can I then expect to be given credit for technological inventions and luxuries brought here by people with the same skin colour that make black peoples’ lives better. You know little things like electricity, running water, medicine, education and books etc. Can you honestly say the average South Africans life is worse today than what it was before Europeans arrived in Africa? In fact the average black South Africans life was probably better in 1994 than the average white Europeans life was before they arrived in Africa.
Domelia you say "The new govt and SA society has a huge task in addressing the social and crime issues", and yet at the expense of the ordinary man in the street, they throw million rand parties, buy exorbitantly expensive cars, flout tender regulations, permit corruption to grow, commit millions to bottomless pits, turn blind eyes to politically connected people's crimes, appoint unqualified useless friends into positions of power and permit them to run the civil service and institutions into the ground. Institutions like Eskom, SABC, SANDF, police, education, health care etc, the list is endless. I suppose this is OK. Previously protection, quality education and hospitals (amongst many other services) weren’t available to many South Africans, now it’s available to practically none. Now that’s an improvement, that’s real equality.
A criminal record isn’t even a deterrent to holding public office under the ANC’s banner, in fact it’s almost become a prerequisite. How does the ANC maintain the moral high-ground while supporting the likes of Ray McCauley, Malema, Boesak (OK not since he joined COPE last year), Mugabe and Gadaffi?
It's really sad that so many people such as yourself use apartheid as the yardstick of comparison for what's going on in SA today. Both of you (Domelia & Cindy) cite a positive experience with a car guard. Before 1994 there were no car-guards. In the days before ANC rule it was safe to walk the streets at night, there were fewer murders, no cash in transit heists or kids stabbing each other at school. But I suppose what are a few kids’ innocent lives when we can enjoy freedom behind burglar bars.
As for your notion “children forced to do labour or even forced into slavery to help supply the west with goods”, like SA politicians you won’t for a second point a finger at the east like China who actually permit sweat-shops and child labour on their very own soil, oh no, that’s the West’s fault too. Grow up, open your eyes and take a reality check of the world. If Africa hadn’t been colonised by Europeans it would have just been a different race, probably the Chinese who’re renowned for their tolerance, compassion and kindness to animals, oh hang on…no they’re not. Even Africa’s colonisers were themselves colonised, those nations probably wouldn’t be what they are today had that not happened. You don’t see them squealing and moaning, pointing fingers with begging-bowl outstretched.
Domelia you also said "Saying this doesn't make me a racist as you might think". Firstly, I didn’t even raise the topic of racism before this reply, but since you brought it up, you seem to be of the opinion (as every single one of your examples illustrates) that racism is only committed by whites on blacks, which in itself is a racist notion. Secondly, you clearly posses incredible powers, capable of knowing what “I may think” and even more incredibly you’re also able to predict non-existent potential past futures (if it wasn't for our horrid apartheid we wouldn't be in this mess).
Perhaps you should use these almighty powers of prediction and instead of predicting a blinkered utopian past, try predicting the future and what yours and your family’s prospects might be in this environment, or is having your daughter raped OK because some guy raped a black decades ago?
Buy my book!
|
Stop the world, I need to pee!: The Life and Crimes of Fenella Fisher
Price: $15.00
List Price: $15.00 |
Teddybear1000 says:
9 months ago
Thanks for the insight it was a good a really good hub Thank YOU