Category Archives: Southern Africa

experiences of 67 years in southern Africa – good bad and sad

My life, Southern Africa

Christmas tree

In 1961, my mother was widowed. My brother and sister were two years, and three months, old respectively. I was fourteen at the time.

Starting with nothing my mother got a job and built a life for us. After a short time in Cranborne Hostel, a welfare-sponsored hostel, we soon moved to the low-rent Queensdale flats – long prefabs with shared bathrooms and toilets.

Christmas approached and I told my mother I would get us a small Christmas tree – she wanted one because she was trying to give us as much of a NORMAL Christmas as she could.

Across the road was a large fenced area inside of which was an electrical transformer station. The area also had quite a few mature pine trees growing in it. One evening I got hold of a saw and clambered up to the top of one of these pine trees and cut off about the last eight or nine feet. I dragged this home, to my mother’s feeble protestations but she was giggling and laughing about it at the same time.

We put the bottom of our TREE in a bucket filled with stones and soil, dug out the Christmas decorations and we had our decorated tree for Christmas.

Other than my friend Willie – who helped me – no one ever seemed to notice the truncated pine tree!

 

Military life, Southern Africa

UDI – The day it all happened

11 November 1965 

Many people have over the years asked the question “What were you doing on the day UDI was declared?”

For those of tender years and those ignorant of the affairs of the world some 52 years ago this refers to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence declared by the tiny country of Rhodesia in the face of the intractability and dissembling of the western powers and in particular the British government of the day. See the following links…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia%27s_Unilateral_Declaration_of_Independence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6fof-8r0kM

I had been in the Rhodesian Regular Army since the beginning of March 1965, having already completed national service between October 64 and end February 65. After an initial posting to Army Comcen I had been posted to K Troop, the signals unit for HQ 2 Brigade. The day had started as a normal warm early summer day in Africa. Another beautiful day.

In those days the concept of the brigade signals squadrons had not yet been discussed – certainly none of us in the rank and file had any idea of what was to come as far as our Corps was concerned or even how the composition of the Army itself was to change and grow.

We, the operators in K Troop, had been sent out in detachments to carry out a local signals exercise – sending and receiving messages and generally practicing our Corps of Signals role.

The exercise proceeded in desultory fashion for most of the morning. My detachment was at the balancing rocks about five or six kilometres from camp while others were variously spread around the suburbs – probably about six detachments in all I think.

At around 1100 we all received a message recalling us to base with immediate effect. We packed up and were back in camp by 1200 hours where we were told to immediately prepare our vehicles for possible deployment with the Brigade Headquarters. We were also told that there would be an important announcement made at 1300 hours and that we were ALL to attend in the Troop lecture room.

On entering the lecture room, we found a commercial radio had been set up and we were told to take our seats and be quiet for the Prime Minister’s announcement. At 1300 hours the Prime Minister, Ian Douglas Smith, came on the radio and the Unilateral Declaration of Independence was made.

I have often wondered about the timing of the declaration that coincided with armistice day in 1918 as at 1300 hours in Rhodesia it would have been 1100 in the morning in Britain. This is significant for those not familiar with the WHY of this…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/what-is-armistice-day-why-do-we-wear-poppies-and-when-is-remembr/

There was a sense of relief mixed with foreboding – how would this now play out? Would we be invaded by the British forces or the United Nations. Would there be war, fighting in the streets?

Everyone in the Army was put on immediate alert and confined to barracks. HQ 2 Brigade only had single and married quarters for the African soldiers and the rest of us had to go home or to our barracks at KGVI and collect kit including our webbing and bush gear.

Accommodation was wherever you could find it and I think I ended up bunking down in the lecture room with several others. A field kitchen was set up to feed us and we were regularly briefed by our Officers – not that there was much to tell us of course. It was a sort of phoney war, this twilight period of uncertainty about what was to happen in the immediate future.

We soldiers – whether infantry, quartermaster, signals, engineers or whatever – grumbled at the confinement and inactivity, chafing for something, anything, to happen to relieve the tension.

After about ten days the emergency status was brought down a notch and we were allowed to go home or back to our normal accommodation barracks at night but still no leave was permitted.

The entire situation eventually sort of fizzled out and we got on with the day-to-day activities of a peace-time army although border patrol was under way and there were stirrings that, with hindsight, were portents of the dramatic events to come.

Our brave defiance was to end when our allies left us – the Portuguese capitulated in 1975 in both Angola and Mozambique leaving us totally dependent on South Africa for materiel and trade. When that country was driven to the wall financially they were forced (it is claimed) to withdraw all assistance from Rhodesia. The terrorists never won – financial interests and political expediency saw the country handed over to black majority rule and we all know how that turned out (if you do not then just google Zimbabwe economic history and Zimbabwe, atrocities).

Southern Africa

The Irene Morning Market

I wrote this article for a course I was doing in 2012 – it was enthusiastically received and I thought I would share it – for those who may never have experienced South Africa?

Sadly, this market is no longer held at the location I have described here – in about early 2016 it was moved to another venue several kilometres away. It is still very popular but somehow not the same? I was last there in late 2016.

Irene is a small suburb south of Pretoria with a village-like atmosphere. It used to be a sleepy hollow but is now enormously popular – even trendy, particularly at weekends

In Irene is “Smuts’ House” that was once the home of General Jan Smuts, a statesman and soldier who was instrumental in the establishment of the League of Nations. (see https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Smuts)

Smuts House is a museum and national monument surrounded by extensive grounds and, twice a month, the Irene morning market takes place there. People travel from all over the region to attend and stall holders arrive early to set up.

Most popular is the food stall area where you can buy almost any kind of food. From Indian delicacies to Portuguese snacks to Chinese spring rolls and custard tarts. There are traditional South African stalls with boerewors rolls (literally “farmer’s sausage”) Spicy and delicious, these are our answer to the New York hot dog.

Artisanal cheeses, preserves, pickles and jams. “Waatlemoen konfyt”, a watermelon preserve using watermelon rind to make a crisp, sugary, delicious treat.

The pancake lady and her twenty-five litre barrel of batter – with a tap. Rotating twelve pans on the burners and flipping pancakes. Her son manages the cinnamon sugar and rolling – they barely stay ahead of the crowd.

Moving on to find curio sellers, local and regional, with carved wood and soapstone, wire sculptures, beadwork and leatherwork.

Bedding, clothing, art, a children’s painting table, coffee and soft drink stalls. Second hand book stalls and plenty of old bits and bobs that my sister describes as the “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure” section. Oh, and collectables of all sorts from old tins to badges, brooches, toys and, and, and…

Pets, particularly  dogs, feature a lot. I learned about “Merle” Great Danes from a tired looking couple ( http://www.all-about-great-danes.com/merle-great-danes.html ) with their magnificent young grey-dappled, white-chested Merle in attendance. Two chaps had a Scotty dog in a zippered “medics uniform” of waistcoat and peaked cap. A beautiful, bored Labrador retriever and a dignified border collie and a man with the slobberiest, puffingest bulldog named Larry!

Camel rides – on aloof-looking camels with the most exotic eyelashes.

A young blonde girl had a colourful “jewellery” stall – a real splash of colour. So eye-catching, I asked if I might take a picture. Poised and relaxed her bright eyes and friendly, unselfconscious smile made the braces on her teeth a part of her sparkle. There is a lesson in this for young people with orthodontic problems because that smile, already so dazzling and natural, will be a real winner when the braces come off.

 

 

People. Fat and thin, well-to-do and modest. Mothers and children, babies and grannies, hot and bothered and cool, calm and collected. Sleeping, exhausted babies and wide-eyed demanding tots in prams with grannies and mommies in attendance revealing varying degrees of love and tired defeat. People, bewildered and brash, shy and outgoing, smiling and grim-faced but all with a common purpose – the Irene morning market.

Southern Africa

Irresponsible unions

I make no claims to be a businessman, economist or entrepreneur. I am just an ordinary person in the early evening of his life but I am saddened and angered by a number of things and try to engage when and where my small voice might cause someone to pause for thought.

I once managed a small factory in South Africa that employed a number of people. Black people, mostly from Zimbabwe.

One day our welder, who was also our driver, came back from collecting a cheque and I noticed him talking to some of the others and gathered it was about the cheque – which had not been placed in a sealed envelope so had been carefully scrutinised before being handed in to the bookkeeper.

Asking what it was all about I was told (I will refer to the owner of the company as Mike) that Mike had just received a cheque for R400,000.00. The general feeling was that he was really lucky to be getting such a big amount.

Curious, I asked if the cheque had been made out to the company or to Mike in his personal capacity and of course it had been made out to the company. So I asked if they really, really thought that that money was going to Mike in his personal capacity. I could immediately see that this was considered a silly question – of course it must be for him as he is the boss and he sent for it to be collected.

I then asked them if they budgeted their wages and proceeded to describe an oversimplified family budget – rent, school fees, clothes, food, water and electricity, transport et al. I ended by saying that once all that has been taken care of then, and only then, could one look at what, if anything, is left over. If there is some left over then maybe one can go to a movie, have some friends over for a meal and maybe even put some aside – savings for a rainy day.

This concept was clearly understood so I now proceeded to ask them what they think becomes of money that the company gets in – earns. I got a kind of a puzzled look and asked if they had given a thought to the fact that the company also had overheads.

Wages, utilities, vehicle finance and fuel and maintenance. Equipment maintenance and new tools as necessary.

Once wages have been paid…and I went on explaining that every penny that comes in has to be accounted for in terms of expenses and then raw materials to make more product and then, and only then, could the owners and directors look to taking a share, or their wages, out of what was left from the month’s income.

It took some effort to get these men to realise that the buildings were not just there for us to use. That we paid for the phones and electricity and water and everything else out of the income from sales after we had paid all our accounts, paid our staff and so on. It was a bit uphill but the message got through. It was obvious that the costs associated with running a business had not really been given any thought. The business was just there, where they worked.

We all know that making rich or wealthy people poor, will not benefit the worker or the job seeker. The person with the vision who is prepared to take the risk in business will take his abilities elsewhere, where they will be appreciated and not be penalised for creating an enterprise that provides the means for others to earn a living.

Now interestingly these factory workers were mostly men who had immigrated from Zimbabwe in the late 1980s and early 1990s and had benefited from the one thing Mugabe had got right up to that time –  education. It was interesting to hear from these men that they were surprised by the levels of illiteracy they encountered in the townships but for all that they were still relatively ignorant in terms of the VERY BASICS of how a business operates – and a small/medium business at that.

The point of all this is that every year South Africa has the same riots and demands over wages and these demands are often, USUALLY in fact, outrageous and not sustainable – not to mention destructive and wasteful with town centres trashed, shops looted and even burned. All supposedly to protest poor wages…there is no logic to it.

In my considered opinion the unions carefully do NOT school their members and shop stewards on how business works and whip up their uninformed members every year regardless of the harm that it does to the economy and the image of the country as a business destination.

The unions are irresponsible and culpable in this because if their members were informed and basically knowledgeable on how businesses function then they would better understand why certain things are not easily granted. They would know that minimum wages are keeping many of their friends and family on the outside of the workforce. They might even begin to realise that the riots and strikes for unsustainable and unreasonable increases are mischievous in the extreme.

Until there is better understanding – REAL UNDERSTANDING – by the various workforces around this matter it will never be resolved.

Building a home requires everyone to work together but building a nation that is prosperous NEEDS a united vision and every time that vision starts to take shape it is quickly obscured by irresponsible, inept, greedy and selfish agendas.

Can the unions be rationalised? As long as they see the ANC as their protector and benefactor I rather doubt it and until then the country will continue to suffer because what the union is meant to be there for – to see to the fairness or otherwise of the workers conditions – has been subsumed by that thing that seems to be at the heart of everything – power to the few.

 

 

Southern Africa

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

When the government of South Africa sought to protect the labour force from unfair labour practices, it was no doubt a laudable intention.

However, what becomes apparent to me, a mere layman, is that the new dispensation went so far to swaddle the baby that they choked off the oxygen to the parent – that is to say the employers of said labour.

They gave the labour unions huge power out of all proportion to the good that should have been achieved, creating a situation where labour effectively dictates to employers.

Industry, the education system, the police and army are all so unionised as to make them ridiculously ineffective a lot of the time.

When one trains in the army (make that a good, well-disciplined army) one has to do drill and weapons training. Many, many people are under the impression that all the square-bashing and shouting and associated hard-arsed training is just unnecessary bluster, breaking their darling children down.

Thing is though that when real action occurs all that training kicks in. Nobody questions when a member of the patrol, leader or otherwise, yells DOWN! The training kicks in and you get DOWN. Why do you do that? You do it because your TRAINING and your own instinct for self-preservation, and the good of the team, kicks in.

It is generally accepted that in a good army the leadership is well trained and professional and that by its very nature the military should be an autocracy of sorts. Precisely the same should be the rule in industry and commerce – perhaps less rigid?  The bosses, the employers, the leaders should be in charge not the workers and cleaners who lack the experience and training for such positions.

MOST IMPORTANTLY those who think a job is just another name for the security of a monthly stipend should be rudely awoken to the fact that WORK is the means by which that remuneration is EARNED. An unproductive workforce is something that employers should be able to rectify quickly and easily.

The lack of will to break the power of the unions speaks directly to the government’s lack of will to chance losing even a portion of the huge, union-controlled, vote. As long as that is the case they will be unable to even try to properly run the country.

I have no doubt that among South Africa’s vast population, and even among the ANC, are people of integrity and great ability but they will never come to the fore where ineptitude rules because of that feudal mentality that gives privilege and power to the least capable and most sycophantic.

Should capable people, under such a bad dispensation, actually find themselves in a position to achieve anything, through hard, disciplined work, they will not last. Stories will appear to discredit them. They will be threatened and then, to appease voters who do not want to pay for services nor follow the rules, those good people will quietly be redeployed to positions of neutrality or dismissed – if they are not already (suspiciously) dead by that time.

Sadly, that is the feudal village mentality – calling for loyalty to the chief at all costs.

Southern Africa

Corruption and ineptitude

Some time ago, and while still resident in South Africa, I saw an article about the corruption in that country’s government and how the people in charge seem to think all government monies are there for their personal gratification. I wrote some comments to a friend intending also to write to the press. It never happened and I recently dusted it off and added a few words here and there because the subject remains relevant.

When the current dispensation took over in 1994 there was plenty of aid available with the world’s governments falling over themselves to contribute to their new darling, Mandela, and his supposedly rainbow nation. Having taken over a working, albeit skewed in places, world class country they then proceeded to plunder and divert money to themselves and allowed the infrastructure to slide into disrepair and dysfunction with service to the citizens becoming a passing interest – just about enough to keep people quiet – not happy but, most of the time, quiet – all the time playing to the apartheid bogeyman to scare the majority into voting for the ANC – for more theft and ineptitude.

The abovementioned article was about the personal ATM that the South African politicians and their henchmen deem the government to be, and the comment that they are not inept people doing the job badly but bad people doing their corrupt activities well, it occurred to me that there are very different attitudes in our society when it comes to criminal activity and imprisonment.

I – and many others, black, white and khaki – would, I am sure be appalled and ashamed at being sentenced to time in jail for an offence. That is because our mindset sees such a thing as embarrassing and a slur on our good name. We would feel shame at the fact we had been in prison or even that we had been accused of a crime.

When, however, you have people who do not understand that mindset, whose entire lives are built on envy and a grasping sense of entitlement and who have NO sense of shame AT ALL you are definitely on a road to a beating.

We have seen corrupt politicians who have served a jail term, being feted by serving government ministers as they are being RELEASED FROM PRISON – actually being carried on the shoulders of these serving ministers as they celebrate that corrupt person’s release.

I think I would be uncomfortable to be seen even visiting a prison and as for collecting someone…. Well I would do it but I would feel conspicuous and uneasy unless perhaps the person being released had been exonerated. Such is the mindset, I would dare to believe, of most law-abiding persons.

Not so the ruling (I use the word ruling VERY loosely) elites of South Africa. With their mindset and the envy and admiration of the don’t haves directed at them – instead of horror and condemnation – why worry at all?

Throw into the mix a police and legal system that is dysfunctional at best…and many of whose members largely share the feelings of the abovementioned don’t haves, and the recipe is rancid. Vast swathes of people see these swanky people and their vulgar displays of ill-gotten gains, as role models to be emulated. They believe that the end always justifies the means and, given the opportunity, they too would trample on their peers, their friends – their family even – just to elevate themselves. They see nothing wrong with this quite feudal approach to being the elite.

What a disastrous situation when a huge part of the populace appears to think like that?

Then, of course, those doing the grasping (the ruling elite) naturally exploit that feudal mindset and keep the people constantly off-balance and in awe of the apparent power that they have – displaying it in fancy cars, blue light convoys and flocks of fawning lackeys…

…and the people do not care how that status and vulgar wealth was obtained, they just want some of it and they openly admire those who have this wealth and status – irrespective of how it was achieved and oblivious to how much they themselves may suffer as a result.

Leadership, Southern Africa

Demands and tragedy at Marikana

In 2013 an incident occurred at Marikana, a mine in the North West province of South Africa. There was much discussion of the matter (and still is for that matter) and left and right wing takes on it passed blame around like the proverbial hot potato. I was in the habit of writing to the press at the time and drafted my comments but various things, including the death of my wife at the time, intervened and the draft has languished on my computer.  My comments on tactics are based on my own training, reading and common sense.

I believe the Marikana matter has still not been properly resolved and probably never will be.

In my opinion the overweening power of the unions and the misinformation that they allow their members to be fed is largely to blame as is the poor handling of the operation by mostly untrained and inexperienced police. Of course the management of the mining house did not come out entirely squeaky-clean either. Altogether a debacle but here, for what it is worth, is my take on the matter as written in 2013…for those interested I suggest a web search for Marikana/Marikana killings and similar. (I have added one or two explanatory asides for the wider audience)

Firstly, long before we get to strikes and protests there is the matter of free choice in the job you choose to take.

Having looked for work and chosen to be a miner you knew what the remuneration was to be and you can’t, and should not be allowed to, suddenly demand that you want double pay.

When you took the job you knew the nature of your responsibilities in respect of family and home. It seems though, that if you are in a unionised environment where the union has overwhelming representation it is accepted that once you are in you can behave as you please. You can do just enough to avoid any serious sanction against yourself. You know that you are fire-proof in terms of current legislation that is so skewed towards labour that it loses sight of the requirements of good business practice.

It is in this environment that DEMANDS are born. Not reasoned requests or applications at appropriate times but savage demands backed up with brutalising behaviour.

Notwithstanding the above it appears that the employer in this case was clumsy in their handling of certain issues around pay. Furthermore, they, the mining house, should still shoulder the blame for not being sensitive to what is going on within its organisation and they should have been in a position to respond or even pre-empt the escalation of the matter. That they remained obdurate when the situation started to deteriorate and the first deaths occurred is shameful.

Before proceeding to my next point – journalists please note:

There were NO machine guns on site. There were semi-automatic rifles (probably in 5.56mm) and semi-automatic 9mm pistols – NO machine guns so learn the difference in the interests of accurate reporting.

As to the reaction of the police it appears that poor training and even poorer leadership – on the ground and all the way to the top – is to blame and not the men on the spot. Bear in mind that they had seen not only the bodies of two of their own men who had been killed and brutalised with pangas but also the bodies of similarly mutilated miners. These now fearful individuals may quite reasonably have felt: “If they could do that to their own people then what could any police member expect”.

Oh and why would the rioters attack fellow-miners? Perhaps those miners had tried to be reasonable – comment has been made that a moderate voice on that hillock would have got short shrift – or were they denounced by a sangoma (witch-doctor in common parlance)? Maybe an opportunity to take care of a grudge presented itself?

It appears that among the police were a fairly large number of poorly trained, nervous people concerned that what had happened to their colleagues might happen to them – bluntly these were armed, jittery men who were, in military slang, SHIT SCARED, without experience or appropriate training for the situation.

When, on film, I saw the miners burst out of the bush a moment before the police opened fire I got a fright – and I was only watching a film!

Notice that the FIRST reaction of a number of the police was to run AWAY from the oncoming charge. Only on hearing the firing of those who stood fast did they turn and add their fire to the fusillade. Well trained men do not run and certainly do not fire from BEHIND the firing line endangering their comrades. Press photos also appear to show some members ducking away behind their colleagues – or could that have been when the first shots came from the rioters – something one gets the distinct impression is being denied or suppressed?

A good riot control squad would firstly have had disciplined, trained and respected section leaders in control. NO-ONE would have opened fire without a clear instruction and that instruction does not seem to have been given on the evidence presented.

The first volley might have been birdshot, or similar, designed to hurt and break up the charge. And the sharp pain of such incapacitating ammunition would have dispelled any thoughts of muti protection actually working! (muti protection being some kind of charm – even an oil or ointment – given by the sangoma [witch-doctor] that the users are told – and which they believe – will make them immune to the bullets/weapons of the police – this practice and belief has been seen a lot among terrorists in Africa).

Only if the charge could not be broken should high velocity ammunition have been used and then it should have been controlled and aimed and not been a random volley of shots. Stop the leaders, break the charge. Of course the main instigators hang back and send a few fierce, ill-considered firebrands to lead the charge so it would be no surprise to learn that not one of the dead will be identified as a leader or instigator.

All the repeated cease fire calls also point to belated attempts to stop a panic reaction.

But I am on the side of the police here – the poor buggers who should have been properly trained and led. Well trained police and soldiers are not fearless but they are disciplined and work as a team. Through continuous training and discipline they learn to trust each other and their leaders and they understand the dynamics of situations because they were trained for them.

Furthermore, it is no good having a nucleus of a few well-trained individuals and padding it out with poorly trained and inexperienced members – there is going to be no trust and no cohesion.

Just giving the police military ranks was not going to magically endow them with the appropriate training or ability either.

Had the specialised paramilitary reaction units, trained for such situations, been maintained it may well have been a different matter. Even this is debatable with the decreasing standards that are evident everywhere.

Southern Africa

Governance in Africa

I drafted this as a LETTER TO THE EDITOR of one of the South African newspapers quite some time ago and then, as with other projects I started at the time, life (and death) again intervened and I never submitted it.

I came across the draft some days ago and, having often been served by the kind of ineptitude that leaves South Africa and most of Africa in the state it finds itself today, I though brushing it off and posting it might not be a bad idea.

While it points to a specific area it is also a chilling example of what has happened throughout Africa. Rather like a truculent child with a new toy, they – the new dispensations – will not be advised and will not ask for or accept help to look after the asset.

Anyway, here is my delayed comment on something I feel very strongly about.

Comments on healthcare and effectively the nation.

Some years ago a visiting professor from Australia, made a few good points but he should have been aware that apartheid in health care as he called it has recently been visited on the country NOT by whites or wealthy people as he implied but by the very government that, given the opportunity, could not arrange a decent booze-up in a well-stocked brewery.

Why does he think that the private healthcare industry has flourished? Bear in mind that this is the very same PRIVATE healthcare that the country’s leaders [I use the term advisedly] subscribe to for their own health issues. It has flourished in the almost COMPLETE ABSENCE of adequate public healthcare. It has flourished because of the government’s lack of vision and its inability to maintain and build on what they inherited which was not dysfunctional and was, in fact, WORLD CLASS.

Private healthcare is a BUSINESS and is run on BUSINESS principles and that business saw a gap in the market and it ruthlessly exploited it.

While it is unequivocally accepted that apartheid was wrong and should not be defended there are a few truths that seem to be conveniently overlooked when discussing the “legacy” of apartheid.

Why do African LIBERATION movements deem it necessary to FIX what is not broken when they take over?

Using the analogy of a motor vehicle let us say that one is given a perfectly good, well looked after, motor car.

Instead of taking the same care of the vehicle as the previous owner and maintaining it with a view to its value for a later transport upgrade YOU JUST USE IT.

Not only do you use it but you allow friends and acquaintances (the masses) to rip the seats to pieces, dump rubbish on the floor, let water enter through broken windows – that THEY have broken. You neglect to top up the oil and water or budget for regular servicing – MAINTENANCE. You decide to upgrade but you can’t get for the car what you should REASONABLY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO EXPECT had it been maintained.

You are now stuck with no savings and in need of transport. Your cash went on using the car to run your erstwhile friends around Those same friends who trashed the seats and left the windows open and allowed their fast-f0od to spill over the floor and upholstery. They, who bashed the doors into things and scratched the paint. Those same friends who never had any money for petrol, or a few bucks to help fix the car but expected, no, they took it as a RIGHT, to call for lifts here, there and everywhere and at any time. Those same non-contributing friends who were annoyed with you, were actually quite offended, when the car was in one of its increasingly frequent down times with some backyard mechanic.

And you came to dislike the traffic cops because you felt they were targeting your car just because it looked A BIT dilapidated and smoked, A BIT, from the very noisy exhaust.

The current government is like that neglectful car owner and the ever-observant media like the traffic cops, always finding the faults. …..and the friends? The friends are the MASSES, truculently RIOTING and DEMANDING but never contributing a damned thing.

A large part of the infrastructure the current rulers had handed to them over twenty-plus years ago may have been skewed towards one part of the population but it ALLWORKED. It was all run and maintained by competent and experienced people who knew how to manage, maintain, budget and generally look after the assets entrusted to their care – and if they did not do their jobs they knew they would be fired and replaced.

A simple example of carelessness and neglect? The toilets in many hospitals are today frequently found with walls and floors smeared with faeces and vomit with no paper, broken seats and filthy toilet bowls – if they work at all.

So why did they not retain and maintain the best of the best and build on it? Are they so blind that they are unable to see what incompetence and an almost total lack of management skills has done elsewhere on the continent, in southern Africa in particular? Why not build systems with those aforementioned excellent examples in mind.

We, the diaspora of white Africa can answer these questions. However, the uncomfortable truth of our answers is not convenient to those invested in the lie and certainly not to those with their snouts firmly in the trough of corruption and nepotism.

Why not work towards the HIGHEST common denominator you might ask in bewilderment?

The highest common denominators are in the private sector where people are expected to EARN their income.

God forbid that government should stoop so low as to look for good examples to emulate – that would endanger the cadres, the loyal lackeys in the highly paid status positions. Well paid positions that ensure that they say and do the right things (read – do what they are told – as and when they are required to do so). They become experts at obfuscation and denial but not at doing the work required of their exalted positions.

As a struggling wage-earner I would have loved to see the public sector thrive in excellence enabling me to pay lower medical aid fees but, truth be told, I paid a small fortune that I could ill-afford because the thought of relying on the state for any serious care filled me – and many others – with dread.

Of course all of the above, perhaps with a bit of editing, could be applied to pretty much the entire government of the country – as well as much of the rest of Africa

Southern Africa

Thoughts on South Africa…and on AID

Am I just a curmudgeonly cynic or do I have a point here?

I lived in Southern Africa for 67 years. I lived, and paid taxes in, South Africa from 1980 to 2016 and I drafted this as a letter to the press several years ago. Life intervened but this remains relevant.

I think it points up something that is fundamentally wrong with the practice of GIVING AID. People who do not help themselves and don’t do the work that they are entrusted with but are helped at every turn by AID will never have an incentive to DO those things that they are contracted to do. As long as the aid is given the VICTIM culture will prevail, the sense of entitlement. Coupled with ineptitude…anyway for what it is worth here are my thoughts from a few years ago…

At the time this was happening…(and had happened before).

MNet / DSTV are once again promoting a Carte Blanche (https://carteblanche.dstv.com/) initiative in respect of the Frere Hospital in the Eastern Cape.

The initiative has called upon corporates and individuals to donate funds to build / rebuild the children’s and neo-natal wing of the hospital.

By all accounts an incredibly successful project, it will provide truly state of the art facilities in this impoverished area.

While the generosity has been great let us not forget that every penny given over to corporate responsibility and charitable causes can be offset against tax. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself and the corporates get some nice publicity.

Most importantly, and without wishing to detract from its success, I feel that these initiatives point up the absolute failure of the post-apartheid government to properly manage funds and maintain and build infrastructure.  

It is NOT the job of private enterprise to build, hand over and maintain facilities for the government. It is why we – individuals and corporates – pay taxes to the government, which government seems to think the money is solely to fund extravagance.

It is accepted that previously disadvantaged areas often did not have quite the same facilities as the more privileged areas. Of course Baragwanath Hospital (the largest in the southern hemisphere) for example, was (note the past tense) a world class hospital and known in the international medical world – and that is in Soweto – the vast township area outside the greater Johannesburg city.

What the new government failed to recognise is that they inherited all these top class facilities that could be used as the model, as the standard to which they should aspire.

Had the existing facilities (and one should include EVERYTHING infrastructural here, not only medical facilities) not been neglected and allowed to deteriorate – no, been dragged – down to the lowest, most base, level then there would be no need to beg private enterprise to do what the government should have done and should be doing on an ongoing basis.

Private enterprise on the other hand could have used all that money to build itself up and create jobs and opportunities. Of course that presupposes that the business world would not have been hamstrung, as it has been by the current administration, by poor decision making, punitive regulations and laws and the entire gamut of negative, oppressive and ignorant government departments each seeming to be trying to outdo the other on measures to drive away and discourage investment and small business initiatives.

With apologies to those grammar Nazis who may pick up errors of tense – I felt if I changed it too much I would lose the immediacy of the time at which I first drafted it.

Military life, My life, Southern Africa

Hitch Hiking December 1979

As December 1979 approached David, my brother, and I decided to go Cape Town.

We were both serving in the Rhodesian Army with plenty of leave available but to save money and have a bit of “adventure” we hitch-hiked and stayed with my aunt in Constantia.

Because of the situation in Rhodesia convoys, escorted by police and army reservists, ran between main areas. As soldiers and with our service rifles we would be very welcome on, or in, anyone’s vehicle.

Salisbury to Fort Victoria to Beit Bridge, about 600kms, was boring and uncomfortable. At Beit Bridge we signed our weapons in to the BSAP armoury.

We walked over to South Africa and got a lift to the Mountain View hotel in the mountains above Louis Trichardt. It was raining and the hotel owners let us camp in some disused, leaky, sheds. We put up our tents, (leaky roof, remember) ate, had a beer then slept.

Day TWO dawned cool and misty and after a wash in the gents we made our way down to the main road. The rain had stopped and it was misty but we held up our CA (Cape Town registration) sign. A young woman roared up and offered us a ride. She had a crow in a box on the back seat (don’t ask because I don’t think we found out why). She drove like the clappers and roared through misty Louis Trichardt – ignoring stop streets – while chatting away excitedly.

In Pietersburg (Polokwane) we found an excuse to leave our dangerously cheerful benefactor, got a bite to eat and went to the main road.

We soon got another lift, being dropped near the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) in Pretoria. We trudged for about a kilometre when a truck pulled over. Offered a ride in the enclosed rear – no communication, view or way to open the door, we declined his “kind” offer

At around 1400 we got a lift to Meyerton south of Johannesburg, pleased we didn’t have to navigate Johannesburg’s confusing highways.

We were wondering about where we would sleep when a bulk liquids 28-wheeler pulled up and offered us a ride all the way to Cape Town.

Our job was to talk to the driver so that he would not get bored and go to sleep…at the wheel!

It was late, very late, when we stopped at a sleepy Beaufort West for cokes and a pie and again, shortly before dawn, at a watering point in the middle of nowhere.

Going over du Toit’s kloof (a picturesque, and dangerous, mountain pass) was marvellous. Outside Paarl and about an hour from Cape Town though, the driver said we must find another ride – if seen with passengers he would be in trouble.

With no-one stopping to give us a lift I called an ex-army friend who came and fetched us and took us to the Pig and Whistle pub in Rondebosch. It was early afternoon on day THREE – not bad going.

I only stayed about a fortnight and  it was now Saturday of my last weekend and once again in the city and hanging around our uncle’s brother’s market stall I knew we would be doing bugger all else. We had been relying on my uncle for transport but always ended up going where, and doing what, he wanted and I really wanted David to get a better experience of the city. Even though I had only lived in the Cape as a child 20-plus years before I said to David “Let’s go, I’ll show you how to get around”.

We went on foot to the harbour and a pub then by bus to Clifton and Sea Point.

Friends in Sea Point took us to the Pig & Whistle and later we took the train to Wynberg where we bought the best fish and chips ever across the road from the station!

We got a bus to Alphen – and walked several miles to my aunt and uncle’s house in Constantia. I was wearing brand new jeans and was chafed raw, but we’d had a good time.

David was staying for a few more weeks which was why I had wanted to show him how to get around! He had a great time on his own after I left.

We got a lift into the City the next morning and I held up my sign, the one David is holding in the picture, with the Rhodesian flag colours and SBY (Salisbury) on it. My first lift to the Worcester turn-off left me stranded for three hours in 40°C temperatures.

Finally, in Beaufort West after having got another lift, I stood for five hours on the northern edge of town. When it started to get dark I got permission to camp on the lawns of the motel over the road. I had some food and was back on the roadside at 0500.

I read a book, standing there, an ENTIRE BOOK and at 1500 a car stopped near me and I asked bemusedly, “Are you offering me a lift?”

We slept somewhere during the night. I’d worried a bit about my benefactors but they dutifully delivered me in Joburg where I was able to spend the night with my brother in law. Next day I was on the road at Buccleuch interchange and got a lift all the way to Beit Bridge.

My convoy lift developed car trouble and, with the main convoy drawing away quickly, there was potential danger for a lone car. After a few roadside repairs and with a few other stragglers we made our own convoy. I think I was the only one among them armed but we made Fort Victoria OK. From there to Salisbury was straightforward.

I was home for Christmas with a backpack stuffed with gifts and bits and pieces others had asked me to get.