Random thoughts about Southern Africa

Security

White South Africans in Johannesburg and Capetown are obsessed with security.  Whether the crime threat is real or just a result of mass hysteria I don’t know, but the evidence of security concerns is everywhere, as Ralph pointed out in his blog from Cape Town.   The situation is even more drastic in Johannesburg, where we took the above picture at the entrance to the parking garage at the Grace Hotel.  The leafy neighborhood around the hotel resembled  a bunch of mini prisons, with 8 foot stucco walls, topped with electrified wire, around all the houses.  The only difference is that these walls were built to keep people out, not in.

 

 

 

South Africa is going to host the World Cup in 2010.  The are construction projects going 24/7 all over Johannesburg but  everyone seems to have complete confidence they’ll be ready.  Hosting the World Cup,  in my opinion, is a huge gamble for South Africa.  It will either make or break South Africa as a tourist destination for years and years.  If tens of thousands of visitors come and have a good time and there aren’t too many incidents of violence or muggings, I think tourism in the coming years should boom.  South Africa is a beautiful country, has great roads, good food and wine, and plenty to do.  Tourists can have a great time.   If, on the other hand, hundreds of visitors are mugged, have their cars hijacked or are otherwise victims of crime, South Africa will get an international black eye that will pretty much kill their tourist industry.  They really need the income; I hope for their sake they can get their crime problem, whatever its true size, under control in time.

There were many differences between South Africa and Botswana, but crime and security is one that is very obvious to casual visitors like us.  In South Africa, our car was locked away in a guarded underground garage; in Botswana we parked all night on the street.  In Johannesburg the hotel staff were horrified that we asked about strolling around after dinner (they told us we could go only in the enclosed mall attached to the hotel); in Botswana we walked comfortably after dark. 

Driving

After 4 weeks I was more or less accustomed to driving on the “wrong” side of the road.  That is, until I was put into an unusual situation like the intersection of a one-way road and a two-way road or driving around in a more “free-form” environment like a big parking lot.  Then my “right” instinct took over and I had to correct myself (or Ralph had to yell at me!)

Baboons are a worse road hazard than deer.  They’re just as fast and unpredictable but they’re harder to see.

Driving at 80 mph (the legal limit) on a 4-lane expressway with nothing between you and the oncoming traffic but a white line is pretty stressful.

The roads in South Africa were, for the most part, excellent.  They are spending a lot of money to keep them that way.  We constantly encountered construction projects as we drove 3,200 miles in 4.5 weeks.  There are lots of “1-stop’s” along the expressways where you can fill up with gas, buy snacks, and let the kids blow off a little steam at the playground.

Public facilities

Someone needs to explain the function of a P-trap to the hotel builders in Botswana and Lesotho.  (For those not up on your plumbing, a P-trap is installed in a shower drain to prevent swamp-like sewer gasses from coming into the room.  This apparently is not part of the developing world Plumbing 101 curriculum.)

Politics

South Africa has been a democracy only since 1994.  There are still a lot of vestiges of Apartheid around.  White people all drive; some black people drive but only black people walk.  In businesses, often (but not always) the managers/supervisors are white and the worker bees are black.  (This was true in our South African safaris, where the driver/guide in almost every vehicle we saw was white, while the “spotter”, who sat in a little chair attached to the front of the hood, was black.  Not the case in Botswana, where almost the entire staff, including managers, was Batswana) .  The white suburbs are, in general, leafy and rich looking; the black townships range from “poor but proud” to abject poverty.  The public schools (that I saw anyway) are all black; the white kids go to private schools.  Things are changing, as I noted in my very first blog from South Africa, but there’s still a long way to go to undo 300 years of racial oppression.

There’s an election in South Africa on April 22, only the third democratic election in the country’s history.  The party which has been in power since 1994, the ANC, is likely to get a majority again.  However, there’s a lot of grousing, both privately and in the newspapers, about the corruption, laziness, and/or incompetence of the government.  The true test of this fledgling democracy will come soon, maybe not this election, but the election of 2014 or 2019, when the ANC loses its majority.  Will the ANC respond to the wishes of the people and willingly turn over power?  For the good of all South Africans, I sincerely hope so.

And finally…

A reminder from the South African National Parks: