Photo from Lailalalami. Photo: Jerome Delay/APFrom McClatchy News:
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — It's easy to look around this proud, polyglot city and think that the favorite slogan of the new South Africa — a "Rainbow Nation" of races striving together for prosperity — is becoming a reality.
Blacks and whites mingle in buzzing bars and restaurants, in state-of-the-art business parks and shopping malls and in tree-lined suburbs that recall Southern California more than southern Africa. A blossoming black middle class fills the boardrooms and back offices of a diverse economy that's the engine and envy of the continent.
In the 15 years since Nelson Mandela won the first democratic elections here, finally closing the book on four decades of white apartheid rule, a lot has gone right with South Africa. Yet days before a new election, a deep malaise has taken hold, a creeping fear that the next decade and a half won't be as good as the first was.
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My Comment: One of the world's worse HIV/Aids infection rates. Crime everywhere. Murderous violence against refugees from other failed states like Zimbabwe. Tribalism mixed in with corruption and violence against political opponents.
Sigh .... if I was living in South Africa, I would be laying the groundwork to get out.
1 comment:
You paint a very rosy picture. Unfortunately, although there was great hope during the Mandela era, the relations between races in this country have since deteriorated to the point where many whites actively fear and dislike blakcs. This was never the case under Apartheid, where whites rather felt sorry for their compatriots and did all they could to lighten the burden.
The fact that the government of the day needed to repress the majority was simply because it wanted to ensure that its race and ethnicity survived against all odds.
Today, in 2009, we have more petty crime than ever, more murders, more rapes, more hijackings than we ever had before 'democracy' reared its head. Most middle-class citizens live in security complexes or behind high walls and barbed wire; some even have their own private security guards and security companies are rife in all the major cities.
Under the new government of Zuma, many people, both white and black, fear that we are going from bad to worse, and many are looking to move elsewhere in the world in order to maintain their status.
For further details go to my own site.
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