i’ve had a hard time sitting down to write this.  it’s been difficult to find the words.

the fact is, i’m not really allowed to have an opinion.  i don’t live there.  last time i went to south africa, i wrote about some of the amazing contrasts that made the country so fascinating, so beautiful, so rich.  i was so looking forward to seeing more.

that was four years ago, and a lot has changed since then.  this time, i was not given the opportunity to be a dispassionate observer, to make up my own mind.  instead i was inundated with your stories about how bad things are, how broken the people, government and environment have become.

i know that violence is an ever-present reality in south africa.  i know people are scared – i have only to look at the barred houses, gated streets, and plethora of guards to see that.  things are getting worse, of that there is no doubt.  i didn’t need to hear the endless litany of murders, carjackings, and armed robberies to corroborate that.  but you’re scared, so you talk about it.  i can sympathise.

i know that the a.n.c. has faltered.  the party once lead by the great nelson mandela has in many ways become a victim of its own success – absolute power corrupts absolutely.  and there is justifiable anger that the coming elections – which will see the installation of jacob zuma (accused of rape, racketeering, and perversion of justice) as president -  are a foregone conclusion.  there is an intense loyalty to the party which brought down apartheid, and people are afraid of changing course, even when they know things are going awry.  i understand the bitter disappointment that comes when you see your countrymen voting counter to their own best interests simply out of fear.

i know that economically, things are difficult for everyone.  the crumbling infrastructure, adaptation to the business reforms and black economic empowerment initiatives, the new minimum wage standards – these are all huge challenges.  for a long time, things were very wrong, and putting them right, sometimes to the frustration of others, is not easy.  people are struggling, you are struggling, and it has hit home for you.  i can see that.

i know that all these myriad growing pains, in what is still a fledgling democracy, are tough to handle.  you don’t have to tell me.

and yet you do – you tell me all the stories of anger and fear and pent up resentment.  i taste the bitterness in your voice and sense the undercurrent of tension as account after account pours forth.  you see the country becoming lawless, corrosive and chaotic – a place you no longer understand or feel comfortable in.  it unsettles you, all this change.  and when i chime in to say that in fact, none of this is new, that these are problems that face many modern countries, that soaring crime and corrupt politicians and urban blight and failing economies are not unique to south africa and certainly have nothing to do with race, you tell me i’m naive.  yours is a version of south africa borne of hard experience and an even harder history.

and i’m not allowed to have one.  i don’t live there.  i can’t know.  which is true.  there is no rejoinder to that.  we must agree to disagree.

but it’s difficult.  i want to learn to love this country, but you make it hard.  i don’t get a chance to draw my own conclusions, to experience it on my own terms.  there is so much more to south africa than just the picture your paint, though all of that is undeniably part of it.  it’s a complex place – let me figure that out for myself.  i’m not saying anything new here -  but for all the frank (and heated) discussion we had, i never got to get that point across.

you live there.  you love your country, in spite of all its flaws. let me love it too.

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