LouBelle - I am responding to your first statement in response to me, if you didn't take the time to read what I wrote then, what is the issue of your remarks?? My response is just about keeping your remarks in context of the entire jest of South Africa. Where has there not been corruption in your country? I am just asking, yes as an outsider, but someone who has been there more than once and here's another tidbit I was married to an West African (by way of his father) man, so I have spent a good amount of time in Africa and have a huge amount of African friends.
If you miss the point on my condemning all the corruption in your country, you are wrong. What I am trying to do is to show that people have been suffering in the millions for a very long time, what is different now? That's my point.
MrsSmith - If you children don't see color that's a good thing, never did I say that corruption doesn't exist there is a lot of it. I have spoken with many South Africans, not just the very small representation here and I would pointedly say that every one of you that are responding are whites or ones that have a drop of "colored" blood like LouBelle, I would like for there to be some of the indigenous native Africans of South Africa to get on this discussion because I truly believe their perspective would be quite different than yours. Not that they wouldn't agree that corruption needs to stop, but just in general the small tangents of remarks that you make. If I had never been there, if I had never spent time there, if I had not had many friends from there, I would not participate in this discussion at all. I am trying to give the other side of this coin and there needs to be a fair representation of why things are the way they are in South Africa. If you refuse to see the why, then you can never get to the fixing part.
Everyone can sit around all day and point fingers at everyone else, tell me what is the point in that. And as I can clearly read this topic was about "immigration" to a person's ancestral land, is it not? That right there says something also about the differences of South Africans in whom they are and their connection to the country. I had a few white South Africans who told me flat out that the majority of South Africans do not consider themselves "African", they consider themselves white/Afrikaans/European and that is why they speak their own language and socialize the way they do. Nothing I saw when I visited suggested otherwise.
Princess Daisy Boo - Every time there has been a subject regarding South Africa from the few of you that are here, race is the backdrop to your criticisms. I could copy and paste all day, but I have better things to do. Honestly, it was getting a bit much to read and whether you know it or not, people can be offended by you making it this black white things. NOW when I finally had enough and called LouBelle on it, she tried to retract her statements a bit and be fair. That's good to me, be fair, realize that it is not so this and that, but many different sides in a county that has been pretty corrupt dehumanizing others for almost a century, and that is before the legalization of Apartheid, because that hatred was happening before that.
Answers to your questions:
1) Your country can never be run by a fraud, whether that person is black or white or asian or hispanic. The corruption in your country goes very deep with a lot of different issues regarding it. Making sweeping pronouncements on a complex problem does a disservice to the true issues in South Africa. What are your solutions to this problem?
2) The crime situation can never be fixed by a criminal, and it has never been fixed by criminals. The progress has to come from all groups of people whatever color having a buy in. South Africans native people need to feel that they are empowered. Just like people in India needed a Ghandi to feel empowered, a lot of what is going on has to do with finding the right leaders and that may take some time. From going from a hand of racist criminals, it has created a lot of opportunist based on hate, frustration and greed. It happens all over Africa and actually all over the world. "The race of man is suffering and I can hear the moan."
3) The HIV/AIDS issue is something I can't fully discuss at this time because there are a lot of theories and ideas about the cause and the cure. I can tell you this NO ONE yet can cure it and no one yet can conclusively say 100% how it is caused. There are a lot of theories and I have actually studied quite a few, I have African intellectuals in my former family, as well as friends, who have lived on the land for generations and we are still in contact, so this is a good topic, one that can't be solved in a forum like this, just discussed in fragments of opinions.
Again, what are you solutions? If running away is your solution and going back to your ancestral land, then let's honestly talk about how and why you can do it and why so many can't and why this can contribute to the breakdown between the population and their buy in for a solution.
You may not like my opinions, but I am entitled to them, just like you. There are many voices and perspective of the South African landscape that are not represented in your views and I want to at least try to give that in my remarks.
