Thursday, February 14, 2008

CRY MY BELOVED COUNTRY - DIE BEELD/THE STAR [Thursday, 14 February 2008]


As I sit today in the desert of the United Arab Emirates, I read and reread the news about my country, South Africa. I turned to the Afrikaans newspaper Die Beeld [http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Home/]. Here are 5 short stories that explain why I cry about my country.
1. Young student dies after car hijacking. Ryan Holmes [22] died yesterday in the Muelmed Hospital in Pretoria after being hijacked by 3 thugs in the driveway of his own home. Another young life pays the price for the plague of criminality that has gripped my beautiful country.
2. South Africa sits on a trauma time bomb. "South Africa is in big trouble. The country is already paying the price for children who are living in fear due to crime or who have personally experienced the trauma of crime," reads an article. An ex-university lecturer of mine, Professor Kobus Maree, remarked: "And the country will pay this price for long. We are not fooling our children: they know what is happening." [Translated from Afrikaans]
3. Young girl dies in crossfire between robbers and security guards. Emily Williams [12] died the day before yesterday when she was killed by a stray bullet in the crossfire between robbers and security guards.
4. Thug rule in South Africa. A gang of men who pretend to be traffic officials are targetting and robbing motorists in the Ogies region by pretending they are traffic officials.
5. Another victim of car-hijacking. Mr. Bruno Baptista [29] of Regents Park in Johannesburg was shot by car-hijackers who ambushed him in his drive way when he returned home from work at 17.40 the day before yesterday. These criminals were waiting for him and pounced on him from his neighbour's garden by jumping over the wall.
Much good has also happened in my new South Africa for which many people are eternally grateful. I shall reflect on some of those wonderful things in due course too. Those dark and dire prophets of doom who only see the bad, the worse and the worst are the types that plunge perceptions of Africa into the deepest tar pits of despair and gloom. Sensibility prevails when the fault-lines in South African society are not examined at the cost of the reasons to celebrate. But, alas, for now it is time to weep with and for all those who have suffered and are suffering so despairingly under the surge of crime and lawlessness.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

"The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services with inferior standards for blacks. The black education system within "white South Africa", by design, prepared blacks for lives as a labouring class. There was a deliberate policy in "white South Africa" of making services for black people inferior to those of whites, to try to "encourage" black people to move into the black homelands, hence black people ended up with services inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indians, and 'coloureds'."

With this in mind, why are you suprised at the level of primitive, thugish behavior going on in your country? You reap what you sow

I too am in UAE, sick to my stomach with you lot of self exiled South Africans trashing your homeland. Have you no pride? or is sticking your country flag to the back of your car and cheering for the Springboks the extent of your pride?

Unknown said...

ALL I CAN SAY IS PLEASE PRAY FOR US EVERY DAY