My husband and I recently went to South Africa for our honeymoon! The country has so much to offer - the rich flora and fauna, the blue skies, the ocean that sits there with its arms wide open inviting you to take a dip, and the beautiful mountains. The country is picture perfect because of its natural beauty and infrastructure, and not to mention the cuisine and wine, which are to die for especially given the amount of $s you pay for it - its what i call real value for money... All seemed perfect in the country until my husband and I acquainted ourselves with the dark side of South Africa. On our third day in Cape Town, we noticed that there were hardly any blacks driving expensive cars in SA's third-biggest city. You would hardly see them performing managerial positions in restaurants, hotels or any other service industries? When more than 90 percent of the country's land is still owned by the white minority, it may explain why a country so rich in resources is still home to many poors? We found out that more than 80% of South Africa's population is made of blacks, of which millions still live in grim townships. They lack basic services like electricity, water etc., which is why the nation has some of the highest rates of murder and rape in the world. In 2007-2008 murder count was 18,487 cases in a country of 47 million people.
Is this what Nelson Mandela gave 27 years of his life for? I hope not and so do millions of black! The government has assured many a times that it is committed to Black Economic Empowerment, an affirmative-action programme aimed at bringing blacks into the mainstream economy, which is still dominated by whites after the end of apartheid in 1991.
"We are hopeful that this inequality in the distribution of wealth would change and blacks would be empowered," said an ex-prisoner Sipho Msomi, our tour guide at Robben Island, where Mandela served 27 years of his life in imprisonment. "Hope alone doesn't feed one's hungry child and hope alone doesn't fetch you a job."
I really hope that President Zuma, known to be Black people's man, who himself was raised in shanty slums, tries to resolve some of the social and economic issues that the country faces. While South Africans are almost sure that South Africa would never go down the path Zimbabwe went, but that alone won't bring comfort to those struggling to feed their hungry stomachs.
