A country in turmoil

 

In the last month South Africa has sunk back to levels of violence not seen since before the 1994 elections where a fully functioning country was handed over the the ANC.

We have had the shooting of striking miners in what now seems to be a very carefully orchestrated show of force against the miners. Then the truck drivers went a very violent strike which also claimed the lives of a couple of people. The trade union bosses are now blaming a third force for the violence. It seems that when anything goes against the government or trade unions they need a scape goat. Sounds like the previous government doesnt it?

And this week we heard at the comission of enquiry that some big shot ANC members were threatenig some of the government ministers to sort out the strikers with any means they saw fit. No wonder we have the police shooting willy nilly.

So the rainbow nation is no longer the rainbow is was meant to be. And it is time the world took notice. We no longer have a Nelson Mandela leading the country, and he has been practically banished out to his modest rural home and no longer keeps everybody on track to a peaceful country.

 

Origins of the Loch Ness monster?

I received an email yesterday showing two ostriches swimming in the sea off the coast of South Africa at a small fishing village of Yzerfontein. I got to wondering if there many years ago someone living close to Loch Ness may have had an ostrich that escaped and swam to freedom across the loch? The picture of the ostriches showing just their necks and head sticking out could to one not familiar with an ostrich look like a monster swimming in the loch!

Just joking!! Here are three of the pictures I received. It is interesting to note that an ostrich does not have webbed feet like ducks, so those legs of them must have been treading water at an astronomical rate 🙂 A thought also crossed my mind, in this area there are plenty of sharks to be found. Were they too confused by these large birds swimming in the sea to actually attack them and have an easy meal?

 

two ostriches swimming in sea

 

Using the slipway to walk out of the sea

 

 

Walking away quite normally back to the bush nearby!

Yzerfontein is a small harbour town with about 1200 inhabitants on the west coast of South Africa about 90 km north of Cape Town. The main sources of income are tourism, and fishing

 

Marikana follow up.

It has been quite a while that I haven’t blogged due to various reasons. I just haven’t been able to do so even though there were so many things happening here in South Africa and in the rest of the world that really needed to be blogged about. I have tried to read most of the blogs that I follow, and really apologize for not even saying that I have read them 😦

Last week I went camping with the family at a place called Buffelspoort. What is unique about this is that it is adjacent to a small town/siding called Marikana. This is very near the place where the massacre of the miners took place. And here we were going about our camping as if nothing of the magnitude that shook the rest of the world had happened! The local population were going about their business as if nothing had occurred. The same went for the holiday makers. How callous we all seem to have become.

I got to thinking about it and wondered if we had had become this way due to the deluge of bad news that bombards us each and every day. Is it just a defense mechanism that we humans have that makes us push the bad things so far back in our brains that we continue as if they had never happened?

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–

I will hopefully post a photo or two that I took while there within the next week or so. All one sees is peaceful hills without a hint of what happened near there.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

In light of the commission appointed by President Zuma (wonder if this might be his last chance to appoint a commission?) I will eagerly wait for the cover up to be made public as per the normal state of affairs before passing further comments as to the various claims that have been made that the police in actual fact had fired gas grenades (and shot some observers overlooking the miners) which actually caused them to run straight towards the waiting police. But let’s wait and see.