Great post from top to bottom Bill.
I too recall walking the streets of J'berg after dark with no fear and no problems, staying at the Jo'berg Sun Hotel. That hotel closed not long after the new government took over as squatters just filled up their lobby. I wouldn't dream of walking the streets there now day or night.
The breakdown of public safety and government corruption is the saddest part of the change in the past 20 years. Slowly, RSA is becoming "africanized". Incompetents are manning civil service jobs slowing services to a halt. I used to love flying SAA over Delta, but no more. Staff and equipment changes have made my last few flights less than they could have been.
It is a miracle that the government transitioned without bloodshed as peacefully as it could have. De Klerk should be the one that the World lauds for engineering and driving what was inevitable. The sad fact is that Mandela is considered a demi-god and De Klerk has become an afterthought.
The old system was failing, with or without outside pressures. I really don't have a workable alternative to what we have today. Maybe a bigger role for the IFP and the Zulu, but I'm not sure that really would have done anything positive.
De Klerk envisioned perhaps a weaker role for the Prime Minister and revolving power between the ANC, NP, and IFP leaders a la Switzerland, but that takes a rationale and cohesive populous to accept, and that is not RSA.
The country has fared better than many feared, but they face problems with no answers.
- overpopulation by the uneducated cramming the cities and feeding crime.
- demand for land from these same people
- unchecked immigration from other African counties filling the slums in Cape town and Jo'berg with hundreds of thousands that have nothing to offer.
- envy of everything the White Man has and has built, and the urge of the ruling leaders to take more and more.
- corruption at all levels of government increasing, making RSA just another slice of Africa
RSA can never go back to 1948 when the Black population was much smaller and the Whites had the education and ran the show. Life for whites as simple and conservative while blacks still largely could live a bush life. As quoted in intro to GWTW - "Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...”
