The South African mirage

There’s more wrong in Africa than AIDS, although you’d never know it from the headlines.

All the focus seems to be on that totally preventable killer disease because of the price tag and the massive lobbying behind it.

The Senate last week passed HIV-AIDS bill which is close to identical to the one approved by the House earlier this month.

It’s big money: $15 billion over 5 years for 12 countries in Africa plus Haiti and Guyana. We already spend $1.2 billion a year on AIDS. This will more than double that.

It’s said that the hope is our “contribution” will encourage other nations to be more generous.

Right.

But while AIDS is an emotional, hot-button issue with enormous activism behind it (read: politicians are worried about votes), the reality of Africa is more than that. Unfortunately, the pols and the media are focusing their attention on the Middle East, ignoring the simmering broth of problems on that vast continent.

I’ve written before about the horror of Zimbabwe with the political corruption, the ominous cooperation with Libya, the intentional destruction of the economy, the deliberate starvation of the people, the genocide and thievery practiced against the white population, the wanton devastation of wildlife to say nothing of the enormity of the damage to the environment. It only gets worse.

The reaction of most of the world is to ignore it. When was the last time you saw any major media coverage of these horrors?

The poster child of Western media, of course, is South Africa and the patron saint is Nelson Mandela. It’s great PR, but the image is far from the truth.

I was in South Africa recently and was able to see it through the eyes of a newcomer, but a view enhanced by the people who live there. I stayed with family and friends, associated with residents and talked to business people and journalists. The picture of the real South Africa left me with mixed feelings and most uneasy about the future.

On the surface, you might not know anything was amiss. In fact, if you were there solely as a visitor on “tour,” you would not get the real picture. And that is unfortunate.

I arrived there without a preconceived notion of what to expect. Quite frankly, just the logistics of doing the trip took all my attention, so, when I arrived, it was, in a way, like being there with a clean slate. I had no expectations and so the impact on me was strange.

Without doubt, South Africa is an exquisitely beautiful country. The coastline from Durban to Capetown takes your breath away at every turn of the road.

Johannesburg is a sprawling city with a built-up downtown that once was thriving and now has become more unused and shabby at the edges. The outskirts are filled with the millions of poor blacks with no jobs and no futures. Whites and blacks with any level of money, live in fortified homes. Crime is rampant.

But the major coastal cities of Durban, Port Elizabeth and Capetown are different. At first glance, they look like suburban U.S. cities. They have malls and parks and housing and schools and businesses. There are well-paved streets and highways.

Of course, when you see monkeys in the trees and baboons on the roadside, you know it’s not “home”!

In areas inland, small towns seem to be thriving. The wine country of South Africa looks just like Napa and Sonoma in California and their products are sensational.

While the image of the country portrayed in Western media is of whites exploiting blacks, that’s not universally true. There are many examples of white owners opening opportunities for their employees. One case in point is the Paul Cluver Winery. Dr. Cluver and his family provide housing and schools for employees, train managers in the wine business, provide travel and education for them in the United States and Europe, and give land to these black employees to develop their own wines under their own label.

They have created entrepreneurs and new opportunities for blacks who, before that, had no viable economic future. And, by the way, the wines are absolutely superb.

Away from the coast, some of the small towns are so insulated from the realities of the country as a whole, that people feel safe enough not to lock their doors. But those are rare and, in fact, that sense of security may not last long.