Wednesday 9 July 2008

South Africa : The only country in the world that markets its negatives.

From The "Home coming revolution" Newsletter

Foreigners living in South Africa are becoming commonplace. Skilled foreigners with a multitude of options open to them, those that could go anywhere in the world, are choosing to come here. Moving to a developing country has its challenges but expats are simultaneously afraid and in awe of this place. In a recent conversation with a Scottish contractor in Jo’burg, it became clear that expats often wonder if South Africans aware of what we have and why we’re so hellbent on highlighting our negatives. At any rate, they’re not only out here because of the cheap alcohol although if that were one of their country’s strongest points, don’t you think that the whole tourist world would know about it? Are we marketing our country to it’s strengths or are we helping everyone to see our negatives? Our best cheerleaders are now foreigners and our worst are South Africans - ironic! Read what a passionate German in South Africa has to say, although I think he would get irate with us for calling him anything other than ‘South African to the very core’:

Isn’t it amazing?

For days and weeks, the press has hammered us with a possible increase in terms of electricity and water of 60% - front page, almost every single day. Last week, Eskom received permission to only increase the rates by 13.5%, which as far as I am concerned, is very realistic – and I was very excited to find this information on page 5 or 6 of my daily newspaper…
‘We are ready to kill for our President’ – sounds to me very similar to a statement I make every now and then: ‘I kill myself laughing’ – does this mean, I put a gun to my head when I hear a good joke? Again, front page, radio, TV – outrage…..the fact that apparently Jacob Zuma has done the only correct thing and pulled ‘his friend’ aside, straight after this statement, to sort this out on a one on one basis, I found by chance on the Internet – wasn’t even worth publishing, was it?
‘Crime’s not that bad in South Africa: it’s worse’ was an article in the Sunday Times. Today, I received an invitation from the Institute for Security Studies, stating that the crime rate in SA went down by 20% since 2002/2003 – the article in the Sunday Times states that in the same time period, crime globally went up by 30%. Hello? South Africa’s crime rate going down by 20%, the rest of the world up by 30% - does anybody get the GOOD news in this? (and yes, we come from a very, very high level)
And, and, and: Economy down, Interest rate on 15.5% - so what? When my family and I got infected by the negative vibes around us and left South Africa in 2000, we were above 20%?!
Load shedding? I found a series of cartoons the other day (Madam & Eve) making jokes about the daily power cuts, and how unreliable Eskom was since they didn’t manage to cut the power every single day – the cartoon was published in 2002…
We will not be ready for the Soccer World Cup in 2010!? I just recently attended an information session about the status on it: All stadiums, besides one, are on schedule for the Confederations Cup in 2009, and the one delayed is behind by two weeks! The gentleman giving the presentation has been involved in Soccer World Cups since 1990, and told us that every other country that hosted it had far more problems, and that he has no doubt that we will be ready…nor do I….
Arnd Herrmann is MD of Uwin Iwin Incentives (www.uwiniwin.co.za). German-born and raised, he lived in South Africa from 1995 – 2000, only to join the brain drain, making a move back to Europe with his entire family. Visiting South Africa in 2004 ‘just for a holiday’, he not only felt like coming home, but realised all the things and people he had missed in our country. He then packed up his wife, two kids and two dogs and moved back again, and according to him, does not regret the decision ‘too often’…
Read more motivations from South Africans and foreigners in this month’s newsletter

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holocaust denialists are the same people who hate my site. I find myself very proud.

It doesn't surprise me that they are here hating , but this surprises me...

They spend half their day talking about and inventing in their minds "genocide" and "authrocites" going on in South Africa , and the other half denying an actual real and well documented genocide......the irony.

Freaking fruitcakes. These are the people you want to get your information on South Africa from people ?

Anonymous said...

Crime denialist? No - wrong -hys n flappie.

Anonymous said...

There are only negatives, if you can name any positives I would like to hear what they are!!! Who can enjoy the positives anyway when you have to keep dodging to miss flying bullets, rather lock myself in my cocoon where its safe

Anonymous said...

South Africa must be the only country in the world where the negatives outweigh the positives by 100 - 1. You can keep doing this 'alive with possibility' crap, it ain't going to work, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. ...

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 03:33 - funny thing is for the whole six months that I was in Johannesburg I did not have to dodge a single bullet. The one time I was mugged - it was a strong-armed robbery, two guys simply overpowered me, took my cellphone and ran. However, I walked around in Soweto, Alexandra, the CBD, the area near Johannesburg's park station and even the world-infamous Hillbrow and other than the incident above nothing happened, no bullets, no knives. But before I came to SA - I had expected all of the above because of stories from people like you that had already been floating around Internet by 2006.

Anonymous said...

And here is now the German who was quoted in the first blog himself :-) - and please allow me to disagree with some of the comments made here.
Firstly, people like this 'anonymous' should be blocked from publishing anything on this forum - I am a Christian and shouldn't judge and use foul language, but in his case I feel like making an exception...
Secondly, it's not only South Africa selling itself badly, you find this everywhere in the world (just came back from Germany and got depressed...), but I really strongly feel that South Africans haven't even started to appreciate the positive things in this country - (most probably because they haven't experienced how it is somewhere else ?) - and additionally constantly get fed with the bad news which makes things worse...
And we forget history: Does somebody remember 1994? Everybody (?) expecting a civil war after the election!!!
1999 - Panic all over the place, Mbeki as 'hardliner' taking over, Mugabe starting to behave madly with white farmers - the brain train was full (incl. ourselves), now it's 2008, Zuma possibly taking over, and we start panicking again - humans don't like the unknown, do they?
Anyway, this country has SO MUCH potential, we have fantastic people, loads of business opportunities, we just need to make it happen