Saturday, December 7, 2013

South Africa

I am sitting in the lounge at Capetown, SA airport. Waiting for an Emirates flight to Dubai, to connect to JFK New York, then connect to Austin. Way too long to travel for business. Like a gas, work has come along to fill all the space of the upcoming November accommodation.

South Africa is a truly, a stunningly beautiful place. The natural beauty that a country inherits anytime it is blessed with mountains in close proximity to the ocean is on display in South Africa. However, I still get the feel that one must have had following the U.S. Civil War in the South. When you still see that the cafes are populated with white people being waited on by black people. Free black people, but none the less the discrepancy remains. South Africa is a country rocked with ongoing struggles to go beyond the words of racial desegregation and try to live the talk. That is a much tougher thing to do. It is no because people do not have their hearts in change, but the sheer economics of such equalization of the masses is next to impossible to deal with. You simply don’t have enough jobs and the people don’t have the educational foundation to fill some jobs that you will try to bring in, so you need to bring in enough business, tourism, etc. to produce a LOT of low paying, service sector jobs because that is what people are currently capable of doing. You have these massive shanty towns and a government desperately trying build more low cost houses, but it is like trying to put a finger in a dam of humanity. And the water of human need just keeps coming.


I wrote these previous words November 1, 2013. On December 5, 2013 Nelson Mandela passed away at the age of 95.