Why South Africa might actually avoid the fate of African countries

Several African countries used to be European colonies, that is, they went through a period of colonialism. The former colonialists are widely criticised - it is said that they plundered the countries and gave back little in return. While there maybe some truth in this, the same criticism have been leveled against South Africa for the way it managed Namibia before Namibian independence while this was not really the case. South Africa did a LOT to develop Namibia, development of which the benefits are still reaped today.

But that is not what I am on about. What I am saying is that many countries went through a colonialist period, including South Africa - colonised by Brittain. In many of these countries, the colonalists left overnight, leaving some or other military dictator in charge or at least leaving the door open to him. The after effects of Colonialism actually caused a lot of damage.

However, South Africa had a more gradual changeover. on 31 May 1910 it became the Union of South Africa, and on the same day in 1961 it became a republic. After that it went through several years of Apartheid - which was the wrong solution to a real problem, even if the problem was only in the minds of a few people. Even though apartheid was wrong, it did form a buffer between the preceding colonialist regime and the present day.

In a way it can be said that the apartheid struggle made us all a lot more mature, and we deal with problems differently. Apartheid also allowed the government of the time to put infrastructure in place - infrastructure that we still benefit from today. Infrastructure that many other African countries never had a chance to develop.

For this reason, perhaps, just maybe, we will not suffer the same fate as Zimbabwe and so many other African countries where civil war and famine are at the order of the day.

I do of course have to point out that my opinion may be heavily influenced by my western background. That I can unfortunately not change.

Lets hope that over time we will learn to understand each other better, be glad for the good things we got from history, and that we can finally bury the bad parts of history.

Revenge of the black algae

This is the worst thing that can happen to your washing machine. Yes, our LG top-loader got invested by black algae. We did not notice this as it was hidden between the inner steel drum and the outer plastic drum. We tried everything: several repetitions of the tub-clean program (wash, rinse, repeat), a full hot water load, even tried a swimming pool algaecide.

The greater part of the solution was to remove the upper ring that shielded the space between the inner and outer drum, and using a thin bottle-brush to brush the algae off. After that we let it stand for several hours with a swimming pool shock-treatment product to remove the last traces.

Moral of the story: do more full loads, and leave the machine's lid open to dry out properly. Perhaps even leave a day open to reduce the time the drum is wet.

Amendeer

Op prof A.C Cilliers se brief in die Burger van 24 Oktober kan ek nie help om te wonder of hy dan nie weet dat amendeer en amendement aaklige anglisismes is nie. Baie mooier is dit om eerder die konsep aan te pas of aanpassings te maak as om dit te amendeer of amendemente te maak. Nie dat ek in beginsel met hom verskil nie, dis maar net nie hoe ons ouens op straat Afrikaans praat nie.

At last

I created my own blog. Who knows if I will actually use it.