I appear to have opened a can of worms ont his whole subject, ...wasn't my original intention. Just a heads up to ppl thinking that light still shines out of this countries a** . There are too many ppl going around fooling themselves into thinking that everything is 'okay' . A man was killed in Pretoria a couple of hours after he landed in the country. Anyone doesn't like what I or anyone else for that matter have to say , ...fine, I have bigger things to worry about , but what if the bloke who is now dead happened to be your brother or son or father or friend..... (list can go on, .. but I wont :D) . Sorry for any offence passed off to ppl through this thread. But nothing will change my opinion of this place, being here in 99 doesn't mean squat as it was almost ten years ago and I live here now. Things have steadily declined in the last two to three years, that I have noticed anyway. If ppl here opened there eyes things would be different but it seems putting on the blinkers and pretending like the government gives a **** is easier. Actually isn't anyones problem but our here in SA. Just a bit of info for ppl who might bring their kids here on holiday, ...you might go home a family member or two short and rather heart-sore.

I'll stop the rant now, not my style. So how about soup? we all like soup?

10 years ago lol. Its closer to 5 mate.

Nevermind the crime,im not going due to the high number of extremely arrogant white South Africans:lol1:

My G/F is going there in a few weeks for a month to help orphans, which if i am honest, i am not overly keen on TBH.

Costing her a fortune as well.

testing times ahead for me i rekon :cuckoo:

If anyone has driven through the townships and shanty towns that surround any large city in SA you will understand why every hotel has armed guards, and nice houses have razor wire fences that are 12ft high and private armed security response. There is still mass poverty, and with that, crime and gangs follow hand in hand.

Sideshow Bob - have you seen the slums that surround the main roads out of Durban? Corregated tin shacks lit by football stadium lights that stretch as far as the eye can see in every single direction. The cities are massesly overpopulated. And also suffer immigration problems from the more volatile neighbouring countries.

The only time I liked SA was when I was not in a city, out in the in winery districts - where people didn't need to surround their homes is 12ft of razor wire for their own safety.

Did a 3 week fly drive there in 2003. Only place we didn't really feel safe was Jo'burg. There were some low-lives hanging around in the lifts at Sandton mall who you would deffo cross the street to avoid. Somewhat strangely nobody got in to take a ride with them. Ironically, Soweto was much safer.

The rest was relatively fine and they had better roads than most European countries to be honest. :thumb:

Mass poverty, crime and gangs do not go hand in hand. I've spent a lot of time in India and it doesn't get much poorer than that. No crime or gangs to talk of :confused:

For what it is worth, here's my point of view on SA.

My parents moved from the UK to SA in the 60's.
I was born in Cape Town in 1972. My parents decided in 1980 to bring the family back home to the UK as things were not particularly safe, and that was back in 1980.
I still have 2 sisters who live in Cape Town with all the usual high fencing, bars on the windows, armed response etc as is normal in a SA home.

I am in Cape Town working at the moment on a 2 month contract.
I love this place with all my heart being born here and all, it is a beatiful place.
That said I would not move back out here for all the money in China, why? Simple really I value my wife and childs life too much to put them in an environment where going to get a bottle of milk late at night could result in them never coming home.
I fully realise the UK is not the safest place in the world, but down in the South West where I live (Plymouth) you don't see many houses with barbed wire and armed response signs etc.

Just a bunch of whingeing Jaapies...:D

Totsiens.

Not going??? you think we invited you? the website is up to discourage ppl from coming here, I guess its true then ...ignorance is bliss. :confused::lol1:

Doesn't all together bug me. I hope you end up here having your rectum re-aligned by one of the rapist scum that roam free and then we see how annoyed you get by the 'arrogant white south african' . You'll deffinitaly get annoyed with me because I'll be standing there chuckling my friggin ass off.

Dont judge what you apparently know s**t-all about. :brickwall

I was thinking about a trip to SA, but it's a no-go for me now!.... so if anything you have helped one person.......... cheers mate :thumb:

If you hate it so much why not move?

To be fair, I have only been on holiday there a few times recently.
I know there is some very violent crime, I lost a friend who was shot in the head for his car in Durban, so im all too aware of how bad things can be, but recently I have felt it was getting better, but having only been a tourist as opposed to a resident, I admit that opinion could be rose tinted.

I am actually reconsidering emigration options to include some less volatile countries, but arent going to write it off completely.

Glad somebody has open eyes. I'm trying like hell to get myself and family out of here ASAP.

That website is just a drop in the ocean, so I put it to anybody who has had a big mouth about whats said on it to come and see for themselves. I never meant to insight any kind of bad-feeling or offence or anything of the kind but apparently sometimes that can't be avoided. bottom line, you dont like it ...BITE ME.

I could quite comfortable leave on my own, but I have a girlfriend and a family of whom I'd never leave in the lurch. I give it about 3 or so years maximum. Exchange rate isn't helping much either. I could sell my house car and bike and maybe get a bungalo somewhere ;)

spoke to the G/F yesterday, she tells me that she is not leaving the airport in Jo`burg, so i am assuming that she has to get a connecting flight somewhere, she mentioned another name but it eludes me.

she knows that j0`burg is supposed to be "well dodgy" but assures me that whoever is running this orphans scheme will be looking after the people on it while they get to the place they need to go (supposed to be somewhere much better, i don't believe non of it TBH)

plenty of orphans in this country IMO :(

I wouldnt worry too much, the charity schemes of that nature are very well received, I think its more the couple wandering around with cell phones and expensive cameras through the streets of Jo'burg that have to worry, your girlfriend will be with a large group, and highly unlikely to end up in trouble.

I know people who have done the same, built houses in the townships, and its well run and very safe, so dont worry, im sure she'll be looked after, and actually have a pretty amazing experience over there.

Look my friend I think most of us know that RSA is a rough place now. But you came on here with a blatantly racist website and asking what do you expect when the blacks take over - or words very close to that. I am saying that if the Afrikaners had taken a different approach other that white supremacy for years things might have been different. In one post you seem aggrieved that you had a relatively poor upbringing but that would still have been a million miles from the black kid in Soweto say. Times change but there are many whites that seem to think that they are superior to their fellow blacks. And they are in a way because thay have had an education for starters but the Afrikaner prevented all that for blacks. IIRC blacks weren't even allowed to worship in the same church.

It is very very complex. I, for one, would rather British troops were in Zimbabwe sorting out Mugabe rather than fighting an unwinnable battle against the Taliban. But that will never happen; ironically because Mugabe is black and protected by many surrounding nations who would accuse UK of being racist, no matter that he has wrecked a country and its people.

FWIW I lived in J'Burg for some years in the seventies. I designed and built water supply schemes. I also lived in Washington DC in 1969 which was the then murder capital of the world and have travelled quite a bit in black Africa. I would say Lagos, for example, is every bit as dodgy as parts of SA if you choose the wrong location.

If I were there now I would move back to UK or to New Zealand. dl

If she's with people who regularly do this sort of thing and know how important protection is I'm sure she'll be fine. There are ways and means to ensure the safest stay which I'm pretty damn sure they would have taken into account. What area is she in?

will find out tonight when i pick her up, i keep forgetting!!

uh alright, either way I'm sure they will have taken more than enough precautions to ensure the ppls safety, you have my best wishes for her to enjoy herself and get home safely. Why she doing this anyway? if she runs into hassle there's a scoob club here that I'm sure could help too, hehe.

she wanted to go travelling in between her degree and getting into med school

helping orphans with aids or other diseases seams like it kills 2 birds with one stone, travel and helping others "on the CV"

A website where ppl black and white alike are able to publicly tell there story of violent crime is racist?? you missed the bus on that one. What the author of the page is doing is trying to get the government to stop covering up an obvious problem in the country and to get the rest of the world to see what actually goes on here, Your calling me racist, fine , I am 22, I had nothing to do with apartheid, I know little black kids didn't either but thats just how it is. I have been blatently told that I cannot have jobs, even though I was more than qualified, because I am not black. <-- THAT is racism. the country is governed by a selfish child with a vendetta against the very ppl who support it. I have a good hundred or so stories of what happens here and if you dissagree with that I'm sorry, I have lived with this for long enough now. And the experiences I'v had, it is not easy if possible to not be angry. We live with it every day, ppl getting killed for fun. Its only so long before the good ppl start killing back, and some have started already....civil war. that what we want?

You apparently have strong feelings about this which I cannot nor would I want to or try to change. But until you'v picked up one of your very best friends to put him into a coroners van because he was shot in the head for no apparent reason and the ONE policemen is too understaffed to lift him 'the right way' ... until then please dont go calling me things.

We could just leave things the way they were, let ppl take everything I'v worked my arse off for for themselves and let them rape my girlfriend and torture my family, ...because of 'poverty' . I dont think so, anyone comes near myself again or near my family and they catch a bullet, the time for waiting for authorities and 'better life' is gone, I wouldn't think twice about it.


and that is the opinion of most south africans who work hard and pay their taxes.

^^Why dont you leave then? Im not surprised at all going by the history of that country. I dont understand why you think that as soon as the white oppressors were overthrown you should expect fair treatment :lol:

I get the impression these days that Government generally in the world is becoming more corrupt and less able to actually run a country for the sake of the electorate. Professional politicians seem to be much more interested in feathering their own nests and allowing their country to go to the dogs while they are doing it!

Les :(

"Living there in 99 meant squat" - being 22 means squat in terms of having any sort of real experience or world perspective, I'm afraid.

I've been to many, many countries where life is every bit as cheap as SA, if not cheaper, and, on balance, the quality of life in RSA far exceeds that of an awful lot of other places (cf Angola, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad, Krygyzstan, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, etc, etc, etc) and, again on balance, is actually better than a lot of the so called developed world to my mind. I wanted to stay, and was travelling there once a month after I left until Oct 2003 so not that long ago really, but my work took me elsewhere.

David Lock speaks a lot of sense above.I have the misfortune to have had dinner with Mugabe back in the 90s and he was an evil and arrogant little **** then. If only Zim had oil instead of agriculture/water - he would have been "sorted" many years ago.

PS I like soup, but can't stand mealie pap HTH

We have a south African at work who moved here a couple of years ago, compared to here he had a relatively comfy lifestyle. Final straw came when his wife was mugged twice in the space of a month, the last resulting in a broken nose and a facefull of glass from the broken car window. all for a handbag.
saying that things are not much better here at the minute.

Take that back there are some sick fcuks in sa:mad:


http://www.crimexposouthafrica.co.za...r%20photos.htm


Nws kid safe or nervous disposition safe BEWARE

:lol1: That was just too easy,SA,s they snap everytime!:luxhello: .FYI i know enough about SA and the people who live there to say exactly what i want,thats why im glad your stuck in SA and i hope you have a great life out there:p

how is "livingstone" in the grand scheme of things?

ohh what a surprise, the G/F has been there since monday, and last night there "home" got burgled and a few of the volunteers had there stuff nicked.

im told the people running the scheme are not that arsed, locks have been added?? but thats all, i knew the idea was dodgy as fook :mad:

that is like robbing samaritans in this country IMO