By Torben Mottes:

Hello everyone,

Barbara and I have been wandering around in the South African bush for almost 2 months now and we thought it was high time that we sent you an email to let you know that we are alive and well. The internet cafes we have found have mostly been the equivalent of the good old '28.8K' modem days so we haven't had the patience, being the ex-San Fran all-you-can-eat Internet snobs that we are, to spend any more time at the computer than necessary. But given that we're a week away from our flight to Aussie, we thought we'd send some photos.

This link should get you to Yahoo Photos and then you just log in:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tmottes/album?.dir=/c009&.src=ph&.tok=phQJsrCBOzNsITVW

Link to Trip Photos [added by Off-the-Rails staff]

South Africa has been great. We've seen a lot of it, almost too much. I take the blame for that because it still hadn't quite sunk in that I was really unemployed and this wasn't one of those Corporate America 'Take a vacation but hurry back or your job might be gone' type trips.

We've done all the obligatory tourist stops like Robben Island where we saw the ex-max security prison where Nelson Mandela (and many others) were incarcerated for most of his 25 years of jail time.we climber Table Mountain, we visited the wine country, we did the safari in the Kruger National park, we did the scuba dive on the east coast and next week we're going hiking in the Drakensberg mountains. I'm also adding my own tourist 'must-see' which is to watch a Super 12 rugby game at Kings Park stadium in Durban (Go Sharks!). But we have seriously slowed down the pace after I finally calmed down and are now having a relaxing time on the beaches on the East Coast.

Cape town has many similarities to San Fran:
1. They both have an island which was once a max security prison and is now a major tourist attraction; although the prisoner were a very different sort (Machine Gun Kelly vs. Nelson Mandela). The tours are actually led by ex-political prisoners and it is really shocking to hear their stories.
2. They both have a wind that blows almost constantly through town and fog tends to accumulate in the late afternoon; although it's a much warmer wind and the fog tends to just hang around Table Mountain rather than blanket the entire town (other than Bernal Heights, of course).
3. They've jammed as many houses as they can into a small area regardless of how steep the hillside and still most of the houses are only 2 storeys (Tim, I'd continue to practice paralell parking on steep inclines with a stick-shift vehicle before coming here if I were you...)
4. They are surrounded by water but it's too bloody cold to get into. Cape town is only slightly warmer so you can get in up to your ankles rather then feel the frostbite set it already with your big toe.
5. There is a major wine-producing region a stone's throw away from town; although we've come to the conclusion that California wines are better (That said, our tight budget has meant that we're only drinking the 'value-priced' wines so there may well be a Peay wine threat out there).

But the big difference is obviously the townships. Just outside town are Guguleto and Kayalitsha, Cape town's Soweto equivalents. An Austrian couple that are friends of Barbara's, one a doctor and the other a physio, just happened to be here volunteering at the hospital in Guguleto while we were here. Despite the fact that Souith Africa has just celebrated 10 years of their new constitution and that the government does have money to spend and has been spending on social programs, efforts to standardize/equalize medical facilities for all people has made little progress. Let's not even mention housing and education. To hear from this couple how little equipment the hospital had was very sad and that includes basics liek wheelchairs.

To improve the quality of medical services in rural (black) areas the government has created a law that all new doctors wishing to set up practice must first set up a practice for 2 years in a rural location determined by the government before they can set up a practice anywhere else. The result has been that new white doctors have instead chosen to leave the country and practice in the US, Europe, Auusie rather than be forced to work in appalling conditions for very little money and at risk of personal injury/death.

South Africa is still a very violent country. The government just released annual numbers which show a drop in the percentage of violent crimes but there is a lot of scepticism as to how the numbers are gathered and reported. The violence is not just between the haves and the have-nots, but also inter-tribal. When the apartheid government created the townships and forcibly relocated blacks, they didn't care what tribe they belonged to and mixed them all up in the townships. They couldn't even bring most of the posessions they had with them so it caused them to steal from each other which escalated into stabbings, rapes and murders. The Austrian doctor said that the majority of the injuries he treated were stab wounds.

The governments efforts to redistribute wealth have been largely unsuccessful. Their black empowerment affirmative action has led to thousands of blacks being promoted to managerial positions they are not qualified to do and they've pushed the majority of white civil servants into early retirement and replaced them with blacks that don't know what they are doing. They've also required that any new government contracts can only be won by companies that are at least 51% black owned. This has forced companies to either give 51% of their companies to black people (I say give because obviously they can't afford to buy the stake) or to set up joint ventures with black companies.

These black companies are basically entities created by government ministers (or ex-ministers because once they've secured a joint venture they don't need their government jobs anymore) that have no product and no sales and any employees are family or friends. The only value they bring to the table is their 'blackness'.in order to qualify for government contracts which range from mining to logging, hotels, casinos, defense, etc. So without lifting a finger, they get 51% of the profits of the joint venture. This has created a small and very wealthy black elite.

While this may sound very critical, it's not. Short of privatizing every major industry, I don't know how you can attempt to redistribute wealth without creating situations that can be exploited for personal gain (especially by the government officials that are creating the laws) and privatization would scare off all foreign investment so fast they'd never recover. It's just amazing to see what is happening as this country tries to transition.

The real problem is that the average black person's life has not gotten better, in fact it's gotten worse in the last 10 years.Unemployment is about 40% (there are about 40 million blacks), most are still living in shanties in townships with even worse schooling and medical facilities than before mainly due to the incompetence of the unqualified civil servants. And HIV/AIDs is still on the rise, estimated at north of 30%. If enough of these average joes see the massive luxury homes in the super affluent neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't another round of violent revolt in South Africa.

At the same time, blacks in south Africa are so much better off than anywhere else in Africa. Illegal immigrants have been swarming in from MOzambique, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Zambia, etc. Many even risk trekking through the Kruger National park and park rangers have found remains of those that were attacked and eaten by lions and other predators. I can't remember the number tht they estimate are killed each week. Of course, this influx is also making it harder for the government to raise the general standard of living for everyone. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens here over the next 10 years.

Anyway, enough of my spouting off. I've attached some photos. barbara and I miss you all very much. If you live in the US, we hope you're planning a trip to europe for next year, if you live in europe we'll see you soon and if you live anywhere else, hopefully we see you along the way.

Hamba Gahle (Go well)

Torben and Barbara.