DAY 31

Ahh, getting up at 5.30 … in the MORNING! That’s not fair, I’ve got holidays.
The reason for this madness is our minimum 12 hour trip back so we had to leave early. And we were really evil bastards leaving without waking up Anzo the super-nephew and he loves us soooo much. But we just couldn’t bare doing it, just to make him cry ‘cause yesterday he said: ‘Uncle Charlie, don’t go!’
Fortunately Charles knows Ugandan goodbyes so after 5min he got in the car and started the engine. And Johanna told me a funny story of a friend of her mother who even started driving away so that her kids had to chase the car^^
On our way back we heard loads of news about the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche
being an old hardcore racist who couldn’t stand the new SA and still treated his black employees like slaves. This means he didn’t pay ‘em (at least the murderers who have handed themselves to the police claim that), slapped ‘em (was even in prison for attempted murder) and was head of a racist party called AWB trying to establish a state for whites only. (there is already a very small whites only town) While we were passing through old school farmland it became obvious why such stuff going against the constitution is still possible. This is a remote, vast and empty countryside where the white farmers own all the land so they can basically do whatever they want because there is no alternative place to work for their employees. (during Segregation only 8% of the land was given to black people) Furthermore most of the black farm workers have no education at all or had only basic lessons in Afrikaans and reading the Bible leaving massive urbanisation into townships as the sole opportunity. There are even cases in the Western Cape where farmers pay their labourers with booze which is just disgusting. Obviously loads of this stuff is against the law but the government can’t do much in those areas and even if someone would complain (many people don’t know their rights) in a town it probably wouldn’t change a thing because the town is run by farmers being in charge of everything. This is no joke, when Charles (he’ s a consultant) wanted to meet a client, his employer made him drive around one of those towns because the insurance wouldn’t pay if something would happen to him inside. On the other hand side over 3000 farmers got killed since Apartheid ended, some of the killings being hate crime but most of ‘em because employees got abused badly as described above. Still there’re loads of farmers being good employers even speaking Xhosa and their kids mix with the farmers, the stuff above is just the worst of the worst which is still happening. And now another thing adds to the already tense situation, this stupid motherfucker Julius Malema (the leader of the ANC youth league) started singing the ‘kill the Boer’ song in public and he has loads of influence on young people. Now take into consideration that the murderers of Terre'Blanche were 27 and 15 years old and you can imagine what the hardcore racists from the AWB think. Unfortunately loads of black people are still thinking in old patterns (who could blame ‘em after almost 50 years of Apartheid and over 300 years of abuse by the white man) and they see racism everywhere. Some who didn’t benefit from reconciliation (which is the majority of the black population) are still angry that over 80% of the rich in this country are white and these are people being easy to influence and longing for revenge. That’s why it is so sad that a member of the ANC sings those old songs spreading hatred. The ANC used to fight for a multiracial South Africa where everybody no matter where he came from is treated equal. Now it seems that the charismatic leaders of the past like Nelson Mandela are replaced by opportunistic, nationalist populists who instead of doing serious politics to bring prosperity for a long period of time, spend their time playing football in the townships showing that they’re close to the people, present easy scapegoats while being bribed and can’t even read the speeches that other people wrote for them. (just look for some speeches of the president Jacob Zuma) The sad thing is that this happens all over the globe. People are fed with puppets like Angela Merkel always saying ‘This can’t be solved alone.’ or ‘Considering this question all of us have to work together.’ but barely taking the position of the people who voted for her.
I just hope that this will not lead to serious riots and that people will not fuck the achievements of the past 16 years.
We arrived after 12.5 hours, had a tea and went to bed.