Today I went to IKEA with my girlfriend for dinner.
We couldn’t find an empty table but we saw one with a single foreigner by himself.
I went over and asked if anyone else was sitting there and he said no.
So we sat down and started talking together. I asked him what brought him to Taiwan and he said… “My house was robbed. I wasn’t home at the time but my wife and daughter were at home. Daughter was raped and killed and wife was also killed and possibly raped. It was at that point I decided to leave and start a new life.”
He then while visibly holding back his tears showed us pictures of his family including his wife and daughter.
I really didn’t know how to continue the conversation other than to grab his line details and offer him help integrating to Taiwan.
South Africa has been deteriorating for years now.
I had a South African Chinese/Taiwanese co-worker almost 2 decades ago. Said same thing, but no rape nor killing, just family tied up while perpetrators went through home burglarizing it.
Bloody hell that is steep. Always heard from Sepentza on youtube how awful it is there but wasn’t ever really sure if he was exaggerating, i guess not.
It seems stupid people are running the country. I mean literally stupid, not stupid because I don’t agree with them. I actually think they’re really low IQ people that can’t do any better.
Yeah, I worked with a South African guy, he was straight-forward as anything, and had a reasonably short temper. Really great guy. Anyway, he was in the police in Jo’burg for a while. Told me if I was going to South Africa, then he’s coming with me. He then stated he’s never going back.
Doesn’t sound exactly like Robert Redford flying a Gypsy Moth Bi-plane around with gay abandon. Or was that Kenya? Either way, point made
No one wants to address the elephant in the room. The fact is, quality of life went down a lot for the white minority when apartheid ended. I had a South African colleague when I was in Korea who was drinking and half-crying one night about how his family lost over half their wealth when apartheid ended. That’s also when personal safety went out the window with carjackings and home invasions becoming commonplace. I’m not saying it was a bad thing it ended as the Black majority was being oppressed, of course… I’m just repeating what he said.
Wait you never said where the guy’s from so how is it about South Africa.
I seen a lot of south africans in Taiwan, or rather seen a lot of them, of course white south africans. I heard about SA losing a bunch of visa free access to countries (it lost it to the UK a while back) and everyone from SA tells me it’s gone to shit.
I don’t like apartheid, and it’s wrong, but raping and killing an entire family is much worse. I hope whoever did it got justice.
criminal probably thinks they are getting their “just desserts” by committing crimes like this. It does not excuse it at all. I hope the criminal gets his just desserts.
The South Africans I’ve met seem really happy … though I met them all in Europe (there seem to be a lot of them in the UK and NL), except a tourist in Thailand who’s half Taiwanese. And they were all white (or half white).
The worry is people start coming out with “oh the country was better under apartheid” type sentiments. That’s up there with, “say what you want about Hitler but at least the trains ran on time”.
I also have some South African friends, in fact i visited them there in early 1997, not long after the ANC had taken over. Those friends have since migrated to Australia (there are lots of SA people in Perth, and apparently one affluent suburb there is nicknamed "Little Johannesburg!!).
My friends there carried guns, and Domestic flights had places at the Airports where you checked your gun in even!!!
Things were bad enough in the days of white rule, but it got worse after the so called freedom, as apparently the ANC promised the world, and delivered very little - and lined their own pockets.
Sadly, much of Africa these days is corrupt, in most cases it started after the various countries got Independence from the UK or France who were the two main colonial powers.
To make matters worse, SA has been inundated with refugees from neighbours, particularly Zimbabwe.
Then the Government owned airline, South African Airways, went broke in 2019 and shut down for over a year and now only operates about 10 Aircraft, almost all on domestic routes.
Well … yes, but the problem is that it’s probably true (the apartheid bit, not the Hitler bit). And whose fault is that, exactly? White people aren’t in charge anymore. If the country is a heap of shit where people are wishing for the bad old days, the solution is obvious: the ANC need to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
It really shouldn’t matter what colour of skin the people in charge have, as long as they’re running the country fairly and competently.
At the end of the day it’s all about institution. I think there are some good articles and documentaries about sub saharan Africa in general. The big problem is there are no institutions. The colonists brought some semblance of institutions but much of Africa has been rather tribal for all of known history, and it’s very hard to undo that. That tribalism is what made it so easy to colonize the place in the first place. It’s not like China where they had strong institutions for thousands of years, and they couldn’t really be colonized.
Sure there are exceptions like Botswana but in general, governments there are loyal to one tribe and will only enrich that tribe at the expense of the rest, and the whole place is just a game of thrones and king of the hill, where power keeps switching hands but never benefiting the country as a whole.
I honestly don’t know what can be done. Until they realize that tribalism is destructive to everyone as a whole and establish stable institutions, Africa will forever remain poor and colonized. It’s hoped China will establish institution there.
It is morally a tough question. However, it could’ve most certainly ended differently.
One thing that should have happened is the ANC should’ve been forced to break up into smaller factions and maybe adjust the voting system to something that ensures that one party cannot have so much power.
The problem really lies with the ANC. Not on the ending of apartheid. However, I do think those who ended it wanted to prove a point lol.
Either way… the country IS far worse off now. What was once a developed country is now third world and getting worse and worse it seems.
If the ANC keep this up, it will happen organically. People find solutions to problems by themselves if the government refuses to do so. And if it does happen, it will be 100% the fault of the ANC.
