Please bear in mind that in this post any reference to black South
Africans is not racially intended in any form or manner. We must accept
the fact that we have a population made up of different population
groups. Blacks, Whites, Indians and Coloureds, each one of these
different coloured population groups should be proud of the fact of the
colour they are. Each person in this country can rise above their
circumstances and become who they want to be, with dedication and hard
work, because the opportunities are there to be taken if you have the
courage to do so. Take responsibility for your own life and stop blaming
others for your problems!
The “first” world and its technology arrived in South Africa in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck was requested to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa. He landed three ships Drommedaris , Reijger and Goede Hoop at the future Cape Town in 1652 and fortified the site as a way-station for the VOC (Dutch East India Trading Co) trade route between the Netherlands and the East Indies. Van Riebeeck was Commander of the Cape from 1652 to 1662; he was charged with building a fort, with improving the natural anchorage at Table Bay, planting fruit and vegetables and obtaining livestock from the indigenous Khoi people. (It may surprise you to realise that it was only the Khoi people who were living in the Cape at the time.)
From this we can see that Southern Africa was 1652 years behind the “first” world countries and had the virtually impossible task of trying to “catch up” technologically speaking to the rest of the world!
When the then ‘first” world technology arrived, “South Africa” was already 1652 years behind. The “first” world had to prioritise what they needed to do and therefore built infrastructures such as buildings, harbours, houses, roads, railways, running water and communications with the unskilled labour force available. The 1820 English Settlers also had a hand in the financing of the infrastructures.
When gold and diamonds were discovered, greed for wealth and power resulted in the Boer War and with it came great bitterness, resentfulness and anger. The white population was divided into segments of Colonials (British) and Boers with the black people sandwiched in between and growing steadily in numbers and 300 years later they were still largely unskilled with some semi-skilled or partly skilled people. That adds another 300 years onto the 1652 we already had, which brings us up to 1952 only 7 years after the 2 nd world war.
The country eventually became a Republic and as the large majority of whites were Afrikaans speaking, they were given back control of the country. Even then, there were still deeply entrenched inherited prejudices between these two white groups of the population and up and till then that is where most of their efforts were concentrated on, with the blacks still sandwiched in between them during this period of prejudice and of war. Time is still the great healer and much has been done in the restoration department of human endeavour, but it remains a fact that black “South Africans” and black Africans were largely and still are to this day, in the majority, approximately 1950 years behind the “first” world, technologically speaking.
There are many black South Africans who rose to the challenge and vigorously sought to be educated and they strove for a better life and although there were many challenges, they overcame them and the results can be seen in their lives and their children’s lives today.
One of those individuals is Nelson Mandela; he was born on 18 July 1918 and at age seven he was the first of his family to attend a school, he completed his Junior Certificate in two years instead of the normal 3 years. After matriculating he started to study for a B.A. at the Fort Hare University. At the end of his first year, he became involved in a boycott by the Students Representative Council against the university policies, and was asked to leave Fort Hare. He later started work as an articled clerk at a law firm and while working there, he completed his B.A. degree at the University of South Africa via correspondence, after which he started with his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Even when he was in prison he still continued with his education studying through the University of London by correspondence through its External Program and received the degree of Bachelor of Laws.
Now the majority of the black South Africans did not have Mandela’s mindset and continued with their lives according to their customs and traditions and western education was not high on their list of things to do or strive for. In view of this we do not have the situation prevalent in the USA where the African-Americans had generations of education and life skills in the “first” world. It is therefore not right to compare Africans born and raised in Africa with African-Americans or with Africans who have lived in “first” world countries for generations and who have learned the skills needed.
History is guilty of breeding a handout society. Despite the fact that Africa and all its very costly superstructures such as road’s railroad, dams, buildings, communications, hospitals, high tech farming, etc, having just been handed over to them in pristine condition, they were totally incapable and therefore incompetent to maintain it, let alone manage it. The result is a not unexpected the collapse of these superstructure foundations on which a nation has to BUILD if it is to blossom and grow.
Africa is full of examples of management incapability and resultant incompetence. The “FAT CATS” in the seats of government get fatter and fatter while the rest of the population gets thinner and thinner in more ways than one.
One is either capable or not and that will determine whether you are competent or not. When Nelson Mandela was our President he kept the skilled (white) workers in place to a certain degree and the country could be run efficiently, but when Thabo Mbeki took over he relentlessly marginalized the skilled workers and replaced them with people (black) who did not have the knowledge, skills, understanding, etc of what was required to maintain the infrastructure of the country and that is why South Africa’s infrastructure has crumbled. We have crisis after crisis, electricity load shedding, polluted water, national highways not maintained to ensure safety, insufficient teachers to teach, insufficient schools, poorly run hospitals, I can go on and on.
It is only common sense to train a person for a number of years from the foundation of a business to junior management and then to senior management, of course also making sure that person is literate and can speak English fluently to ensure that they understand what the customer requires.
You cannot take a person who used to work on the streets of the Municipality and make him the overseer or manager of public works without proper training and supervision to ensure that he knows and applies what he has learnt properly. It may seem ridiculous but that is exactly what happens in this country. So the normal maintenance of equipment is not kept up to date and when the equipment malfunctions they just leave it as they do not know what process to follow to get it up and running again and everything comes to a grinding halt.
The government has acknowledged that it is not a lack of funding that has caused our country’s problems; it is a lack of skilled people in management and grassroots positions. In fact most of the Municipalities and Schools have only used 50% of their annual budgets because they do not have the skills to plan and execute what they had budgeted for and at the end of the financial year they lose the unused portion of their budget which should have been used to upgrade, maintain, build, expand, etc their area. Who loses out then? Their community!!!! Their people!!!! Their children!!!! WHAT A WASTE!
It is wonderful when you are democratically elected to run your country on the promises you made to your people, but you are expected to keep the promises if you do not want anarchy on your streets. Yes it is good to promise electricity to all, but then you need to plan forward and ensure that you can meet the increased demand. Do the maths, if you promise electricity to approx 40 million people who previously did not have it, it stands to reason that you will need to build more power stations, not close them down! The other aspect they did not consider is that they would not get paid for the electricity provided as most of the black South Africans could not afford to pay for electricity; they had to write off billions over the years.
We have a time bomb ticking in our country you can push people only so far, no further! Just below the surface there lurks a danger, the one day a person is a responsible security guard watching over your property and the next day he becomes a person with a grievance and damages your property or even kills you. Then again one day a person comes and collects your garbage and the next day he goes on a rampage through the city streets damaging cars, shop windows, rubbish bins, etc because he has a grievance with someone else, but he does not care that he is damaging property of innocent people.
The main cause of this is a lack of education and understanding of how business enterprises work, how any organisation should work and because they are playing “catch up” with the rest of the world they are trying to force people into situations they are not trained for and of course this has disastrous effects throughout the whole country, economy, education, healthcare system, etc.
I hope this gives non-African readers a better insight and understanding into the problem of playing “catch up”. Unfortunately they might not have sufficient time to catch up because HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, bacteria poisoning from polluted water and the crime in the country is killing so many people per annum and with the multiplying effect of these it could wipe out millions of people in a very short time.
The “first” world and its technology arrived in South Africa in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck was requested to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa. He landed three ships Drommedaris , Reijger and Goede Hoop at the future Cape Town in 1652 and fortified the site as a way-station for the VOC (Dutch East India Trading Co) trade route between the Netherlands and the East Indies. Van Riebeeck was Commander of the Cape from 1652 to 1662; he was charged with building a fort, with improving the natural anchorage at Table Bay, planting fruit and vegetables and obtaining livestock from the indigenous Khoi people. (It may surprise you to realise that it was only the Khoi people who were living in the Cape at the time.)
From this we can see that Southern Africa was 1652 years behind the “first” world countries and had the virtually impossible task of trying to “catch up” technologically speaking to the rest of the world!
When the then ‘first” world technology arrived, “South Africa” was already 1652 years behind. The “first” world had to prioritise what they needed to do and therefore built infrastructures such as buildings, harbours, houses, roads, railways, running water and communications with the unskilled labour force available. The 1820 English Settlers also had a hand in the financing of the infrastructures.
When gold and diamonds were discovered, greed for wealth and power resulted in the Boer War and with it came great bitterness, resentfulness and anger. The white population was divided into segments of Colonials (British) and Boers with the black people sandwiched in between and growing steadily in numbers and 300 years later they were still largely unskilled with some semi-skilled or partly skilled people. That adds another 300 years onto the 1652 we already had, which brings us up to 1952 only 7 years after the 2 nd world war.
The country eventually became a Republic and as the large majority of whites were Afrikaans speaking, they were given back control of the country. Even then, there were still deeply entrenched inherited prejudices between these two white groups of the population and up and till then that is where most of their efforts were concentrated on, with the blacks still sandwiched in between them during this period of prejudice and of war. Time is still the great healer and much has been done in the restoration department of human endeavour, but it remains a fact that black “South Africans” and black Africans were largely and still are to this day, in the majority, approximately 1950 years behind the “first” world, technologically speaking.
There are many black South Africans who rose to the challenge and vigorously sought to be educated and they strove for a better life and although there were many challenges, they overcame them and the results can be seen in their lives and their children’s lives today.
One of those individuals is Nelson Mandela; he was born on 18 July 1918 and at age seven he was the first of his family to attend a school, he completed his Junior Certificate in two years instead of the normal 3 years. After matriculating he started to study for a B.A. at the Fort Hare University. At the end of his first year, he became involved in a boycott by the Students Representative Council against the university policies, and was asked to leave Fort Hare. He later started work as an articled clerk at a law firm and while working there, he completed his B.A. degree at the University of South Africa via correspondence, after which he started with his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Even when he was in prison he still continued with his education studying through the University of London by correspondence through its External Program and received the degree of Bachelor of Laws.
Now the majority of the black South Africans did not have Mandela’s mindset and continued with their lives according to their customs and traditions and western education was not high on their list of things to do or strive for. In view of this we do not have the situation prevalent in the USA where the African-Americans had generations of education and life skills in the “first” world. It is therefore not right to compare Africans born and raised in Africa with African-Americans or with Africans who have lived in “first” world countries for generations and who have learned the skills needed.
History is guilty of breeding a handout society. Despite the fact that Africa and all its very costly superstructures such as road’s railroad, dams, buildings, communications, hospitals, high tech farming, etc, having just been handed over to them in pristine condition, they were totally incapable and therefore incompetent to maintain it, let alone manage it. The result is a not unexpected the collapse of these superstructure foundations on which a nation has to BUILD if it is to blossom and grow.
Africa is full of examples of management incapability and resultant incompetence. The “FAT CATS” in the seats of government get fatter and fatter while the rest of the population gets thinner and thinner in more ways than one.
One is either capable or not and that will determine whether you are competent or not. When Nelson Mandela was our President he kept the skilled (white) workers in place to a certain degree and the country could be run efficiently, but when Thabo Mbeki took over he relentlessly marginalized the skilled workers and replaced them with people (black) who did not have the knowledge, skills, understanding, etc of what was required to maintain the infrastructure of the country and that is why South Africa’s infrastructure has crumbled. We have crisis after crisis, electricity load shedding, polluted water, national highways not maintained to ensure safety, insufficient teachers to teach, insufficient schools, poorly run hospitals, I can go on and on.
It is only common sense to train a person for a number of years from the foundation of a business to junior management and then to senior management, of course also making sure that person is literate and can speak English fluently to ensure that they understand what the customer requires.
You cannot take a person who used to work on the streets of the Municipality and make him the overseer or manager of public works without proper training and supervision to ensure that he knows and applies what he has learnt properly. It may seem ridiculous but that is exactly what happens in this country. So the normal maintenance of equipment is not kept up to date and when the equipment malfunctions they just leave it as they do not know what process to follow to get it up and running again and everything comes to a grinding halt.
The government has acknowledged that it is not a lack of funding that has caused our country’s problems; it is a lack of skilled people in management and grassroots positions. In fact most of the Municipalities and Schools have only used 50% of their annual budgets because they do not have the skills to plan and execute what they had budgeted for and at the end of the financial year they lose the unused portion of their budget which should have been used to upgrade, maintain, build, expand, etc their area. Who loses out then? Their community!!!! Their people!!!! Their children!!!! WHAT A WASTE!
It is wonderful when you are democratically elected to run your country on the promises you made to your people, but you are expected to keep the promises if you do not want anarchy on your streets. Yes it is good to promise electricity to all, but then you need to plan forward and ensure that you can meet the increased demand. Do the maths, if you promise electricity to approx 40 million people who previously did not have it, it stands to reason that you will need to build more power stations, not close them down! The other aspect they did not consider is that they would not get paid for the electricity provided as most of the black South Africans could not afford to pay for electricity; they had to write off billions over the years.
We have a time bomb ticking in our country you can push people only so far, no further! Just below the surface there lurks a danger, the one day a person is a responsible security guard watching over your property and the next day he becomes a person with a grievance and damages your property or even kills you. Then again one day a person comes and collects your garbage and the next day he goes on a rampage through the city streets damaging cars, shop windows, rubbish bins, etc because he has a grievance with someone else, but he does not care that he is damaging property of innocent people.
The main cause of this is a lack of education and understanding of how business enterprises work, how any organisation should work and because they are playing “catch up” with the rest of the world they are trying to force people into situations they are not trained for and of course this has disastrous effects throughout the whole country, economy, education, healthcare system, etc.
I hope this gives non-African readers a better insight and understanding into the problem of playing “catch up”. Unfortunately they might not have sufficient time to catch up because HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, bacteria poisoning from polluted water and the crime in the country is killing so many people per annum and with the multiplying effect of these it could wipe out millions of people in a very short time.
