SA Rocks

The post below is a letter that I received regarding a post that was written by Jason Von Berg. I appreciate these sort of letters and must admit that they don’t really come along very often.

The post ‘I want to stay,please give me a reason‘ spoke to me,but for me, its more sort of ‘I want to go,give me a reason’.

My parents are black South Africans who left during apartheid. I was born and live in England. There’s many things I love about England, but recently, I decided I want to move to SA. I am at the point of going to university and considered I could stay here. Or I could listen to the voice telling me I love South Africa, and feel I belong there,and make the move.It hasn’t been a simple choice, I keep up with South African papers/blogs and am aware of the problems facing the country (crime/aids etc) and whether I am imagining it or not, since I made my decision the news seems to be getting worse! With people ominously talking about South Africa becoming a banana state since Zuma, the load-shedding, Selebi etc.

This stuff can freak me out but then I consider that if you go on any british newsite, and a lot of the stories are also negative/about crime. I’m not trying to suggest that England and SA have a similar amount of crime, but, that is the nature of news anywhere, to report the negative over the positive.

I think of the things I love about SA, the people, the accents, the contrasts; visiting my grandmother in her quiet village in the north, then going out with my cousins in the fast-paced, vibrant Joburg, the beauty of the country, the chance to learn all those languages, or attempt to! And i cant wait to see how the world cup will turn out. And I know I’m generalising, but in the UK I sometimes feel that everything’s bought up, already done, a kind of sense of complacency about things, whereas in SA I feel a sense that things are still new, there are things that people are passionate about, want to fight for, and contribute to.

I’m sure you get a lot of mail from the ‘SASucks’ type of people who love to tell you about the negative and say you’re stupid for talking about the positive. I don’t see why your site offends them so much (you must be doing something right!) as for every positive site on the net about SA, there’s about 20 other negative ones where they can go and grumble. Also I am yet to read an article on SARocks that says ‘South Africa is perfect, there are no problems blah blah blah’. You don’t deny the problems, but instead of indulging in pointless rants about how rubbish everything supposedly is, you encourage conversations about how to possibly solve these problems and are unashamedly proud of the great deal of positive there is in South Africa as you should be. Since when did acknowledging the positive automatically mean you are ignorant of the negative???

I hope you’re aware that sites like yours mean a lot to people like me, who appreciate hearing the good news as well as the bad, keep up the good work, hopefully I’ll be joining you guys in SA soon!

Anon

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