SA Rocks

One of the perks of running SA Rocks is the letters to the editor that I receive. This is one of those letters, one of those moments when people realise that the world is bigger than them and their immediate actions.

Hi Nic

As a major supporter of my home country South Africa, I felt the need to write this, I suppose just to make people aware of the people that actually do work hard in this country without any recognition. Because I truly do believe that SA Rocks!

I was out in Cape Town the other night and we were going to a night club, we took for granted the free entrance that had been organised for us, and we took for granted that we would be able to spend the night drinking and partying with good friends. However, in the car on the way to the club I realised that not everyone finished work at the standard 5pm. It was raining out and it seemed that a lot of the drains in the Rondebosch/Claremont area were blocked. They could just be left like that but instead, the council had sent a team of workers out, in the rain, to clear these blocked drains.

These are all people with friends and family, walking faceless and nameless beneath their rain coats on the city streets after 9pm, ensuring that our country is kept in shape. While we were underneath the club lights, they were beneath the street lights. You will see them in other forms too- the men emptying your bins during the week, the men fixing broken electricity poles in storms late at night and all the people who remain anonymous but keep our lives running smoothly often while we sleep.

It then dawned on me how many people we actually have in this country that do work hard, that do care, that don’t expect any recognition and that just want to support themselves and their families. We often berate car guards for being a nuisance and there are the drunk ones who are not employed by companies who are an irritant.

However, the guys employed by companies are always there, rain or shine, and all they want is a small tip in recognition for their work. I have on many occasions been one to complain about car guards, but then again what do I know about their lives? How do I know what they go through every day to get to work and support their families?

I have seen it in other forms as well. Not long ago I worked for a short time as a delivery person and had to deliver alcohol and drinks to various companies in Cape Town. While office workers sit in their offices and enjoy food and cool drinks from the canteen, they don’t realise the guys and girls who work behind the scenes to deliver these goods direct to their offices and the strenuous physical labour they endure for minimal pay.

I guess this is just to say that there are people out there working hard to ensure our well-being, but we just don’t take the time to acknowledge them.

So in a small manner, this is my acknowledgement to the teams of guys and girls who keep our country great.

Keep it up, there are people thinking of you.

Regards

Sean

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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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