The Most Developed Country In Africa...supposedly

The problem is, I can't really see South Africa moving forward in any way. It's just a ridiculous place through and through. Yes it's beautiful, and things do seem to work here - in general, but nothing is improving with the big issues that actually matter.

Like HIV. The government seems to be racking up the education and the access to contraceptives and healthcare, but the populace seems determined to resist it. Young people still don't go for tests - even though they are free, they still don't use condoms - despite the fact that they are everywhere, and they still don't tell anyone even if they do have the disease. They just go on being promiscuous, spreading this plague which is wiping out an entire generation here.

I'd like to say that my views on this are only a microcosm of society, and that broadly things are moving forward. But the truth is, I have been to quite a few places now and everywhere is the same. South Africa is no better than other countries in this regard, as with the likes of tribalism and a conservatism which makes the right wing of the Tories look like proponents for a socialist revolutionaries.

People are too focused on the cure rather than on prevention. And we all know which is better than which.

It does not help that everyone in the country is racist. Or 'racialistic' as some boer tried to call it, whilst he explained how all black people are stupid. They don't trust the black population (you do kind of understand why when since Mandela things have kind of gone downhill somewhat, especially for the whites), and as a result there are two sectors of the population, who don't mix. Therefore there is no free transfer or exchange of wealth or property, and thus very little social mobility. It is messed up.

You know that things are wrong when Oxfam don't want to know anymore. They moved out last year, so did VSO - the main organisation for western volunteers. But then, white people can't own land in certain parts of the country, and they can't be employed in others. And if the only people with the required skills are white, what are you supposed to do?

It is just such a shame. At some point this bubble is going to burst - which seems soon, based on the current political strife (the ANC, the only real political party here, is about to implode), and when it does, I fear for South Africa.

Not that I'll be here then. I'll be working some boring nine to five in an office five minutes from the Isle of Dogs. But I would like to come back here some day, and see some of these things sorted out.