Sanity

I grew up in a lunatic-fringe country, ‘Apartheid South Africa’as it has become known. I grew up in a world where I would be shunned as a South African abroad. Given grief and abuse because of what the country was doing to it’s majority black population.

And now I live in one of the few sane countries in the world, ‘New South Africa’. A country where,

1. when the deputy president is charged with corruption he actually gets fired despite having incredible influence and being able to possibly split the ruling party.

2. when a polition gets convicted of corruption (accepting a car at 50% off) he actually goes to jail.

3. the government becomes the first to voluntarily destroy it’s own nuclear weapons and bow out of the ‘nuclear club’.

4. despite the vicious attacks on their AIDS policy the government continues to call for AIDS dissdents to be heard in the name of good science and fails to cave into the pressure mounted by billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies (remember, good science likes debate, it doesn’t shout it down like republican politicians in the USA). Bear in mind that politicians in other countries queue up for the campaign backing laid on by these companies.

5. if evidence of a crime is gained ilegally (due to, say, a policeman making a minor procedural mistake) it can still be deemed admissable “in the name of justice” instead of letting the miserable bastard(s) off. Take note, my dear Jacob Zuma, and stay away OJ.

6. we did away with torture rather than re-introducing it worldwide with a little ‘spin’.

7. when silly politicians decided to try and gag newspapers they got beat. Not immediately but they did.

Not that we’re perfect. We have high crime, annoying old people walking slowly on pavements and it’s too cold in winter to make the beach (unless you’re Scottish).

But perfect isn’t the same as sane. We need to remember that.

VIVA South Africa, and, please don’t shoot me. Sure, there, have my wallet…

And finally- well done wikipedia for telling China to take a hike on censorship. No caving like google and yahoo. No looking only at the money. Perhaps integrity can count sometimes.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1869074,00.html