Hi All,
Been a long time since I was last here. Originally under the name robcraig, but couldn't remember my password, so just reregistered. I was reading a blog on News24 last week about expats etc. Didn't take long to figure out who were residents in SA and who were expats. The aggression in the local's writing was unreal. One of the bloggers actually stated that ther had been 43000 whites murdered in SA, since ANC took over. that equated to over 7 murdered every day for 16 yars - that's a shock. But still , the locals were angry that us expats try and persuade them to leave and tell "such lies" about SA, that are so unfounded (feel a Tui ad coming on here).
The irony is that I have been here since August 2007 on a WP (submitted ITA 30 November 2009, so holding thumbs for positive results soon), I have already served one year as a deputy chairman and am in my second year as chairman of the Porirua Chamber of Commerce. I am well known to a number of members of parliament, have a house friend (Samoan) who is the list co ordinator for the Labour Party and head of a major section of CCDHB, have met Bill English and he is a really pleasant man (did think he was the local high school head boy at first - damn he looks young), so have been too busy to worry about convincing anyone to come here. Our NZ) crime rate doesn't even feature in accordance with what is posted, let alone the actual truth. It has been interesting though that the ones who labelled me pessimistic and a traitor, are the very ones asking me how I can help to get them out of SA?
I lived in Joburg for over thirty years. and can't recall meeting anyone, who considered themselves powerful in SA piolitics. Here, the people are so much more laid back. The deputy mayor of Porirua is a Samoan lass that has a sense of humour that is uneqaulled (been unable to return my entry dockets after governance meetings with concil, cause she grabs anyone's she can, and writes 'tosser' on them - had to explain to her what it meant??).
Our ealsest son is getting married in SA in September and neither wife nor I are looking forward to this exercise. My mom visited us for 6 weeks over Christmas and just prior to her return, I overheard her speaking to family in SA saying she was flying back Saturday, thus would be returning to 'prison' that day. When I meantioned the murder figures of 43k to Kiwis, they were horrifed, yet you could see they have no real concept of it. They have never been exposed to those horrors.
