It was as busy a Friday as I have had in some time- first awake at 5:30 A.M. entertaining notions of crossing from Zambia to Zimbabwe by cab to see the other half of the very-wide and very-tall Victoria Falls, then out on the Zambezi 3 hours later paddling furiosuly away from Hippos, then detained at the border by the “informal” branch of the Zimbawean government, through to the Falls, another brief border incident in Botswana, a desperate scramble around a bush town at 5:30 on a Friday trying to locate local currency, and finally a 6 hour drive punctuated by heavy braking to avoid Cattle, Impala, Wild Cats, and to gawk at the occasional elephant.

To elaborate on the more interesting points of the previous run-off sentence my brother Jon and I were paddling on the Zambezi river about 8 km upstream of Victoria Falls yesterday. We had seen hippos, crocs, and even an elephant feeding about 15 feet away. We had even had a chance to show off our inept paddling skills by spinning around twice in white water as we shot down river with no idea of how to straighten out.

We were nearing the end of the journey and carefully watching some hippo (they are very territorial and can bite you in half apparently) on the other side of the river when our guide said very firmly and quickly: “Guys paddle fast to the left shore!” As we dug our paddles into the water two hippos surfaced about 15 feet away. It is a very distinctive noise they make, splashing out and breathing, like the gas shooting out of a tightly-sealed soda bottle.

We climbed ashore where we would be safe, and watched as six hippos surrounded our escape onto the river. They barked like dogs, and bared their teeth and pink mouths.

They slowly moved off, but stayed in the general area long enough that our guide decided we should move on. We got into the boats, hugging the shore, and waited until they surfaced so we could see them. Then we paddled like hell.

We shot around a blind corner where we could not see the shore, to see a crocodile peeking out of the water.

Fortunately this was the end of our route so we disembarked onto shore, but looking back over my shoulder I could see the hippo following us. As we put the equipment away they came closer and closer, apparently really intent on making sure we did not violate their river’s soverignity again.

Frankly, it is testimony to what kind of justice you can expect in a Zambian court… on a trip with even the remotest chance of injury in the U.S. you would be forced to sign liability waivers… we were not. I assume we would have no real chance of getting any compensation for being bit in half by a hippo.

Apparently they kill the most humans of any African animal. I would venture to guess this is because they are both extremely territorial and migratory, a really bad combination.
So, elated with our wildlife experience, we headed straight out of town to the Zimbabwean side of the falls. Unfortunately, to see the entire thing (it is damn wide) you have to cross borders. This is really not a big deal if you are on foot, but bringing a vehicle through the border, is like driving a big fat dollar bill.

We had gone through this in Zambia already, where we paid a “carbon tax,” a “bridge toll,” and “temporary insurance.” My father decided the insurance at the Zambian side was just a scam, as the people running it where not decked out in official gear.

Needless to say, it was quite an amusing scene at the border with our car blocking the entrance/exit to both countries (that’s right, for about 20 minutes no one was allowed in or out of either country thanks to our protest against goons posing as government officials, claiming to offer you something of value in return for a wad of American dollars).

Unfortunately, no traffic seemed to want to cross either of these borders, so our protest was regarded mainly as a great joke. Eventually we were forced to cough up 65 bucks to people whose best attempt at producing official documents to prove who they were was a bright orange traffic vest that read “Third Party Insurance Provider.”

The people with official badges could not say what department of government they represented, but they certainly would not consider letting us through without paying them off- so this is a state-sanctioned shakedown.

Welcome to Zimbabwe! If that is the worst you encounter it is because you are not a citizen of the country. Zimbabweans are lucky enough to be kicked off their land and tortured for their political view by the President and Asshole-in-Chief Robert Mugabe, who I can now bad-mouth all I want now that I am in Botswana.

In fact, our guide on the river earlier in the morning was tortured by the government for being part of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) party. He told us he was taken away in the night with a hood over his head and thrown in the Zambezi with a rope around his neck. He was told they would let him shoot over the falls if he did not give up names.

The other fun thing about Zimbabwe is that you cannot use the government’s own currency to pay the official bribes unless you have a receipt proving that you changed money at a bank.

The reason for this is that the government likes to make up its own fantasy exchange rates so it can deny the horrendous inflation that is plauging the country. If you want to not spend several hundred dollars on a couple of burgers and cokes you have to exchange money on the black market, risking arrest.

We high-tailed it into Botswana, a much more stable country, where the only hazard is plowing over animals in the night.

Sir H.S. Balls Writes a Letter Home to His Wife

Dearest Lady Balls,

I write you from the urban jungle of Johannesburg having just completed a successful journey into the bush of Kruger National Park, a most barbarous land where predators roam freely about, and raptors screech from above eyeing you to see if you are running out of strength. The climate is most inhospitable: at day the sun scorches the dry land, beating down on you with no relief, but when it disappears at night the temperatures quickly drop to freezing. It makes me miss the moderate climate of our native California, crumbled and decaying though our estates there may be.

As you well know, I departed on this trip to escape the dreadful business of the lawsuit over mother’s chutney fortune. How abominable it is to me to think of what that dear lady would think if she knew her precious chutney that brings joy to so many is now in the hands of a ruthless corporate conglomerate who has simply pasted her name to their product to fill their own coffers. Fie on their whores of lawyers! Let them meet me in the bush like men and we will see who is triumphant then!

It was then some small comfort to me to have the presence of some fine traveling companions on this trip. I departed on the safari in the company of two men of steadfast determination, keen wits, and powerful moustaches: Mr. Resistible and Professor Bougy. Another moustached companion, David Kates, also proved to be a skilled bushman.

We were also accompanied by nine young women whose vigorous constitutions would be the envy of ladies worldwide, and finally three older companions, two of whom were native to this country.

We departed in a monster of a bus, which would serve as our vehicle for viewing the beasts of this land. Tall and misshapen, it looked more like a garbage truck to our sights. It proved a formidable vehicle, however, serving as a kitchen and our home for most of the days we were in Kruger.

After a long drive to the park the first day, we awoke the next morning ready to see animals. Regrettably, the first day was somewhat forgettable: no man-eating lions, no rhinos looking to test their brutish strength against the wits of a pack of well-trained, moustached bushmen. We did encounter an elephant that showed of his powerful trunk by pushing over a small tree, some giraffe, and at the end of the day some hippo, who were afraid to come on to land where we could have a fair fight.

Mostly, however, we saw herds and herds of impala, and birds, much to the anger of Mr. Resistible, who remarked several times he wished to see a lion tear off the heads of the “boring” impala.

The next morning we rose early for a better chance of spotting wildlife. However, contrary to the established wisdom that animals were more likely to be spotted in the morning, we saw nothing. Spirits were low. Ms. Allison Brody, a robust young woman and skilled animal spotter, offered a bounty of 50 rand (7 dollars) to whoever spotted a lion, confident she would make the spot herself.

Ultimately it was our guide J.R. who spotted the beast on the side of the road, stalking a number of animals, impala, wildebeest, zebras, and giraffes. As it was our guide who made the spot, Ms. Brody haughtily declared she had no intention of paying the bounty.

The animals were nervous, and banded together in fear of the lion. The zebra stuck close to the giraffe, convinced their tall stature and bird-eye view of the bush would save them from the wrath of the lion.

In the midst of the excitement, Ms. Zubeida Jaffer, a native South African exclaimed exuberantly: “Oooohhhh! There’s a leopard in that tree.” A closer inspection by binoculars proved this to be untrue, however.

Ultimately the animals escaped, proving to be once again the savage strength of the lion is meaningless in the bush. Give me a sharp knife to whittle a stick, and we shall see who would triumph over the lion! What a weak and pathetic animal!

We later spotted an elephant in a highly stimulated state, brandishing what the locals refer to as a “fifth leg.” It swung around wildly like a pendulum on a grandfather clock as the elephant stamped at the ground and glared at us. The “fifth leg” was spotted by a very excited Ms. Heather Downie, much to the amusement of her traveling companion Ms. Rocio Zamora, who was seldom seen out of Ms. Downie’s company. Mr. Resistible, not normally the most modest of men, declared that his own manhood was not remotely equal to that of the elephant.

We concluded the day triumphantly by taking a night drive with a park ranger whose knowledge of the wilderness almost equaled that of us moustached bushmen. We did not spot any more predators or large mammals, simply some jackals and small cats, night scavengers, a pathetic lot.

The following morning we rose with sun to travel by foot in search of rhino. Following my expert lead, our guide tracked the savage beasts, checking its dung, until he was informed by radio from another group of their location. Therefore dishonoring himself by not continuing on the beast’s trail, we chased them down.

The beast, though large, clearing is dull-witted, unable to spot humans sitting 60 feet away, firing away with pictures. In these modern days of semi-automatic weapons how could such a beast expect to survive? Give me a pack of matches and a large club, and I would smoke the thing out of the bush and club it to death without breaking a sweat!

This meeting with the rhino largely concluded our safari and we drove back towards Johannesburg in our garbage truck, sweaty and exhausted, but triumphant knowing we as men and women could still claim superiority to the brutish animals of the wild.

Having learned this, I am prepared to return to what is left of the once-glorious Balls estate and enjoy the fruits of civilization. I remain your loving husband,

Sir H.S. Balls.

After several weeks of merely passing by on the freeway I have finally had several occasions to venture into the “townships” of Cape Town. Many people think of these areas as predominantly full of informal shacks cobbled together and set up on public land.

This is certainly the appearance from the highway. The sides of it are lined with the areas that are informal- meaning the occupants do not own the land they are living on, and usually that they are also stealing electricity from the power lines overhead. However, the bulk of the townships are full of older apartments and houses, which are occupied by Xhosa-speaking black people moved by the apartheid government from areas closer to the city center.

The townships are all in the flat areas between Table Mountain and the ranges to the east of the city, no sign of the hills and water that make the wealthier parts of the city so pleasant to be in. They are also much colder than other parts of the city, for reasons I don’t fully understand. I can see how the flat lands between two mountain ranges would serve as a wind tunnel, and that Table Mountain blocks the sun in the late afternoon, but even in the middle of a day that is not windy, the temperature is just lower.

In short, it is not the most desirable location to live, in an area that has some fantastic real estate locations.

My first visit came on June 16, the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising where students in a Johannesburg were shot by police after protests against learning Afrikaans. The occasion was marked by a series of speakers, a march, and a concert event at a stadium in Langa, one of the local townships.

This is where I first learned that every Xhosa event is accompanied by music- impromptu chants and songs from the crowds which are incredibly musical. The march in particular was spirited and entertaining, a recognition of an event that was violent in nature in a very peaceful way.

Unfortunately, later on at the stadium this was marred by some attempted violence: some people threw rocks at performers on stage. The official story is that this was the result of security guards, who up until last week were striking against low wages and benefits, and committing some pretty heinous acts of violence against non-union security guards in the process (here you want to say maybe a case of a “few bad apples” but there has not been a lot of contrition from the union about the murders of a few dozen “scabs”).

The stadium emptied out, with hordes of people running through the exits. Standing outside, having already decided to head home, we stood shocked and scared, wondering what could have prompted such an immediate and desperate evacuation, especially as some of our friends were still inside.

A female security worker at the event came up to us, scared as hell, claiming it was security union violence. We watched as several other security workers ran from the stadium tearing off the yellow vests that marked them as a target. At our urging the guard standing with us also removed her vest.

It was a sad that violence disrupted the celebration of a day where people remembered the unjust massacre of protestors at the hand of the state.

Meanwhile we had been marooned in the middle of a township where the police advised a group of 10 of us to not walk on the streets in broad daylight thanks to some bad advice. After a two hour wait for a police escort to the bus station, we secured transport with a driver for the ANC Youth league. He apologized to us for the violence- not the first time someone has apologized to me on behalf of his nation.

My next two occasions in the township allowed me to get to know some of the residents a little better. First a visit to Khayleitsha as a volunteer to put rain tarps over some residents shacks, where too many volunteers wandered around with too few tarps and nails. I served mainly as a photographer for promotional material for the community radio station that organized the event.

The last visit was an overnight tour that included a stay with at a local family’s bed and breakfast. I found this idea somewhat odd; imagine how well received a tour van driving through the streets of Compton would be.

The tour took us through some rough looking informal shack areas where we spotted some children trying to build a make-shift shelter out of wood and cardboard (sorry this pic is blurry, but I think it is still worth looking at). We also got to witness women cooking up sheep’s heads, a local delicacy. They get the heads from the butcher, blacken it and burn the hair off, then cut the head in half and scoop out the brains. People eat the actual head and face. Very smelly and gruesome. I have spared you all the pictures of the heads being blackened on a grill.

Staying with a local family led to some interesting conversation, as well as a brief incident with a local who felt slighted because I did not speak any Xhosa. He rudely berated me for not having learned the local language, after I failed to recognize the greeting “Ninjani,” meaning “how are you?”

However, most of the evening I getting perspective on live in Cape Town from the perspective of a Xhosa who lives in Langa, but works in an office that is mostly white and coloured. I was told not to get a skewed view of the local population from the abundance of coloured culture (strongly Muslim in many instances), which frankly was a sensible warning as most of the people I work with/interact with are coloured.

In the morning I attended a Baptist church ceremony which was again, a lot of singing, but also a lot of references to money. Way too many for my taste.

All in all, an interesting tour, but still a bizarre idea to drive around staring at a local community from inside a bus, in my opinion.

A little note on the confusion between journalism/public relations in this country: the week before last I attended a business networking breakfast where Mayor Helen Zille (of the white-dominated DA) was speaking.

On entering the restaurant in a leafy suburb of Cape Town, I was suddenly thrust back into white South Africa. Sometimes I am surprised at the level of racial integration in Cape Town, for a country barely removed from legally-enforced segregation. Not so at a business association’s breakfast.

I will avoid going off on a tangent on white South Africa (here is the short summary: I have come across whites who say they deplored apartheid, but still have a paternalistic feeling towards South Africa, and feel as the best educated demographic, the rest of South Africa ought to look to them for guidance.)

The Mayor came to the breakfast flushed with her success in passing her annual budget with a unanimous vote, meaning the ANC (which is just barely an opposition party, thanks to the DA-Nut Job Alliance that consists of the DA and several small fanatical parties) caved in entirely, when she suspected they would fight her tooth and nail just to stop her from being able to actually govern.

“The ANC made a transition from being in denial to facing reality yesterday,” said the Mayor, and proceeded to scold the party for not accepting her party’s authority sooner.

My impression of politics in America: when you get the opposition party to bend over backwards for you, you toss em a bone (although Bush has defied this convention- but then he does not get very many unanimous votes from the opposition these days). Helen Zille scolded them, instead.

This level of discourse is not unusual for South Africa. Later that day, while attending a session of Parliament an ANC member told the one coloured member of the DA that she “would never make it as an honorary white” and told another member “if you put our brains on a scale, mine would way 10 times what yours would.” Maybe this is all just for show, but looking at the parliament divided into two aisles: one mostly black, one mostly white, it was harder to accept that the strife was as imaginary as when the Dems and Republicans exchange vicious barbs on talk shows, but seem to get along when the camera is off.

Also, the other day the DA-run Cape Town government cut the power and water of the ANC-led provincial government, ostensibly for lack of payment. Yesterday the provincial government retaliated by stripping the Cape Town government of any authority over a controversial local housing project, which frankly needs all the government regulation it can get (there are a lot of people that want into this housing project, and some believe it will come to violence between local applicants and applicants who have just recently come to Cape Town looking for work.).

But this is just business as usual in South Africa. Just like when the police pelt crowds of protesters with rubber bullets, or street children pummel each other in the street (saw another bout last week), or the health minister makes another crazy remark about treating aids with beetroot and olive oil. It isn’t even front page material anymore.

Instead you get a lot of people trying to push straight PR material into the newspaper, and succeeding. Paper here publish straight promotional material with the byline “Staff Reporter.”

That is not to say there are not feisty journalists here. This became clear when after covering the Mayor’s speech I later received a call telling me I had take “unauthorized photos” and that I should only print the pictures the business association had taken.

I accepted their offer for photos, because I take horrible photos when inside (digitial camera is partly to blame for this… outside it makes me look like a better photographer than I am, inside a worse one).

However, when the photos arrived tucked away in a white envelope, they also came with my “article” already conveniently written for me, courtesy of the Claremont Business Association.

Annoyed (and amused) by this and encouraged by the contempt of my editors for the CBA’s move, I decided to publish my photo of the Mayor where the flash reflects of the lenses of her glasses. Just to spite them. That’ll learn em to try to do my work for me.

Baboons were the anticipated highlight of this weekend’s trip around the peninsula whose northern shores we are calling home for two months, and I don’t think anyone was disappointed.

All guidebooks and personal accounts relayed to me indicated that the creatures were highly aggressive, quick to steal food, and potentially dangerous. I have seen other monkeys steal food and hassle tourists before, which is sort of endearing and really annoying at the same time, but I have never seen a monkey as aggressive as the baboon.

Background on these animals: Chacma baboons, weigh up to 70 lbs., teeth longer than a lions, fast and agile, and can leap like Michael Jordan on steroids. Click here for an amusingl article on their relationship with locals on this pennisula.

So mix a bunch of aggressive super-monkeys and my idiotic curiosity together and there was bound to be an incident.

I was eating lunch outside with two comrades before embarking on a few short hikes around the Cape of Good Hope Reserve, the southern most point on the peninsula (though not in Africa as we will discuss later), when I spotted a baboon on a the lower patio of the restaurant/cafeteria we were eating at. Before I could actually vocalize a warning the beast had leapt to our patio and on to our table, inches from me and my fellow diner, Allison.

Things get a bit blurry in my memory here, as I was busy fleeing backwards (the sight of a large, charging animal having set of my flight half of my flight/fight instinct), but from what I gather from later accounts, in seconds the beast had grabbed half of our other comrade’s sandwich, and acquired all of Allison’s as the result of her tossing it in his general direction.

Then the thing semi-retreated back the way he came, which is where I had repositioned myself to. More willing to stand my ground, I raised my water bottle to club the beast, but realizing how small it was, and that it would require me to get very close to the thing, I settled for splattering some water drops on it. Fortunately, a park employee came over with a “baboon stick” and slammed it into the ground next to it, and it fled.

But not for long. Soon it came back for Allison’s chips and bottle of juice, which it stowed carefully in its mouth, before taking off.

Shortly thereafter, having warned other people to eat inside we embarked in the direction of the trails, with the intent of grabbing another companion David on the way. Assuming he had gone to eat in the information office, we headed in that direction, only to see him being chased by a baboon, after his apple pie.

It was impressive to see David so stubbornly refusing to give up his food, and since he had been standing and eating, it was unclear whether the beast had the guts to attempt to jump up and snatch the pie out of David’s hands.

Not being the subject of the attack, I felt emboldened enough to advance on the thing, clap my hands together, and grunt, “Hoo! Hoo!” as I had seen some of the park employees/baboon wranglers (seems to be their main function) do. The beast backed off in stages and disappeared into the brush to plot its next move.

I apologize that the baboon pictures that I do have do not sufficiently relay the menace that the animals displayed at the park, but I was not in the position to take pictures at the time. As you can see, they also have their more thoughtful and quite moments, but for all I know all they are thinking about is how to get their next free lunch.

Baboons aside, The Cape of Good Hope is a scenic point that looks like the end of the world, but as it turns out it is not the southern most point of Africa, a claim that I have heard made infrequently in Cape Town. More prevalent is the claim that it is where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet.

The idea behind this claim is that the water on either side of the peninsula varies significantly in temperature, because the western and southern side receives Artic current, and the eastern side receives current from the warmer drifts originating in the Indian Ocean.

Which makes it easy to go one step further as Capetonians do, and just say that one side is the Atlantic and one side is the Indian, which until this weekend I believed was the actual geographic truth. However, the park pamphlets go to great length to explain that this is not true. The actual point, which is also the southern most point in Africa, is Cape Agulhas, an apparently uninspiring place that is rarely visited by tourists.

Drawing an exact point where one ocean becomes another seems to me incredibly complicated, and the fact that the water becomes warmer at Cape Point due to current coming from a totally different direction, seems to me to make it the logical point where the Atlantic becomes the Indian. Perhaps the geographic marker is supposed to be the southern/northernmost point on each continent, but I am not sure. Anyone want to clarify this point for me?

Later we capped the day off by visiting a penguin colony, which was the exact opposite of my previous experience with sub-Artic penguins (they are much smaller than emperor penguins that inhabit Antartica) in New Zealand. There Robin and peered through a slot in a wooden wildlife-viewing shack perched up on a hill over the beach. We were told that any human presence would mean the penguins would stay out at sea, and find another beach to return to. We ended up seeing three penguins.

At the penguin colony on the Cape there are hundreds. The colony was started to keep the animals protected, and they are provided with small, artificial, sheltered holes to nest in. They clearly have no fear of man.

The highlight here was a seal that almost succeeded in snatching two very oblivious penguins, who entered the water right next to the thing, just after it showed up- which was odd considering I had not seen a single penguin go back into the water in the 20 minutes I had been watching.

There was also a very impressive formation of penguins returning from hunting. They gracefully darted through the water like torpedoes and splashed onto the beach where they set themselves upright and waddled around clumsily. If you have not seen national geographic footage of this, check it out. It is extremely amusing how sleek and fast they are at see, and how goofy they are on land.

So there it is, a non-political South Africa post, that does not delve into long tangents on race, class, and history.

So said a cab driver to me on a Sunday afternoon. “It doesn’t matter if you as tall as Table Mountain, they take you down like a pack of wolves.” His advice to me is that I stay out by the beach where I live, and never enter the city center, where I work. A large coloured man of Indian descent, he looked like the mountain himself squeezed into the corner of his cab.

Street children in Cape Town do indeed resemble wolf packs, one seeming to take the lead, urging others on with whistles and shouts. I have seen them surround a police officer and divert him from his task of arresting one of the group, only to be deterred by a police car racing up with bells and sirens (see previous post). At night they seem more prone to the solitary pursuits of begging tourists for spare change. Local non-profit organizations recommend you drive them away by inquiring about where they live and about their lives in general, figuring this will make them quickly lose interest, as they are interested in your money alone.

Doesn’t work so great as it turns out. They are desperate enough to tolerate the inane inquiries of the tourist. One called himself “Popeye” and told me he needed “spinach” from me to grow up strong.

I don’t need think I need to remind anyone of the unspeakable tragedy of children raising themselves on the streets, many of them having fled abusive homes in the townships, or abandoned after their parents die (the HIV infection rates in the township are staggeringly high). However, it is impossible to dismiss these things as the inevitable result of a prolonged and open attempt to force people to live in squalid conditions, and reason that it will likely be corrected in the next 30 years with the natural social and economic progress that a country that does have strong educational resources (for some), abundant natural resources, and first-world infrastructure. These kids will be passed by that progress- they will be another lost generation like their parents and grandparents.

That is the bitter pill to swallow in Cape Town, and one that leaves an American like me, raised in a prosperous and just society (for the most part) baffled and impotent. The same cab driver who warned me to stay out of downtown Cape Town asked me if I was an American, than bitterly responded, “All the rich people are in America and all the poor in Africa.” A very true generalization, but there are many very rich Africans living not more than 5 minutes from the city center, and I would not want to be in their shoes. As frustrating as being faced with the poverty here is for me, I cannot imagine living the way wealthy South Africans do. No matter where you live there is tension between economic classes, but it seems to me unimaginably difficult to unify a country that had a severe and legally enforced divide between wealthy and poor, that also ran along racial lines.

I want to also briefly mention, for those who are not familiar with the racial breakdown in Cape Town, that the major racial groups are the “coloured” and the “Africans.” The Africans are black, but are usually referred to as African, which I find yet another divisive element of South African society- do you have to be black to be an African? Some black activists have taken refuge in an African identity, implying they should make the future of their country as they are the original occupants of this land, but the term is mostly employed by whites and coloureds, implying that they themselves are different, and possibly superior because they have descendants who lived elsewhere.

The term coloured, which was really unpleasant affiliations in America, is a one-size-fit-all racial category invented by the White apartheid government- it includes people whose ancestors include blacks, malays brought be the dutch as slaves, indians who came over to serve much the same role, and possibly some European heritage. As one might imagine, the difference between coloured and African is often a fine line, and one that the apartheid government solved with the “hair test,” which is basically whether a pencil can stay stuck in a person’s hair when they bend over. If it stuck you were African, if not you were coloured.

Coloureds generally had it better than blacks during apartheid, but not much. There is a lot of tension between the communities as will tend to happen when one repressed group is treated better than another (see Rwanda). Also many older coloured people still vote for the white-dominated Democratic Alliance, a party cobbled together from old British parties with Tory-like leanings and the National Party that was responsible for apartheid. This dismays some of the younger generation, including an editor at CCN who looked dismayed while telling me her grandparents vote for the DA.

The older generation also primarily speaks Afrikaans (the Dutch-derivative language spoken by the National Party Afrikanners that ran the apartheid government)- which for a time was considered the language of the oppressor, and totally rejected by blacks in the country.

The bitter slogan sometimes used by coloureds today is “first we were not white enough, and now we are not black enough.” Today most government jobs go to blacks from Mandela’s African National Congress party (ANC) that is a monolith that cannot be defeated in national elections right now. Cape Town is another story, where the DA gathered a bare minimum of local legislators to form a fragile coalition (including Afrikanner separatists, and radical Islamicists) and elected a DA mayor to run the city.

But discussing that opens up a lot of other questions, and this post is running long already (I believe we started with street children) so I will save it for another time.

After three days of sunshine, the Cape showed the winter weather that is its reputation- sideways rain, high winds, and quick moving dark clouds- either way it is a pretty city- at times it seems relaxed and easygoing and at other times menacing. While waiting for a bus taxi Wednesday I witnessed a crowd of homeless children surrounding an officer trying to take one of their own in, and pummeling him. One had a sack full of god knows what that he swung over his head. When I say a gang of children I mean children- some were no older than 9. From my discussions with people, this is a fairly normal occurence- as is the notorious overbearing cape city police beating people up for looking at them wrong.

Still this city has a gentle face as well. Today I was sent on assignment to cover a warden’s soccer team that won a amateur league championship, and went to Cape Town’s main prison community. The place had low fences that barely blocked the view of Table Mountain, and prisoners who have two years or less left on their sentences have open grounds priveleges- for a compound that includes the homes of the warden, guards, and their families. They are left to wander around and work and garden if they choose, or play soccer and rugby, do art, etc. etc. Amazingly enough nobody on the Cape Community Newspaper staff had heard of an escape attempt or violent incident- though they do happen inside the cells from time to time.

Still even more bizarre was that the prison was located next to a country club community where retired soccer and rugby athlethes play golf and have their own private vineyard! Apparently people here believe in actual rehabilitating prisoners, and don’t go crazy about the idea of having them nearby-so unlike America where they are sent to rural wasteland- the empty stretches of the Mojave, or the high plains of Kansas.

Cape Town also has a real sense of wilderness about it- on the way from the airport we drove by a game park at the bottom of table mountain where several antelope and zebras milled about- wild ones, not domesticated.

Ultimately the most notable thing about C-Town is the Cape Flats- miles of tin shacks, illegally hooked up to power lines- a dangerous area for anyone to go, and a place many authorities would like to ignore. Fires are a regular occurence because of overloaded power lines and are devastating because the shacks are squeezed so tightl together.

Meanwhile there is a solid middle class in suburbs around the city, and very wealthy areas out on the coast- for an city this small with such strong education and health care, and amenities for so many, it is shocking to see so many more in such desperate straits.

In far poorer countries like Cambodia I have seen more in shacks, but in countries of comprable wealth, Venezuela, Thailand, the shack cities are smaller, better organized, and less desperate-looking. The destruction of aparthied is remarkable and horrible- so many have been denied education and basic human rights, that they lack the means to possibly pull themselves out of Cape Flats, or to improve Cape Flats, without major assistance- the kind that may take a generation or two to fully enact. It is not for lack of trying on the government’s part, but it is just a monumental task to educate and find jobs for a generation lost to systematic repression.

In short, this is a city that is pleasant enough to live in, but stimulating enough to keep a journalist’s attention. I am happy to be here

Riding some last minute momentum to accomplish something between school and Cape Town I managed to get an immigration article into the Los Angeles City Beat this week- really, there isn’t anything else going on right now in this country. Maybe that is a gross simplification but outside of immigration, it has actually been a slow couple of news weeks.

The article is about day labor centers, and a congressional amendment that would stop cities from forcing retailers like Home Depot to help pay the cost for labor centers for workers who clog up their parking lots looking for work- here in SoCal, Burbank has done this, and L.A is interested in following their lead. This is relatively minor compared to legislation like a 700 mile fence, but it sure has some local council members and mayors pissed off. Once again it shows how far from their roots Republicans have come- true this forces government to keep its hand off business, but it also imposes a massive federal restriction on small government and eliminates a perfectly sensible open-market solution to a very obvious problem: if Home Depot wants into a city bad enough they should pay for the labor center, and if the city wants Home Depot enough they pay for it. Makes perfect sense.

Also it is disturbing that Diane Feinstein is behind this amendment as well- as a California Democrat and a one-time mayor she really should be more sensible about how crucial keeping labor centers organized is.

Anyway, give the article a look: http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3759&IssueNum=154

Hail the beginning of DanAbendschein.com, a general web site for me, Dan Abendschein, a USC journalism student and loudmouth, about to head for Cape Town, South Africa for the summer to work a journalism internship. My header still reflects the fact that I am in Los Angeles, but will changed next week, after the massive jet lag inspired by the 22 hour flight through London that USC was kind enough to book for me. Enough said about that.

My intention here is to do a little news anaylsis, showcase links to my published work, and probably shoot off my mouth a little bit about what is going on in my life. With my short temper that usually means whatever bureaucracy and irrationality I am currently dealing with.

Today for example, in order to book a flight using Alaska miles, I had to impart on a QUEST to figure out my previous address, a post office box on the very rural Whidbey Island. This address being the last one I passed along to Alaska Airlines, for security reasons, was absolutely essential for Alaska to have before they OKed my mileage account being used. I suppose I should be grateful for their concern for the security of mileage account, but wouldn’t it have been better for them to ask for my social security#, something I have memorized and did not used to appear on all my incoming and outgoing mail? In fact, I seemed to be the only one who DIDN’T know this address- the phone company knew it, the post office knew it, but nobody was allowed to tell me. By the way, I move a lot, if you are wondering why I don’t know my previous address- besides it was a PO Box, and not a street address.

In any case, I had a great Kafkaesque conversation with a post office representative that went as follows:

DAN: I, um, know this sounds dumb, but I can’t remember my previous address in Greenbank, Washington and I need it to book a flight. I know I there is a record because I have had my mail forwarded.

PO Rep: Where did you have your mail forwarded to? Your current address?

DAN: No… first it was to a second address in Whidbey Island, then a Hawaii address, then a New Jersey address, and then my L.A address.

PO Rep: In order to verify any information from your previous address, I would first have to the information for that address.

DAN: Ummm… OK. Wait! That doesn’t make any sense. You need my Greenbank address to verify my Greenbank address?

PO Rep: Exactly

(pause)

PO Rep: I don’t give out information, I only take it down.

DAN: Thanks for your time.

I never did find the address… I was able to fool Alaska Airlines into changing my info and activating my account by calling and asking to change the address on my mileage plan, rather than calling and asking to book award travel. So now I will never know what the hell the PO Box number was- I did call the local branch which is adjacent to the Greenbank general store- we had a discussion of my memory of where the box was located and what number range that might make it in- but it didn’t really help.