Theroux in Jo'Burg

fucking savages.

it's ignorance tbh...if you truely believed you could get rid of a killer disease by doing something would you not want to give it a try

Jimmy Carr : "Africa just needs a Lidl"

read my last post......

I was in South Africa earlier this year and judging the country on the basis of that documentary is like judging England on Moss Side.
Most of the country is safer than the UK.
Hosting the world cup will not be a problem. They won't be hosting matches in the worst slums of Jo'burg will they

Bollox, its well known for being one of the most dangerous places on earth. The police are issued with M60 chain fed machine guns for fucks sake... thats heavy support fire for most ARMYS in the rest of the world

Jo'burg is but not the rest of the country

sorry like but i was only a few years ago dozens of white farmers where being dragged fom their farms and being butchered against trees in the yard. that was all across south africa

was that not zimbabwe?? or was it both??

probably both

zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is fine, as long as you are not a farmer. A lot more black farmers got their farms taken away from them than white farmers, but that doesn't make good news for the worlds media. And Mugabe actually gave black farms to white members of his party (yes, there are some). Mugabe slaughtered 10,000 of his fellow countrymen (Ndebeles - basically Zulus), in the early 1980's, but that was at a time when Peter Hain, Prince Charles et al were licking Mugabes balls...

My Dad is a Zimbabwean passport holder, and he regularly has to go back to get a new one. As long as you have a few US Dollars you are fine. And this cholera outbreak will only affect the very poor - anyone with a bit of cash has a borehole. The white community over there are very close knit and help each other out a lot. And all the old farmers have either gone to Zambia, Nigeria, Botswana, Mozambique or Western Australia, with Botswana being a real success story in Africa (they have a shitload of diamonds and other natural resources and aren't actually corrupt).

Oh, and I'm assuming Theroux's documentary was filmed in and around Hillbrow, which is a very very dodgy part of Johannesburg. A no go area if you are white, full of Nigerian and Liberian drug lords, and arms dealers from Mozambique. Most of inner city Johannesburg is unsafe. But you know what, I don't see any massive bombings or terrorists incidents in South Africa... Durban is now a bit dodgy at night times, but there are nearly 1 million Indians who live there, and they sort the security out. Most of the other city centers are really safe. Cape Town has a vibrant clubbing scene, with loads and loads of festivals, and many psy events (with South Africa probably having the fastest growing psy trance scene at the minute)

nice to hear someone speak from knowledge instead of prejudice

Aye. Maybe people should actually go to the places they speak so badly of instead of slagging them off after watching something they've seen on tele. There's some very dodgy places in South America, in Asia, even here in 'advanced' in Europe, dodgy places in North America too. There's places in Australia where you need an armed guard to go around (Aborignal settlements such as Wadeye), that doesn't mean the whole continent is a write off. Why doesn't Theroux come to the dodgy as fuck Australian towns where child sex abuse is rampant and alcohol and pornography are banned? Cos people's prejudices are already set - Australian is seen as one of the safest nicest places on earth. Good old Australia can't be seen as having real social problems, its the dream of most poms to emigrate there. Easy target Johannesburg on the other hand.....

Tell you what, I felt a lot safer growing up in South Africa than I did when I returned to England. Not one of my old school mates in South Africa has been murdered or raped, though a lot have been mugged and hijacked. However, my brother has been mugged twice in Gateshead in the past couple of years, the second time by some prick with a hammer.

And all this "They're not advanced their society as much as we have" is total bullshit. Our development has been mainly down to geographical luck. Australians slag off Aboriginals all the time calling them backwards and dumb. Aboriginal society is ancient, at least 50,000 years old. The reason being is they live in a sustainable way. Eating only what they need, and limiting the number of kids they have. They didn't have the climate for farming (which has been the one of the factors that has vastly advanced certain societies in the past few thousand years) nor domesticated animals to A) gain food off B) to harness power. Most importantly, they didn't have wheat, a food which can be stockpiled, meaning people can go and specialise in other things, be it mathematics, philosophy, science and so on.

On the flip side look at all the so called advanced cultures who have imploded recently - Easter Island, The Maya, The Vikings, who shat all over us for a while, all died off in Greenland (conversely, the native Innuits flourished, despite being what we would describe as 'backwards'), the Anasazi in North America. All because they lived in an unsustainable way, coupled with things such as natural climate change. Look at all the people in the world today, multiplying as its Gods wish. Now who are the thick ones? Read Jared Diamonds "How societies choose to fail or survive" if you are interested in this type of stuff. Or you could go back to the classic statement people make: "They didn't even have the wheel a hundred years ago man"

And another thing that I would like to point out - he was filming in the most violent area of the most violent city in South Africa. They filmed for 'several' weeks and the only actual violence that they captured was one drunken and fairly trivial assault? I could take a video camera into the Bigg Market on a Friday night and capture three of those.

Anyone into Rugby? I watch the tri-nations (six nations of the Southern Hemisphere) and the Super 14 (like the Champions League for the rugby clubs of Oz, New Zealand, South Africa) and the stadiums (including Ellis Park, which is right in the Center of Johannesburg, about a mile from Hillbrow) are full to the brim with white South Africans.

Ferox that's so true...I want to got to S.A. just not to those parts...When I was going to Brazil last year a lass I know had watched R\oss Kemp's gang's & was convinced she was going to see me in a body bag...bless her at 19/20 she wanted to get a flght to rescue me
simple you don't go in the favela's...you see them at the end of the street you turn back