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p>1. Who am I in South Africa?

I suppose I am the storyteller here but the story is not mine perhaps not even Sam’s, but I will have to tell you something about myself if you are to understand the background of what happens.

At the time I seemed to have drifted into a few jobs and had been in the National Health Service for about five years doing menial administrative and clerical / analysis jobs and had recently just finished a degree at night school. The pay was fairly rubbish and the jobs were dead-end but it had security and you were hardly pushed, this did have a down side as a lot of the time I was bored senseless, it was routine monotony, described by a work colleague as living death.

At the time of telling I was working for the National Health Service in Scotland as a Data Analyst turning large chunks of data returns into information of some sort. One of the types of data I collected were on infectious diseases in Scotland, the excitement here being if we got a weekly return saying someone had contracted Anthrax, hear those alarm bells ring in the Scottish Office. Within the organisation money was available for junior staff to come up with ideas / projects involving bold ideas, mine was to go to South Africa and compare and contrast the NHS with the Health Service in South Africa, blah, blah, blah, looking specifically at infectious diseases.

The truth be told my aim was to get a month out of work and a month in South Africa and have a holiday. I applied and seemed to have gotten the funding even though the paper I submitted was vague to say the least; I had the sneaking suspicion that I was the only person to have applied. Who cared I had a month off all expenses paid, this wasn’t even classed as a holiday so I’d still have my holidays when I got back, this was a Win-Win situation.

I arranged the trip for May 1996 and the plan was to travel round South Africa and do as little as possible. I had done the 'garden route’ so far, this involved driving from Cape Town to Durban, with numerous pit stops for rest and recreation stopping in at vineyards and game parks etc and generally having a good time. The wine tasting was particularly fun, I was spitting nothing out, I had therefore spent the first few weeks half-canned.

I had gotten the trip off to a flying start by flying from Edinburgh to Amsterdam, spending 9 hrs in Amsterdam and then flying on to Cape Town, in today’s era of global terrorism, I’d never have been allowed on to the plane in Amsterdam. During those nine hours I sampled the hospitality of the red-light area and numerous drinks and hash-cakes in the bars and coffee houses. I was totally wrecked and got even more hammered on the flight (the in-flight movie was James Bond ' Goldeneye’), the KLM air hostesses did make a profound impact on my warped brain but I can hardly remember any of it just the plane re-fuelling in J’burg.
I therefore re-fuelled myself with a couple of G&T’s to avoid a crippling hangover, breakfast never tasted so good, and then it was on to glorious Cape Town. On disembarking from the aeroplane I fell down the stairs onto the runway, it was a nice day for it and then picked up a rental car, yes a car. Welcome to South Africa. Start as you mean to go on I thought.

The timetable was I was there for four weeks of mayhem at least that is what I wasn’t telling my masters back home, I was out of contact and 'out of sight out of mind’. The first three weeks were effectively free in the last week I had arranged a meeting with Health officials in Pietermaritzburg which was the regional administrative capital of Kwazulu-Natal.
Here it was just going over some information systems background and statistical stuff, asking their views on whatever.

As I’ve said I decided to do the 'garden route’ this was the trip from Cape Town to Durban effectively from the south west of the country through to the south east, I’d had some memorable nights on my way through and had done the usual tourist stuff, went on safari, went to one of the Sun (Sin) City establishments in one of what used to be termed 'homelands’.
This was the system where those who were designated as belonging to such a homeland had their South African citizenship revoked, and replaced with homeland citizenship. These people would in the past have had passbooks to work in South Africa instead of passports. It was a state within a state and meant that the same laws did not apply therefore gambling was allowed hence a chain of casinos had sprung up in the homelands.

It had all been memorable and even more so as I wasn’t paying for it, glad to see where your taxpayer’s money is going in the NHS, I was feeling guilty... NOT.

I’d had a good couple of nights in the unfashionable coastal town of Margate just outside of Durban, I’d stayed in an old run down hotel owned by an old woman from Glasgow and at the time her brother and sister in law were staying too, they were down from J’burg. I seemed to be permanently pissed on Castle Beer every time I finished one another as if by magic re-appeared (great). Her brother had emigrated in the 'Sixties’ but both his kids were going back to Scotland as there were no opportunities; this was probably positive discrimination in effect I thought. They showed me pictures of their house, which seemed like a mini-fortress with guard dogs, security companies the lot. Why would you want to live like that? After two nights in Margate I wanted a rest, my stomach was doing somersaults it was time to go. I promised I’d visit the 'ex-pats’ on my way up through J’burg but I doubted it would ever happen. Who knows though, they seemed like a nice lot, just that there whole world had been turned upside down, the sister was wanting to sell the hotel but couldn’t get any buyers, the colonial days were gone I thought.

Pietermaritzburg was a sort of old-fashioned post-colonial town it was nice to look at but not that exciting, I wasn’t really wanting to hang around as I had other fish to fry. I got my best clothes on folder under my arm did the business and was in and out in a few hours the meeting had been quick and formal (a gift of two bottles of Johnnie Walker left for their help) and through this I arranged to see an orphanage / treatment centre first hand it was after all on the ways drive to J’burg.

The orphanage was described as a treatment centre for children with HIV / Tuberculosis. I thought I’d better go and see what was what at these places as I’d really done very little since arriving (my guilt was starting to show), however the report I was supposed to write had effectively been completed before I’d left, this had been done through correspondence etc, but I’d have to say I’d done something and try and pan it out at least make it look like the organisation had gotten VFM. I doubt however if anyone would check up on me when I got back and as far as I was concerned this was a glorified holiday by all intents and purposes.
The department was glad one of theirs’ had gotten the funding / the glory, so it was an all round win-win situation, good management speak for everybody was happy.

As health topics go at the time HIV/ AIDS was flavour of the month in the UK and Scotland, and had been for some time since the late eighties the 'Don’t die of ignorance!’ campaign, and books such as ’Trainspotting’, this was one of the reasons I’d gotten funding for looking at this on the 'frontline’.
The NHS and health organisations were throwing money at it, besides it wouldn’t do my CV any harm saying I’d been to Africa looking at this, that was for sure. The issues in Africa for HIV / AIDS were different however than in the West, in the West HIV / AIDS revolved around intravenous drug use and the gay community, though no one was being complacent about it in the West. In South Africa it was spread through all communities heterosexual and homosexual and the government was being extremely complacent.

However I had the sense to know that the fledgling democracy of South Africa had more pressing matters than HIV / AIDS to take care of, the African National Congress the winners of the election in 1994 had to consolidate power, these were early days for democracy and military coups were not inconceivable particularly in a continent with a history of such activity. Nelson Mandela had been elected and it had went smoother than a lot of people had anticipated, there had been no tribal bloodbath but a fairly smooth transition of power, the dismantling of apartheid and the seeds of a fledgling democratic state had been sown. The white Afrikaners had on the whole accepted the result and the nation was looking to a rainbow future. The ANC had taken power and Mandela the grand old statesman / freedom fighter had become the President of the Nation people were optimistic for the future, in the majority of all communities.

Health concerns for the black population revolved around the primary basics such as sanitation, running water, electricity, adequate food and clothing and shelter. It really was the basics mirrored by the standard of medical care.

In the cities the black population tended to live in the surrounding townships on the outskirts, SOWETO (SOuth WEstern TOwnship) being the most famous, a lot of these areas were just third world 'shanty’ towns. The black workers would travel in from SOWETO to there place of work in the main city, not a lot I could see had changed though it was early days, however, some of the whites had seemed to have suffered and I was surprised to see whites living rough in destitution on the streets in J'burg.

The poverty was more extreme in the black rural communities, you could always tell by the smell, no sanitation and festering heaps of rubbish, it was never that fragrant and probably a magnet for disease, but at the time people had hope and hope is a powerful thing like religious faith. If you were young and black you went to the cities, women as domestic servants, men general labour, mining.

Crime was becoming a major issue in South Africa, with high unemployment and poverty making a substantial contribution. Add in a gun culture and an easy availability to access firearms and the recipe for violence is complete. Crime was always a problem. In Durban I’d been witness to a 'gun fight’ in the street, all very exciting and extremely frightening.

In the weekend I was to stay in Durban there were 50 plus murders in the city and surrounding areas. It has to be remembered that much of the youth had no formal education, black children had boycotted schools for a substantial period of time during the apartheid era due to the fact they were being taught in Afrikaans. This had resulted in a generation of children with no education, which to my mind did not bode well for the future.
The MK 'Spear of the Nation’ or the armed wing of the ANC had not decommissioned any arms either. The MK had been active during the apartheid era in fighting the apartheid state.
Guns and violence were a serious problem and that was an understatement.

As an outsider even at the time I thought it would take generations for the black community to win their freedom, they had won their democratic freedom but for that to mean anything they had to win their economic freedom. South Africa was the most developed nation on the African continent it was time for it to make it happen for all of its’ people regardless of race / colour. It is summed up eloquently in the nations national anthem
Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika - God Bless Africa:
“Lord, bless Africa
Let its name be praised
(May her horn rise high up)
Listen also to our pleas
Lord bless
Us thy children
Come spirit
(come spirit and bless us)
Come spirit
Come spirit holy spirit
And bless Us, Us thy children

Lord Bless our Nation
And end all confilicts,
O bless our nation.”

Some cynically said God had left Africa a long time ago.

South Africa at least had an infrastructure which was one up on the rest of surrounding Africa and driving was ok, the roads never seemed to be busy apart from the cities, the drive to the orphanage was over a lot of old back roads and was a pain in the arse though bearable, However in the event of meeting something coming the other way, particularly stray cattle, driving in South Africa was dangerous, drunk driving was in the national 'psyche’ (I seemed to have settled culturally) and then there was the fact that animals just seemed to roam freely, all very nice until you are doing 80mph and go over the crest of a hill to find a few large cattle standing there. I had seen a few wrecked cars on the roadside and carcasses of dead animals. If it was a cow, and near a local village, the carcass was stripped in hours, 'waste not’ 'want not’ I suppose. A lot of these areas could be dangerous driving if you broke down, so I always stocked up on food, water, roadmap and a spare can of petrol, this was all before the time of the mobile phone.

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