First impression

My first impression of South Africa - apart from the Joburg airport and the more than friendly helper who got us from the international terminal to the national. Quite a walk there... And the busy, busy working with finishing a new, modern, updated South Africa for the 2010 World Soccer games - was the townships from above.

It's actually true, it exists. Exists beyond what you might think, areas of townships unbelievably vast, unbelievably run down - and not seldom rather close to houses and areas of unbelievable monetary wealth.

It's really, really difficult to take in... To accept and say "that's the way it is, the way things are in this country, at this continent", something that don't come easy for a Swede that believes in equal rights and at least some basic human rights for everyone. Like a proper house with four walls.

For a Swede that believes in something as simple and basic as municipal transportation like buses instead of road-signs that say "Hitchhiking forbidden" or warningsigns for children walking beside the highways, since they have no other way to get to and from school...

Of course it might be presumptous for me, as a tourist for some weeks, to draw a lot of conclusions. But still many things, of the way they work or maybe not work, in South Africa leaves me with a hard knot of sadness and actually, as a white human being, guilt.

After having abolished apartheid, the south african legislation is said to be very evolved and modern when it comes to discrimination clauses. Can't help but wonder if that's something that's only put to paper and not into words... With the evergrowing HIV pandemic in South Africa, it fills me with even more sadness that there are people in government that turn too many blind eyes to this fact and/or utter something so unbelievably ignorant as "eat more vegetables and get well".

People that obviously think it's more important to build new arenas for the 2010 games so the Table Mountain will show in the background - instead of using the perfectly good ones already existing. The budget for the games already exceeded more than 1 billion rands (about the same in SEK) - when there are so many national problems that urgently needs to be addressed and dealt with.

Yes, there are many things to cry over in South Africa. Not only the country's beauty.