The Pacific

South Africa

South Africans talk about three miracles. The first was the ending of apartheid. The second was Nelson Mandela who was able to lead the country through a peaceful transition to a fully representative democracy. They are still waiting for the third.

Indeed South Africa is a confusing country for the first time visitor. On the one hand its rich cultural and bio-diversity, mineral wealth, moderate climate, long coastline, animal preserves and natural beauty make it an enchanting place to visit. Additionally, Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg is the largest airport in Africa; the Durban port is the largest port in Africa; and the banking system is as solid as most developed countries. These and the well developed roads and infrastructure in the large cities suggest that South Africa is a developed rather than a developing nation.

On the other hand South Africa is facing deep and corrosive challenges. Unemployment stands at 36%-42%. Crime is so prevalent that barbed wire topped walls encase every city building and visitors are warned not to walk on the streets of Johannesburg and Durban – even during the day. According to the United Nations, SA is second in the world for assaults. AIDS has obliterated an entire generation with SA having the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world. And lately, between 2-3 million refugees from Zimbabwe have flooded the already troubled cities of SA.

For all of the challenges it faces South Africa is the linchpin in the development of Southern Africa. As the wealthiest and most developed country in the region it almost must succeed for its neighbors to have a chance. And that is, no doubt, the third miracle South Africans and those of us in the rest of the world are hoping for.

Image: Children in Lesotho, a country entirely surrounded by South Africa, taken August, 2007

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is just about as far away from Seattle as you can get without finding yourself in the Indian Ocean. And it’s not just a geographic distance. The distances are also social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political. They are about more than which place has elephants and which has Starbucks’.

Taken together Southern Africa has an immense fragile beauty. Whether camping in the Okavango Delta or hiking the great dunes of the Namib dessert I couldn’t help wondering how these fragile ecosystems could survive the onslaught of global warming and modernization. And no one has even calculated the cost of the greatest scourge of all, AIDS, which has robbed many of these countries of an entire generation.

It’s tempting to either romanticize or condemn this troubled part of the world. But Botswana and Zimbabwe have little in common beyond their shared border. In 1980 nine countries formed the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the forerunner to today’s Southern African Development Community (SADC). Originally founded to lessen economic dependence on the then apartheid government of South Africa the current organization of 14 nations (including South Africa) that make up the SADC are concerned with various aspects of regional development. The underlying assumption is that to progress the region must work together.

One month is far too short a time to learn anything definitive about such a complex part of the world. Nevertheless, in my next few posts I plan to do a series of quick takes about the countries we visited.

Image: Elephants at dusk, Botswana, September 2007.