RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: South Africa's miners killed two security guards and ate them - Yet they call employers 'psychopaths'... go figure... Thu Jul 03, 2014 3:23 am | |
| Bright ideas await fruition in a troubled Africa
“This is where miners killed two security guards and ate them.” We’re 90 minutes north-west of Johannesburg, passing the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana, and our driver is helpfully pointing out the sights. The miners are once again on strike, but what’s making news is their 2012 walkout, and the cannibalism testimony of a man known as Witness X.
Cannibalism? Months back, when I’d agreed to speak at the CSIR Green Buildings conference in Pretoria, wild horses would not have stopped me. Africa is the quintessential mystery continent. Predators, voodoo, blood-rhythm, adventure; it’s like Australia with proper animals and a functional spirit life.
But by the time we left Sydney I’d heard so many car-jacking, random murder and armed escort tales that I was teetering on regret; certainly wishing I hadn’t agreed to take the kids.
Shaping the trip, then, was a gradual calibration of that fear, the slow parsing of mad paranoia from valid caution. Travel is all about trust, yet here we had no idea how it worked. Could you hail a cab? Catch a train? Walk? The black-white laws may have gone, but history colours everything.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/bright-ideas-await-fruition-in-a-troubled-africa-20140702-zstft.html |
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