Facts about Durban

If you are interested in the history of Durban – as I am – have a look at a local website called ‘Facts about Durban’. You can find it here.

Have a browse around, contribute if you have specific knowledge or buy the book.

Arms and the Manne

I’ve been sitting here staring at my gun safe: a grey metal thing bolted to the floor and wall. It contains the essentials for survival in Africa – my trusty rifle and a bottle or two of brandy. Some locals go a bit further and also keep some biltong and a copy of the Bible in there but I’m not over fond of dried, hard meat, I’m an atheist and also a minimalist……the bare necessities jy weet.

The choice of alcohol may change from region to region and from white tribe to other white tribe. It used to be Kommando Brandy but Klipdrift – Klippies – has become the connoisseurs choice – and so it should be as it’s railed all the way from the Cape and is thus guaranteed to be at least one day old. Nothing then like an evening with your mates and a dop ‘n dam or three and a discussion on how cheeky the natives have become since they let Mandela out. Not like the old days but at least we can still wave our guns about and talk about the army and the Border and how some Major-General arrived for a morning to inspect our camp and got so pissed he had to stay for three days. No doubt Klippies again – you could keep it in the mortars on the tanks.

But I have digressed and given those ignorant overseas people the wrong idea about white South Africans.

The reason I was staring at my armoury is that I have to run the gauntlet of the new Firearms Act (or whatever it’s called). All licensed gun-owners have, over the next four years, to attempt to re-licence their firearms. This is a complex procedure involving proving the need to own a gun, convincing the authorities of its safe storage and undertaking and passing a proficiency test and a few other bits and pieces. The ultimate aim is to make it very difficult to (legally) possess a firearm.

Firstly I agree that there are too many guns in South African. I also agree that too many people own weapons they cannot handle or even know when they can legally use them. I have also accepted that I will not get my two guns re-licensed and will have to dispose of them. All well and good.

I believe however that once again the authorities and law-makers have not thought the matter through. There must be approximately four million or so licensed firearms out there. To implement the provisions of the Act a million applications will have to be considered each year during the re-licensing period. Given that there are approximately 220 working days a year it requires a processing rate of 4545 per day – for four years! Some wags have said in the press that based on the past rate of application processing it will take 50 years to complete the task.

Chaos and a growing backlog will force a re-think. I believe that eventually a combination of making it almost impossible to obtain a new licence, a staged re-licensing process over a longer period and natural attrition amongst gun-owners will achieve the result needed – less guns. My guess is 10 to 15 years being more realistic.

But then what about all those unlicensed firearms? We need far more than amnesties reliant on the goodwill of criminals…….

This is possibly old news but I see that Google now has a South African search page. It's South African because it allows you to enter your search in a number of local languages. But then, of course, the results will all come back in English......well nearly all.

It's available here.

A Few Christmas Left-Overs

The Christmas decorations came down this week. This signified the end of the festive bash and caused some retrospection of the past week or so. Patterns of the season tend to repeat themselves but there are always a few surprises.

Christmas Day and New Year’s Day saw the usual masses of people on the local beaches. Most estimates put the crowds in the region of 100 000 or so. As happens every year hoards of children get ‘lost’ and have to be housed at Addington School to wait to be collected by their loving, caring parents. Well they wait and then they wait some more and hours become days and days soon become a week. Even a few days back there were some still waiting to be claimed.

Now how can any parent lose a child or two at the beach and not worry for days on end? No reports to the police, no frantic searching, no anything. It is suspected that the parents know where their kids are and simply leave them there because they are being fed which means it’s not a home expense.

Just before Christmas an article appeared in the local ‘Mercury’ advocating that we should make Christmas more African. The usual argument was advanced that in our part of the world snow, mistletoe and other northern hemisphere symbols are out of place. Up to this point this does make sense but then our esteemed Mayor, Obed Mlaba, was asked for an opinion. ‘Yes’ he agreed, ‘we must go back to celebrating Christmas the way we did before colonisation’!!

A little bit more brandy on your Christmas pud Mr Mayor?

The other bit of unsurprising sentiment being expressed by African despots, dictators and presidents-for-life is that ‘Africa’s Money’ is being siphoned off into relief for the tsunami victims in Asia. This leads one to think that some research should be done into how much Africa receives on an annual basis in the form of relief, reconstruction, disease-control, peace-keeping and general handouts. The suspicion is that it is probably equivalent to a large tsunami every year or so.

On the topic of handouts the Nelson Mandela Childrens’ Fund throw an annual Christmas party at his home town in the Transkei. The invitation is general and a free cold drink, sweets and a token present is promised to all who attend. Now a free-for-all is a serious matter in this part of the world and more than 50 000 arrived in a high state of agitated anticipation. The ensuing scramble eventually became life-threatening and so the proceedings were called off by the organisers. They felt they had got off lightly with a broken limb or two and some random trampling.

The season was, however, rounded off on a sombre note. Nelson Mandela’s eldest surviving son died at the age of 54. The past president went on TV and announced that he had died of AIDS. He is saluted for being honest and open and by his conduct still towers over the current President. If his example is followed 2005 will be a good year.

Water, Water Everywhere

Nearly all human cultures have a legend about a great flood. This is hardly surprising as originally most humans tended to settle in coastal areas or on the banks of a river or lake. Therefore at some stage the river has risen or the sea has swept in and in ancient non-global times the whole known world of a community was flooded.

Humans have always sought a reason for these seemingly unpredictable disasters. We had obviously sinned and strayed from the path of morality in the eyes of the acknowledged deity and so god had to cleanse his creation and allow his people to regenerate themselves in a new purified form. Lack of a written history blunted the detail and the perceived punishment was – with time - seen to be uniform and just. We would pray and try harder to live the good life.

I, like many others, have been sitting in front of the TV watching BBC World and Sky News showing the appalling scenes coming out of Asia. Instant visual coverage in the wired global village show the suffering inflicted by the tsunami to be a grim lottery; there is no grand plan to correct evil and allow the chosen few to go forth in righteousness. Families have been torn apart. Children swept from their mother’s arms. Others have found themselves kilometres from where they were with little recollection of how they got there. Scenes of people burning the bodies of their relatives whilst others search through the ruins of their homes and lives have been relentless. The mind shuts down as the scale of the disaster and associated suffering is too large to comprehend.

So to say or even think that this is part of a deliberate plan by God is vile and obscene in the extreme. A report showed a priest standing in front of his church saying that he would not be able to explain the reason for this to his people was an honest exclamation.

We must realize that we humans are biological systems that creep and crawl upon the face of the earth like all other life and are subject to the same forces of nature. We have no recourse to any authority. We cannot buy our safety by ‘living in harmony with nature’ as the environmental evangelists now proclaim. The wilderness is always close at hand and whilst is can be understood it will never be controlled.

We have simply ourselves for succour and comfort when the time comes.