The Positives in SA thread

daveza

daveza

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Everyone's in a negative mood at the moment and we ( myself included ) are looking at other countries and greener pastures.

It's easy to list our gripes about SA but perhaps for just one thread we can remind each other of the things we have that greener pastures won't and the things we would miss if we took the brain drain train.

Feel free to add the good things- because if we are honest there are a lot of things we love about this country.

We have:

A beautiful country. More tourists than ever before visited SA last year.

Weet bix

Wine and beer - cold beer, not room temperature or wussy Budweiser. Oz wine - doesnt come close.

Beaches - Clifton, Jefferies, - unbeatable.

Our friends.

Top class private schools

Top class private hospitals

Biltong

Braais - not Barbies.

Shops with stock on the shelves

Bread and milk always

A liveable climate - not too hot, not too cold.

Great music festivals and great local music talent.

Thriving theatre and musical / opera entertainment

Maynardville

Table Mountain

A free press

Religious freedom

Political opposition

Nelson Mandela

Internet ( yes, its slow and expensive )

Libraries

Gold and diamonds

The Wild life ( as in animals n things )

A sense of humour - it's what we turn to when all else fails.

These just for starters.

Oh,

and we have

hope.
 
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Well we have everything that we need, some more than others...
 
There are quite a few positive people.

[conspiracy]I mean HIV as designed by Wouter Basson is making alot of people positive :([/conspiracy]

That aside - I love this country - won't move away from it.. I can make my millions here somehow..
 
Table mountain, who needs it. I heard they were going to demolish it and use the rubble to landfill table bay and build low cost housing from Milnerton all the way to Cape Town city centre.


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Just joking.
We still have sense of humour.

That would make such a great April fools joke.
 
Just difficult to find positive news in the papers. Nature of the beast I suppose: no news is good news, as they say :D

The only time I really appreciate South Africa is once I've got home/am on holiday and am sitting while the sun is going down in the blue, blue sky drinking a can of my favourite beer while overlooking the sea/a river/our beautiful mountains/my garden.

I just wish reality didn't keep sinking in the next morning, after dreams of sugarplums dancing in my head.
 
A big positive for me is people are generally so frigging fed up with the crime, with Eskoms incompetence and with governments lack of integrity and efficiency. People now more than ever are expecting positive steps and accountability with regards these issues...
 
I'm still positive and upbeat despite the major setbacks :)

It is too early to tell whether this year's going to be a flop or a success :)
 
daveza said:
I've never understood if this means having no news at all is a good thing, or that news is never good.
Click to expand...

Sum it up: bad news sells papers and magazines. If there is no news then they can't report the bad news and since there is no bad news it can only be good.

Tragedy and disaster are the order of the day when it comes to the press.
 
There's a few threads on this topic. I guess we REALLY want to see something postive. :o:D
 
I wouldn't be staying here if there wasn't still a little bit of hope left. Just wonder what it'll take to push me one way or the other?

I just hope Eskom doesn't find a way to turn that off too. :/
 
We have:

A beautiful country. More tourists than ever before visited SA last year.

(When did YOU LAST hike around SA? Or hitch? Or go for a long walk, day or night?)

Weet bix/Wine and beer
(can buy these anywhere, I have Castles in my fridge here in the US)

Beaches - Clifton, Jefferies, - unbeatable.
(not everyone wants to sit on beaches in sunlight. Something to do with cancer..

Our friends.
(You stay somewhere so that you don't lose touch with your friends? That's
not 'friendship' - it's called 'co-dependence').

Top class private schools/Top class private hospitals

(Available everywhere)

Biltong
(I make my own - like people do all over the world)

Braais - not Barbies.
(I have my own braais, like people do all over the world)

Shops with stock on the shelves
(Gee, try anywhere in the US, anywhere in Europe, Asia, Australia.. shops with stock on shelves, is hardly a 'positive' - unless you want to compare SA only with a small tribe of very poor Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert :P)

Bread and milk always

(See above)

A liveable climate - not too hot, not too cold.
(What are you, a lizard that wants no variety in your weather? 70% of the rest of the world enjoys 'seasons' :P

Great music festivals and great local music talent.
(I have lots of mp3's. And I don't have to wonder if its safe to drive to any festivals or concerts).

Thriving theatre and musical / opera entertainment

('thriving'?? Excuse me, as a working playwright, I can tell you that SA has maybe 20 - 40 reasonable sized theatres in the whole
country - the US has literally tens of THOUSANDS of theatres, all of which are filled with theatre/music/opera/entertainment..
The same goes for venues in Europe/Asia/Oz..

Maynardville
Open air theatre/entertainment is everywhere here, and elsewhere in the civilized world, in the summer months.


Table Mountain
(Okay, I'll give you that. There's 'Table Mountain'. Its great, but.. thats the first thing - and its basically just a mountain, remember. Unless you climb it all the time, and spend hours daily staring at it - its just a backdrop to your 'real life').

A free press
(Want to bet?)

Religious freedom
a) so what?
b) 'sort of'. When was the last time you heard of a Satanic Church opening up casually for business in SA?

Political opposition
Really? You comparing SA to a long suffering Kalahari tribe again? :P
(Name 5 things that the 'political opposition' have stopped the Government from doing, since 1994. I dare you).

Nelson Mandela

(Okay, great. Famous, morally superior etc etc. But so what? He's an old guy, and hardly a valuable asset to anyones personal life, technically. Unless you hang out with him daily :P )

Internet ( yes, its slow and expensive )

('Internet' in SA doesn't compare to most countries outside of Africa. And so what? That's like saying 'we have electricity'. And trying to compare your situation to Kalahari Bushmen).

Libraries

(Dah. When did you last drive or walk to a city library? Libraries are not a thing to show how unique your country is. See the Bushmen reference above).

Gold and diamonds

(Again. So what? Unless you have a bath each day in gold or diamonds, it means nothing to you or anyone else on street level. Saying that because your country has gold and diamonds, its a 'positive' to YOUR life, is like saying you're rich because banks generally have money in them. No you're not. Its a meaningless positive :P

The Wild life ( as in animals n things )

(Okay, this is perhaps a valid point. Assuming you've actually gone to see the wildlife - and haven't been too scared to drive across country to do it, or too poor to afford to go to a large game park. Again though, all the animals you can see, can be seen
in game parks around the world. Sorry).

A sense of humour - it's what we turn to when all else fails.

(Oh yes? Let's test this and see how good your sense of humor is, after having your fairly lousy and weird 'positives' about SA, being analysed, crapped on, and stripped down into reality)
:P
 
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LoneGunman : best post of the day. Summed up the positives for what they really were. Vaporous or "at least we have food" positives.

BTW: Playwright? Cool - what genre and so on?
 
All the above and we have a unique outlook on life. We can take the world on our shoulders and still smile, laugh and joke.....

Think the three err no 4 B's are my fav tho.... Braai, Biltong, Beer and Boerewors (Order entirely random!) :D
 
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