United 4 Bafana Bafana bracelet … check

 

Series of South African flags … check

 

Car window flags … check

 

Awesomely cool SWC Adidas shirt … check

 

Tickets to see a game … chec … wait a minute. No.

 

That's right – I have absolutely no tickets to see a game. Thus far, all my efforts to secure some people to bring along with me to watch something in PE (which is by far the closest) have been met with more opposition than freeing the internet in China. Not since Herr Blatter tried to introduce a FIFA charge for cheering at games has there been so much resistance.

 

It's a little dispiriting.

 

So, I suppose I will watch a couple of the games from the comfort of my own living room. Which I suppose should be fine – I have a pretty decent TV and good sound. And I guess if I get tired of it all I can just switch over to something else.

 

I just don't think it'll be the same though. I mean when you get right down to it, there's nothing quite like the feeling of being at an actual, live game.

 

The shouting, the potential for rain and even the Vuvuzelas.

 

So if you're one of the lucky ones who managed to a) get a ticket b) get time off and c) find people to go with, spare a thought for me as you hopefully watch some foreigner find out that South Africa really can do bloody well.

Genteel xenophobia | 6000 miles from civilisation…

Oh the hell with this! People in South Africa need to stop being so full of shit. So called “Genteel Xenophobia” is just as bad. It’s incredible to think that an organization touting itself as the bringer of the good news, saver of the people and all-around swell folks would do something like this.

I suppose this is the almost inevitable follow-up from the people who are furious that foreigners get to live near their neighbourhoods.

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Radio 702 reported that residents at Midrand, where the government was setting up a shelter for displaced residents, hurled insults at a senior official who came to address them.

The residents were concerned about crime and the value of their homes if the temporary shelter was set up.

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South Africans don’t seem to comprehend the situation. People have been burned alive, turned out of their homes and sent fleeing back to homelands that are no longer safe. Their only refuge is a camp of tents with portable toilets and some other basic amenities.

Are we so desensitized to the things happening in our country that we truly only think about something as petty as the property price when considering the living conditions of refugees?

The UN has called this a humanitarian crisis. Do these people really think for a second that there’s a single Zimbabwean or Mozambiquan that wants to be living in these camps?

It would be truly interesting to see the pleas coming from these same people if South Africans were the target for Xenophobic attacks in other countries.

Tags: xenophobia, violence, Midrand

Following a terribly humanitarian comment by Daxk over on 6000 miles something has come crashing down on me that I really should have cottoned on to some time ago. South Africans as a nation are terribly desensitised.

The lack of gasps around the room show that I’m not exactly shocking anyone with this news. Still, I think it’s important to know that we should never have reached a stage where we no longer care about the horrendous things that are happening around us. Before anyone lumps me with the “South Africa is going to hell” crowd, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s undeniable that terrible things are happening but that doesn’t mean that South Africa is a terrible place.

Sitting with some friends last night, I realized that I feel worse about the way stock animals are treated than I do about some of the things I hear about happening to people. It’s not good but it’s true. Hearing stories from a farmer friend about how chickens, pigs and cows are bred and slaughtered was almost enough to push me to vegetarianism but listening to Tsepiso Makwetla speak about the latest headlines rocking SA leaves me cold.

Today’s news headlines include:

“I saw pangas in the window”

“42 dead in Xenophobic violence”

“Man kills cop’s husband”

Now, these are deliberately all the bad headlines that I could find but the fact that I can scan over them without being particularly upset by them worries me. It means I’ve become more desensitised than I would like. And for me, desensitised means dehumanised.