Quotes of the Week - 18 November 2010

[James]

A selection of quotes of southern African interest. Quotes of the Week - 18 November 2010.

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"Chief, we don't want to entertain or dignify anything not directly related to our political work as an ANC Youth League." -- League spokesman Floyd Shivambu when asked by The Citizen if its leader Julius Malema would accept an invitation to participate in this year's Dusi Canoe Marathon.

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"I'm reminded of a comment made by Plato in a book called The Republic. He said the worst thing anybody can do is to express a very strong opinion on something you know very little about." -- Government spokesman Themba Maseko on the ANCYL in the Northern Cape, after it attacked national director of public prosecutions Menzi Simelane for his decision to prosecute ANC Northern Cape chairman John Block for fraud.

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"It was a scary experience. They beat me and threatened us with guns. I refused to leave the yacht and I was prepared to sink with the pirates." -- Skipper Peter Eldridge speaking to reporters after he was attacked by Somali pirates, who kidnapped Durban couple, Bruno Pelizzari and Deborah Calitz, from his yacht in the Indian ocean.

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"They said we were from Britain because we were white. This was despite the fact that we showed them our passports." -- Eldridge.

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"It is not good for Gugulethu to have this happen. This is evil. Please tell the British people we are not all bad here." -- Gugulethu, Cape Town resident Nomuula Ndala, quoted in The Times, after honeymooners Shrien and Anni Dewani were hijacked, and Anni killed.

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"What the 'frikkadel' [meat ball] were they doing in a township? If I go to another country I wouldn't go into their slums and expect to be safe. Now the whole of Cape Town gets a bad rep." -- Carina on news24.com.

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"We are out here in a warzone and we don't know how to deal with it... It was their second visit to South Africa and they made it clear they will not be coming back." -- Halstead Farm B&B owner in Addo, Eastern Cape, who asked not to be named, after a German couple was robbed at knifepoint in her establishment.

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"I wondered what to do, so I shouted for my mom." -- Teenager Nel-Marie Els talking to Beeld about the moments after she was bitten by a spitting cobra.

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Source : Sapa

[DenSweeP]

.... Halstead Farm B&B owner in Addo, Eastern Cape, who asked not to be named, ...

How stupid can you be? Please don't name me, but mention my business name and where it is. That's ok!

[OmegaFenix]

"What the 'frikkadel' [meat ball] were they doing in a township? If I go to another country I wouldn't go into their slums and expect to be safe. Now the whole of Cape Town gets a bad rep." -- Carina on news24.com.

My mother inlaw is in tourism and both me and my wife swore we would never speak to her again after she started talking about running tours into the townships for tourists.

I mean WTF? How fucking stupid do you have to be.

"We are out here in a warzone and we don't know how to deal with it... It was their second visit to South Africa and they made it clear they will not be coming back." -- Halstead Farm B&B owner in Addo, Eastern Cape, who asked not to be named, after a German couple was robbed at knifepoint in her establishment.

Yep that right, lets chance away all the tourists who line our pockets with shiney euros or heavy pounds and then when the tourism industry stops making money and all the little "stalls" next to the round go tits up due to no one wanting to climb out of their bullet proof Hummer, lets all ask the goverment to provide for us.

This country fails.

[James]

I don't think impoverished criminals are thinking about the damage they are doing to the tourism industry when they are committing these crimes. Apartheid left a huge portion of the population woefully disadvantaged and the ANC fail goverment hasn't done much to rectify the situation.

In contrast, people get murdered all over the world on a daily basis, so I don't see how it is any more or less tragic when it happens to a tourist.

GUGULETHU HAS ONE MURDER EVERY 2.5 DAYS -- SAIIR

The police were out of touch with reality for expressing shock at the murder of a tourist in Gugulethu township in Cape Town, the SA Institute of Race Relations said on Tuesday.

"Data in the possession of the South African Institute of Race Relations shows that over 700 people have been murdered in Gugulethu since 2005. In the year to March 2010 some 110 murders occurred within the Gugulethu police precinct," the SAIRR said in a statement.

"This amounts to one murder every two-and-a-half days for five consecutive years. How under such circumstances can the police claim to be ‘shocked' or surprised at what happened to the British couple?"

The SAIRR said if the police were truly shocked, then it suggested that "the police's senior management is out of touch with the reality of life on the ground for people in areas such as Gugulethu who have been left to run the gauntlet of violent crime on a horrific scale".

The institute said it was "revealing" that it took the murder of a foreign national for the police's senior management to take stock of the state of affairs in Gugulethu.

Poor communities did not have the resources to get private security companies to protect them, said the SAIRR.

"Many of these communities rightly deserve to feel deeply let down by the performance of their government and insulted when it feigns shock and surprise at violence that has become commonplace across South Africa's poorer urban peripheries."

Western Cape police said on Tuesday that people had been taken in for questioning in connection with the killing of tourist Anni Dewani in Gugulethu at the weekend.

The newly-wed 28-year-old was murdered on her honeymoon during a suspected hijacking in the Cape Town township of Gugulethu.

Her husband, Shrien, was not harmed.

National police commissioner Bheki Cele said in reaction on Monday: "We are saddened to learn about this horrendous and shocking incident."


Source : Sapa

[czc]

It seems that lots of people want to go to the townships.

My family visited in January and they wanted to see Soweto, take them there and they're like wtf is this, boring. Lets go to the beach.

Guy from work, his friends from America come over and the same thing happens. This is Soweto? Whats the big deal, lets go to the beach.

[OmegaFenix]

I don't think impoverished criminals are thinking about the damage they are doing to the tourism industry when they are committing these crimes. Apartheid left a huge portion of the population woefully disadvantaged and the ANC fail goverment hasn't done much to rectify the situation.

In contrast, people get murdered all over the world on a daily basis, so I don't see how it is any more or less tragic when it happens to a tourist.

Check out these figures.....

List of countries by homicide rate