Services for poor people are poor services

This is a World Bank saying, which they used about 15 years ago to introduce charged services everywhere in education, health, on the basis that if people pay for servies they are more likely to complain about the poor quality. In fact probably poor people, who are not used to complaining about anything, probably lost out on a lot of education and health services during this period.

So today, given that the Viola Congress programme was not that exciting, and given that I realised I would not have much time to shop for books in Cape Town tomorrow, I decided to make an early outing there. White people tend to assume that everyone has a car, and there are offers for 'transfers' to everywhere by car (350 Rand return), so they tell you there is practically no public transport in SA. But I spotted a railway station in Stellenbosch, so off I went. Call it social research.....

The first surprise was at the ticket office, when the clerk asked about first or third class. I suggested second class. Does not exist, so off I went into third class (14.50 Rand, 11 Rand to the Euro). Oh dear....The carriages have a long yellow bench along each side, an that's it. No toilets. Not a single white face to be seen. Stops everywhere. Hawkers selling (successfully) sweets keep wandering through the train. The windows, of plastic (?) so blind that you could not see out of them; more a problem on the return journey when I could not really tell where I was - but a kind student helped me.

Somewhere down the train someone began to sing, with a chorus behind him. Very interesting, I thought, remembering last year's music course. Then he started preaching, in a language ununderstandable by me (11 languages in this country). Given that later he preached in English I realised it was all about God, a loving God, a saving God, but heck - the tone of voice was loud, hectoring, all hellfire and damnation. Talk about the difference between the words and the body language! A woman, never-ending, followed him; another man preached, the main man preached again, a guy was saved (on account of trying to get off the train and unable to escape), and so it went on for the whole hour on the train. Jeeezus! Luckily they did not pick on me, or on the Muslim woman sitting opposite me. Some people seemed to be amused, but it was a little scary.

Off the train in Cape Town; the station full of blacks, again almost no white face. Went into town, in the pouring rain without a raincoat, had a coffee, decided to by a brolly at Woolworth's (which here is more like Marks and Spencer's), and the rain promptly stopped. Found a German bookshop, with no order whatsoever, and could not find what I was looking for, so asked about others - to be told they are at the waterfront and far away. Back to the station to look for a bus - saw a minibus loading up people. I know that they only go when they are full...so after about 10 minutes we left, and I was let off by the shopping mall. Did I mention that the bus contained only black people?

The mall was big, with a much more mixed population, especially among the buyers (paler than the shop assistants), and had a half-decent bookshop. So I managed to get a few books (though the Stellenbosch Protea shop was better in terms of what I wanted). Am now loaded up.

On the return journey the train was packed; people returning home from school and so on. This time we did not have the God Squad, but an elderly guy who never drew breath, telling anecdotes between Cape Town and Stellenbosch - he had the whole train in stitches! An improvement on the morning's performance!

I did briefly peep into the first class compartments; they were not much better - hard-looking seats only but across the compartment, not along it. Far from what one might imagine first class to be like....

Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, is a beautiful place. It's quite old - the oldest year number I have seen on a building is 1837. Full of low-rise houses (one or max two floors); lots of lovely little shops, coffee shops, restaurants, a university described as 'Ivy League'....and yet and yet....

There seems to be a white part of town and a black part of town (that with the cheap shops, including a rather smelly fish shop). Black people are seen as shop assistants, gardeners, tradesmen - though I saw a fair number around the university. In the viola congress the audience is white; the South African violists playing today were white (though one had a Russian name and a playing style similar to Bashmet's, rather attacking a Brahms sonata).

To us Europeans it looks as if nothing has changed.....I suspect Stellenbosch is rather a middle-class town - but does it all need to be white? We are very conscious about it, or, I wonder, is it our prejudices speaking and our way at looking at South Africa which is out of date? Are we overlooking the middle-class blacks? I wonder what it will be in Cape Town when I go there on the weekend.

Emotional intelligence....

Having spent most of last year chatting to my therapist in Vilnius (and paying for her new windows in passing), I am a bit better at sussing out emotions, mine and those of others. Which is very interesting.

Picked up last night at Cape Town airport I found myself the victim of a deluge of non-stop praise of South Africa by the white taxidriver of British-French descent. He seemed disappointed that he could not take me to Cape Town because he would have given me lots of information; instead he took me to Stellenbosch and never stopped praising his country; including offering interpretations which languages different words and names came from (not always correctly, but with much conviction), telling me about the history of SA (mainly white), and stating everything with a very clipped and almost aggressive sense of conviction. Talking about the languages he went through English, French, Dutch, German.... eventually arriving at some 'black' languages.  I felt it wise not to ask about the black population; his discourse was so forceful that I thought he was defending something that he certainly did not want to be touched.

As it happens, I did touch a rather sore spot. Talking about his life (there's only so much you can talk about whilst driving through dark countryside) it turned out he had been a policeman. Seeing he is younger than me and the police seems like a safe job (better than taxi-driving) I asked him why he had left the police - I knew I should not have done when he burst out along the lines of 'I killed the fucking bastards'.....He had left for his sanity, he said. Myself, alone in a car with a killer (policeman or not), in the dark countryside, I wondered if he was really a) in total control of his feelings - they seemed damned close to the surface - and b) the right person to take tourists all over the country.  After this small interlude the conversation became very superficial, talking mainly about wine....