Should she stay or should she go?

After her performance in at the AIDS-congress in Canada, the call for the firing of SA minister of Health Manto (Tshabalala-Msimang) is louder than ever. The conference-stand of SA was said to be filled with no more than some "salad-ingredients" like onions, beetroot and lemon juice. These veggies form the core of her remedy of HIV/AIDS and not ARV-medicine (HIV remmers in Dutch) as most people would like to see. For a lot of western people it is incomprehensible that she can stay on as a minister since in their eyes her lack of support for ARV's causes more people to get infected and/or die than necessary.


On the sight of the Mail and Guardian people can post their opinions on the question:
Should Minister Manto loose her job?
I am showing you some of the fragments posted on the site, to show you that the discussion isn't as clear cut as it is in most western eyes:

"I am fully behind our minister, and as one of the people living with HIV, I have been following wome of the natural methods and they work well for me. My CD4 count was low and I used natural herbs and it was boosted. Different things work for different people. Let us not push for the western medication in so much that we become rigid and not want to try some other things that work."

"It is about time that people understand that Ministers implement government policy and not their individual ideas.If people are not happy then why don`t they vote for the DA and reinstate grand apartheid."

"Quite odd is the fact that a bunch of white people are trying to force a black person to do all in her power to improve the suffering of the poorer blacks affected by her decisions and unclear communications."

"It seems to me that TAC is pushing for pharmaceutical companies' interests ahead of common sense, while masquarading as a mouthpiece for HIV positive people. "
(TAC is the Treatment Action Campaign, an organisation in favour of ARV's, LK)

"And I dont understand what's the hullabaloo is about, coz Manto stated clearly that in addition to people taking ARV drugs they must maintain a healthy diet. She never asserted that people should disregard ARV for beetroot and garlic.
Its only cynical white media, which is hell bent on twisting her utterances, to mislead poeple!"

"Government is also for traditional medicine, which has served millions of South Africans and Africans very well over centuries and millenia. The problem is that even though there is anecdotal evidence that natural herbs do work, the legacy of apartheid insured that these were never regulated or tested."

A response from the USA:
"...have you ever wondered just why it is that HIV and the HIV tests are only going off on the least accepted human beings on this planet of Gay men and Black Heterosexuals. In particular, the poorest of the blacks that suffer from poor hygiene, poor nutrition, bleek and highly stressed lives?
If the west had been fortunate enough to have such as Manto and Mbeki at the helm, there would have been no false declaration of HIV as being behind AIDS, that was given on the White house steps of the most Homophobic president, with no scientific proof of the statement being offered."

For the whole statements go to www.mg.co.za

Windy city

Cape Town is (in)famous for it's South Eastern wind, also called the Cape Doctor, because it prevents smog from forming. However, I wonder if this strong wind doesn't also take lives now and again cause of the objects that makes it fly around in the air. In this picture you see the outside table of our neighbours hanging in the tree and driving a car on the day all the trash cans are outside, waiting to be emptied, can also be very risky business.

They didn't want better lives

" Those people didn't want to be upgraded", the 70 year old Afrikaans woman said after I told her of my visit to the District Six museum. This museum tells the story of the Capetonian neighbourhood District 6 that was destroyed by the apartheids regime because it was "unhealthy" and " too crowded". It reality the land was designated to become a white neighbourhood, so the black and coloured inhabitants had to go. The pictures of the people leaving their house reminded me of the deportation of the Jews in WOII to the ghettos. Wagons full of household belongings pushed forward by beating down people, faces drenched in grieve...

(The District 6 museum itself)

I told the Afrikaans lady how shocked I was and what an outrageous thing to do. But she had her own views; " These people lived in old and dirty houses. We gave them new, better houses, but they didn't want them. They didn't want a better life". Better houses? They were send to the townships of the Cape Flats. Better life? They never complained. The people of District Six loved their vibrant neighbourhood.

Talking to the Afrikaans lady felt like talking to my grandmother; set in her ways and very unlikely to change her mind. It made me wonder: was her view of things the way the apartheids-regime communicated it to the white people back then? That the coloured people were an ungrateful bunch? Or did she come up with her analysis all on her own?

These are not voters....

These are not people waiting in line to cast their ballots. These people are waiting for ....

the icecream of Sinnfull in Camps Bay, the best in Cape Town! Icecream-lovers are waiting up to 20 minutes to get a taste of flavours as Wildberries-Cream, Aero (Bros) chocolate-ice cream, Toffe Fudge Hazelnut, Butter Pecan, Cookies and Cream, Peppermint....

For my mother

Whale watching

Every year between july-december the Southern Right Whale comes to the south coast of SA to mate and give birth. One of the most famous whale-watching-towns is Hermanus. If you're lucky you can see whales mating as close as 10 metres from the shore. And if your don't see any whales you can always watch the watchers.
(That little black and white thingie on the right side of the picture directly above is a whale. Double-click to enlarge pictures)

VegiWHAT?!

A meal in SA isn't complete without a huge portion of meat. When I told my boyfriend that in Holland the guideline for the daily intake of meet is 100 grams his eyes popped out. "But that's only one sandwich!"
Yesterday I was preparing dinner when he peaked over my shoulder and saw that I had 'only' taken 150 grams of boerewors out of the fridge for him. (I chopped a pack of 500 grams into 3 portions) So he dived back in there and took another piece out. He must have eaten about 350 grams of wors (sausage).

The other day at the McDonalds I noticed for the first time that there was no veggie burger on the menu. Needless to say that my asthonishment wasn't exactly shared by my SA companion "Of course there's no veggie thing here, who eats that?"
Once a friend of mine was stupid enough to ask for a veggie burger at a fastfood restaurant. She got a bun with onion, lettuce, tomato and mayo!

The menu above gives you an idea of what people eat here for breakfast. Special attention for the Plaasjapie please. With 200 grams of steak it contains more meat than a complete steak dinner in an average restaurant in Holland.

Don't give them money or alcohol

The hunting trip I referred to earlier, started of with going over an extensive list of rules. Since there are guns and people involved it can get dangerous. Most stuff was pretty standard like; don't drive around with a loaded gun; always point the gun upwards; don't shoot a bok who fell or trembled over something, please give him a fair chance; don't wander away from the place at which you were dropped of, you might end up walking into some others shooting range.


Two of the rules really stood out for me. Those were the ones that concerned the people who came along to locate the animals and drive closer to the hunters. They were local (coloured) people. According to the farmer we had to treat them with respect. "You will see that I will treat them with respect and they treat me with respect and I want you to do the same". Wow, treat people with respect? Does he really have to explain that? According to my South-Africans friends there are still lots of white people out there who need to be reminded of that. The second rule was: " Don't give them money or alcohol. Otherwise they will come back for it time after time and bother not only you but also the people who come after you. If you really want to give them something you can give them some food". We're still talking about people here right? Not dogs?

X-mas in July

X-mas in SA means sun, sea and braai. That is...the one in december, because the 'European' idea of X-mas (snow, slay rides, pine trees, cold outside while it's warm inside, etc...) has gotten some roots here as well. In june/july there are X-mas festivals being held in several places i.e. Tulbagh, because that is the time of year the weather in SA is most similar to the situation mentioned in the all the European and American X-mas songs and movies.

Hunting (not for sensitive viewers)

Last weekend we went hunting. I've always been against hunting, although I never did it myself. In order to actually find out what it was I was opposing I went along. I am almost ashamed to admit that I kinda liked it. Lying in the beautiful Karoo (semi-desert), hearing the birds tjilping, watching the small animals and flowers making their way through the rough and dry landscape. It's a bit like fishing. You have to wait for the animals who won't be rushed. While you're waiting in silence all the stress fall of your shoulders.
I didn't shoot anything cause I missed.


The animals that could be shot were different types of bok; springbok, blesbok, gemsbok. The hunting season lasts for three months, during which a maximum of 25% of the population can be shot. After a bok gets shot the butcher will make sausage, ribs and steak out of it. The skin will be sold to a tradesman and the guts are left in the field for the animals to eat. The skin of springbok gets sold for only 3-5 rand a skin, that's around 50 eurocent. I was very surprised by that since a bag made out of springbok leather will cost you around 400 rand (50 euro).