To leave or not to leave: that is the question
Have you ever thought about leaving South Africa? Do you feel like spitting on someone who would even consider it? Or have you already left?
At one point or another, I've been all three. So perhaps that's why I've found "Should I stay or should I go", a collection of writing about leaving South Africa (or, in some cases, returning or staying put), has a special resonance.
The stories are always riveting, always compelling, sometimes infuriating. Andre Brink's piece was written after the brutal murder of his nephew. He wrote why he chose, in the aftermath of such a tragedy, to stay in South Africa. Brink harbours no illusions about this country - and he captures, with brutal precision, the corrosive decline of our young democracy, weakened by corruption and its leaders' contempt for the rule of law. But his decision to stay is because of his love for South Africa - a love that even this most seasoned of scribes struggles to define or explain, but which so many of its citizens, myself included, have experienced.
I relished Ways of Staying author Kevin Bloom's appreciation that South Africa is the best possible place to map out his own identity. It is in this place of bewildering complexity and excitement, that the writer can determine his own place in the world.
Journalist Gillian Tucker's grappling with homesickness is understandable, but the conclusions drawn from her visit back to South Africa after living for 14 years in Canada, were not. She contrasts the opulence of her accommodation with the shoddy service she received. To her, this somehow embodies what South Africa has become. I found that strange - poor service is an issue in many parts of the world. Her bad luck to experience it both in Johannesburg and Cape Town is more indicative of insufficient research on TripAdvisor than a meaningful truth about the country.