South Africa Sucks

Cape Town - By next year, South Africa will be one of the worst places in which to live. The "in" country will be Ireland.
André Gouws writes this in an internet article on News24 (see below). The information is the result of an authoritative worldwide quality of life survey poll, compiled for 2005 by the Economist.

If you're a South African you'll probably beg to differ. Where would you rather live - Luxembourg or South Africa. Sweden or South Africa? I guess that depends on how many dollars you have in your pocket, perceptions of the impact of crime, HIV and how important the weather is to you.
From the article:
The five best places are Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Sweden, none of them exactly places that can boast much sunshine.

Even Iceland is high up on the list, in seventh place, with Australia sixth.

According to the Economist it has long been accepted that material prosperity by itself is not enough by which to measure quality of life.

Australia sounds like the one sensible iota of information in that report. Even Bob Mugabe will probably disagree that Zimbabwe is the absolute worst place in the world to live, and I'd have to agree. So why did South Africa get such a bad rap?
Because HIV is so prevalent, chopping down our average life expectancy. So maybe, and this is a wild guess, maybe if you don't have HIV life in South Africa doesn't suck so much. What do you think? I'll be finding out very soon.

The magazine also considered looking at issues like health, freedom, unemployment, climate, political stability, gender equality, family and community life. Ireland was the winner because it successfully combined things like wealth and freedom with old-fashioned values like close family life, reported the magazine.

America ranked 13th, Canada 14th and New Zealand 15th. Israel, despite its security problems, was 38th and Brazil and Argentina 39th and 40th respectively.


I wonder where Korea ranked? I have actually been to Ireland and although it is called the Emerald Isle, and it is green, it is also the cold mouldy place Frank McCourt paints so well in his book "Angela's Ashes".

I'll also pass on Switzerland. I read about Switzerland in Bill Bryson's book Neither Here nor There. I have been to Austria, and it is beautiful in a Heidi and Clara sort of way, but not as a permanent hideout. Mrs Rottenmeijer is, according to Bryson, still alive and well in Switzerland, and the chocolates and watches are not the only things incredibly overpriced. Getting citizenship, if you really want to go, is supposed to be just about impossible if you weren't born there.

Three places I would consider, even just as destinations worth squizzing through, are Australia (but of course) abba...and, I mean and Sweden. Dirk Schneider, a school friend of mine, recently worked there.
The third one is Iceland. The mixture of steaming black volcanic rock, glaciers, platinum blonde girls with baby blue eyes, eternal sunshine (in summer) and the sheer eccentricity of being so far flung are just some of the things that really get me juiced.

As long as the perception exists abroad that South Africa sucks, my chances improve of getting a house for less than $1 million, and ahead of some speculator from the States or the UK. As it is the property market is booming, and it sucks with respect to house prices that have shot up since I've moved into position to buy one. I'd better buy a house before South Africa sucks even more.

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1625122,00.html