My husband and I were very keen to move to South Africa, like most people.
After viewing a "a place in the sun" documentary in our lounge in UK, featuring a place called Margate on the Hibiscuss Coast, we decided to go to South Africa to see this place for ourselves in Sep 07.
I made appointments with several estate agencies to view houses before leaving UK and all communications went well via email.When we got there things got very different.The first agent was absolutely shell shocked to see us together when she came to pick us at Margate Hotel.She kept saying "are you sure you are the lady that emailed me.I am surprised you can write that well..." (reading this , you can clearly see that this is not what you would call writing well)We were supposed to view five houses with her and in the end she showed us only one house, made her excusses and left!
The next agent was no different apart from the fact that he was very friendly towards my husband and I did not get any eye contact even though I tried to ask him questions about the houses. All the answers to my questions were directed towards my husband.He just totally blanked me out.Wherever we went, we got evil nasty stares, especially from the elderly.We were introduced to a company that deals with financing of properties and things were no different there either. One of the managers there said with a huge frown "are you two really married? I take it you(pointing at me) sit at home all the time doing housework in england while he is at work" By this time I had had enough and I told her what i thought of her. The funny thing is that I actually run a successful business and had asked my husband to give up his poorly paid stressful teaching job to work with me three months before we met this lady.
When we got to Margate we could not see the " Margate" sign so i decided to ask a lady who was on the durban-margate bus with us whether we had arrived in Margate.She looked at me from head to toe, turned her back and called out to her friends who were just crossing the road "we have got a woman who is asking whether she is in Margate, you wonder where these people come from!" (In the end the white bus driver gave us directions and even offered to call a taxi for us.He was really nice and we were very grateful.)
In contrast, I met a frail elderly lady Milan last month and asked her directions.This lady turned round and walked about a km to show us the place we were looking for. Bless her
I am not suprised when some members on this forum describe south africans as friendly because i saw it for myself. The truth is there is a huge, sad and frightening gap between black and white.My husband was treated differently.I am sure he would have had a good time if i had stayed behind.A few people offered to show him around if he was willing to come on his own because "there was not enough space in the car"
I visited South Africa with high hopes of settling there.Being black,visiting Africa was meant to be special but unfortunately it turned out to be the nastiest place i have been to.
South Africa is a big country and it would be unfair to paint everyone with the same brush. Surely there MUST be some decent white south africans (like the margate-durban bus driver)who can understand that there is more to people than just the colour of their skin.
However, I do not think that Margate, in the Kwazulu Natal province is their favourite location.
Am I still considering to live in South Africa?
With the High Crime and all, the answer is simply no.