A point of view

Africa, Australia, everywhere is different and has a different effect on people who settle where ever they choose to settle.
It's as if the soil or the sunshine, the media or the type of lifestyle on offer dictates who you are and what you will become. Open societies versus closed ones  happy successful versus sad.
Of course that also depends on the sort of character you are and how effected you are by outside stimulus or conversely how aware you are of what is going on around you.
It is often said of Africa that it's hard to get out from its effect on you and by this they usually mean the open savannah the animals the pathos of living and dying and the unquestionable sagacity of the village African

Australia in the 60s had a brash "can do" attitude. The people were open and sunny, cocky in a Mates sort of way which was refreshing. They were an homogeneous bunch without any natural predators in those days and could afford to take life lightly having earned their reprieve by stepping off the boat 200 years previously. The literature was full of die hard characters putting two fingers up to the establishment or settling in the outback hundreds of miles from anyone. The scale of the country put it at odds with the person in Europe, particularly the tiny island of Britain where proximity meant that one had to respect the order bequeathed from above just to exist. In the 'Outback', as in many of the smaller towns the individual was allowed to flourish whilst in England uniformity ruled.

South Africa was a strange phenomenon in that the divisions in society defined the country.

The white population was split into two camps, Afrikaner on one side and the ones with an English heritage on the other.

Both camps were united in establishing their rights, not only to their perceived rights to the country but in the assumption that their rights trumped the rights of the indigenous native African.

This tripartite was the cause of much soul searching and whilst the die-hard, settler mentality which spoke for keeping what it had won regardless, was a harsh compatriot the alternative was unthinkable, that is at least until 1994.  
The defining of people by colour made the society concentrate on its own and with this concentrated awareness came a closeness in which it was instinctive to offer alms and shelter once you had concluded who the "other" was. Arriving into this open armed family of people was so refreshing after the "my home is my castle" mentality back home and I was astonished at the warmth and civility of Cape Town in 1962
The reason for this blog and its subject matter was a reply to a blog I wrote, obviously one of a number which had conveyed the impression that I hated the government (I do) currently governing over here in the UK and that  but in so many other ways I am contemptuous of much else in this country.
He is a good friend and I'm sure after our little contretemps we will assume normal service but for what it's worth this is his take.

He wrote :-

Practically every blog you write is riddled with your loathing of everything that the British Conservative Government does. Everything it stands for is riddled with evil and I wonder if there’s anything done that’s respectful  or worthy. There’s not a single thing that you find right in the place. It’s a pity that you left South Africa, that cradle of democracy after Apartheid. You must miss the peace and tranquillity of the African continent.

My reply 

At last a fervent, if disquieting response to my political views regarding this country. Keep it up I need the criticism.

Yes I have always been a Socialist and therefore I disagree with much of the policy emanating from the government of the day. Being at odds with government is not an act of treason, well at least not yet anyway and I would argue the effort I put in to my criticism and the concern I clearly have is a measure of how much I care. 

This society has much that is good, especially when I compare it with many other societies but that does not mean that it is without considerable blemish. 

The education system in the UK when compared to Africa is of course streets ahead but we are not comparing eggs with eggs and it is an accepted fact that we are a two tier country largely because of the artificiality of our schooling system. From this flows the apparent lack of concern for the true effects of draconian changes to the subsidies we pay people and the protection we afford them. Unlike the Germans we relegate whole sections of our society to the dustbin. 

This is an historic problem and we are no closer to solving it today than ever we were.

Of course if inequality doesn't concern you all well and good. There are many people I talk to who couldn't give a damn, but I do and I think in your work the fund raising and the charity work you do, you also care.

Placing an argument, perhaps the dislike of the 'medieval religious uptake' over here, or the chipping away at anything which is not 'privately owned' or run with inevitably, the effected of its lobby on shareholder interests, these are things that I wish were debated and on everyone's lips but they aren't, and so, in its incomplete way my blog is a clarion call to think about the other point of view which is just as relevant.

I might say that Africa and you mean South Africa is the "only country" in the world to have dismantled its Nuclear weaponry.

It had a Truth and Reconciliation system which was unique in the world.

It has a Constitution that is the envy of the world in its comprehensiveness and legally binding constraint on Parliament to follow civilised and humanistically derived rules.  (It's noticeable that the Mother of Parliaments continually refuses to consider a Constitution).

And on a personal basis having lived in a number of countries including South Africa I was shocked and dismayed on returning to Blighty, at the attitude which particularly English bred management displayed toward its workforce. But then people ape their betters and we come back to the entrenched class attitude that is as deep in the English psyche as it ever was.

We are friends, we go back a long way. I am my fathers child as you are yours. We shared the open spaces of our environment but we were segregated at the school gates. I hold no grudge but if it taught me anything at all "it's important to be your own man" and my blog is an epitaph to that.