Binocular III

Ride through Europe and you can’t stop talking about the Alps. Ride through the USA and you can’t stop talking about Route 66. Ride through the South Africa and you can’t stop talking about the political cauldron brewing and boiling.  How this affects motorcycle touring will become apparent...

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The rain that poured down last night leaves me no little apprehensive about the road-works sections we encountered on the outward leg, after my horror mud experience last year. Anxiously, I struggle into my rain suit. Plastic doesn’t easily slide over leather. Nor are the pockets and buckles easily accessible.
 
Before mounting up I test the surface with my boot. The sand is indeed muddy and slippery but the grass isn’t bad. If I stick to grass at least I’ll get out of Binocular Hill without mishap. That's great for now, but there won't be grass options on the road works sections. 
 
We gather. Engines start. Wheels roll.
 
It’s cloudy and misty. Rain drizzles down. I can’t see. My usual trick is to turn my head sideways and let the slipstream blow the visor clear but in this thick mist the visibility is near zero, so I can’t build up enough speed to get up a decent slipstream.
 
After just a few minutes, however, we emerge from the mist and into clear sunshine. We ride out of the rain band, into what is becoming a beautiful day. And here’s me, in full leathers and a rain suit. The morning warms up, keeps on warming up, and little me in the rain suit begins to crisp on the outside while remaining tender and juicy on the inside. 
 
After some time, we pull into a chain restaurant called Mugg & Bean. The sun is out and I can’t peel off the rain suit quickly enough.
 
We have brekky, mount up, and take a route whose name I am, for political reasons, not going to name. Let me explain why.
 
In the 1990s, the world cheered as Nelson Mandela’s ANC triumphantly swept to victory at the polls, bringing about the miracle of democracy, yadda yadda yadda. The world applauded. And then we faded out of the headlines.
 
That ANC, still in power today, has degenerated into nothing more than a toxic mix of warped ideology and sleazy habits. To this day its members cling to ridiculous 1970s Communist phraseology, addressing one another as Comrade and using bizarre phrases like Lumpen Proletariat. This they learnt from their then-USSR sponsors. Industrial scale corruption, gross incompetence and downright foolish ideology shape their “thinking.”
 
Until recently, they seemed impossible to dislodge. Now, however, as the country unravels at the seams, the ANC at last faces defeat at the polls in 2024.
 
What place does all this have in a motorcycle forum?
 
Look at the pictures below. These are genuine, not contrived. Wherever one travels in SA today, discontent bubbles just under the surface about the once-hegemonic ANC. It’s relevant to a motorcycle forum because if one rides through South Africa this is what one will see.   It is relevant to any social, political or news forum, because the poor get poorer precisely because of the sickening behaviour of their chosen few.
 
The pics are worth a thousand words. The once-revered ANC is now the object of ridicule, and as infrastructure deteriorates, the public responds by whipping out their aerosol cans and branding the ANC as the direct cause.
 
That’s why I’m not mentioning the route. It’s unlikely, but if any South African “government” official ever gets to read this, I don’t want him/her/it to know where to go to replace the road signs. All I will divulge is that it’s a road-works-free; section of road (we avoided the under-construction sections for the return leg of the trip), somewhere in the province now called the Free State.






If a picture paints a thousand words... 

We pull into a garage-and-restaurant for a final bevvy together before the group splits up. Then it’s handshakes, helmets, engines, and we take off for the unbeautiful city of Johannesburg. Rider after rider waves off and takes his relevant slip road.
 
I return home, ride into the driveway, and learn we have had no water the whole weekend. This water supply failure will last seven and a half days. This is South Africa under the ANC.
 
I squeezed this trip in before going in for an episode of minor surgery. A couple of years ago I was lifting the Suzuki onto the centre stand, did it incorrectly, and gave myself a hernia. It looked like an extra gonad. Now they're going to split my cases to resize my bearings. Don't be anxious, we Saffers have learnt to improvise. If the lights go out in mid-surgery, the scrub nurse lights a candle and uses a shaving mirror as a reflector. All I hope is that they don’t mix up the job cards; I’d hate to wake up and find I got breast implants and the chick in the next bed got the furniture in her groin reconditioned...
 
Until next time, order a frosty one and tell the barman it’s on me.
 
 
Regards
Stan L
South Africa

Love the humour.

So many Sowt Efrikins over here in Aus....lots in Perth, i think because they can wave at home from that side of the country... ha ha
The rest seem to have headed to Queensland's Gold Coast.....

Get the feeling it was because of what you have spoken of....

Do you think that there is a viable replacement for the ANC there ? 
Might be a long hard road out of the potholes they have left in society there ?

Do write more about your adventures