Kwazulu-Natal - North Coast

Richards Bay

The town boasts the country's largest harbour and some of its most magnificent wetland scenery. "Industrial Tourism" is actively promoted and groups are able to visit industrial plants, mines and other operations.

Hippos in the sea.

This is very close to St Lucia which is a nature preserve and adjoins the Kruger National Park.

I have never been here personally (on my to do list) but I am told it is like Miami Florida. Seems possible from the pics I have seen of Miami.

Industry

Alusaf is part of the Billiton group producing aluminium. Also big there is Richards Bay Minerals who do dredging and extract minerals from the sea sands. It is, as I mentioned in the Mpumalanga section, the main port for coal exports.

Alusaf plant and coal export terminal

Stanger

From what I have heard, it is a popular deep sea fishing destination, not much in the way for the international tourist.

Sheffield Beach

As you can see a little quieter and more rocky beaches. Not really conducive to swimming.

Ballito Bay

Port Zimbali

Big Aerial Pic here (link)

Umhlanga Rocks

Umhlanga is a residential, commercial and resort town north of Durban on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is part of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, created in 2000, which includes the greater Durban area. Commonly and erroneously pronounced Umshlanga (the correct pronunciation, of "hl" in Umhlanga is similar to the Welsh "ll"), the name means "place of reeds" in isiZulu.

Umhlanga, specifically the former sugar cane fields of Umhlanga Ridge, has become the focus of development in the greater Durban area with many businesses relocating offices from central Durban (similarly to Sandton forming the new centre of Johannesburg)(wiki)

This is a real upmarket destination and plenty of time share and self catering apartments.

One of the trends in SA for the rich folk is to buy and build a vacation home in the more remote coastal towns and then rent out via time share or simple rentals keeping the best times of the year for themselves. You start talking at ZAR2M for a very small property about 600m² and in Cape town, properties of this nature about ZAR7M+.

Political off topic

Although the government is predominantly black run, there still exists a dichotomy of the white folk actually running the economic side of the country with ownership of large companies still in the hands of whites.

Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) measures were introduced to counter this and what we have a token managerial positions in the private sector. This also led to BEE partnering companies that take a stake (for free) in the company so that you can get contracts with the bigger conglomerates where BEE is a prerequisite to be on their tender lists.

There are even independent agents now that try hook up businesses with these BEE "partners" FUCKING brilliant concept (if you are black) to get a stake out of some one else's hard earned capital w/o investing a cent or lifting your butt from your luxury office chair.

All this has done in reality is the cost of goods and services to these companies went up and in the end the taxman foots the bill via less tax by companies being paid as input costs increased.

This has led to a new neuveu rich black class and only a few astute black businesses actually have benefited. The masses are still the poor class here and their lot did not improve much.

One venture of a fully black owned banking institution failed and lasted less than a year. The same happened with a fully black owned mining company and it has gone bankrupt. Man the stories I could tell you of ineptitude would shock you.

The government introduced many minimum wage measures and in the farming community right of tenure laws. This means when a labourer is dismissed, he can now remain on the farm indefinitely if he has been there for say 7 years.

Farmers had little villages to house their workers and in the past and some had even supplied electricity and running water. The farmers would give extras to their pay like tobacco, maize meal, meat rations, a slaughter animal every so often and so they shared of the produce of the land essentially. They even had sections of land they could till themselves and plant crops and veggie gardens etc. all 100% subsidized by the farmer with seed and fertilizer.

So what farmers did was pay the minimum wage and the perks stopped and the black folk were in fact worse off. The folk had to find accommodation off the farm premises. The increased seasonal labour used to came from extended families and they all used to reside on the farms or come visit. Now the farmers hire for the harvest or planting from the local town. Probably as it is in the US, harvesting goes way into the night and not unusual to see harvesters still at it at 10pm. New laws meant overtime, the old system was a harvesting bonus, now only overtime is paid. The worker was screwed again by the govt. "fairness" laws

This has led to a huge influx into the towns of black folk and the traditional townships just exploded. The government built RDP (Reconstruction and Development Program) houses for them and is about the only good thing that came out of the govt. Of course, the huge imbalance in the population and job availability led to increased petty crime rates. The workers now have to commute to the farms.

In the original set up, a farm worker retired and stayed on in the village till he died. They were not put out to pasture and still contributed in menial tasks like say tending the farmers garden and mowing the lawn. Some big farmers built schools and funded the purchase of books etc. There was this win-win and there was peaceful coexistence. Somehow these folk were indoctrinated and told they were being taken advantage of and a shit storm erupted. They were duped and ended up worse off as the charity stopped when the new laws were mandated.

Certain farms were reclaimed by the government also in a redistribution drive and given back to the descendant of the alleged original owners of the lands. The white farmers were fortunately paid out for their farms.

To show you the result of what happened, read this blog article of one of my ex Rhodie friends. Here is one before/after pic of a once very productive farm. This is as recent as 2007.

All it took was 4 years….

These are pictures of a sugar/citrus/banana farm right next to Ngwenya Lodge in Komatipoort, South Africa.

This is not a scorched earth policy. The house was left intact and they stripped the building of all windows, roof sheeting etc. leaving just the shell of the building

The farm neglected and unproductive

You see this all over the country. A functional and habitable abandoned farm house will be stripped of all windows and roof sheeting within 6 months (stolen) and then you see tin shanties going up. Seems they like to live in squalor. The Govt. should have simply "bought back" the land from the "traditional forefather" claimant IOW given him cash. At least then the farm would have remained productive.

There is of course a superstition. Say someone dies in a village setting and there is a very functional thatched roof hut (some build really cool huts) no one will occupy the hut and they will burn the thatch roof off leaving the shell. Perhaps it is so that the soul can ascend to the heavens, no black man has been able to explain to me why they do this. It stands to reason, many farmers have died within those houses as these are 3-4th generation dwellings in some cases. It is an African cultural thing I cannot grasp and it seems a common trend/superstition in southern Africa.

Blacks only do subsistence farming. This is essentially the same thing that happened in Zimbabwe except there, the farmers were harassed off their land and the Mugabe cadres arrived in Jeeps and armed to the teeth with AK47s and put them off the lands. These farms have not been productive since. This scenario has played out all over post independent Africa. When the white man left, the land returned to fallow/nature. Some of these farms were left with implements like tractors too. The new owners simply sold or abandoned them to rust.

These cadres (aka war veterans) were not even alive in the Rhodesian war and are really no more than a band of Govt.. sponsored thugs. They are all in their 20's and 30's. The war ended in 1979. Do the math.

We see a similar trend here in SA where the ANC youth league are all about nationalisation and "taking back the farms" rhetoric. The Govt.. have seen the error of their ways (one hopes) and this redistribution has pretty much petered out. Over 3000 white farmers have been killed since 1994 and we are talking of women and children being butchered mostly in their sleep. All they take are weapons and the farmer's truck and car.

This is the side of the political story that does not make the press in the USA, the blacks are liberated, the "evil whites" pushed out and then it falls off the news radar screen. The sad thing is that the blacks have not aspired to roles of leadership in actually taking ownership and planning and running a farm. There would be less to bitch about if this actually happened but it does not.

Some African leaders have come to their senses and have realised, white farmers actually create jobs and till the lands and make the productive. Zambia has given grants and subsidies to these displaced farmers and many SA and ex Zimbabwe farmers have gone there. They also have the first ever white VP (Colonial rule had Brit appointed Governors not presidents). Result, the agricultural industry there is booming again. Less maize imports, more internal revenue win-win. Nationalisation of white farms was an epic failure under Kaunda.

My BIL and my wife sister's husband are both farmers so what I share I know first hand and not hearsay.

This is what happens when government tries to redress what they think are disparities and by doing so have done more harm than good. That old natural evolution just cannot be accelerated no matter how hard you try.

There are of course exceptions to the rule. There are some successful black farmers but these usually worked alongside with the other white farmers to get going and now are autonomous in their own right. The farming community tend to help each other out with assistance (for money, a cut in the harvest) in harvesting, planting etc. These machines are not cheap and of course they are not "point and shoot" machines, they are complex and training is required to operate them.

Nothing breaks a farmer's heart more than seeing adjacent fallow farms that should have crops on them. It is a love of the land more than a vocation.

The store front window of Africa is pretty, it is the back yard you don't see that is a mess. Political ideologies only work in theory, never in practice.

Much of what the early settlers did here is no different to what the white man did in the US with their NDN reservations. Same shit, different names, different continent.

Sorry for these rants but it is an emotional thing for me and many white folk here. I have lived here all my life and have nowhere to flee to not that it matters as I love this fucked up continent and all its people.

I have no political leanings as all the politicians, white and black alike, are a bunch of fucktards distanced and isolated from reality in their ivory towers of ideology.