Violent Crime: The State of the Nation

My boss moved with his family, to Cape Town about 2 years ago. He says he knew a couple of people who had been killed in hijackings and robberies in Johannesburg and he felt very unsafe here. So he moved to the Cape and says he feels much, much safer there. Albeit people do get killed there as well, Cape Town obviously has the right PR machine going which gives the residents a feeling of well being – good for them.

But here’s the thing – you have more chance of being killed, beaten up, raped and abused by your nearest and dearest, someone you know….by someone who is really close to you. Scary isn’t it.

At the mo, we are having 16 days of activism against women and child abuse. How does this activism help – well I don’t know but I certainly hope it makes people aware of the appalling levels of women and child violence and abuse in our country. We can bemoan the fact that there is a lot of crime in SA but the real nitty gritty scourge of violence against women and children is seldom given the same emotive outpourings as a robbery or hijacking. I don’t see people picketing for the death penalty for baby/child rapists….. and nor do I hear of people leaving town because women and children are being abused and killed in their neighborhood by their nearest and dearest, those closest to them.

The stats say that one in four women in this country will be raped. I don’t know what the figures are for wife and child killings, violent beatings and maiming. These crimes are not reported separately by the police; they are lumped into the general category of murder and assault with intent etc. And bear in mind that the crimes are only recorded when someone reports a rape or assault or even a killing for that matter.

Rudi Giuliani launched the broken window campaign in New York city which seemed to have fixed not only the city, but the psyche of the people living there. We need a campaign to fix the psyche of our people….that it’s just not ok to beat the hell out of your wife and kids, not so lekker to rape babies, children and women, and it really is not right to kill your wife and kids, hack up the neighbour’s kid up for muti, kill the chick next door or the woman down the road because she said no. And nor is it ok to ‘accident’ little kids just because you don’t want to pay maintenance – chilling!

Have you ever wondered what the diagnosis would be if the country of South Africa was given a psychiatric evaluation? Would it be something like: psychopath with paranoid schizophrenic tendencies?

A society is extremely sick when some of the most vulnerable people in it are not safe. It is very sick when we still hear comments like: well she asked for it; I wonder what she did to cause him to do that; the dress she was wearing was too short. What do you say, or what reasons do you give for a small child who can’t speak yet?

With this kind of violence, the appalling levels of crime against women and children why aren’t making more of a fuss…..why aren’t we ratting to the cops on wife beaters and the filthy sods who are raping their small kids every night. We can’t keep quiet and say this isn’t our business. It is our business.

Camino Wine

Quite a few people have asked me about the wine I drank on the Camino…I guess my blogs mentioned my daily tipple quite a bit *grin*, but also I guess the questions have arisen because I was walking in some very famous wine regions in Spain.

First though: I have to confess that I drink wine because I like it – or if I don’t like a particular wine then I don’t drink it…. I have never, ever had any desire whatsoever to get to grips with the how and why and when wine is made, the cultivars, the process, laying it down or picking it up. I seldom detect the smell of chocolate or vanilla, I seldom remember the name of a wine and I usually only buy a new wine if it has a nice label. About the only thing I know about wine is how to twirl the glass and then you get to see the ‘legs’…and I drink the stuff no matter how many legs it has.

I really do feel like I’m the wrong person to ask about wine…but here goes:

I am sure I mentioned that you always get a bottle of wine with your Pilgrim Meal….more often than not, they just plonked a bottle of vino tinto (red wine) on the table and that was it…sometimes the bottle had a label in the style of labels we are used to, sometimes it had a sort of home made label that just said Jose’s Vino Tinto or something like that, and sometimes it didn’t even have a label. In the villages and small towns you mostly got an earthenware carafe of wine so goodness knows where that came from. You were almost never given a choice of red or white…it was always red.

And very, very delicious – without exception.

When I was there it was harvest time and often saw families, friends, neighbours in the fields picking grapes. And sometimes in the small towns I walked past places where they were crushing the grapes – the very grapey smell became quite familiar. I even saw some guys crushing grapes in the back of a truck…they had lined the bakkie part with canvas and they were standing in there and smashing the grapes with spades…maybe that’s why the wine tasted so good….

One of the most famous wine regions I went through made the Rioja wines and I had the good fortune to drink quite a bit and it is good – but had I done a blind tasting I would not have been able to distinguish this from some of the local no-label wine…which brings me to this point:

I did tastings in 3 wineries (really nice wine – and just before lunch time these were a real treat) and I went to a ‘shop’ in a small town where they do a demo of the wine making process, you do a tasting and you can have a little chat with them about their wine. This was really interesting. This particular company (the name escapes me) has been replanting the locals vineyards with the grapes they want and training the farmers how to look after the grapes in a modern way. The company does not want these small guys to go out of business – the farmers can’t sell their wine anymore – people want the label stuff! So there is a good partnership – the farmer grows the grapes and the company buys them. I asked the man who did the presentation about the chilled red wine…yes, I kid you not. I don’t think I ever drank a room temperature bottle while I was there. He laughed and asked if I enjoyed it…well, yes of course – silly question. But here’s the thing. I have never really liked red wine – I have never enjoyed drinking luke warm gloopy red wine…yuk! But chilled is another story. I digress though. The man in the wine shop said ‘why not?’ Why not drink cold wine especially if you are in a really hot country like Spain (or Africa for that matter). He also said that the small wine makers know their wine and how it should be drunk…ie. Chilled - which is why you get it nice and cold. The big wine makers also know and he was of the opinion that chilled is great…. He said that this idea of being really serious and prissy about wine is very old fashioned and people should experiment….that is why Spain has Sangria after all…

Since being back in SA I have chilled a Cab, Merlot and a Shiraz….very delicious. Please try it.