I was in South Africa less than a year ago. I'm married to a South African. We went there to visit her family and show off the kids to the grandparents. The country is going to hell in a hand basket and now well past the point of no return. The number one problem is the HIV thing (uncontrolled violent crime is a close Number #2). I have heard from multiple independent sources that more than half the population will be dead from AIDS within 15 years. My brother-in-law is an orthepedic surgeon working at a major hospital near Soweto. He is on AZT and other anti-HIV drugs because he is constantly exposed to the virus from his patients (hasn't become HIV positive yet). He's tried to flee South Africa to the US and New Zealand but the medical licensing requirements of both countries are so prohibitive that he would have to change professions (this is deliberate to keep out foreign doctors). There is nothing that can be done to stop the HIV plague. They can't even control the squatter camps growing up around Johannesburg. The government of the ANC bulldozes the camps just like the National Party did under Apartheid. However it does no good (new ones pop up over night like mushrooms). Remember the movie "Soylent Green"? People have been patting each other on the back saying how clever we've been to avoid that bleak future. Baloney! We avoided it in America and Europe but the squatter camps and townships in South Africa are straight out of Soylent Green.

Now here's the spooky part: South Africa is the "economic engine" of sub-Sahara Africa. South Africa is Africa's "success story" and what the rest of sub-Sahara Africa would like to "trade up" to. It is my understanding that much of Brazil and Argentina are in the same dire straits as Africa (don't know this for a fact). We're doing just fine thank you in America and Europe but the rest of the world is going down the drain. This will catch up with us eventually (We need to colonize Mars).

Gary