Yesterday wasn’t one of Brand SA’s better days. In the UK, millions were treated to a lengthy whine by former diplomat Michael Shipster’s travails when returning to from Sunny South Africa. His article revelled under The Times’s headline of “Grief. Guns. Guards. My hellish trip home from South Africa”.
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Shipster (above), who had a spell at the British Consulate in SA, was in the country last month to comfort a dying brother-in-law. His return from the Covid Red List nation required a 10 day quarantine in a pre-allocated Third World hotel near Heathrow. Reading that part of the story almost evoked sympathy.
But those emotions evaporated when SA’s recent visitor shared how his host in Johannesburg “insisted on driving me everywhere I go…….every time he edged anxiously out of his barricaded fortress in his car with his Walther PPK ‘James Bond’s weapon of choice, you know’ (I did) he truly believed that he was risking his life for me.” Seriously? With “friends” like Shipster…
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
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On the other side of the Atlantic, the US News and World Report released its annual ranking of the world’s best countries. Sterile Canada came top while SA fell two places to 41st, below Indonesia, Morocco, Costa Rica and Vietnam. Ludicrously, SA was ranked 63rd (of 78) on “Quality of Life”. Ag nee man. Surely braaivleis, rugby, sunshine and low Covid deaths counts for something?
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