Back to reality

Oh, Cape Town. I'll miss you.

Today, I flew back to Jo’burg. It was sad leaving beautiful Cape Town and saying goodbye to the kids who will be working there. I feel like I’ve gotten to know them well during the orientation, so it was a bittersweet return for me. Those of us here are planning a trip back out to Cape Town however, to reprise our adventures on Long Street and to experience everything Cape Town has to offer. Shark cage diving? Paragliding? Skydiving? Doing the tallest bungee jump in Africa? O.K., maybe I’ll try a few of the things Cape Town has to offer the next time around…

While doing some grocery shopping today, it finally hit me: I’ll be living in this place for the next three months. For the past week and a half, I’ve been a bit of a nomad, wandering around Amsterdam and South Africa living out of a suitcase. Tomorrow, I start working. I need to figure out where I can do laundry, how to navigate the city and what to report on. Everyone’s been telling me it’s a great time to be a journalist in South Africa. I sure hope so.

Tomorrow, the National Prosecuting Authority is planning to officially announce whether or not it will drop its corruption charges against Jacob Zuma due to political collusion. Essentially, this is the biggest political story of the year so far, arguably more important than the election itself. Basically, the election is a shoe-in for Zuma and his incumbent party, the African National Congress, because South Africa is largely a one-party democracy with many small opposition parties. We’ll see what goes down tomorrow, and what this will mean for South Africa.

I know for one thing: if something like this happened in the United States — Blagojevich, cough cough — political careers will be cut short 90% of the time. South Africa’s different, I’m beginning to understand. You can be accused of rape and corruption, and still be on the road to becoming the country’s next president. It’s incredible.      

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