The Fruit Farmer sent me a beautiful story today, about Johannesburg, written by Top Gear personality, Jeremy Clarkson following his recent visit to our beautiful shores.

Clarky

This, from The Times online:

I dare you to visit Johannesburg, the city for softies
It’s the least frightening place on earth, yet everyone speaks of how many times they’ve been killed that day

Every city needs a snappy one-word handle to pull in the tourists and the investors. So, when you think of Paris, you think of love; when you think of New York, you think of shopping; and when you think of London – despite the best efforts of new Labour to steer you in the direction of Darcus Howe – you think of beefeaters and Mrs Queen.

Rome has its architecture. Sydney has its bridge. Venice has its sewage and Johannesburg has its crime. Yup, Jo’burg – the subject of this morning’s missive – is where you go if you want to be carjacked, shot, stabbed, killed and eaten.

You could tell your mother you were going on a package holiday to Kabul, with a stopover in Haiti and Detroit, and she wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But tell her you’re going to Jo’burg and she’ll be absolutely convinced that you’ll come home with no wallet, no watch and no head.

Jo’burg has a fearsome global reputation for being utterly terrifying, a lawless Wild West frontier town paralysed by corruption and disease. But I’ve spent quite a bit of time there over the past three years and I can reveal that it’s all nonsense.

If crime is so bad then how come, the other day, the front-page lead in the city’s main newspaper concerned the theft of a computer from one of the local schools? I’m not joking.

The paper even ran a massive picture of the desk where the computer used to sit. It was the least interesting picture I’ve ever seen in a newspaper. But then it would be, because this was one of the least interesting crimes.

“Pah,” said the armed guard who’d been charged with escorting me each day from my hotel to the Coca-Cola dome where I was performing a stage version of Top Gear.

Quite why he was armed I have absolutely no idea…

[read more here]

Read the rest of that – it’s pretty enlightening. A prime bit of script to send on to your negarito buddies who are addicted to talk of doom and gloom.

Remember when they said 2010 would never happen and we’re gonna lose it?

Remember when they said the country would be fucked in 1994?

And again every year since then? (15 years now)

Ja, those people..