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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Monday, April 10, 2017

Anti Zuma Protest

 A lot has happened here in South Africa recently and although this is not a political blog it would be remiss of me not to comment, particularly as thousands of bikers have been involved in the country wide protests that have taken place.
Thanks to the actions of one man, two ratings agencies have downgraded South Africa to "junk status", this will have disastrous effects on the economy which has already been suffering due to the blatant corruption and mismanagement of the ruling party, foreign investment will also be adversely affected. The country is in crisis and Friday last week saw the biggest nation-wide march, with people of all colours coming together under one banner; "ZUMA MUST FALL" since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
There were protest marches all over the country and we west coast bikers met in Velddrif to do our small part.
 



I will let the pictures tell the story, estimates are that over 200,000 people were involved and as you will see it was not a racial event but a concerned South Africans event. Click on the pictures to see them full size. Several of the pictures were borrowed from facebook posts so I am unable to credit the photographers.



 











This photo shows just a part of the crowd in Capetown on Friday morning.



Where do bikers go after a hot day's protest action? Why to the nearest pub of course! Not to make light of a serious matter, but it was a very hot day for all concerned.
There are a lot of video clips posted to Youtube that are worth watching and will definitely give you an insight into just how many people got together. Just put in keywords "Anti Zuma protests" to have a look.
Where to now South Africa? Watch this space.
One possible positive aspect for foreign readers; South Africa is still a beautiful country to visit and your dollars and pounds will be worth even more here now, come over for a cheap holiday.

2 comments:

Trobairitz said...

I am going to have to go hunt for some of those videos.

Here in the USA our news is so censored I'd not heard anything about what South Africa is going through right now. We joke and call CNN the "Censored News Network".

the rider said...

Brandy there's a lot going on down here at the moment, and lots more happening within the next week or two. As I said in the post South Africa is in crisis and we don't know what's going to take place. I have a feeling that there is going to be a large amount of whites leaving the country very soon, I was at a home affairs office today looking for forms to renew our passports because we are going on holiday to the UK in December and the office was absolutely packed, people in a queue right out to the pavement, what were they all doing there? I didn't find out but it was certainly unusual. It's going to be a very interesting few months. By the way those video clips are easy to find, check them out.