Police and Wine

So on Friday, my service placement went to a 100 year anniversary of the South African Police Service (SAPS for short) at the Athlone Stadium.

It was a pretty cool thing to experience. There were a surprising amount of people in attendance seeing as it was 11 in the morning (Another example of the high unemployment rate I guess). The police were lined up on the field in a formation that looked like 2013, and the minister of police and the deputy minister of police gave speeches.

It had to easily be around 85 degrees yesterday, but inside the stadium (which was unfortunately mostly white) it had to be around 120. Which had to be really painful for the police officers in their full dress uniforms. A conservative average would be around 10 fainted during the service. I guess that's expected when you have to stand at parade rest from 7am until who knows when.

But the crowd reaction to the police was what really threw me for a loop.

In Northern Ireland, the locals hated the PSNI because they believed them to be a continuation of the corrupt RUC. And I can't really blame them: from what I read the RUC, though trying to keep the peace, was just as terrible as some of the paramilitary groups. And during Apartheid the South African Police were just as brutal.

But the crowd reaction. I would have never expected it. They were cheering for the police! I wonder if it's because they think reforms are working within SAPS, but I was dumbfounded. To me, it just didn't make sense.

On Saturday we took a tour through 3 wine yards. It was beautiful scenery, but I've come to realize that I just am not a wine person.

The hardest part was definitely the contrast in wealth. We had to drive through some of the worst looking places around Cape Town to get to some of the wealthiest looking. It was very difficult to understand how someone can live on a manor making hundreds of thousands of dollars while their neighbor is living in a literal shack. I understand that it's just the way things work, but it doesn't make it any less confusing.

I'm going to end this post with a history fact.

 The wine yards in South Africa are similar to the Cotton Fields in the USA. During slavery in the South, the slaves would work on the cotton fields. The same thing occured in the Wine Yards of Cape Town. Very interesting to see some of the comparisons during the tour.