REPORTING FROM SOUTH AFRICA

I was here ten years ago to film South Africa’s first democratic election. The world media was then out in force. Today, as veteran journalist Allister Spark notes, “what is remarkable is how unremarkable” this latest election was. It was almost routine as if democracy has been around forever.

How strange and refreshing to escape the hothouse of American politics, the war news from Iraq, and the latest media outrages. Traveling overseas is a way of letting some new air in the brain, especially here in the sumptuous sunshine and dynamism of South Africa.

America is not far away, of course, not by a long shot. American culture has implanted itself on the cultural front here in Johannesburg as CNN brings news and shopping malls show off the latest brands and while McDonalds pumps out its burgers without pause. Hip hop is here to stay and the familiar catches the eye although as someone who has been here many times, the familiar is changing too, with new construction, new government program and a heady optimism even as poverty and joblessness remains intractable.

As this country takes a day off to celebrate ten years of democracy/freedom tomorrow, one senses a great spirit of relief that at least part of the racist legacy of apartheid is being eroded, and that South Africa did not succumb to the civil war and bloodletting that many of the wise men of the media predicted.

I am too jet lagged to write in any detail, but I will report tomorrow on the Presidential inauguration and freedom celebration that I have come to cover, amidst all the contradictions that have always made this land of so many worlds so fascinating.

I am still receiving my e-mail so you can e-mail me at dissector@mediachannel.org