rain rain...piss off.

it's now officially the south african autumn/ winter transitional period, when the weather is as british as british can get...there is an evil dribbly spittal of rain descending from the clouds every 20 minutes or so. unfortunately our grand plans to hike up table mountain and abseil down were squashed so maddie and i have spent the day shopping, browsing and visiting the Slave Lodge checking out a cool exhibition about Bantu Stephen Biko who was an anti apartheid black consciousness activist who died in police custody in 1977. the slave lodge was really interesting and quite moving, the mst interesting part of the exhibition was the way it took you through a comprehensive history of black intellectualism around the world and within South Africa, there was also a Peter Gabriel song playing in the background about Biko himself...it was a bit cheesy and accompanied by a video of a film version of his life which i fear denzel washington may feature in. anyway it was sehr interesting and it's important to see what political and social upheavals the country has come through to appreciate the mess it's in at the moment. the elections are coming up, next wednesday i do believe the country will be voting. there is a hella lot of propaganda for and against Jacob Zuma, controversial ANC president who was tried and escaped conviction for rape in the past and also suspected of embezzlement and arms deals. yet there are so many avid supporters of the ANC over here, parituclarly within the townships and at a grassroots level it looks likely he'll be president. it was weird the other day i bought a magazine and newspaper with some criticsism of Zuma on the front cover and the two ladies behindthe till started laughing at me and aksing why i wanted to read anything negative about Zuma, quite bazaaaaaar.
enough about the weird politics and the billions of political parties they have over here (billions i tell you billions). we went to some tiny little rasta shop, hell knows what led us there but we ended up going in and chatting with the rastafarian fellow who worked there, nice chap, Zuma supporter :( and i was coaxed into buying an introductory guide to rastafarianism...i don't know why i have no intention of following the 'religion' but it's something to read innnnit.
spoke to my dad on the phone this week and he mentioned 'grassy park' which was supposedly one of south africas most dangerous neighbourhoods...i currently live near Grassy Park about 10 minutes away. here is a little youtube link as i was interested as to what the bbc had to say about this township