Brand South Africa Blog

Another satisfied visitor: “I’m not able to visit my family in the highly developed suburb of Washington DC without having to dance around the house, looking for that perfect spot that allows me to make a call.  Even then, eight times out of ten, my call gets dropped midway through the conversation.  It is astonishing that in one of the most developed and wealthy cities in the world I have trouble using my cell, yet I can be in an isolated region of South Africa and have full network strength.”

Arnd Hermann of Kyalami has launched a Fans of South Africa page on the social networking site Ning. On it he has placed this splendid ode to the country he loves.

I love her for the perfection of her days
The crisp Karoo morning
The Joburg winter noon
The late summer Cape Town sunset
The star-filled Free State night

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Ray Hartley, one of the shrewdest political writers in SA, now editor of the The Times, the daily edition of the Sunday Times, finds reasons to be cheerful. Sanity is prevailing on the economy. Zimbabweans are negotiating their own future. Civil society is flexing its muscles. The comments on his blog post are, well, vigorous.

Humphrey Borkum, chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, reflects on the current state of South Africa. He finds plenty to cheer about — from strong institutions and a muscular free press, to the resource boom and the Bushveld Complex, to the massive investments under way to modernise our infrastructure, to the explosion of the black middle class.

JP Landman, in this research note for investment managers BoE Private Clients, finds much encouragement in the SA government’s capex programme and rising per capita GDP. A useful corrective for those who think the current economic downturn and electricity shortage are permanent.

Yes, there are a lot of them to be caught, but this site offers heartening news from all over the country that policemen are hard at work and proud of what they’re doing.