Learning from some 10 year expats

Some of you asked me about my expectations for my time in SA. Perhaps surprisingly, I did not expect to learn about BBBEE over a traditional Korean meal in an old Afrikaner house, but that’s what happened on Sunday.

I visited a church on in Midrand (halfway between Pretoria and Joburg) on Sunday and a few people invited me to have lunch with them. The hostesses were a Korean girl and her mom, and we drove out to their “plot,” as they call acreage. It was an interesting mix of cultures. The house was obviously an old farmhouse meant to be run by domestic staff, and it felt even larger and emptier with only two Korean women inside. This very Afrikaner house was decorated in a very traditional Korean style, and we had Korean food while sitting on the floor at low Korean tables.

A decent shot of both the landscape and the electric fencing.

The whole place is fenced with what looks like high exotic game fencing in west Texas. However, I suspected and confirmed that it was actually electric fencing. Despite the 7 ft electric fencing and the steel bars on the windows, they had been robbed twice during the 10 years they had lived there.

The girl just got her masters in BBBEE studies. She approached it more from the anthropology side – studying how it had been implemented and its effects – but I was still surprised that you can actually get a master’s in this. The more I hear about it, the more I realize that it’s like accounting – complicated, and something that requires professionals to basically audit/consult so you can figure out how you’re doing and what you need to do to get points.

Vuvuzelas aren't that bad -- provided you're the one behind the horn blowing it.