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This article was emailed tot me earlier today. I'm not sure of the source, but it does well to drive it's point home.

Living The High Life

Dear Editor, I am a white guy living in Cape Town. I have been thinking about who I should be voting for in the next elections, and I have decided that I will vote for the ANC. I think I need to explain to everyone out these in cyber land how I came to this decision.

As a white boy, living under the apartheid regime was not all that great, I mean I had this huge guilt complex about what the NATS were doing to my fellow South Africans.

I voted YES in the 1989 referendum and I thought things would be a lot better in SA after 1994. But in reality, they are not so great. We all know all the problems in SA. I don't need to spell this all out again.

I read this forum regularly, and I see that the ANC supporters (the Kolobes, CTKs, Calvins, etc) have such blind hatred for anyone not supporting the ANC (and especially us white "counter revolutionary colonists") that frankly I don't get it.

After 15 years of "freedom" and ANC rule, how do we end up having such blind racial hatred? What has really changed in 15 years?

So I have decided to vote for the ANC. And this is why: The ANC has done a lot more to keep black people poor and living in tin shacks than the NATS could ever have done in the same 15-year period and without any sanctions.

They have squandered vast sums of money - more than the NATS ever did. The have made the divide between rich and poor wider. They have lowered the standard of education to such an extent, that hardly any South Africans tertiary qualifications are internationally recognised. The standard of high school education is dropping year by year.

We have a lot of foreign qualified people working in SA earning vast sums of money due to AA and BEE. The BEE wealth is not being distributed; it goes to the elite few. Companies are not training AA folks, they rather hire foreign contractors.

I am better off under ANC rule than I ever was under apartheid. I earn more, live in an exclusive area, have private medical aid, private health and a private security company keeps me safe. My kids go to a private school.

Under ANC rule I keep all of this and I no longer have to suffer the shame and guilt of being a racist apartheid supporter. If I vote for another party, things will change.

More people will be qualified, and my kids will have competition trying to find jobs. More people will have jobs, and more exclusive areas will spring up, and I won't feel so exclusive anymore.

I won't be able earn a vast contractor salary as more local people will be trained and able to do the work. I won't be able do the work that is given to a BEE company (and sub contracted to me) as they will be able to do the work themselves.

I will lose money on the shares I have in the security companies, as we will no longer need private security firms if the SA Police actually stop the crime wave.

So, as a white guy, the best party to vote for is surely the ANC. I get to keep living the high life while I watch the poor supporters of the ANC live in tin shacks and struggle.