Don’t mention the . . . um

Actually, it’s much better to be honest about the uglier aspects of your country’s history and get to grips with whatever lies ahead

Man, I love being South African. It certainly beats being Greek any day. No, seriously. Greek government debt stands at 177% of GDP. Yes, dear reader, that’s a whopping 177% of GDP. That means they will never be able to pay. We are still hovering below 50% debt to GDP. Not too shabby.

Things have been so bad in Greece over the past few weeks you couldn’t bury your dead relatives. The banks had put an upper limit on cash withdrawals because, well, people were just hoovering their money out in expectation of a Greek exit from the eurozone. They were putting it under their beds. You couldn’t trust the banks.

So if one of your relatives passed on, you were in trouble. You couldn’t get out enough money to pay for the funeral. That’s pretty grim.

Anyway, I was sitting at the Admiral’s Inn in Antigua, in the Caribbean, enjoying a cold Wadadli, which is the local beer, and it is good to taste, when I concluded that it was not too bad to be South African. I had just concluded a tour of English Harbour, a historic and hugely strategic port in the West Indies, and I was depressed. Very depressed.

I was depressed because after an hour of learning about how English Harbour started off as a hurricane refuge for sailors as far back as 1671, and how it became a British naval dockyard after that, and how it developed to become a key part of how the Brits maintained naval superiority in the Caribbean through the 1700s and 1800s, there was something missing.

There was no mention of slavery. I kid you not. Not once. Now, between 1607 and 1807 the British alone trafficked 3m slaves from Africa to the Caribbean. By 1804, when Haiti declared the first black republic, the ratio of slaves to whites in the Caribbean was 10 to one.

Yet, from the Parks Commissioner of Antigua I read blithely that: “English Harbour’s importance grew in the 18th century not only as a port but also as a hurricane refuge and for careening His Majesty’s ships in the deep water against the shore . . .

“Well known British admirals who used the harbour were Rodney, Hood, Nelson and Lewis. The name Nelson’s Dockyard has been derived from the fact that Captain Nelson was made temporary Commander of the Leeward Islands Station (1784-1787).”

This tosh is the equivalent of taking tourists to Robben Island and telling them about the quarry on the island, or the prowess of BJ Vorster on the ski slopes.

This is why I think we are on a good wicket in SA. At least we talk about stuff. Go to Robben Island and learn about Makana, Mandela, Sisulu and others. We might have a lot of terrible history, but one thing we have done spectacularly well is at least try to acknowledge it.

So I sat with my friends on Nelson Dockyard in Antigua, pulled deeply from the Wadadli, and felt sad. The view, as is the case in most of the Caribbean, was spectacular. Shirley Heights on a weekday, when the tourists are not around, is beautiful.

It doesn’t much matter where you are in the Caribbean — the beauty of the islands, the clearness of the sea, the pristine beaches . . . It is all spectacular. The spirit of the people is ebullient and infectious. Service is brilliant.

I can drink the Jamaican beer, Red Stripe, all day in the heat of the Caribbean.

Yet, as much as I enjoyed so much of it, I couldn’t help but feel glad that we chose to face our demons here in SA, and continue to do so. We will be a better nation for it, not one built on fault lines.

Then I called our waiter over, ordered another Wadadli, and enjoyed myself. Sadly.