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Comment by pixelpoet | Hacker News Reader

Eish, that's still going on? I'm half South African and grew up in SA but left in 2007, mainly because of the crime, but also the Telkom monopoly and rolling blackouts ("load shedding") were not so conducive to starting an internet business.

It's kinda amazing to me that any techies stay there. Cape Town is beautiful yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated to).

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It's worse than ever. I am having a lot of trouble keeping to my deadlines for work and have to work around all the blackouts which frustratingly disrupts my life and thousands of other businesses. Just a couple more years until my degree is done, then I am GTFO of here.

It's not like loadshedding is happening year round. We have periods of it, but it's almost as if you forgot last time it happpened. Now it's ongoing though, and yes it is frustrating.

Can’t you get a UPS? Or do they last too long to make that an option?

Load shedding lasts for hours. Generators are a big business, but they are expensive to buy and run. Keeping a good battery in your laptop is great, but the power to the wired internet infrastructure, the cell towers, etc are also cut. You could drive to the office, but the traffic lights have no power either.

So it is nightmare.

The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start. They must find an empowerment partner (which means some black people, but they have no money so you have to give them their controlling 51% share) that happens to be a friend of the ANC (not a documented requirement, but I did mention corruption). So they will siphon funds out of the company, but if you have the right ones, you can win big government contracts such with the bailout money they keep getting.

The place is a banana republic - Live there, enjoy you cheap labour, great food, amazing geography, the wildlife, your personal security guards and inexpensive servants, but don't reside there and keep everything in another currency.

> The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start.

There's no evidence that Google ran into empowerment (BBBEE) roadblocks here. And that assertion about 49% ownership is quite incorrect. BBBEE doesn't actually work like that (1). A lot of factors go into scoring a company's empowerment rating.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-Based_Black_Economic_Emp...

'Companies in South Africa that deal with the government or parastatals must be empowered as required by the Preferential Procurement Act.'

$3M USD / year turnover is a low bar these days and must apply all seven pillars of BBBEE to calculate their score as per the Generic Scorecard. - Black Ownership - 25 points - Black Management control - 15 points - Black Skills development – 20 points - Black Enterprise & Supplier development – 40 points - Black Socio-economic (SED) development 5 pts

So yeah, I need 51% Black ownership to get full points and again for management control points.

This is so racist my brain is bleeding, but it could be republished as a book on how to make a corrupt government.

From the Wikipedia article, "A general criticism can be made that wealthy and politically connected black individuals have been the real beneficiaries of BEE and not those still living in poverty. In fact, unemployment and inequality have both increased since the introduction of BBBEE policies.

In 2018 a surfacing argument is that BBBEE should be changed from a race-based policy to a policy that favours poverty regardless of skin colour. Apartheid was criticised exactly because of race-based legislation that favoured a minority based on skin colour and BBBEE once again has introduced race-based policies diverting South Africa's problems from endemic poverty to race. "

I'm a techie living in Cape Town and I love it. I have no plans to emigrate. We have problems down here yes, but they've been no impediment to my career.

Both Amazon AWS and Oracle OCI have satellite development offices in Cape Town, and if anything they are hiring more and more.

Are they still having the rolling brown-outs in Cape Town? My hubby's family were getting a bit gatvol of those a while back, telling everybody here in New Zealand all about it.

gatvol?

Others have explained, but I found it funny to read this word. My native language is Dutch (flemish variety) and I would also read this word as expressing a negative emotion (fed up sounds right). "gat" = dialect/slang for ass, "vol" = full.

> Adjective. (South Africa, slang) Completely fed up; very upset.

Speaking as a South African, still living here.

gatvol = "fed up"

It disappoints me that so many fellow South Africans are seemingly oblivious to the audience they are interacting with and casually use local slang regardless.

When I saw it I guessed it was some local slang, and I was excited to learn what it meant from someone who really knew rather than some online dictionary. I don't think it should be a disappointment, it contributes to the wonderful diversity of language.

As a Brit, likewise - and the context of this thread is fairly, well, South African.

Reading South African as a Dutch person is always great. I understand most of the words, but it’s still clearly a completely different language/context.

Gatvol = hole is full

When I learnt Dutch is came is a surprise that ‘opgewonde’ does not mean excited.

I told many an executive at KPN that I was opgewonde to work on their project. :)

Apparently Google Translate hasn't had the epiphany that you did yet. What does it mean? :)

Afrikaans: opgewonde → excited Dutch: opgewonde → aroused.

More specifically, in this word gat would mean ass.

As a non-South African, it's always great to learn local slang from around the world. On forums such as HN or Reddit, there's always someone around to explain it means. It's never an impediment to understanding the point being made.

Jislaaik. Don't skrik bokkie.

I’m not South African, my husband is. I picked it up from him. We use it around our home quite a bit. I was replying to a South African. Whilst talking about South Africa. I'm fairly sure nobody's upset about it, more intrigued.

>"Cape Town is beautiful yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated to"

I found this interesting. I did not know that was a common migration. Is there any reason for that? I know they are similar latitudes but I'm guessing there's some other connection?

There's a massive middle-class emigration going on in South Africa. Roughly sorted by volume descending:

* UK - many families have ancestry that enables them to easily get UK/EU Visa's

* Australia - most common Visa is points-based. Aus is attractive because the climate and lifestyle are comparable

* New Zealand - Visa's are more accessible than Aus, some families move to NZ first as a route to Australia but as mentioned there are clusters of expats there too

* US - comparable climate depending on state

* Canada - points-based Visa's

* Panama - you can buy your way in on a ~$3000 visa

not from either, but they are both english speaking commonwealth countries with warm climates of similar size

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