I had an argument with a friend of mine yesterday. It wasn’t ugly or bitter, but it upset me massively. Maybe it was so much worse because we were stuck in a car together for five or so hours, and people can be a bit testy in those circumstances, but even though I realise this it still got under my skin.

He is an America traveller, who has been around the world over the last ten years or so. He is now working as a volunteer in Kliptown, Soweto.

Anyway, he got to saying first off that Africa (and I’m assuming he includes SA) is lawless on a level he couldn’t comprehend when he got here, bearing in mind he has been all over the world already. He likened it to Gotham without Batman (in Batman Begins), which is a terrifying, dark and almost post-apocalyptic world. I take offence at this comparison. Despite our obvious and undeniable crime issues, citizens do not live in constant fear and the issues are certainly not country-wide without exception.

I think my point is that the blanket statement doesn’t ring true for me. I grew up in the Eastern Cape without burglar bars on our windows, without knowing anyone who had been hijacked, without any real fear beyond what is rational and universal.

I am a lot more aware of crime now in Johannesburg, where I have had a few brushes with fear, but still it’s no Gotham.

His second point, and this is where I really want to focus, was that things were getting worse and to stand by the ANC given this deterioration would be an evil act in itself. I am not an ANC supporter but I think denying their gains over the last 14 years in effect rejects everyone’s progress and achievements in building our new South Africa.

There is corruption and slow movement on social issues and back-breaking poverty all around us, but we are working on changing an entire country, working on stretching infrastructure and industry designed to serve 5 million people to now serve 50 million people.

Rather than rabbiting on for another load of pages I have included below some information that records UNDENIABLE progress in many areas. They are NOT a denial of what is wrong here still, or a statement that we couldn’t do more, because we ALWAYS can! But, rather, it is an affirmation of what has been achieved.

This information is sourced from the Quick Facts page of SA Good News:

• South Africa ranks second worldwide in terms of the transparency surrounding its budgets – just behind the United Kingdom, tie with France, and ahead of New Zealand and the United States – according to the Open Budget Index.

• South Africa ranked 44th out of 131 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2007/8.

• More than 12,000 ‘Black Diamond’ families (South Africa’s new black middle class) – or 50,000 people – are moving from the townships into the suburbs of South Africa’s metro areas every month, according to the UCT Unilever Institute’s Black Diamonds 2007 survey.

• South Africa is ranked 20th out of a total of 128 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2007, ahead of many developed nations, including, the United States (31), Switzerland (40), Austria (27) and France (51).

• The black middle class grew by 30% in 2005, adding another 421,000 black adults to SA’s middle-income layer and ramping up the black population’s share of SA’s total middle class to almost a third, according to the Financial Mail. Between 2001 and 2004, there were 300,000 new black entrants to the middle class.

• South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, higher than any country in Asia, the Middle East or South America, and ahead of Japan, Spain, Italy and the United States.

• Home ownership in SA has increased from 64% (5,12m households) in 1994 to 78% (7,9m households) in 2006, according to a South African Advertising Research Foundation development index

• South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)

• Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education

• Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor

• In 2005, 10 million South Africans benefited from access to social grants