Seniors Lib Pt 1.

Uh-uh said Bra Trademark. I had nicknamed him this,to his delight, because his initials were TM. I am taking that name. He did, but shortened it to 'Bra TM'. It did roll off the tongue. Jonas Gwangwa was commonly known as 'Bra JG'. Perhaps he preferred the likeness. Returning to the question, he repeated: Uh-uh! explaining I am going back to Germany. And he did, soon, return to Germany.

He had come out to SA as one of many freedom fighter returnees. to have a look at the New South Africa. I forget the details, but he had married a German women. He did not work only as a musician in Germany, he had other work, and he and his wife paid the regulation contributions, whatever they were. He was reluctant to lose out on the state pension he expected at retirement in Germany. The difference between himself and most other ANC returnees, he said, was that he had these options - not everyone else does. They can stay. I won't.

The hand that feeds you

There were hints that it was not only financial: he once confided in an undertone You need to have an idea of how they will treat you. I have such experience. I assumed he was talking about the movement. It was not the first time I had heard a hint of sad treatment in exile, but a hint was all I ever got. Nobody told me outright that they had a raw deal at the hands of a liberation movement, and when others within my earshot asked, the response was a 😕 moue .

With ' Bra Trade' back in Germany, life went on, and it was good. Yeoville, back then, was an example of what the New South Africa could be. This was before the IFP's Buthelezi was put in charge of Home Affairs. His time there was the undoing of Yeoville first, and then the rest of SA. Mr Buthelezi allowed people in to SA for the princely sum of R10k per peson. Maybe he thought it was a fortune, and unaffordable to most. This is enough evidence to me that he was innocent and naive, because in fact, R10k was a few minutes work for the crowds of Nigerian, DRC and other diaspora drug lords and loan sharks who appeared within days of this immigrant windfall.

With SA not far off a government change (this is about to happen in the blink of a political eye), I have a feeling that it will not be long before we return to working together as we did in the days when the New South Africa was one mass Woodstock-style love-in, as it was back then. First off, though, we need to tsek these greenhorns from epalamenti.

Mzabalazo

YouTube attributes the name Mzabalzo to mean homecoming. We used it to mean the struggle. Bra Trademark was a struggle vet, but in his case, homecoming meant Germany. Was Bra Trademark financially wise to hightail it back to Germany? Here in Part 1, we can look at Europe, where many ANC people operated in exile, then at African neighbours, like SADC. In Part 2, we can look at how other former British colonies far from Africa fared, and then at BRICS countries. Here we go.

Europe

I was almost scared of what the data would reval, but it turns out Bra TM was right on the money: If he is still with us (I lost touch with him), he is currently receiving twenty times what I receive. For perspectve, a loaf of bread in direct foreign exchange terms costs about R40 in Germany. You did well, Bra 'Trade'!

Country	R Pension
Switzerland	56,680
Germany	46,590
Italy	26,515
Spain	24,980
UK	23,900
France	23,684
Portugal	4,299

A Swiss couple I have long known visited SA recently, to look at her old haunts. They are actually penalised for being married, such that their monthly pension is only R84,000 pm for them as a couple. If each were single, the amount would be R56k plus each. Anyway, my point is that they were easily able to afford air tickets and an extended holiday in SA on their Swiss pension.

Africa - SADC

Today, SADC (Southern African Development Community) has fifteen member states. Since the point to my story about Bra Trademark is that he did better by returning to Germany, let's first look at how a freedom fighter would be paid out as a pension grant (in direct exchange ZAR} if s/he were to have remained in one of our SADC neighbour countries, instead of returning home to SA, and limited to countries most likely to have hosted freedom fighters:

Country	R Pension
Tanzania	37
Malawi	500
Zambia	632
Botswana	699
Namibia	1100
Mozambigue	1260
Zimbabwe	1811
South Africa	2315

Bra Tradmark would not have done very well if he had lived in, and returned to, one of the SADC states. In general, it seems these states are no place for old men. We know that is not strictly true: seniors in Africa live out their lives sharing dwellings with family, thus not being faced with impossible rentals, as they would in Europe.

In Part 2, we will compare old age pensions with those of some other countries, and make a simple suggestion on how to turn SA around.