But what use is there to encourage tourists who will be sitting targets if there were no measures in place to safegaurd them. I could never have that guilt on my hands by recommending to one of my friends in the U.K to visit S.A and they had to fall victim to the out of control crime.

I pray that S.A improves and reaches the potential it so truly deserves.

You site is all lovely and flowery and positive, but that alone is not good.  Your site has an evil edge to it which people soon see through, that edge intent on attacking Neil.  At least Neil is attacking with a purpose, to expose crime.

It is time the world takes notice of the problem we have, but thanks to bunnies like you it is covered up all the time.  Go ahead... be positive, even when you are hijacked and are forced to kill or be killed.

Stop attacking Neil, even though he exaggerates, and change the theme of your site to something like: "How to be positive about your wife/sister/mother being raped/hijacked/murdered"

I in no way advocate bad mouthing South Africa just for the sake of it, but Neil Watson points out violent crime on his site because a lot of these stories do not make it into the international press, a lot of foreigners think of SA as being all great now apartheid is gone and that we all get along and that we have great game reserves. Many are completely unaware of the level of violent crime or of AA and BEE.

In regards to some of the things you have brought up:

- You say that we cannot compare SA with Lebanon because of the difference in the population size, but the death doll from Southern Lebanon (about 1300) was from a period of war and for the same time period in South Africa about 1700 were murdered, not just died in their sleep or had an accident, but murdered, and this in a country that is (supposedly) not at war and you are trying to promote as a lovely tourist spot. The UK has a population of around 60 million yet even in an entire year they have nowhere near as many murders as occurred during the short war in Lebanon. A big population doesn’t mean you have to have a high murder rate.

-Many of your figures and percentages are taken from government websites like joburg.org and southafrica.info, or from fin24 who obviously are going to put positive figures on because it doesn't benefit them to tell it any other way. It is most likely that their polling group is very limited and carefully selected to achieve the best possible numbers thereby promoting what they want you to hear.

-In your section on white homicide rate, you seem to downplay the number of whites that are being targeted, by saying that 10.3 per 100 000 is far less than the national average of 44 per 100 000, you seem to love using numbers and percentages, so 10.3 out of 44 per 100 00 is 23.4% and this from about 8 or 9% of the population.

- Your advice to tourist’s section looks like it will make people seem scared to just go out and enjoy themselves. I have travelled to twenty countries and 7 of those were in the Middle East, never once did I have any reservations about going out at night on foot or walking into any local eatery whatever the hour and never did I see anyone have to hide their jewellery because of a high chance that they were going to be mugged.

-In the same section, your 100 reasons why SA is amazing look and sound as if they came out of Homecoming Revolutions. Yes SA has many amazing sights and a rich history but some of the stuff on that list isn’t really amazing;

•More mountains in CT than hills in San Francisco, who cares.

•We produce the most Mohair, ok so that’s money but not amazing

•Afrikaans may be the youngest language, I didn’t bother looking that up, but across vast sections of Africa, French, German, Portuguese are still spoken, aswell as hybrids from mixing with local languages. all European based Languages.

•We have a place where sharks like to commit suicide, again not really a fact that is amazing or special, everywhere in the world, every country has something that only happens there or can only be found there.

•ark Shuttleworth, again not amazing, he didn’t pioneer anything by going into space, he was merely a rich gut who paid for the privilege.

•The Anglo Boer war cost the Brits a lot of money?? Again I fail to see how this makes SA amazing.

•SA property rose 35%, are you referring to house prices? If so then that isn’t good, it means that houses are more expensive and more difficult to buy. I know, When I was still thinking about maybe returning to SA, from the time I decided to buy to the time I did but prices in my area went up by about R250 000.

•3rd best rugby team, that means that there are two better than us

•5th most medals at the Commonwealth games, again that means that there are four better than us.

There are some good things on the list too, I will not dispute that, but nothing that makes me say “You know, we did the first heart transplant, must mean its great in SA, lets move back.”

There are too many negatives in SA right now to warrant singing its praises too loudly.

AA and BEE are nothing but trouble for business, instead a decent education and training program should have been implemented and people moved into positions as they were ready to undertake the tasks at hand and not purely because they fall into the right racial group. Violent crime, rape and murder are some of the things at which South Africans seem to excel at these days. Corruption in the government and police services has skyrocketed and any attempts to criticise the government, its people or its policies is regarded as a racist attack. It isn’t a democracy when they can pass laws with a 70% majority, it means they can do whatever they want unchallenged. They claim to be democratic by listening to what everyone has to say because they know that no matter what is said, what they want to pass will pass with ease.

You seem to be a bit naïve about the actual state of South Africa right now, its good that you have a positive outlook but that will no doubt change once you actually get out into the real world, being 17 I take it you are nearly finished with high school, and so this wont be too far away.