TILL now, it is the British press virtually alone which has exposed the sordid truth about Mr Mandela’s decaying and degraded "New SA." But now the quality US media is beginning to examine our sorry state. An Illinois friend has sent me a 7½ page article written by an American now living in SA, Jim Peron, and published in the heavyweight journal, Liberty. Why has the US media been so reluctant to do this before? Says Peron: "They had invested too much in telling everyone what a saint Mandela is." Excerpts from his article:

"When a country begins sliding into oblivion, it really is the little things that get to you. You wake up in the morning and turn to see what time it is. The clock is off. The electricity is off again. Sometimes for a few minutes. Sometimes for a few hours. But it seems to happen more regularly than before."

He moves to a new home in Johannesburg. For two years, despite endless pleas, he cannot get a water/electricity/rates bill. Then ". . . they show up to turn off my electricity for failure to pay. The municipal workers refuse to show identification, wouldn’t say whose account they were turning off, wouldn’t show any legal authorisation."

He goes to the municipal offices. "Finally a sour bureaucrat tells me I must pay R9 000 immediately and the rest over six months. I got off relatively easily. Today’s newspaper tells of a man who received an account for R500 000 for water use. He owns a well - doesn’t even use city water. When he went to talk to the bureaucrats, they were very sympathetic. They told him to pay 50% now or have his electricity cut off."

He tells of an encounter at a print shop "The woman’s family . . . originally immigrated from India. Clearly she was not of the class ‘privileged’ by apartheid. What she said surprised me. ‘My husband and I decided we were better off under apartheid. Sure, now we can live next to Whites and ride in the same bus. But those things are not important.’"

What is important? "Not being afraid. Today the murder rate is ten times greater in South Africa than in the US. It wasn’t this way four years ago, before the ANC took power. But the government says the murders are ‘a legacy of apartheid.’ That’s part of the problem. Everything that goes wrong is a ‘legacy of apartheid.’

One of my friends was hit six times in one year. The last time I saw him I asked what he had done that day. ‘I got a new TV,’ he said. ‘How generous of you,’ I replied. He has since left for England.

"A major cellular phone company placed an anti-crime ad in a newspaper saying: ‘President Mandela - you were in prison. Now we all are.’ A top official of the bureaucracy regulating telephones called the company and the ad was withdrawn. I guess it was too rude to state the obvious.

"In America, you don’t see what’s happening. I know. I watch CNN. It doesn’t even come close to telling the truth about the decline and death of South Africa. The American media can’t tell the truth now - they have invested too much in telling everyone what a saint Mandela is.

"Well over 3 000 hijackings are reported each year. ANC bigwig Terror Lekoto told the press that hijackings are the fault of apartheid. Last year another top government official blamed the spate of hijackings on Whites. He said there was no crime wave at all, that Whites were inventing crimes just to collect insurance."

He points out that in 1997 approximately 2,300 police officers were charged with corruption - just about one every three hours. "Almost 500 police officers have appeared in court on charges of working with criminal gangs. In the Johannesburg area alone 700 police officers are facing trials for committing crimes ranging from murder to burglary. And everyone assumes this is only the tip of the iceberg.

"Over the last two years, there have been dozens of major highway robberies. In broad daylight gangs of a dozen men armed with AK-47s and other ‘military’ weapons attack security trucks carrying large amounts of cash. These robberies have netted millions for the gangs. Government officials blame security companies, banks, and anyone else they can think of. But some arrests have finally been made, the ringleaders have turned out to be ANC activists. The leaders who were arrested were officials in the so-called ‘armed wing’ of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe. One gang leader had been Youth League secretary for the Johannesburg area.