ABSTRACT
I was born and raised in South Africa, where I have lived all my life. I have experienced the days of apartheid, the turbulent period following the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, the electrifying first elections and the current, more stable situation. I have worked as a child psychiatrist in the public hospital sector which caters mainly to indigent patients, this being my twenty-eighth year in service. Since 1995 I have been clinically and psychotherapeutically involved on a regular weekly basis in a township community outside of Cape Town where the population is a mostly traditional, semi-urbanized, isiXhosa speaking community. In the new South Africa I have experienced crime and violence personally. I see and feel the suffering the HIV/Aids pandemic is causing mothers and their babies. The dark side is known to me. Yet, despite these horrors, there is something within the country that continues to be astounding.
