Hey Petter
Thank you most kindly.
I shall do so (dig in) when I have a moment again.
For some odd reason, I love write. Whenever I learn interesting new information I have an insatiable urge write about it. I've discovered that I like rolling that sort of information into fiction.
So I've sold 3 non fiction titles and 5 fiction titles.
Being new, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to list my website.

@Smorie List away, mate.

@Petter www.MichaelSmorenburg.

@Smorie com, es, org, tv, co, co.uk, ??

@Petter How odd... . - but I did put . onto it:
www.MichaelSmorenburg.

@Smorie Ah. It's a .com extension.
www.michaelsmorenburg.com
Very interesting. I must investigate further.

@Smorie What is life like in S.A. at present? Kenya, sadly, has become insecure, although outside the big cities it is still a friendly and beautiful country.

@Petter I hate politics and avoid the news... other than issues to do with Trump and only because of the damage he can and does do to science and the environment.
I'm a South African with very many generations behind me. As such, I recognize that there has not been one day in our history when calamity wasn't just around the corner.
I say this with both an Irish passport and Green Card on hand. I moved to San Diego from '95 to '03, but, although I made a ton of and had lots of 'things'... and lived in La Jolla... I was miserable - because I'm African and not American.
So I returned.
I admit to living in a bubble - both through my ignoring the media and physically in a paradise of a beach community that I rarely (have to) leave.
Like all places, the vast majority of all people are really nice and happy and just want to get on with their lives - but provocateurs and media keep a vigil of stirring discontent.
I work a lot with visitors and every one of them wants to re-locate here.
I always ask them whether they think could solve the problem. I pose a question where some fairy godfather steps out of the sky and makes every citizen of this country super-rich, "Do things get better or worse?"
The natural answer is, "better".
I contend - no.
The more things approve here, the more population we will attract and there is a vast well of misery to draw on. A billion people in Africa in far worse off condition - and it is the growth of this population that outstrips any attempts to fix our problems - and, sadly, always will.

Do you ive in Kenya?

@Smorie My South African grandmother moved to Kenya in "nineteen hundred and footsack". I therefore also have Africa ingrained.
I left Kenya in 1987, and now live in Almeria, Spain. Here's the start of my rather neglected autobiography:-

[mojacar.ws]

@Petter
Observations:

1. You're a very good, crisp and clear writer. I'm really enjoying this.
   2)... so much so that I want to pop it onto my kindle to read on the beach
2. What a great legacy to leave for kids/grand, etc kids. How I wish mine had been so thoughtful.
3. This is somewhat why I too write - to leave that legacy that people can look into my head when I'm long gone.

... kindred spirits.

@Petter

Your lines:

" Please put aside the myth of jack booted colonial masters lording it over terrorised de facto slaves, so beloved to makers of movies about the American South. Where anything remotely resembling that stereotype existed it was usually recent civil service arrivals with an over rated opinion of themselves.

We locals preferred to call ourselves settlers, if only to make a distinction between ourselves and overbearing, “anything-but-civil” servants, usually out in “the colonies” on short-term, renewable contracts, complete with regular “home leave”. My father never saw the home he had left behind in the early thirties for over 20 years.

Of course we had servants, we were socially advantaged; we were near the top of the pecking order. Kenya was a bastion of the lifestyle of olden day Britain, as portrayed nowadays in many a television serial. The servants were part of one’s household but were also one’s responsibility. My family treated them as people, with feelings, and I was taught to say thank you for any service received. I was mainly in the care of an African “ayah” (nanny) and I would also follow the African herdsmen around, talking and learning. My parents actively encouraged it: Kenya was our home, for life we thought. "

...resonate massively with me. The South Africa I know is one quite apart from the "outside looking in" image. It was just like your explanation here. Alas, politicization is changing that and everything is becoming volatile and polarized.

@Smorie Praise indeed. My head now precludes my passing through narrow doorways.
I love words. For 22 years I published magazines here in Spain, before retiring.
We do indeed have a "colonial" past in common.

@Smorie Short, but I rather liked it. The sort of little story I would have published in one of my magazines. ( Lightly corrected)

[agnostic.com]