Tomorrow, I leave for South Africa. I’ve got an interesting itinerary lined up, and a couple surprise “cancellations” along the way, which I’ll tell you about as I go along. Here was my general itinerary:

April 1 - Flight to Johannesburg; Arrive @ 4:40 p.m. on April 2
April 2 - Zurich Club Chapter Meeting – MoneyWeek SA, local university
April 3 - Lunch Meeting with MoneyWeek SA
April 4 - Flight to Cape Town; Arrive @ 2:10 p.m.
April 5 - Tour of Cape Town
April 6 - Flight to Port Elizabeth; Arrive @ 10:20 a.m.; Lunch with VIP Subscriber F.S.; Return to Johannesburg @ 6:55 p.m.
April 7 - Will arrange a tour through the hotel, perhaps to Pilanesberg Game Reserve (90 min. north of Johannesburg)
April 8 - Flight home; Arrive @ 11:53 a.m. on April 9

I’m having lunch with one of our very own Taipan VIP Inner Circle subscribers, F.S. He’s lived in the country for 30 years, and he had this to say in a response to one of my Taipan Insider articles…

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You know, it’s not just U.S. automanufacturers that are feeling the heat from this global financial crisis. Swedish automaker Saab (SAAB-B:Stockholm) just announced that it would be filing for bankruptcy.

Turns out, there’s a connection between U.S. problems and this latest news.

You see, General Motors (GM:NYSE) used to “own” the Saab brand… And that meant owning the company’s debt, too. Like the $340 million loss in 2008. Well, now that GM is in hot water here, and is restructuring its own business, it’s trying to cut out the diseased parts. That’s Saab…

So, the Swedish company is looking for protection from creditors in the bankruptcy filing, and may even sell itself, if there are any potential buyers.

Know anyone that wants to buy an indebted Swedish car company? Anyone? Anyone?

Today, hundreds of farmers took to the streets of the port of Pireaus, demanding government aid. This is the 13th day of protests, and Greece is having trouble all across the nation.

According to an International Herald Tribune article, “The clashes highlighted growing social unrest in Greece. The center-right government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis is struggling to restore its credibility after student riots in December.”

Greece isn’t the only European country experiencing riots…

Russia is seeing economic protests. And Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum is underway, also has it share of demonstrations. In France, hundreds of thousands of protestors demonstrated in the streets all across the nation.

The common denominator is the disgust at how citizens think their governments are handling the global economic crisis. Certain groups are pleading for financial aid, others want resignations. Neither will come quickly or easily.

So for some, like these Greek farmers, help may come too late. Farmers’ income has shrunk by nearly 24% in the past ten years, and now that commodity prices have fallen off a cliff, it’ll be even harder for farmers to gain any ground on the past.

In Davos, Switzerland, the world is holding an economic forum. It’s a grim meeting where money experts - according to Tim Weber, a BBC correspondent attending the forum and posting tweets on Twitter and the BBC - say, “We are not about to turn the corner, we haven’t seen the corner, we don’t know where the corner is.”

This forum encompasses so many issues, from the current economic crisis to climate change, to the political posturing in Zimbabwe and calls for peace in the Middle East.

More than 40 heads of state and 2,500 participants, including the likes of Al Gore, Rupert Murdoch, and Kofi Annan, to name a few will attend this five-day meeting. It comes at an unprecedented time, and the participation this year is unparalleled.

But again, the overall feeling right now is very grim.

The BBC has a page where you can follow live, via Tim Weber’s tweets, or you can see some of the Webcasts directly from the World Economic Forum Website.