SA Rocks

I have blogged about World Heritage Sites in SA before but now there is more to tell.

South Africa has received an 8th heritage site. The Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape is to be inscribed on the World Heritage List of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) as a place of “outstanding value to humanity”.

Outstanding value to humanity, that sounds like our country and the things we have to offer if you ask me, not that you did!

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Sorry guys, but there’s no CookSister post this week. Why? Well, because I am not just writing about how SA rocks, I’m getting some hands-on experience. So while I’m here:

I look forward to having some

and definitely also some

See you when I’m back next week!

CookSister

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Kate Thompson’s Tea and Biltong with the Queen:

Leaving home is a virtually universal experience, whether it’s a minor move from your folks’ home to your own place just down the road, or a major one like emigrating – it can be a heady mix of emotions, simultaneously exciting and terrifying. When I first moved away to university I had a small taste of this, but it didn’t compare to the experience of moving overseas.

I thought I’d minimised the shock by picking a country with similarities to my own, and at least one I knew a little about.
Speak the same language – check!
Have family to house me for the first little while – check!
Familiarity with the culture? Well, let’s see: Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, an obsession with horses and dogs –check, check, check!

Well, the thought process wasn’t quite as naïve and clichéd as that, but I did think I’d thought it out and was prepared, but the truth is I hadn’t a clue. Culturally, despite being brought up in an English speaking family in an ex-British colony, it turns out (insert sigh of relief here) we have nothing in common.

It is so hard to pin down what South African culture is. Maybe we could venture a guess at some familiar pillars of Xhosa culture, of Ndebele or Afrikaans or English South Africans – but we’d be hard pressed to narrow it down in any meaningful way. And that’s not nearly as hard as describing South African culture, with tons of languages, peoples, and influences. I’m not a sociologist or an ethnographer, and I doubt even their ability to do that, – but, here’s the kicker, it doesn’t matter!

You don’t have to pin down the culture of your home to know that it exists. It’s something so ingrained, so subtly learnt that you don’t know that you’ve learnt to read the signs or even that there are any signs for you to read, until the signs change (when you wake up on another continent, for example).

This may contain a few overused examples, (we all know why something becomes a cliché, after all), but below is a list of some good South African words, phrases and understandings:

1. “Now” – this is great word. It can be used to mean this minute, or in an hour or two. Combined with “just” or repeated as in “just now” and “now now”, this tiny simple word can mean virtually any time without ever being specific.

2. “Howzit, how are you?” – no, I haven’t just repeated myself. One is a greeting and one is question – obviously!

3. “Ja no” – another absolutely nonsense phrase which adds little of worth to a sentence, except for what it adds in colour. Can be used instead of “um”, as in “Do you have the keys? Ja no, I last saw them in the kitchen”.

4. Bilingual and Creative swearing – most South Africans speak at least two languages, and even those we don’t speak we hear often enough to learn the fun and useful bits. I love swearing in Afrikaans and Xhosa round the office and getting away with it, while the office manager has a go at other staff for saying innocuous things like “Damn”. Oh, and South Africans love a good euphemism. My personal favourite is “Ooooh, veldskoen!”

5. The Metric System – the simple decimal system that the two most powerful nations in the world can’t wrap their simple heads around. It’s just easier folks!

6. “Robot” – traffic lights are robots. Sure it’s a little old fashioned sounding, but they’ll never be anything else to me. Oh, and this applies to “packet” too. I get blank looks when I ask for one here because in the UK they’re simply “bags”.

7. “Pavement special” – don’t make the mistake of referring to a cute mix breed dog as this. People in England take pedigree seriously, far too seriously. Maybe that’s why they still have a royal family?!

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Ed’s Note: It is with much pride and elated pleasure that I welcome Stii as the newest SA Rocks contributor. Stii has taken over the weekly Tech contribution on a Thursday.

He has a great technical/personal blog and is involved in some of the most cutting edge projects in the country at the moment, one of which being Afrigator, the hit blog aggregator for Africa.

Stii will be writing about all the wondrous things happening in SA surrounding technicals and technology!

South African projects are very democratic. In SA a lot of these new and exciting startups tend to listen closely to their users. They are all extremely keen to give you what you would like, rather than expecting you to take what you can get out of their services.

Recently a new service launched called iJol.co.za. It is a social networking site where you can register and tell other socialites about jols happening and what the jol is about. They released early (like most other projects!) and are still actively developing and improving and changing.

When a couple of bloggers mentioned some features they would like to see, iJol was very quick to respond and more so take action. Some of us wanted them to build in the hCalendar Microformat so that you can export and save events to Google calendar if you were using the Operator plugin on Flock or Firefox.

In a matter of days, they have done it! Dispite the fact that there are little use for microformats yet, they have done it and they impressed their community by giving them what they asked for.

It is a healthy situation for a growing community to make users an integral part of a project. Not only does it give users a sense of belonging, it also makes the project grow quicker and in the direction of demand. Its not always a healthy situation for the developer implementing the changes and demands, but thats what he does. He’ll just have to put up and shut up!

So next time if you think a South African project needs some feature, tell the people developing it. Rather than thinking it would be cool to have this or that, say it! Get involved, thats what these project thrive and depend on.

(This is just one simple example. The other big project like Afrigator, Muti and Amatomu do exactly the same.)

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These photos popped up in the SA Rocks Photo Pool at Flickr:

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This advert is brilliant. Using people and sports poses in place of gunshots, guns and bombs. Fantastic.

Unfortunately I couldn’t locate the video on youtube or zoopy. Follow the link, check out the blog and see the advert. Sheer brilliance.

UPDATE: The Nike advert has been removed from the blog where I found it. Apparently it’s a part of the bloggers corporate work and he was asked to take it down. As soon as the video has been posted on the official site I will link to it!!

UPDATE #2: Here is the Video:

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Pinotage is making a huge comeback.

In the recent past, writers and critics alike have been giving it a bad rap – labeling it a varietal with little potential and no depth in character.

Well that has seriously changed and many writers are faced with having to eat their own critical words!

The change in fortune can be attributed to a few very important factors (some of which I may very well have left out so feel free to add to them!):

The outstanding quality of Pinotage now being made by a vast majority of wineries

The outstanding quality of Pinotage that a select few wineries have always and continue to make (keeping their hopes of Pinotage alive and in turn teaching other hopefuls) – Kanonkop and Beyerskloof take a bow.

The formation and great work of the Pinotage Association

Some positive press about the varietal (Gary Vay-ner-Chuck of Wine Library TV recently went stark raving mad about Kanonkop Pinotage!)

The ardent support and work of die hard fans of Pinotage – Pete May of The Pinotage Club take a bow here.

Stormhoek – the success of Stormhoek and their Pinotage in particular should be heralded and recognized as a major perception changer.

Well I’m off home to have a half jack of Beyerskloof Pinotage (thanks Beyers Truter!)- enjoy the South African icon everyone!

Cru Master

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I adore entrepreneurs. For the guts it takes to risk your livelihood on a great idea. For the fact that life rewards these brave beings with the fastest, grittiest schooling and gruelling tests to prove commitment. For the fact that entrepreneurs always get in over their heads if the idea is big enough, worthy enough.

The guarantees that come with choosing this path are, being screwed over at some point, emptying your bank accounts at others, and taking an ego hammering from critics and the market.. among other exciting challenges. But those who make it out the other side are ALIVE and interesting and add value to the world and get rewarded accordingly.

In South Africa we have a pitifully small percentage of people with the guts to dare to be an entrepreneur – don’t believe me? check here

Henk Kleynhans is one of those who is rocking the game with style. Not because he hasn’t had his fair share of scary and absurd obstacles, legal, financial, logistical. But he keeps proving that if you play the game with clean hands, have good taste in problems and gather a strong network of mentors and fellow maniacs.. the gods will finally smile broadly on you.

Henk has won numerous awards for his company, Skyrove. It launched in 2005 as the world’s first prepaid wireless hotspot service. And he doesn’t just keep the business all to himself – he enables others who want to run their own businesses to get started easily in this HUGELY promising industry >> Go check out Skyrove’s opportunities for entrepreneurs (a little residual income never hurts)

I’m so excited to watch where Henk is going to go next, especially after the very healthy injection of venture capital from Lingham Capital (good job Vinny!)

Henk is an asset to the tech industry in South Africa, particularly for the young entrepreneurs who need to know how the hell to deal with the challenges that we all undoubtedly face starting our own businesses. Get to know him and link in before he goes stratospheric.

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Are we for or against the unifying of the national sports teams emblem?

I am personally not too phased if there is unity, but I think that the Protea should take a walk and the Springbok should swing in to the mix.

What are your thoughts, Protea or no Protea?

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The Times has a short interview with Ruda regarding her move from the hit T.V. programme Carte Blanche.

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