SA Rocks

I am always reluctant to blog about Nelson Mandela in spite of the undoubted affect he has had not only on SA but on the world. I am reluctant because I personally feel that the exposure he constantly receives has desensitised South Africans to his incredible achievements.

In the name of heritage I am blogging this post that I found on thepropertymag.co.za.

It is always refreshing to see where our leaders, icons and heroes have come from. This is where Mandela started:

Madiba’s first home was a tiny ‘matchbox’ house in the older area of Soweto called Orlando West.

His first son was born in this house. I am sure that this makes the home even more special and holds fond memories for Mandela.

Heritage is what we make of it and the future is what we learn from our past and subsequently alter. Much has been learned from a man like Nelson Mandela and I am sure he is not done imparting knowledge on the world.

I am very interested to find out if South Africans have had their fill of the man? Not taking anything away from his astounding past and incredible presence, but do people rather want to learn things like this about the man or rehash the knowledge? I personally am more interested in the random facts and interesting historical tidbits regarding his past and his heritage. I have studied the struggles that he overcame and the history that he made, I want to know about the man, not the achievements.

What would you ask Mandela if you met him? Have you met him?

I have on a few occasions and I must say that his presence is quite overwhelming. His humble nature is grounding and his humour is extremely surprising!

photos and quotations courtesay of thepropertymag.co.za

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I know that there is going to be a lot of content floating around on the web in SA today, tomorrow and now this week with SA Rocks.

I am going to be blogging heritage-centric content for the next week. Hopefully it wont be boring, hopefully we’ll spark some interest, debate and reflection – but not too much reflection if you don’t want to!

The Sunday Times has an insert this week in there paper focusing on Heritage and have launched a website to match their print ideas – not sure about the situation of their website is at the moment but give it a try and see what pops up!

Then iCommons has initiated their project titled iHeritage. This is without a doubt one of the coolest online convergence projects that I have seen from any organisation in the world.

From the iHeritage website:

The aim is simple – to build an online repository of South African culture and heritage – as lived in the day-to-day lives of ordinary South Africans, to be added to the growing collection of indigenous content on Wikimedia Commons.

This is a really incredible project in my humble patriotic opinion. This collection of data, of history, is invaluable to us and our past here in SA. You can upload content in various ways such as:
Wikimedia Commons and Flickr. If you are going to use Flickr you need to tag your photos with South Africa and iHeritage. Simple.

But if you are the kind of person who likes to contribute on a face to face platform then get down to Rosebank in JHB NOW! You only have 2 hours left to contribute at the event in The Mall of Rosebank so make it count and get down there. If not, stick to the online areas I’ve mentioned above. This is a great project to follow up so keep a look out for new developments.

Coming up this week: I take a look at Sunday Times’ special Heritage insert. I will be analysing heritage, what it means and if I am truly African in spite of or because of who I am and where I’m from.

This should be an interesting and challenging blogging week for me here on SA Rocks. If you have anything to add to my week of heritage please email me and let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

Note: I would love someone from the iHeritage event to send me a blog post about how the iHeritage event was received and how successful it was! Do It guys, do it!!

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I just found out that SA Rocks has been nominated in the international blog awards, the Best of the Blogs (BOBs)!

I think it is pretty cool. I am not really sure who else is nominated or involved but I am happy to be on the list of potentials!

Now I have been told that voting is a bit difficult so my request is that you stick with it and get through it and support SA Rocks!

Visit the BOBs to see who else is doing what. Then you can vote for this blog.

Voting is not open yet:

2. Participation in the Voting Competition
Users have from Oct. 22 to Nov. 15, 2007 to examine the nominated Weblogs and to vote for their favorites. During the decision phase, a voter lottery will also take place. After casting a vote users are offered the chance to register for the voter lottery. The voter lottery prize winner will be chosen after the awarding of the contest and announced on the BOBs Web site. Deutsche Welle employees and jury members are prohibited from participation in the voting lottery.

I’ll let everyone know when voting opens and then you can get to the BOBs and vote for your favourite!

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Congratulations to Vincent Maher and Amatomu for winning the award for best corporate initiative in Africa.

What is Highway Africa? From their site:

Highway Africa is an annual ICT conference hosted by Rhodes University which is situated in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Each year, more than 500 delegates from across the globe attend the conference to discuss issues relating to Internet governance, ICT policy and media for democracy.

The criteria on which the award was based is as follows:

Corporate category: Judges will be looking for creative adaptation of global technologies in an African media context.

Other broad criteria: (which apply to both categories), is the use of new media to benefit press freedom in Africa and encourage social empowerment in African communities. Ultimately the award aims to highlight innovations that result in African media benefiting from new ideas and developments in communications technology.

Well done Vincent! A great achievement, well deserved. We’re very, very proud of you!

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Let’s talk about bridging the digital divide: Knysna. There I’m done.

Knysna has become a bridge, I massive, invisible, wi-fi enabled bridge.

Working in conjunction with the town’s local authorities, internet provider UniNet has set up a system of base stations which spread wi-fi around the town.

courtesy BBC

Obviously providing wi-fi access to people without computers that are able to access the internet is a fairly futile exercise. So the Knysna community has been provided with computers that are able to access the internet throughout key areas in the community that enable all people from all walks of life to gain access to the global community that is the internet.

This is a phenomenal step forward, not only for SA but for the African continent. Let’s hope that more and more nations, city’s, villages, businesses, organisations and governments wake up and see the potential for growth that access provides to a community.

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The statue of Nelson Mandela stands loud and proud next to Winston Churchil and Abraham Lincoln right in Parliament Square in England.

The statue looks great, in fact it looks better than the rubbish statue in Sandton Square. Gordon Brown allegedly noted that Mandela is the greatest leader of our time. What a phenomenal achievement for the greatest leader that SA has ever seen (Sorry Thabo).

I really don’t understand why here in SA we can only manage to put a statue up of the man in a shopping centre, but in England he gets a statue in a relevant area like Parliament Square. Go figure. Then to make up for our poor showing of a statue we decide to call every street, bridge, nook and cranny “Nelson Mandela” whatever.

Here’s the video of the unveiling from Zoopy:

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Cape Town has been ranked as the tenth best city in the world in the Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards 2007 readers’ survey. In addition, nine South African hotels were named on the top one hundred hotels in the world list with Singita Sabi Sand/Kruger National Park coming in at the number two spot.

With the recently launched Accelerate Cape Town I think that everyone needs to get behind CT and rock it harder than it’s ever been rocked.

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This is the kind of statistic that every South African should love to see!

I have blogged about Jo’burg policing on numerous blogs from numerous angles. It seems to me that the increasing police presence in the JHB area has proven to have worked. Since 2006, strategic clampdown on crime seems to have worked.

Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said the joint strategy was put in place in July last year.

“We have confiscated more than 1 000 illegal firearms and reduced armed robbery within the inner-city by 63%.

Now there are going to always be the sceptics that question the statistic and challenge the longevity of this sort of result. I say booha to you because this is a start, in fact this is an above average start (63% in fact).

I am also sure that initiatives such as the Primedia’s crimeline and citizens taking more ownership of their safety are playing a large part in the turnaround.

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Update:Johannesburg – The mystery gem discovered in the North West province last week has been certified as a diamond, according to a report in Mining Weekly on Thursday morning. – from news24.com

Uncorroborated reports of the biggest gem in the world have surfaced on BBC’s news site.

This gem is the size of a coconut. Can you believe that? This place never ceases to amaze me. The diamond is being touted as being twice the size of the Cullinan Diamon which is the centerpiece of the British Crown Jewels. Allegedly 7000 carats of pure flippin’ natural marvel.

The discovery was made by a small and relatively unknown mining company. The company has remained unknown but who cares, this was discovered here in SA!!

Everyone is apparently waiting with baited breathe for results of tests from yesterday. Debeers has come out strongly stating that it is very, very rare that a gem of this size, and a green one at that is found in the north-west province. But if the tests confirm the value of the rock it could be the find of the century.

image courtesy of BBC News.

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I am told that it is important to celebrate milestones on your blog. So to celebrate the 100th registered member who registered this morning I am giving that user an SA Rocks T-Shirt!

That user was courtz from sharepointdeveloper.co.za. He is actually a friend of mine so this all works out pretty well.

In fact I think that I will be sending shirts (if they are in SA) to the 25th, 50th and 75th registered members too!!

They are:

Liza Pretorius
Tseliso Moahloli
Marietjie Wepener

I have sent them all emails and am waiting for their responses.

I really must thank everyone for the incredible support that this blog is continuing to receive. I am blown away everyday.

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