SA Rocks

I was sent this photograph by Adele via email. Thanks for the heads up and have a look at this fantastic National Geographic photograph by James Nachtwey.

Click to view the full image now!

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William Nicol drive is infamous for its ability to cause hours and hours of meaningless and senseless traffic. It has frustrated many South Africans over the years.

But now it has been revamped and completed.

Have a look:

It’s great to see people working so hard to complete a job over a long weekend. Good news, good work and lets hope that this solves the traffic problem somewhat.

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Cherryflava keeps popping out the hits and the latest one is this:

Unhinged: Surviving Jo’burg is an honest, quirky (and sometimes manic) documentary-style film about Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city and the world’s gateway to southern Africa. With rapid narrative, dry black humour, trivial factoids, insightful observations and a highly enjoyable soundtrack, the film tells a slice-of-city-life story. It’s a personal video snapshot of today’s Jo’burg and provides a unique opportunity for viewers to get a glimpse inside a place that the world has a very fuzzy sense of. – source

I want to go to this event. If you know of anyone who is going, can hook me up or is organising, send them my way!

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Jo’burg Child Welfare is celebrating 100 years of caring for abused, abandoned and neglected children. To mark this milestone join them on Sunday December 6 2009 at The Melrose Arch Piazza in Johannesburg for a day of family fun.

There will be kiddies entertainment as well as an extreme zone. Come and enjoy the Mediterranean market, try your luck in the silent auction and enjoy a sunset concert featuring local artists.

Jo’burg Child Welfare (JCW) has been at the forefront of providing direct services to children, families and communities in distress since 1909. Last financial year, they reached over 45,000 underprivileged children, families and communities through a team of dedicated and highly qualified professionals who extended vital care and support to those in need.

For more info please contact us at communications@jhbchildwelfare.org.za

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It’s fantastic to see such a prominent movie producer/direct like Peter Jackson speak so highly of talented South Africans. Not only is the movie directed by a South African, but it stars South Africans and is produced in Johannesburg and based in Johannesburg.

I cannot wait to see how this film comes together.

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An interesting article from Business Day last week: Parallels are often drawn between South Africa and Columbia. It’s difficult to say whether what has been achieved in Bogota could also be achieved in JHB however it does provide food for thought…

Business Day Article

Posted to the web on: 15 April 2009

Bogota shows Jo’burg how citizens can make a difference

ANTHONY PRANGLEY

LIKE Johannesburg, Bogota in Colombia is a large, flat, high- altitude, industrial heart of a country with the scars of its violent history. In the mid-1990s, two-thirds of “Bogotanos” believed the city had no future. Now, two-thirds believe the future is filled with hope. What happened to turn this around?

Recently, the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science hosted Antanas Mockus, the two-term mayor of Bogota through the mid-90s and early 2000s. A quiet, intellectual mathematician and philosopher, he helped change the face of the violent capital of Colombia through educative invention. He was brought to SA by the Human Sciences Research Council to engage with the public, state and private sector on his citizen-centred approach to combating crime and violence.

Under Mockus’s leadership, Bogota experienced significant improvements: 7000 community safety groups were created, the murder rate fell 70%, traffic deaths dropped more than 50%, water was provided to all homes (up from 79% in 1993). He asked people to pay a voluntary extra 10% in taxes and more than 60000 families did so. Through an amusing advertising campaign, water use dropped 40%.

Mockus demonstrates the ability for low-cost societal innovation to have a high impact in changing social reality at the city level. His social interventions are borne out of theories of social regulation by citizens themselves. Whereas we tend to focus on the fear of legal sanction (legal norms) to regulate our citizens, Mockus looked at a broader range of forces. In particular, he took steps to increase the pressure of moral and social norms.

Our moral norms include the pressure we feel through the fear of guilt and positive reinforcement through the desire to align our values with our behaviour and those of our fellow citizens. Social norms can force people to regulate themselves through fear of social rejection, the importance it places on the value of our reputation, and the resultant societal trust that is invested in us. The effect can be extremely powerful and at the same time easy to implement. Mockus painted a large star on the road at the site of each traffic-related death. Motorists would slow down when they saw these stars and pedestrians would look twice before crossing the road.

Other ideas included handing out 350000 thumbs-up and thumbs-down cards to the public, who were encouraged to use the cards to indicate their support or disapproval of their fellow citizens’ actions. After an initial period of widespread flashing of the thumbs-down cards, behaviour matured to the point at which the acknowledgement of positive behaviour was more common than rebukes.

In addition to police officers, Mockus put mimes on the streets. They mimicked and embarrassed rule-breakers in a gentle and humorous way. People feared embarrassment, the social norm, more than the law, the legal norm.

The focus on citizens for their own self-regulation and policing has been hailed globally as groundbreaking and the results speak for themselves. What is most heartening in SA’s context is that widespread behavioural change was achieved in a relatively short time. Change is possible.

Mockus was elected outside the formal party-political system. Can SA’s cities produce mayors of this quality from party ranks? If so, then those active in political parties need to be constructing power in a way that allows innovation to rise to the top. If not, then the ordinary public needs to find creative ways to lead our cities from the “middle”.

Mockus’s thinking teaches an important lesson: that the responsibility for change and societal advancement sits with the citizens. The state’s backing of something as simple as citizen role models makes for a powerful combination that has the potential to dwarf the effects of legal regulation on behaviour.

As Mockus put it: “Good citizens are not born. They are nurtured and grown, and every citizen should be seen as a potential trainer of other citizens.”

South Africans are deeply frustrated by the lack of desired change in our immediate environment. Despite this anger, we remain apathetic about engaging in the public realm and sceptical about what can be done. Unless we believe that these battles can be won, they won’t be. Mockus shows us that changes in social trends and the safety on our streets can happen, and it can happen quickly.

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I absolutely love Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame. He’s a laugh, he’s witty, he says what’s on his mind and he gets at everybody.

I subscribe to his column in the Times Online and read it every week. The man is brilliant.

This week his target is good old Johannesburg. And boy does Clarkson have it in for us.

The article is titled: “I dare you to visit Johannesburg, the city for softies“. I was a bit concerned about the article and Joburg receiving even more bad press. I was almost right. But it’s not Joburg receiving the bad press, it’s us, the people living here. Clarkson believes that we’re all sissies who need to get over ourselves and start positively promoting our incredible city.

His closing lines:

Johannesburgians are telling the world they live in a shit-hole to save their lions. That’s the sort of people they are. And so, if you are thinking about going to the World Cup next year, don’t hesitate.

The exchange rate’s good, the food is superb, the weather’s lovely and, thanks to some serious economic self-sacrifice, Kruger is still full of animals. The word, then, I’d choose to describe Jo’burg is “tranquil”.

I await the backlash for his article and my posting of it. I am sure it is to follow.

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Disclaimer: This is going to be an exceptionally geek-orientated blog post but those of you who are interested in the new world happening right would be mad to not read on!

South Africa has been chosen as one of the nations taking part in a world wide fundraiser called a Twestival. The event is basically run from organisation orchestrated on Twitter, the micro-blogging platform.

Here is what the main Twestival website has to say:

Tweet. Meet. Give.

On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

Johannesburg and Cape Town are the two local venues taking part in the global event. Other African destinations include Lagos and Lusaka.

The JHB event will be held at Cappello’s in Sandton on Feb 12th at 19:00. All other events around the world will also take place on Feb 12th.

The charity that we are trying to raise money for and assist in their quest is Charity: Water
From the website: “Most of us have never really been thirsty. We’ve never had to leave our houses and walk 5 miles to fetch water. We simply turn on the tap, and water comes out. Clean. Yet more than 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have clean water.
It’s hard to imagine what a billion people looks like really, but one in six might be easier. One in six people in our world don’t have access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can’t imagine going 12 hours without.
Here, we’d like to introduce you to a few of those billion people. They are very real, and they need our help. They didn’t choose to be born into a village where the only source of water is a polluted swamp. And we didn’t choose to be born in a country where even the homeless have access to clean water and a toilet.”

I think that this is a very valuable charity to be supporting and even if you don’t, it might be nice for you to get out and meet some of the people who tweet non-stop and it might be nice for some tweeters to get out into the real world and meet some non-tweeters. (I can completely understand how absolutely crazy this entire blog post sounds to those who don’t make use of the word “Tweet” in everyday conversation.)

This is a worthy cause couple with a different sort of event that just might turn out to be fun and help others. So when tickets go on sale, get them!

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I absolutely love Joburg at this time of year. There is on simple reason for this.

If you have an incredible view from your apartment, flat, office or are driving down a road with an amazing blanket of purple on the floor then take a snapshot and send it to me, I’d love to see it.

Here is the reason for loving JHB right now:

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Wow, Jozi actually has a mayor. I’ve never heard from the position, the person or the office, not a peep.

But I know his name, it’s Amos Masondo and he was the first democratically elected mayor of Johannesburg.

Currently in his second term as the mayor of Johannesburg, Masondo apparently has chosen to prioritise economic growth and tackling the AIDS crisis as major issues.

I am surprised at how much information is actually available about Masondo. See below:

Profile on Joburg city homepage
Interview on Joburg city homepage
CityMayors profile

There is more information available on Wikipedia and around the Google-sphere.

This is the first introduction to localalised government representatives on SA Rocks. I will be trying to focus on more as the days go on but if you have any information, suggestions or ideas, please feel free to contact me.

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