This video was created by the incredibly talented Mike Scott.

Another rocking production by Goldfish and colab with Mike. Fantastic work.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I visited Cape Town a week or two back. I was there for a wedding but managed to discover a fantastic local singing talent that I’d actually known at Rhodes University.

Black Porcelain (stage name) is the moniker of one Carol Mashigo. Carol bubbles passion and oozes enthusiasm for her music, her art and her life.

You can join the Black Porcelain networks here:

Myspace
Facebook
Diva2b

She lives in Cape Town and through a series of interesting occurrences I was reintroduced to Carol and her absolutely stunning music.

She released her EP Green (only five songs) late last year.
Track names:
1. Johnny
2. Teacup
3. Nobody knows
4. Lovelies
5. Your dreams

Teacup,Nobody knows and Johnny are the most play listed.

For my fantastic readers I have managed to get three of Black Porcelain’s singles for your to download at your will.

So please feel free to do so now (click to stream, RIGHT CLICK, SAVE LINK AS, to save to your desktop):

Johnny

Nobody Knows

Teacup

Please also spread the love. Send the links to your mates, pass around the mp3′s if you know someone who knows someone then send it on to that person too.

I am truly impressed and moved by Carol’s fantastic music, incredible voice and unwavering passion.

The EP, Green, was released November last year and her songs have been play listed around the country. Radio stations like Tru FM, Heart FM, UJ FM and Capricorn FM to mention a few. She is currently working on a full album. She will be performing at this years Woman’s Show in Cape Town on the 22 February. She will be leaving for Nigeria to perform there in March. Dates will confirmed soon.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Here’s another great band that was recently and luckily thrust upon me. Love their vibe, love the tunes and love the band. Top class stuff.

For more info on them check out their myspace page, mynoise and their very own website.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I don’t. I don’t enough about my government, the policies, the people in power and what departments they control.

At the Million Man March The minister of Safety and Security Correctional Services was booed of the stage when he accepted the mandate set by the MMM. People wanted the President, they wanted Mbeki because he is the one they believed would listen. Pah!

The crowd wanted Mbeki because he is probably the only person in government that they knew by name and position. President Mbeki. Easy.

But what is the nature of a democratically elected government? Is it not to have various platforms of responsibility and channels of communication? I think it is. Yet this system falls flat because the people of this country haven’t taken the time out to actually learn about their own government. As I write this I can’t tell you who this MEC of Gauteng is, I don’t know who the mayor of my city is and I sure as hell don’t know the name of anyone in the police force in my immediate or greater areas. This is a major, massive problem that starts with me and continues over to you and your immediate surroundings.

If we as the people are not engaged enough to find out who to blame for the little things then how can we expect to create a stir at the top about the big things, like crime?

Using crime as an example is a good case study. Many people have been asking why the MMM was a “flop”, how could it have been better and why are the crime rates so high. Maybe it’s because we are trying to conquer the world before we control our neighbourhoods? Maybe what we should be doing is banging down the doors of our mayors and local government officials instead of trying to reach the president himself? There are people in these position for reasons, tried and tested, yet we don’t feel the need to even learn their names. I think this is where our community is flawed. We should all know where our closest police station is, who we can talk to at that police station and what number to call when we have a problem. Imagine if everyone in Johannesburg took the initiative to talk to their neighbours, friends and local government (include police). Don’t you think that would actually make more of a difference than trying to rally a gazillion people to the union buildings and call for the president to come down? I think it might.

Now let’s do a bit of an exam here – DON’T USE GOOGLE OR THE GOVT WEBSITE

Tell me who the ministers of the following departments are:

• Agriculture
• Defence
• Housing>/li>
• Justice & Constitutional Development
• National Treasury
• Secretariat for Safety & Security
• SA Police Service
• Trade & Industry
• Transport
• Water Affairs & Forestry

I hope you didn’t use Google or any other online resource. Now go ahead and try to answer in your comment. I am extremely interested to know how many of you actually know 10% of the above. I didn’t. I can guarantee that local government knowledge is even worse.

To find the answer to the above and all the rest of the ministry’s visit the South African Government website.

I understand that I often call people to action, that I ask people if the problem lies with them, us, or everyone. I know I do it. I do it because I think it’s the truth and it’s the necessary truth. We need to start to learn about our surroundings, accept and act rather than rebel and react.

For good measure, here is a list of our ministers:

Ministers

Popularity: 7% [?]

Talk about bad timing. It seems as though Afrihost just can’t handle SA Rocks on their servers. I’m not sure why that is as I personally don’t think that SA Rocks can possibly be toppling servers just yet. We are on the way, but not just yet.

I have had this debate a thousand times with a hundred people on many blogs. But is it viable to host a “successful” blog or website locally?

I am beginning to think not. Inspite of Gian at Afrihost trying exceptionally hard to please local websites and blogs I think that I need to take a stand right now and say that the last three weeks of hosting with them has been filled with difficulty.

A while back SA Rocks begin to flourish and local servers at Afrihost couldn’t handle the pressure. So I was moved to an international server and told that I would have access to unlimited bandwidth with my current package. Then earlier this month I was having serious downtime due to SA Rocks putting pressure on that server. I was then moved to another server (more downtime) and told that the problem was rectified. Then today I see a lovely image, something about bandwidth, usage, exceeding, blah, blah, more downtime.

Afrihost have been incredibly accommodating, helpful and resolute in their approach to me, SA Rocks and the business I give them. Yet at some point a good attitude cannot replace a good product.

For me a good hosting product offers me little downtime and a lot of stability. I have had too much of one and not enough of the other from Afrihost.

I will not be moving my site away from Afrihost, I believe that they can and will get things right, but it needs to be said, product is more important to me than service. I need your product to work.

I am not going to mention the 100% uptime promise that Afrihost offers because that doesn’t really factor in to this. What I am going to say is that I expect 100% uptime, not 100% good service.

Maybe hosting abroad makes more sense; it’s cheaper, more reliable and will more than likely give me less gray hairs.

But for now, I’m sticking with Afrihost. Gian can thank the great customer service that his team provided me in the last 3 weeks.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Rikus sent me an email a few days back. He runs a project/website called Charity Wines. The concept is a simple one and one that I like. You buy wine, they deliver and money goes to charity. Easy huh? Yep it is.

You can have a look at who benefits when you buy wine here.

Let’s have Rikus explain things a bit more:

Hi Rikus, Welcome to SA Rocks. I love the idea behind Charity Wines. Tell me a bit about where the concept came from?

Thank you. As you might know, there are a number of grassroots charities out there doing fantastic work. Time and time again we find that their greatest concern is financial stability. They simply do not get enough funding and support from the government and therefore they are forced to make applications to corporate South Africa for their survival.

My partner and I were driving through the winelands of the Breede River valley after a visit to one such organisation when the idea occurred to us to create a sustainability model for charities in the winelands. We simply decided to ask the wine producers of our country to make some of their marketing wine available which we then sell to the public. The funds raised are then made available to organisations in the fields of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and severe learning difficulty. We approached the governing bodies of the Wine Industry for their endorsements and then we set out to build the infrastructure needed to pull this off. Before long we accquired the services of Mondi Packaging, The Vineyard Connection and Cluver Markotter Lawyers who all pleged their support pro bono as part of their corporate social responsibility programs.

Engelbrecht/Els got the ball rolling by sending us some lovely wine and the rest is history. We have close on 50 farmers pledging wine to the Trust on a monthly basis and more are joining all the time. It is important to notice that the farmers are donating their wine free of charge.

Do you deliver outside of Western Cape?

We deliver to every corner of South Africa courtesy of The Vineyard Connection and Cross Cape. Westen Cape deliveries take approximately 24 hours and deliveries country wide can take up to 3 days.

How many people are involved in the project?

The Charity Wines Trust has 3 trustees whilst we acquired the services of a retired partner of Wine of the Month Club pro bono who manages strategic parts of the operation. Then there are the Industry’s gurus, the wine farms, implementation partners, media partners and a whole host of individuals who support the project in some way or another.

Is it purely an online venture?

Although buying online is the easiest, it is not purely online. People often call us once they learn of Charity Wines and order over the phone. Most customers simply join on a monthly basis by means of a debit order.

Can people get involved more than simply a donation? Is there an option for hands on assistance?

We often take guests to some of our beneficiaries but essentially Charity Wines is a fundraiser for charities and not a grassroots organisation per se. Having said that, we are working on a volunteer program whereby we would like international volunteers to stay on the beautiful wine farms whilst giving their time to interact with the community and talk to the people about the benefits of healthy lifestyle choices and the dangers of alcohol use during pregnancy. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a HUGE problem in South Africa, worse than anywhere in the world and the more prevention campaigns there are, the better.

What are the growth plans for the project?

We are aiming to grow our Farm Members pool significantly whilst building our sales to approximately 500 per month by October 2008. Upon achieving this we will be in a position to make charitable grants of R1 million annualy.

How well is it all doing? How many bottles of wine do you deliver and registrations do you get per month, for example?

We are pleased with the growth of the brand. We started trading last year and sell between 80 and 90 boxes of wine per month currently. I find that at least 3 farms join per month.

Let’s summarise things clearly for potential “buyers” of Charity Wines. When you buy a box of wine for R250 you are essentially making a donation to a charitable trust which is governed by legislation to implement the funds according to the objectives of the trust. The wine, which gets delivered to your door (in SA), is of top quality and always exceed the amount paid by the customer. This is the perfect gift for Father’s day, Mother’s day, Valentine’s, any occasion really. Your folks receive superb wine and your money goes to very worthwhile and transparent causes.

Please go to our site, see who’s donating and where your money goes and support this project.
Send us a mail at rikus@heartofhealing.org.za and reception@heartofhealing.org.za, order online or call (021) 442 9600

Thanks for taking the time out to chat with me, Hope that the project takes off!

Thank you very much and thanx for your website! SA really needs all the positivity we can get because, as you allready know: SA Rocks!!!

Popularity: 12% [?]

It seems that local is lekker is taking a new “breathe” of life. Over the weekend I did some very homely things like visit Builders Warehouse, Hardware stores, Mr Price home and others. What I saw in most of the places was a refreshing amount of proudly local products and a phenomenal amount of people purchasing the local products of imports.

This is one of the local products that I saw:

So in future if you are faced with a choice between local or imported, go local, it’s lekker.

Popularity: 2% [?]