SA Rocks

SouthAfrica.info has a fascinating story providing insight in to the 72 days that may have shaped SA.

I wont go in to too much detail but here is an excerpt:

Just how miraculous was South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy? How close did the country really come to civil war?

Check out our press clipping snapshots of the 72 days leading up to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as SA’s first democratically elected President in 1994 – and see how heavily the odds were stacked against the rainbow nation.
1 MARCH 1994
Walvis Handover ‘a triumph’

Walvis Bay – South Africa’s last remaining dispute with the international community was formally ended at midnight last night as the South African flag was finally lowered in Walvis Bay and the Namibian flag raised in its place.
The formal handing over of the enclave ended a worldwide campaign for its incorporation that had been linked with the demands for Pretoria to surrender control of Namibia and to end apartheid in South Africa.
The last lowering of the orange, white and blue flag was watched in silence by a South African delegation headed by Justice Minister Kobie Coetzee, Namibian President Sam Nujoma and by representatives of African states and the Organisation of African Unity.
The Star, Tuesday 1 March 1994
2 MARCH 1994
IFP, ANC in ‘breakthrough’

The IFP is to consider provisionally registering for the April 27 elections. This emerged after several hours of talks between the African National Congress president Mr Nelson Mandela and IFP leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi in Durban yesterday.
Both the IFP and the ANC are also to explore possible international mediation to resolve outstanding constitutional deadlocks.
Buthelezi said the IFP was determined to contest the election, but added that his party’s demands, as contained in the Freedom Alliance’s proposals, had to be met.
The Zulu king’s demands also affected the IFP’s participation in the elections, he said.
The Sowetan, Wednesday 2 March 1994

Please do yourself a favour and read the rest of the article. It’s extremely interesting and relevant to each and every one of us today.

Source: SouthAfrica.info
The all-in-one official guide
and web portal to South Africa.

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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 haven’t blogged about a great SA website in a while. Sorry about that, but here is one for the archives!

I can’t really recall how I found Loadtheshow.com but it seems to be a very interesting website indeed. At first glance it looks like any old music download website. After registering and a bit of investigative research I discovered a neat trick to the site. They offer a certain amount of free downloads per day.

From the website:

All downloads on loadtheshow are free!

Our sponsors pay to advertise on the site. We use the money to give you cutting-edge music for free and pay our contributing artists.

Unfortunately, when the day’s free downloads are used up, there are no more free downloads available until the following day.

When you register with the site you automatically receive a profile page. I don’t particularly think this is very necessary but it adds a nice web 2.0 feel to the site and i suppose helps them – and you – to track what you are downloading, listening to and viewing.

Each artist registered with the site also gets a profile page. There are a fair number of artists listen, not many some big names that I can see in the list – I found The Dirty Skirts, Hog Hoggidy Hog and the Diesel Whores – but I guess I’m no authority. It seems like a great place to discover new music. I even found a band I know personally, the awesomely entertaining and interesting Undone!

Downloading a song is easy enough but a bit different to other sites I have used in the past. Instead of immediately and directly downloading the song of your choice from the site, you are emailed a download link from “Marvin”. This is apparently done for security reasons which makes sense. The email tells you to save it as proof that you have legally downloaded the track from loadtheshow, which is cool. I reckon it’s a small price to pay for free music. I am going to become very good friends with Marvin very shortly.

Then there is a nifty little section called “Charts” on the site. This is a list of the top downloaded songs of the day as far as I can tell. Nice idea.

In general I think this is a fantastic site with phenomenal potential in SA as bandwidth prices decrease and users increase (whenever this all happens). Follow them closely and even maybe read their blog.

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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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I am not sure how reliable this information is as I have only read about it on one blog. But I read a post on Sunday that tells of Nelson Mandela’s book, No Easy Walk To Freedom is going to be made available online at Proquest.

Apparently:

The agreement has been made between Mandela and Proquest, a leader in collection, organization, and publishing of information. Initially published in 1965, the digital version is expected to be out by December this year.

And incase you were curious about exactly who had the rights to digitally distribute the work of Nelson Mandela, this is from the Proquest website:

ProQuest provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world’s scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts, literature, and social science to science, technology, and medicine.

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Apparently the positivity that exudes from SA Rocks is reaching the higher levels of the media!

According to cnn.com SA’s public broadcaster is launching SABC International with the goal of challenging the media stereotypes surrounding Africa.

Fantastic and about time too. I must admit I don’t know how this is going to turn out in the long or even short run. The SABC has had some questionable incidents this year and in the past regarding media freedom and the like. But nonetheless I think this is a great step forward for the development and altering of Western perception of Africa.

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Tea and Biltong with the Queen: No, it is not the same as Beef Jerky!

I’ve written in previous columns about the distinct feeling of isolation I’ve experienced as a legal alien in the UK, and I’m starting to believe that it’s not so much the addition of a new feeling (isolation) but the removal of a feeling I had at home (belonging). This may seem like a strange thing to say as a South African, but at home I felt part of something – both a movement and a people – and it’s weird to think that I identify more with South Africans from a multitude of cultures, than I do with the British (my ancestral home).

Recently, with the floods in England, I felt an increase of national spirit from the locals here in the UK – sometimes a little adversity will do that. And it reminded me, firstly, that I am not at home here, and, secondly, how great it is to feel like you’re contributing, that you belong and are part of a greater whole. If press coverage of SA is to be believed, there seems to be a similar process happening at home.

It has been thirteen years since the first democratic election in SA. Thirteen years is actually not a long time. The problems we have in SA are going to take generations (yes, generations! Plural!) to fix but we must acknowledge how far we have come, and above all, not cease to strive. This means vote, protest, and foster equal opportunities.

There used to be a feeling of “jump ship” when faced with crime and unemployment in South Africa, now it’s more of a “dig in and get your hands dirty” vibe. Don’t believe me? How about the increase in websites like “SA Good News”, “Homecoming Revolution” and “Crimeline”? How about increased coverage of crime against the poorer sectors of our communities? People worry that more crime stories mean more crime, but often they mean more effective police work and increased awareness. This reflects a change in our collective attitude as South Africans.

It is a very exciting time for South Africa. The afro-pessimists will scream that its scary, sad, chaotic, but I see a full generation of people who attended integrated schools, who know of Mandela as a free man, who’ve escaped the economic isolation of the 80’s, who can travel and compete in international sport. We’re a people who have won the begrudging respect of our international peers, whose constitution is often lauded as the best in the world, who aren’t travelling just to escape, but for travel’s sake.

Yesterday I ran into the members of the Soweto Gospel Choir just walking down the street in Edinburgh. They’ve arrived for the Edinburgh Arts Festival, I guess, and although I was rushing in the opposite direction, and don’t know any of them from Adam, I couldn’t help myself yelling “Molweni” as I passed, to which they happily responded, and those few quick phrases exchanged in Xhosa made me happier than I’d been all week. I felt like I had met people I could identify with for the first time in months.

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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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CherryFlava features a phenomenal post on the best SA television adverts.

Here’s a snippet and a video from the post:

Number 1: BMW ‘Mouse’ – a true 80’s Hunt Lascaris / Keith Rose classic. Marketers are to this day still briefing in jobs to their agencies with the instruction that they want a BMW ‘Mouse’ ad. A no-brainer for top spot.

Read the full post and see all the videos at CherryFlava.

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It seems as though the 2010 website is finally up and running.

I like it. I like the feel, the colours, the vibe. It all gels with a great feeling that an African World Cup will bring to the event. I am certain that there has never been a culturally specific World Cup as the one we will be hosting!

Have a look:

The site features speeches from The President, facts, stats, Africa info, SA info, opportunity info and a host of other information that visitors and locals alike might find interesting.

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