SA Rocks

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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Manu Padayachee. Picture: Tebogo Letsie

It is with deep sadness that I heard today that Manu Padayachee died in his sleep.

Padayachee was the sub-editor at Reporter.co.za in his most recent position. I remember watching Padayachee on SA television for ages and ages. I watched and listen to him as an icon of the times on SA T.V.

His career was a decorated one and he will be sorely missed in the world of journalism in this country. In his most recent contributions Padayachee aided in bringing citizen journalism to the fore in South Africa through his work with Reporter.co.za. His impact on this genre of journalism is undeniable and his career speaks for itself.

For the full story visit Reporter.co.za.

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On the 20th of May I was pleasantly surprised while watching Carte Blanch. Finally I saw some extremely poignant, relevant and well produced South African investigative journalism on the box.

Apparently the documentary that night was about train surfing. I was moved, intrigued and astounded at the documentary in general. The topic, the filming, the commentary and the general production were all astounding.

Fortunately for Musi Manyamalala, the producer of the documentary, I am not the only one who enjoyed the piece that he created. CNN picked up the story and filmed the entire thing on Saturday. The documentary showed on CNN apparently featured some edit out footage that Carte Blanch did not show.

I am blown away at the talent that keeps emerging from the South African up-and-commers. Musi, you are a talented individual who deserves all the success the world and our country have to offer. I am glad that you have received international acclaim so early in your career and look forward to the rest of your career as it unfolds.

Here is an extract from the documentary:

Their parents think they are at school, but these teenagers skip classes every day just to surf. And they smoke dagga and drink alcohol because it makes the surfing easier and seem less dangerous.

Train surfer 3: “Let’s smoke. Where is the dagga? My dagga’s finished. Do your thing my man. We’re together.”

Now they wait for a train, girls are always around to support them. They’ll scream and cheer them on as they surf and the boys love it because it keeps them going.

Calvin is a seventeen-year-old surfer who is known for stopping trains … this is how he spends
his school hours.

During the strike, the boys were able to surf freely without getting arrested. It also gave them a chance to try new stunts.

These trains are often travelling at 40km/h or more.

…Read More

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I really hate regurgitating other blog posts and stories but sometimes there is just some really great stuff out there that needs its due recognition. Instead of reproducing the same stories from my perspective I am going to list a couple of cool things that are going on or have gone on and briefly just talk about one particular story that made me laugh.

To begin:

SA’s extreme swimmer to swim to North Pole

A swimmer who grew up in South Africa will be braving the icy waters of the Arctic as he attempts to swim to the North Pole in an effort to raise awareness about global warming. – sagoodnews

Just Jinjer’s June Jol’s

Just Jinjer is back and rocking out in June. – insidepeakperformance

Afrikaans version of Firefox released

That is freakin’ kool ekse! – sagoodnews

Everest 2007 Summit champs return home

I have posted about this before, but these incredible South Africans are on their way home!

Finally, on to the laugh for the week:

Yeah!Fi has a great post titled “Idiot of the Week“. What a laugh.

The post is centered around the bandwidth issue here in SA. The fact that people are being forced to host their local sites abroad has become a major issue of late. It has even pushed a group of people to start a website that is calling for people to place viruses on local sites that drain bandwidth and put pressure on Telkom in this way.

Are you kidding me? That is a really smart idea in principle, it really is, but think about it for a second, local sites will suffer now and today if this works and telkom will be laughing to the bank. Change needs to happen in a gradual process and I think that there are things in place that are making life a little easier, but not overnight.

I think it is great that people are noticing the problems here in SA and are thinking outside of the box to solve these problems. Now we just need to get people to stop being malicious in their approach to solutions and we’ll be set!!

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Big Blog Directory and SA Rocks are co-hosting a South African Blog Roundup. Any South African blogger can participate and I hope that many will.

Between May 25th and 30th write a post on your blog with something like the following (please link to both blogs):

“Big Blog Directory and SA Rocks are co-hosting a South African Blog Roundup and I am participating…”

Next answer the following three questions:

1. Why does South Africa “rock”?
2. Why do you blog?
3. What are two of your favourite posts?

Once you have written your posts leave a comment here with a link. If your blog is listed with BBD leave a comment there otherwise leave it with SA Rocks.

Thanks everyone, I think it’ll be an interesting experiment to see who participates and what the answers are to some of these questions!

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Bullard’s heated sideswipe blistered the blogosphere ..and just blasted home another powerful reason why SA ROCKS! what?! Why in the world would I claim this as a positive about South Africa?

The constitutional right to freedom of speech that each of us enjoys today has been exercised. Regardless of whether that opinion is one we share or rail vehemently against – the RIGHT to express that opinion is something we enjoy in this country. For now.

Set in a global context, there are people are being jailed in Iran, Egypt, China, Zimbabwe for the rights we enjoy here. (For those impassioned enough to write in response consider lending your voice to the greater force for good, bloggers & ‘real‘ journalists lives are at stake for the right to banter as we do). Even if it’s hate speech or degrading polemic humans have a birthright to rant.

I heartily agree that most of the blogosphere is bogus bollocks – it’s reflective of life.

“The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter.” -Winston Churchill

But thanks to search engines and RSS I don’t need to come into contact with unnecessary swill enroute to the good stuff. We have choice what to pay attention to, rather than being offered a slim filter of what is deemed acceptable by those who know better than you (you swarthy heaving masses who need your untamed minds tranquilised for civility).

Like Wikipedia you have the right to put up whatever crap you like, but eventually knowledge neutrality smoothes out what is flaming unsubstantiated bullshite ..and oddly enough the result is an increasingly accurate view of reality to date.

So I have the right to be irritated by the article, but the only thing that could have done with editing was the peculiar association with the Virginia Tech massacre. The right to free expression had Seung-Hui Cho flagged by his professors for his violent and malevolent spewings in creative writing classes. He was a writer but not a blogger, and that fetid association sparked the flame of fury online because it was baseless.

I do certainly agree with the headline that cowardly cowering behind anonymity online allows for the depraved and sexually-frustrated to exercise their power to disseminate fear. But oddly very FEW bloggers take the route of anonymous expression – particularly because they AREN’T paid. Humans always have to have a What’s In It For Me angle. Like David Bullard, the majority of bloggers are out there to get attention. Within an Attention Economy this can translate into being paid if you prove your expertise. Most drop their blogs when they don’t get enough attention in reward, because they’re braindrainingly dull. Natural selection. But I digress.

We are so damn lucky to have the window of opportunity to evade being muzzled in this playground of paperless publishing. Policies of control instituted when people are reacting out of fear plays right into the hands of unhealthy dictatorship – political, religious or corporate. 1 order of thought-leadership not thought-control please.

This is not about oldskool journos vs bright young bloggers, it is about seeing the potency of words to shift attention. Those with the most power are those with the biggest audiences, simple. This is why entertainers & sportstars can command surreal salaries – they can capture and sustain attention. Traditional media has earned its sway. It is evolving, but still commands the lionshare and its effect proven today.

Bullard trippingly set a trap to test the bloggy waters & found his bait handsomely rewarded. It would have been a wonderful time to translate that attention: but wait, hark! ..you think Groogle hasn’t been sharing a tip or two with the man. LOL!! Ray and teamsters have been hard at work, and no doubt delighting in David taking on the bad cop role so eagerly. Sun Tzu, nay Machiavelli would be glowing with pride.

David Bullard is a court jester among the finest of the archetype, sparing no sacred cow.

Give thanks that you woke up in South Africa today, and blog for all you’re worth. Rock your bullhorn boys & girls. Who knows, you may even refine your skills and one day rise to the hallowed domain of the pressroom, I know you all secretly long for it, now dontcha?!

PS. check Bullard’s response on video (sorry bandwidth starved South Africans, but this one’s worth it)

PPS. use your powers for good and support freedom of the press, or join ISOC’s policy-making committee on digital freedom – one day this may affect you.

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The film below is a short film directed by Fausto Becatti. Becatti has been featured on SA Rocks before. He is definitely an up and coming South African film director in the humble opinion of SA Rocks so keep a lookout for his work.

If you know of any other directors or media practitioners who would like to put their work on SA Rocks please contact the Editor.

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There are many countries in the world and many people in each country, but believe it or not there is a South African presence in the Time 100. Below I have highlighted what I could find:

Marc Shoul for TIME

Cyril Ramaphosa – (born 17 November 1952) is a South African lawyer, trade union leader, activist, politician and businessman. He was born in Soweto, near Johannesburg, in what is now Gauteng province. While Ramaphosa was previously a major figure in South African national politics, he has in recent years become a prominent figure in the business community. (wikipedia)

From the Time 100:

When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison in 1990, Ramaphosa was at the gates. Ramaphosa told me once how Mandela made his final decision on the national flag. After a nationwide contest, a winner was selected, but Mandela was hundreds of miles away. “Fax it to me,” he told Ramaphosa, who protested that the fax would not show the colors, which had been carefully chosen to reflect South Africa’s complex racial composition. “Well, just describe it to me,” Mandela said. “I trust you.” And thus, the unique flag of Africa’s most dynamic nation.

Roger Federer – Federer was born in the town of Binningen (near Basel, Switzerland), to Swiss-German Robert Federer and South African Lynette Federer.

It is a bit of a stretch in the end, but Federer is definitely 50% South African!! I think we can claim that. He has such passion and such an incredible temperament that he must be half Saffa!

From the Time 100:

The most impressive aspect of Roger Federer’s ascendancy to the top of the tennis world is the way he carries himself as a champion. It’s quite unusual. He just lets his racket do the talking.

Nelson Mandela wrote the piece on Oprah Winfrey for the Time 100, which I think is great. One great icon and historical figure to another soon to be historically celebrated figure.

If you have managed to sift through the list of Time 100 people of the year please let me know if you located any more Saffas on the list. I battled to get through the entire list!

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I have chosen to place the entire speech in this post so that you can read it all in one place. I found the speech at IOL.

Here goes:

Fellow South Africans,

We need to dedicate ourselves to the building of a socially cohesive nation, always working to create a common identity as South Africans, united in diversity, bound together by the same vision of creating a truly non-racial, non-sexist society based on the values of ubuntu.

Clearly, all sectors of society should join forces in a national partnership to achieve social cohesion and build national unity.

While priding ourselves on the successes we have made since the dawn of freedom, we equally have a duty to reflect on the challenges that we still have to do, especially the eradication of the legacy of our odious past.

Indeed, since the onset of freedom and democracy in our country we have traversed a long and arduous journey of bringing together a nation until then fractured by a deeply entrenched system of institutionalised racism.

However, to accelerate our efforts towards a non-racial and non-sexist society and build a better life for all, means working in partnerships to fight the legacy of apartheid in all its manifestations. It means that we must fight racism wherever it appears – at the workplaces, in business, at schools, in the media, in the streets, at the dinner-tables, in public and private institutions and in every part of our country and society.

Further, freedom and democracy gave birth to a culture of human rights in South Africa. At the centre of the new culture of human rights is the promotion of non-sexism and non-racialism. We therefore, call upon all South Africans to work in partnership, especially with institutions such as Commission for Gender Equality, Human Rights Commission and others for the promotion, protection, development and attainment of human rights.

Three years into the Second Decade of Freedom, let us renew the pledge we made as a nation as we entered the decade, to build a national partnership to advance faster towards a better life for all.

The progress we made in the last thirteen years of freedom laid the foundation for us to move still faster towards a better life for all and to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014.

Let all of us, on this day, the Freedom Day, rededicate ourselves to build a better society in which we can defeat poverty, unemployment, homelessness and economic marginalisation.

Together, government, business, traditional leaders, women, youth and workers should help the rural poor with simple yet critical programmes that would alleviate poverty and hunger. Together let us help to set-up and strengthen community gardens, co-operatives, small and medium enterprises and structures aimed at the up-liftment of our people in the rural areas.

It means that government’s expanded public works programme should be accelerated and services to rural areas radically improved, so as to continue changing for the better the living conditions of the mass of our people in the rural areas, so that they can also feel that while today is better than yesterday, tomorrow will bring more joy than today.

In this regard, all of us as South Africans – business, women, youth and both the public servants and public representatives, should rededicate ourselves to building a caring nation.

Today, on the occasion of the celebrations of our freedom, we renew our partnership committed to working with business for a growing economy that benefits all, an economy that creates the resources necessary to push back the frontiers of poverty.

Together, let us ensure that our economy achieves higher rates of growth and that all the people of this country share in this growth; that our businesses re-invest in our economy, in this way helping to create more jobs and thereby fight poverty.

Together – government, institutions of higher learning and business – let us strengthen efforts aimed at addressing the shortage of skills in our country.

Together, we must work hard to tackle the challenges of our second economy and ensure that measures aimed at addressing the specific needs of the millions who subsist in this economy are effective, so that these masses of our people can also become part of the first economy and enjoy its benefits.

To work in partnership to build a better life for all means that all of us should be committed to the implementation of policies aimed at bringing black people into the mainstay of the economy and therefore help implement policies on affirmative action and broad-based black economic empowerment. Continue Reading

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The original 2010 logo

Not the 2010 world cup logo is great. It’s loads of fun, talent and prizes rolled in to one Pro-SA and design site.

From the site:

This website was created simply as a portal for designers who felt that they were unjustly excluded from the opportunity to design an emblem or logo for the 2010 World Cup. Many designers feel that the current logo is not a good reflection of SA design and this website affords them the opportunity to submit their own creations. Your logo will not become the official logo by any means, but you can win some great prizes for your efforts and become recognised as creating the best unofficial logo. Do you think you can design a better logo? PROVE IT!!

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