SA Rocks

If you think you have what it takes to blow SA’s best innovators out of the water then this is for you. It seems as though, again, I am a bit slow on the uptake but iHero is holding a competition for innovative South Africans.

Think differently

The iHERO Awards programme is the brainchild of a new campaign called innovationTOWN, a programme that makes South Africans think differently about innovation. The campaign celebrates the entrepreneurial and creative spirit of South Africa by identifying those individuals or organisations that have created sustainable value through exceptional innovation in the following categories:

* iHERO – The overall “Grand Prix” winner – South Africa’s leading innovation or innovator;
* iEntrepreneur – for innovative entrepreneurs and self starters;
* iBusiness – innovative business practice, products and processes;
* iGovernment –innovative service delivery by government to the people;
* iSouth Africa – everyday innovators who are improving the lives of others through innovative social upliftment or projects within communities;
* iSciTech – celebrates scientific and technology breakthroughs with a strong community focus.

Awards and recognition include cash prizes for all category winners and the overall iHERO Award winner; widespread media exposure for all winning entrants; published articles on the most innovative submissions valued at R100 000; and an invitation to exhibit at the innovationTOWN exhibition later this year at the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown. (courtesey http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/11/16065.html)

CLICK HERE NOW TO ENTER THE IHERO AWARDS. Or Click HERE to visit the innovations town website.

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Running the SA Rocks blog has really opened up my eyes over the past 4 or so months. I receive emails all day from bloggers, websites, organisations and people asking me to post about their specific area of interest. It is incredibly interesting to me how differently people perceive this blog.

It is also amazing how many people choose to see what they want to see in spite of me explicitly stating what this blog is about.

So many people think that pointing out another countries failures or shortcomings is the same as promoting SA’s successes. Let me just clarify, on this blog that doesn’t cut it. I know that SA is not perfect and therefore have NO right to come down on any other country for their errors. I say again, no country is perfect. It is always good to make constructive comparisons and criticisms, but to pointless bad mouth another organisation, person, place, country, group or initiative is just that, pointless.

The other thing that strikes me as a interesting is the number organisations trying to get quick recognition for something they have done. Recognition is not bought, or bribed, recognition is earned I am not the judge, jury and executioner when it comes to these decision. I am the blogger. I listen to my community and make decisions accordingly. If people are talking about a great initiative then I’ll blog it. If a corporate does something cool and doesn’t ask for recognition then I’ll blog it.

At the end of it all I would just like people to remember that I am trying to promote people, places, organisations and more, all trying to do something great for our country that in itself is great.

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Kate Thompson’s Tea and Biltong with the Queen:

Leaving home is a virtually universal experience, whether it’s a minor move from your folks’ home to your own place just down the road, or a major one like emigrating – it can be a heady mix of emotions, simultaneously exciting and terrifying. When I first moved away to university I had a small taste of this, but it didn’t compare to the experience of moving overseas.

I thought I’d minimised the shock by picking a country with similarities to my own, and at least one I knew a little about.
Speak the same language – check!
Have family to house me for the first little while – check!
Familiarity with the culture? Well, let’s see: Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, an obsession with horses and dogs –check, check, check!

Well, the thought process wasn’t quite as naïve and clichéd as that, but I did think I’d thought it out and was prepared, but the truth is I hadn’t a clue. Culturally, despite being brought up in an English speaking family in an ex-British colony, it turns out (insert sigh of relief here) we have nothing in common.

It is so hard to pin down what South African culture is. Maybe we could venture a guess at some familiar pillars of Xhosa culture, of Ndebele or Afrikaans or English South Africans – but we’d be hard pressed to narrow it down in any meaningful way. And that’s not nearly as hard as describing South African culture, with tons of languages, peoples, and influences. I’m not a sociologist or an ethnographer, and I doubt even their ability to do that, – but, here’s the kicker, it doesn’t matter!

You don’t have to pin down the culture of your home to know that it exists. It’s something so ingrained, so subtly learnt that you don’t know that you’ve learnt to read the signs or even that there are any signs for you to read, until the signs change (when you wake up on another continent, for example).

This may contain a few overused examples, (we all know why something becomes a cliché, after all), but below is a list of some good South African words, phrases and understandings:

1. “Now” – this is great word. It can be used to mean this minute, or in an hour or two. Combined with “just” or repeated as in “just now” and “now now”, this tiny simple word can mean virtually any time without ever being specific.

2. “Howzit, how are you?” – no, I haven’t just repeated myself. One is a greeting and one is question – obviously!

3. “Ja no” – another absolutely nonsense phrase which adds little of worth to a sentence, except for what it adds in colour. Can be used instead of “um”, as in “Do you have the keys? Ja no, I last saw them in the kitchen”.

4. Bilingual and Creative swearing – most South Africans speak at least two languages, and even those we don’t speak we hear often enough to learn the fun and useful bits. I love swearing in Afrikaans and Xhosa round the office and getting away with it, while the office manager has a go at other staff for saying innocuous things like “Damn”. Oh, and South Africans love a good euphemism. My personal favourite is “Ooooh, veldskoen!”

5. The Metric System – the simple decimal system that the two most powerful nations in the world can’t wrap their simple heads around. It’s just easier folks!

6. “Robot” – traffic lights are robots. Sure it’s a little old fashioned sounding, but they’ll never be anything else to me. Oh, and this applies to “packet” too. I get blank looks when I ask for one here because in the UK they’re simply “bags”.

7. “Pavement special” – don’t make the mistake of referring to a cute mix breed dog as this. People in England take pedigree seriously, far too seriously. Maybe that’s why they still have a royal family?!

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Are we for or against the unifying of the national sports teams emblem?

I am personally not too phased if there is unity, but I think that the Protea should take a walk and the Springbok should swing in to the mix.

What are your thoughts, Protea or no Protea?

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After the Cooksister posted about what she remembers from back in her day I thought that I should do the same!

I remember:

Lucky Packets

Candy Necklaces

Fart Bags

Twisty Bread from Dominos

The Gummy Bears

Conan the Barbarian

K-Tv featuring Candice Hillebrand

The Take-Two advert on TV (taketwo-taketwo)

Tamagotchi

My parents voting in our first free and fair elections

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Wikipedia has a magnificently insightful and humorous list of South African Slang words. I have selected some of my favourites and the ones I found the most hilarious!

Have a look:

bergie – from berg, mountain, originally referring to vagrants who sheltered in the forests of Table Mountain; now a mainstream word for a particular subculture of vagrants in Cape Town. When used as slang refers to anyone down and out

bioscope, bio – cinema, movie theatre (now dated), originally a defunct international English word it has survived longer in South Africa as a result of the influence of the Afrikaans cognate bioskoop

boerewors – spicy sausage (Afrikaans) farmer-sausage, used as a mainstream word in South African English

bru – male friend (shortening of broer meaning brother, see also bra below)

dinges – thingamabob, a wotzit or a whatchamacallit

dof – stupid

fyndraai – at the brink of orgasm (Afrikaans – at the fine end of the last turn)

gatvol - fed up, had enough. (Afrikaans – hole-full)

goof, goef – swim, dip

hoesit, hoezit, howzit – how’s it going? How are you?

jislaaik! – wow!

kiff, kif, kief – (adjective) cool, neat, great, wonderful (from Arabic, kayf, meaning enjoyment or wellbeing)

windgat – highty-tighty; highty and mighty; snobbish. (Afrikaans: wind hole)

vrot – rotten, putrid

stukkend – (Afrikaans) broken

swak – broke. Original Afrikaans: weak. “I’m swak, ek sê”. Also used to express disgust or derision (depending on tone and context), for example: “It’s swak that I failed the test”

Check out the full Wikipedia 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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When I started SA Rocks I was surprised at the lack of positive online presence and press South Africa was receiving. I stand corrected and I am so glad to say that.

Here is a list of sites I currently subscribe to containing SA info and outlooks:

Homecoming Revolution Blog
Algoa Bay Yacht Club
CapeTown Blog
Notes From The Cape
South Africa Blog
South Africa.info

There are so many more that I know I haven’t located. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep on top of all of the news happening on all of these sites. The competition is fierce, the players are tough and the subject matter is brilliant! I am loving the fact that there are so many sites trying to say so much about our country. Do yourself and these sites a favour and visit them regularly, in fact subscribe to their RSS feeds and support.

The latest in this long line of sites is Go2SA.

Stii has blogged about the project already so I wont try to better his words, I will simply quote:

Its been a loooong time coming and is finally here! Our latest project is in a final Alpha stage ready to go beta! And since everybody else launches at this time more or less, We though “Why the hell NOT?”. So here is one of the reasons for my lack of blogging…

Go2sa.co.za is a community driven tourism portal. By that I mean that content is generated by the members. The members is all tourism related service providers like accommodation establishments, activity providers, restaurants, etc… everyone that service the tourists.

Stii was gracious enough to ask for SA Rocks to feed stories to Go2SA. I accepted without a moments hesitation. I think that any and all help that our beautiful country can get is welcome a million times over.

I implore you all to get over to Go2SA and the other sites I have listed and show your support today. Blog about them, blog about the subject matter, contribute to their sites and their causes. Contribute to SA Rocks too, of course!

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South Africa has some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and we don’t even need to go far to enjoy a bit of respite from our daily hustle and bustle. It turns out very few people know about the Groenkloof Nature Reserve, in the heart of Pretoria. Seems you need to know people who know mountain bikers who frequently engage in mountain biking activities to find out about this little peace of heaven.

Situated next to the Fountains Valley Resort just off Christina de Wit in Pretoria, GPS -25° 47′ 22.70″, +28° 11′ 45.40″ (view in Google Maps) lies the picturesque Groenkloof Nature Reserve, home to impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, ostrich, giraffe, red hartebeest and a flourishing bird life.

A little known fact is that the Groenkloof Nature Reserve became the oldest nature reserve in South Africa and the second oldest in the world when President Paul Kruger proclaimed the valley a game sanctuary in 1895.

The reserve has loads to offer for the family and nature enthusiast, with mountain biking, hiking and 4×4 trails, while the picknic area provides a haven for relaxing those tired muscles.

Our recent day hike provided ample opportunity for some nature photography and these pictures can be viewed at the SA Rocks Flickr Pool.

So next time you need to get away from it all, consider the Groenkloof Nature Reserve – just another reason why SA Rocks!

Sent in by Nico from Aquila Online

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You call a bathing suit a “swimming costume”

You call a traffic light a “robot”

The employees dance in front of the building to show how unhappy they are

The SABC advertises and shows highlights of the programme you just finished watching

You get cold easily. Anything below 16 degrees Celsius is Arctic weather

You know what Rooibos Tea is, even if you’ve never had any .

You can sing your national anthem in four languages, and you have no idea what it means in any of them

You know someone who knows someone who has met Nelson Mandela

You go to “braais” (barbecues) regularly, where you eat boerewors (long meaty sausage-type thing) and swim, sometimes simultaneously

You know that there’s nothing to do in the Free State

You can do your monthly shopping on the pavement

The petrol in your tank may be worth more than your car

People have the most wonderful names: Christmas, Goodwill, Pretty, Wednesday, Blessing, Brilliant, Gift, Precious, Innocence and Given

“Now now” can mean anything from a minute to a month

The last time you visited the coast you paid more in speeding fines and toll fees than you did for the entire holiday

Prisoners go on strike

When 2 Afrikaans TV programmes are separated by a Xhosa announcement of the following Afrikaans program, and a Pedi ad

Sent in by Courtenay Farquharson.

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