We have had a harsh week of weather, with icy temperatures and driving rain, causing a significant amount of flooding.
As usual the worst hit are the poorest of the poor, living in informal settlements without drainage. 49 townships are said to be affected and 38000 people.
“It was terrible. If four major storms hit consecutively, there is nothing one can do about it. The problem is that people settled in low-lying areas,” said Mayor Helen Zille.
As it was explained to me by my Geography teacher. the Cape Point area is actually an island and the large land area in-between is basically a low lying sand bank. So when heavy rain comes they always flood.
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Elsewhere in the world, the term “Cable Theft” refers to illegally having acess or watching TV channels that you have not paid for.
In South Africa, it refers to the actual theft of copper cable, insulation and even manhole covers. The copper is then sold to scrap yards and melted down.
South Africa is actually exporting copper to China, although we do not have any copper mines 
R77-million worth last year ($10.5-M)
The theft of these cables causes massive blackouts and brings trains to a halt regularly.
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This video has handy subtitles and translations for you to learn. as you may be asked to sing this upon entering at customs. (Without the helpful Casiotone accompaniment) Since we also intend winning the 2010 world cup, you may as well get used to the song now.
The new South African anthem combines the old/pre-democratic anthem , Die Stem (The Call) and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica (Lord bless Africa) I don’t know any other country that has a “double play” anthem. For more info on our national song see here….
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So as mentioned in my earlier post, we decided to do BOTH shows in one day, luckily Decorex closed at 5 or we would of had to toss the spare wheel to transport all the pamphlets.
Decorex ‘07 has now finished, having run from the 26th-29th April, so I am going to tell you about it, but you can’t go.
This was the first time I have been to this show and I must say I was very impressed. Not just with the stands and the exhibitors, but with the convention centre itself. Wow, the CTICC (Cape Town International Convention Centre) is a world class structure, for a moment I thought I was in lost in Europe. My neighbour Simon, was one of the architects involved in the project, so we stood around in his part, for a while. Very nice, well done Simon.
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This time of year FULL of public holidays in South Africa, nearly every week it seems. People take full advantage if it and take further days off to stretch those already long weekends into a month where not much gets done at all.
Today is Freedom day, when we (and a few other) countries celebrate our first fully democratic elections.
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Today marks Madiba’s 89th birthday and starts a week of festivities, including the soccer match dubbed “90 minutes for Mandela” featuring greats Pele and Samuel Eto’o and the launch of a humanitarian campaign.
Guests at the launch include Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and ex-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. British entrepreneur Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel are also expected to attend.
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With only 1084 Days to go we can almost smell the…..boots? Stadiums are going up and down faster than stalagmites and will definitely* be ready for the first matches.
Here are the highlights on the progress towards the first African world cup.
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Since my last post was a bit of a damning treatise, here is a great bit of news for visiting gastronomes.
The S. Pellegrino 2007 list of “Best Restaurants in the world” was released last week and in the category for Africa and the Middle East, the top 5 were all in the Western Cape !! Eat that Ahmadinejad.
Le Quartier Francais (Franschhoek)
Bosman’s (Paarl)
Jardine (Cape Town central city)
Aubergine (Gardens)
Reuben’s (Franschhoek)
In the world rankings Le Quartier Francais came 47th and was SA’s only establishment in the top 100.
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I haven’t thought much of Tony Leon in the past. He is the head of the Democratic Alliance party and although that is who I vote for, he has not really impressed me personally until now.
This freedom day (yesterday) he released a list of 13 factors which threaten our lives as South Africans. Coincidently this comes 13 years after our first fully democratic elections.
This list just about completely sums up my view and he puts them across so eloquently that I may just send him a basket of fruit. This is still vastly superseded by my crush for Mayor Helen Zille, who will rule the world from the emerald tower one day.
These things only really effect us people living here and potentially those that invest here. Tourists can come, go and enjoy without having to painfully deal with all our charming little inefficiencies.
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South Africans are fast developing a reputation of being fear mongers, nay sayers and downright miserable toads.
The local media is jammed with negativity, with very little space spared for the good things that are happening here, and there are plenty.
Dopezyn from the BnA South Africa forum sent me a website that a friend of hers, Warwick started called, www.positivelysa.org he also has a mailing list to which he sends out the “good news”.
Another site that does a great job of counterbalancing the flood of doom is http://www.sagoodnews.co.za
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