Archive for 'South Africa'
Peace in Africa – mining diamonds in the ocean
I blogged photos and a more detailed blog post about the Debeers mining ship previously on SA Rocks.
I know have a video from the day up on Zoopy! Here it is, watch and let me know what you think of Peace in Africa, the offshore mining ship. It really was a wonder of technology […]
A Chat with the 2010 World Cup Team: First on African Continent
We met with the South African World Cup team to learn about their goals for hosting the World Cup. We talked to them in their offices just outside the main stadium which is currently under construction as you can see below.
From the CEO and director to the communications manager, we learned about their goals from a cultural, economic and political perspective. Of the four we met with, World Club 2010 Local Organizing Committee CEO Danny Jordaan takes the lead on the de-brief with our blogging team.
Says Jordaan, “we want infrastructure improvement across the board, from broadcast, transportation, roads, accommodation and human resource capacity. We also want to promote growth in tourism as well as job creation which we’re struggling with right now.”
He continues, “our past comes from a past of a long struggle between black and white. What is important in that process is to create projects that are shared by the majority of the population.”
Below is Jordaan with his Chief of Communications Rich Mkhondo
He references the German World Cup created a new nation….remember up to 1990, there were two Germanies. It was two separate countries. In 1990, it brought down the wall but didn’t bring together a single nation. The World Cup did that. The Germans were embracing themseJordalves as one country. It is important for this country to develop that sense of a common South African nation.”
Lastly, they hope to develop a brand for South Africa. Because of the scale of the World Cup event, it can help develop a brand essence for South Africa, one which embraces democratic rights. They want to attract businesses and tourists to come to this country.
They hope to allocate at least 30% to help create economic opportunities for smaller businesses in South Africa, to that smaller micro-businesses can begin to grow and thrive.
While South Africa has hosted global sporting events including the 2003 Cricket World Club and the All African Games, South Africa has struggled to get the World Cup. In July 2000, they also tried to get the rights to host it, but lost to Germany. Finally, in 2004, they won the right to host in 2010.
Some of the sponsors and partners for this event includes Sony, Visa, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Emriates, Adidas. They go to great lengths to talk about economic gain from this World Club vis a vis others. The revenue generated from Germany was $2.8 billion. They tout that this event is moving towards $3.4 billion as a result of the commercial activities around this event to-date, more than any event in the last one hundred years.
He says, “it has been said that the two mega events that should not be hosted on the African continent are the World Cup and the Olympics. Now that we are hosting the World Cup, we hope this continent will next host the Olympics.”
There are various stadiums being built around the country. In Johannesburg, Soccer City is now 95% complete and will host 94,000 people, the largest stadium since Brazil in 1950.
In Durban, the Moses Mabhida Stadium will have 5,500 steps you’ll be able to walk up for a magnificent view of Durban’s coastline.
They’re also building the Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit (46,000 capacity), which is near the Kruger National Park. The capacity is currently at 46,000. In less than an hour from the stadium, people will be able to go into the game drive and witness elephants, impala, kudu, exotic birds, giraffe and other game popular to the region.
They’ll be able to sit 48,000 in the Port Elizabeth stadium. All of the seats are already in, and they’re currently working on the roof, all of which is due to be completed by May 2009. Rustenberg will be able to host 42,000 for the Confederation Cup. There are others being built including Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, which will sit 45,000 and be completed in October 2009. Green Point photo below.
Jordaan expects 450,000 people visitors during the World Cup, which gives you a sense of growth of tourism in the country. He shows us year to year growth which is steady. “We want to move beyond 10 million tourists by by 2010,” he says.
Then he talks about IT infrastructure and our ears perk up. It will be the first World Cup where you can watch the entire game on mobile devices. IT partners include MTN, Sony, and local telecommunications company Telekom.
They plan to implement approximately 40,000 voice and data network ports, build in support for 10,000 communication and network devices, 4,500 notebook PCs, and 4,000 mobile telephony devices across 41 primary locations, which includes ten stadiums and ten FIFA venue hotels. They also expect to have 99.99% network availability up-time.
Then there are fan parks around the world. They want to create fan parks in all the host and non-host cities. Germany had 15 million requests for 3 million. In South Africa, we have 47 million population but here too we only have 3 million tickets that need to be distributed across the world, hence the importance of the fan parks.
They want people in Johannesburg to talk to people in fan parks in Cairo, Berlin, New York, Lagos and everywhere else in the world, so this becomes an “African celebration” around the world. The initial idea was to promote communication through satellite link-up….they haven’t thought about how they’ll use blogs and social networks yet, but they plan to explore the possibilities here, locally and internationally.
Teams coming to the Confederations Cup, which starts on June 14, 2009. The Champion of Champions who will be attending include the United States, Egypt, New Zealand, Iraq, South Africa, Spain, Brazil and Italy.
A chief challenge for them is obviously cost. They need at least 3.2 billion rand, and to-date they have raised roughly 1.4 billion rand. The good news is that they are about 80% complete.
Nic from SA Rocks, wants to hear more about their marketing efforts since he doesn’t feel that it has been hyped enough locally or worldwide. And that there have been some issues about local transportation and accommodation.
Yet, when asked about publicity roughly 18 months before the event, Jordaan referenced local television campaigns, but this is a far cry from what needs to be done to get worldwide buzz going, particularly online which is where younger demographics live. What about using social media? Blogosphere viral programs? Contests on Twitter? YouTube interviews?
What we learn more about is infrastructure and security efforts. They’re bringing in an additional 1,400 buses for the event as well as three international airline entry points to accommodate various parts of the world. Durban will cater to everyone flying in from Asia, Cape Town will handle people coming in from the Americas, and Johannesburg will handle visitors from Europe.
They are looking at additional 200 airplanes to take care of additional demands as well as charter flights. He also talks about South Africa’s infamous Blue Train, which is a 5 star hotel on rails, a bit like the Orient Express.
There are 55,000 rooms for the ‘event’ requirement. In other words, their obligation is to provide accommodation to FICA family, the teams, the media and the organizers. Based on current availability, they will still have to contract 20,000 rooms.
Jordaan tries to reassure us that there will be plenty of capacity. While they expect 450,000 people, he reminds us that the event starts off with 32 teams. After the first round, it gets reduced from 32 to 16 which means that not everyone will be here at the same time. They get about nine million tourists in December so he feels confident that they can host 250,000-300,000 at any one time.
On the media side, they’re expecting 20,000 international media of which 360 are broadcasters. I ask them of the 20,000, how many will be bloggers and they haven’t figured that out yet. With a smile, we all get an invitation to return in 2010 to cover the Confederation Cup in 2009 and the World Cup in 2010.
What we don’t learn is whether they have seriously thought about integrating bloggers into their media campaign and no one seems to have put together a budget to accommodate them since we all know that bloggers or blog networks are unlikely to have the budget to fly someone across the world to cover the event in real-time. Hopefully they will start thinking about their online, social media and blogging strategy soon – the event is only a year and a half away.
Soweto: Hector Pieterson, Holiday Inn, Nambisa and Kliptown
Over the past ten days I cannot express to you effectively the magnitude of incredible things that I have done. But the trend that I seem to have been following on my excursions is to be dumbstruck and in awe of the smaller things, the details that make me African and not the grand gestures […]
Global Blog Buzz for We Blog the World Tour
Ayelet of Blonde 2.0 in Israel writes about the We Blog the World blogging tour in South Africa, as does a well known Kenyan blogger, Stormhoek and Biz Community.
Diamond Mining Ship aka Peace in Africa
Elizly Steyn on the deck photo by Simon Barber, Brand South Africa Blog
[South Africa Blogging Tour 2008] On Wednesday, we flew to this amazing diamond mining ship 10 miles off the Northern Cape coast of South Africa. Elizly Steyn, the metallurgist, one of the 3 women on board, gave us a tour of this huge “gadget” that costed 1.1 billion rands ($110 million) to De Beers.
Gravel filtering process, photo By Simon Barber, Brand South Africa Blog
After a complex six steps process that separates them from shells and clay, the diamonds end up in cans without having been touched by a single human.
Data imaging, monitors in the crawler control room, photo by Simon Barber, Brand South Africa Blog
Prior to start mining an area, an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) explores the sea bed 15 meters by 15 meters, collects the data and generates a 3D image of the underground, so diamond trails are detected.
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Click on the photo to watch the Crawler Launch gallery
Photo: the crawler launch in front of the ship, photo by Elizly Steyn, De Beers
The mining is operated by a giant crawler in front of the ship, the process is controlled by the metallurgist and the crawler team, using the data and the imaging generated from the exploration. The crawler is composed of a winch, a boom and a nozzle that mines 120 meters below the surface and scrape the floor 1 to 12 meters deep (avg 5 m).
Four anchors maintain the ship’s stability, on average 400 tons of gravels and 10 000 cubic meters of water are processed per hour to produce an average of 57 carats of diamonds. No chemicals are involved, everything except the precious gems is spitted back to the ocean, and the AUV monitors the ocean floor after the operation to analyze the impact on the environment. According to the crew, fishes are rarely caught in the machinery because they are afraid of the noise. The ship name is Peace in Africa, 65 people stay on board simultaneously, and each crew member works for 28 days and takes a 28 days break afterwards.
SA bloggers are thriving in cyberspace. They just aren’t nearly diverse enough.
An article in this morning’s Times, cleverly positioned next to a marketing blurb about an increase in traffic to their website, says that South African bloggers are thriving in cyberspace. A new study released this week by World Wide Worx claims that 4.5 million South Africans are now online and that over 5,000 are consistently blogging. (According to Rick Joubert of Vodafone, another 9.5 million connect to the internet with their mobile phones.)
The Times article claims that 1,000 of these 5,000 bloggers took part in a survey to learn more about the social demographics and motivations behind South Africa’s blogosphere. Some interesting findings:
- Cape Town is the epicentre of blogging in the country with more than 75% of bloggers living in the city;
- 58% of local bloggers are aged 25 to 44
- 95% of them speak English or Afrikaans
- 42% earn more than $2,000
- 46% of them have children and 55% are married
- 88% describe their blogs as online hobbies rather than income-generating tools
- 65% spend more than 10 hours a week blogging
What I want to know is where is the raw data? In the open spirit of the web, will it be made publicly available? The survey says that 95% of South African bloggers speak English or Afrikaans (I assume they mean “write in English of Afrikaans”.) What are the other languages represented and where are their blogs? (I have a hunch there are probably more Urdu blogs than Sotho despite the fact that there are way more Sotho speakers.) Also, I was amazed that 42% of the bloggers participating in the survey earn more than $2,000 a month. But what were the average and mean salaries?
On the second night of our Bloggers Roadshow of South Africa, we joined our South African blogging colleagues at Asoka Bar and Restaurant in Cape Town for a few rounds of drinks. With lounge techno in the background we clinked glasses and exchanged business cards. I finally got to meet some bloggers that I had been reading for years like Rafiq Phillips, Matthew Buckland, and Chris Rawlinson.
Among the dozens of bloggers packed into the bar, however, only two or three were black. And, as I learned from Rafiq, they were Rwandan, not South African. When I asked Rafiq about the lack of non-White bloggers at the meet-up he said there were two explanations. First, more Indian and Pakistani bloggers would have showed up if the event were not held at a bar serving alcohol, as the majority of Indian- and Pakistani-South Africans are Muslim. (Rafiq makes a point of noting that he was drinking orange juice at the bar, which I dutifully confirm.)
Second, South African bloggers of different ethnicities tend to stick to their own spheres, as I’ve written about in the past. This was quantified in a study by Annie Kryzanek of the Berkman Center’s Internet and Democracy project. She selected 30 blogs from AMATOMU’s life section, categorized them as English-speaking white bloggers, black bloggers, and Afrikaner bloggers, and then examined their linking patterns. 30 blogs is a very small sample size, but the results are provocative: South African online society is nearly as segregated as it is offline.
There is an obvious history behind all of this. Like in most other countries, South Africa’s bloggers started out as a community of tech-centric geeks. They had the computers, internet access, and time on their hands to figure out the new tools and develop their voice. They were nearly all White males in their 20’s and 30’s. Once the community was defined, it unknowingly became an exclusive clique. Mario Olckers, looking at South African social media through the framework of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, argues that the South African blogosphere’s exclusive start already spells out its impending failure.
Any kind of Social Media Strategy is therefore little more than inside baseball amongst an incestuous clique of privileged practitioners who retain and guard the old money and benefits of the old apartheid regime. Whatever Social Media campaign is launched online will necessarily only be seen by a handful of regular old faces who continually regurgitate each other’s utterings and bounce around any newsworthy items or movements within the local South African Web 2.0 zoo.
I think that he’s right-on in his diagnosis, but I tend to be more optimistic about the future. South Africa has centuries of ugly race relations history. The only way that things are going to improve is with dialogue. And social media – be it forums, twitter, blogs, or social networks – are ideal for that. But it’s going to get ugly, emotional, and difficult as it did a couple years ago at the Digital Citizen Indaba. Those are exactly the kinds of conversations that need to take place and we need leaders like Ndesanjo and Ory who can summarize them so well, step back, and offer some clarity and perspective.
The first step for any White South African bloggers reading this post (or anyone else for that matter) is to subscribe to the feeds of all the bloggers featured by Ramon Thomas in “Who’s who in the non-white Web 2.0 South African Zoo“.
Over the past five years the vast majority of South Africans have been excluded from the new public spehere that is the social web. Ridiculously expensive internet connections ($20 an hour at the hotel where I am writing at this very moment) and a lack of new media training programs means that only the wealthy are able to participate. Furthermore, English and Afrikaans have centuries-long histories as written languages. You’ll find that many bloggers – and writers in general – are more comfortable expressing themselves in writing than in person. South Africa’s other 9 official languages, however, have, comparably, only recently existed in written form. Unlike in Tanzania, where written Swahili was a significant and symbolic part of their independence movement, formal education in written indigenous South African languages has never really taken off.
I don’t want to discount the up-and-coming movements of Zulu and Xhosa literature, but it has to be said that most South African languages are still 99% oral and are rarely put down on paper. Which I believe is why the bloggers in Kwa Mashu tend to be unenthusiastic about updating their blogs with text, but become instantly excited when there is an opportunity to communicate with video, audio, performing arts, and music. For them, those are simply the best ways to communicate. Unfortunately, South Africa’s bandwidth constraints means that participating online is still restricted to text-based communication. But in the next few years a number of international and domestic projects are going to vastly improve connectivity in South Africa. Once video becomes the major medium of South African cyberspace, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s the old guard of White tech bloggers who are clamoring to keep up.
On a final note, it is increasingly difficult to define what is and isn’t South African. This country has always been cosmopolitan. The majority of its people, languages, and culture actually came central-Western Africa when Bantu-speaking farmers migrated south. Yesterday, walking around Soweto’s Freedom Square, the majority of merchants were not South African, but rather from Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Today two of the most highly regarded bloggers living in South Africa are probably completely unknown to the majority of South African bloggers. Manal and Alaa are hugely popular Egyptian bloggers currently living in South Africa, as is Ory Okolloh, a Kenyan who is one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most authoritative voices internationally. Meanwhile, there are plenty of influential South African bloggers living abroad, like Mohamed Nanabhay. It is becoming increasingly difficult to categorize bloggers by nationality or location. Soon enough we’ll just have to treat each other as people.
And for an extra bonus, I recommend Théophile Kouamouo’s “Why I blog about Africa.”
Following South Africa's Path
If you are looking for a guide to how humanity should move forward to a sustainable future, there’s no better place to visit than where we all started.
Our whirlwind bloggers’ tour of South Africa included a dizzying 22 stops during the first five days. We’ve seen so much — including the rich and diverse cultures of the native peoples, the technology that seeks to build a greener future, the urban centers, and the lush landscape — that it is easy to miss the forest for all these lovely trees.
Why — other than making for great travel entertainment — does South Africa matter so much to the world today and to our collective future?
During the tour we’ve seen how South Africans, including non-profits, community groups and the provincial and federal government, are working to protect the language, culture, and natural beauty of the nation. While much of the population still lives in the poverty of shanty towns, the government and private sector are getting better at sharing the new wealth from the diamond, gold, platinum and coal mining industries with the indigenous people.
Granted, this is a sponsored tour that attempts to show South Africa in the best possible light. But the interactions with people in the cross section of cities, towns and villages has revealed a strong commitment to making sure that future generations will have access to the nation’s rich heritage.
The !Khwa ttu center in Darling is preserving the spoken languages and tribal rituals of the San people to prevent them from being forgotten. The San people have been dispersed across all of Africa over the decades as more powerful groups have pushed them from their native lands. Parents of the current generation are no longer teaching the language, so the center is training children in their tribal culture and bringing together different San groups from all over Africa to share their common stories. The center also hopes to increase the financial resources for the local people by developing educational programs for tourists.
In the Richtersveld community on the west coast, money is flowing in after the resolution of a 10-year court battle over land rights and revenue from diamond mining after the land of the Nama people was taken away nearly a century ago. The local council of government is now determining how to spend the millions in back payments, with much yet to be decided about community and training programs.
The Richtersveld is also home to a 400,000 acre protected park of desert and mountains. 
The park is also home to many priceless petroglyphs (stone carvings) dating back 10,000 years.
In many parts of South Africa, conservation programs are returning animals to their native habitats and invasive non-native species are being removed. I was overwhelmed by the majesty of many species of birds and mammals that are once again roaming the plain at the Plumari Game Reserve. Being able to connect with some of earth’s grandest species up close is a powerful reminder of how we need to act to prevent climate change from damaging their fragile habitats.
The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site contains the world’s richest deposit of hominid remains. Zuza Fakude, a native of Soweto, talked with me about the importance of researching and preserving our ancestors. Maintaining archaeological sites enhances our incomplete family tree, she says. “It is important to know where you’ve come from, because it gives another way to look at things. It offers another piece of the puzzle.” She said visiting Magaliesburg is “especially important for us black people, because we are very much people of our ancestors.”
Anthony Paton, Public Relations manager for the Gauteng provincial government, agrees that visiting the Cradle of Humankind drives home our common ancestor. “We are far closer together as a race than our superficial differences lead us to believe. That unity of people is symbolized in th[is] place… That we all started from a single source reinforces that we should consider our impact on the planet and each other as we move forward in what is expected to be a resource constrained and environmentally challenged world. If we have an awareness that we are all one, then we can avoid the tragedy of the commons” (in which farmers allow their animals to overgraze because of a desire for personal profit, even if it imperils the entire community).
A sustainable future requires a “communal effort in not putting in an extra cow. The challenge for now is to not add to the burden on the commons, or the planet.” However, Paton concedes that there is not an equality in interest in understanding our common ancestry. He says that his area’s historic and cultural centers are having difficulty attracting wealthy South African whites. “Many are arrogant and don’t want to be educated when they are on holiday. Conversely black Africans who can least afford to come to the area are the most interested in visiting.”
In Soweto, museums highlight the recent history of the struggles against and victory over apartheid, the system of government that suppressed the rights of black South Africans until 1994. The Hector Pieterson Museum is named for a 13-year old boy killed by police during a demonstration on July 16, 1976. The incident sparked outrage inside South Africa and around the globe and paved the way for the collapse of apartheid.
At the nearby Mandela Family Museum (which we sadly were not able to visit), the life of the former prisoner of apartheid and later South African president is detailed. Fakude says “the apartheid museum teaches us about what the worst people can do, but also about the best of what they can do. That shows us the possibilities of what we can still accomplish; that we can do so much more.”
While humanity has shown a sickening ability to abuse portions of the population, the victory of apartheid and coming together of the races in building a better South Africa is a lesson for all strife-torn regions. “We have gone through all of this rubbish and put it aside — not behind us, but aside. It shows what you can do for the future from your strength. It is important to have these things to hold on to.”
Going back to where it started — where the earliest land masses formed, where the oldest mountains reside, and where our common ancestor once foraged — drives home the need for a future that can sustain our entire global family. “We have to realize that we all have common problems regarding the environment, regarding carbon (emissions) … and the over-fishing of the seas,” says Paton. “These all stem back to a common thing — there are too many of us in our family (to consume and emit greenhouse gases like westerners). The only way we’ll have a long-term future is to realize that we’re part of the same family.”
iPod South Africa Style
iPod South African Style. This guy passed me in the Soweto Mall yesterday. How could I pass this up?
For governments, no easy energy choices ahead
A developing situation in South Africa may hint at what lies ahead for the world’s nations, a future holding no easy choices when it comes to making and using electricity.
State-owned utility Eskom has abandoned a plan for an $11.5 billion nuclear generator that would have boosted the country’s electrical capacity by about 10 percent. Eskom says the price was too high, in part because the global recession has made financing more difficult.
Unfortunately, the cancellation leaves a hole that must be filled. In general, the country is open to building new coal plants, and several are already slated, but the local energy mix is already heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
South Africa is also strained to the max when it comes to its energy supply, with several shortfalls already projected for the coming year. That makes building more cheap and easy coal or gas plants a tempting fix, especially with prices temporarily low.
But the choice to stick with fossil fuels could be deadly for the ruling parties in the future, in part because global warming’s effects on Africa are becoming more apparent. While economic and social issues remain the top worries for now, an arid desert climate is advancing eastward across the country, meaning the water supply for the country’s most populous region could soon be overwhelmed by demand.
Building more fossil fuel plants will only make the government — which in fact just fired a top scientist who warned of water shortfalls — look complicit in the problems, which could easily result in social unrest.
The best solution appears to lie both in nuclear power -– smaller, cheaper plants have already been suggested –- and sources like wind, solar and wave power. There’s a project taking place on the southeastern coast, in fact, that could be world-changing if it goes through, providing about 770 megawatts of wave power -– alongside smaller amounts of wind and solar energy.
But the total output for the project, being headed by a company called the Darling Wind Farm (pictured above), will total less than a third of the 3,300 megawatts the canceled nuclear project would have provided.
The wind farm’s CEO, Herman Oelsner, said he’s confident the ruling government will pass a feed-in tariff in March that will offer a high enough price for him to develop his projects. Yet with Eskom in control of the country’s energy supply, even Oelsner is forced to operate in partnership with a local province, rather than working independently.
And like many state-owned utilities, it’s unlikely that Eskom will take it upon itself to develop renewables, because that cuts into the company’s bottom line. For now, the state appears unwilling to grapple with the cost of alternatives.
That will work for the moment, because there may be no immediate danger: South Africa’s government says that the decision to cut out the nukes was reasonable, as it believes the recession will limit demand.
But with supplies already limited, and a growing economy and population, that excuse won’t stand for long. The status of energy, as a social and economic issue, is rapidly changing, perhaps too quickly for the government to react. And South Africa is far from the only country in this position.
