Archive for 'People'

Global Blog Buzz for We Blog the World Tour

by on December 7, 2008 at 2:46 pm

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

by on December 7, 2008 at 12:09 pm


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.



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.

by on December 7, 2008 at 2:17 am

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?

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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.

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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.

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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

by on December 7, 2008 at 1:15 am

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.”

!Khwa ttu: Sustainable Cultural Preservation

by on December 5, 2008 at 11:27 pm

The surprise highlight of this trip for me so far hasn’t been a helicopter flight, luxury resort, or journey down three and half kilometers to the world’s deepest mine. No, what has impressed me the most was a lunch-time visit to !Khwa ttu, a culture and education center for the San people of Southern Africa that sustains its operations through a tourism lodge and restaurant.

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!Khwa ttu’s restaurant and gift shop.

Trip out on this: if you trace your ancestry from your parents to your parent’s parents and their parents and so on for thousands of generations (back 60,000 years ago), then you’ll find that you share a direct ancestor of this man:

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That’s Andries, a 30-year-old from the ‡Khomani community of the Kalahari who learned how to become a tour guide at !Khwa ttu. Along with his colleague Kerson, Andries taught us how to pronounce the klicks and klacks of the various San languages.

Video by Simon Barber.

After our lesson in Khoi and San languages we were shown the following video about the making of the photographic exhibit “The San and the Camera.” The Khoi and San peoples have long been exoticized on the covers of travel pamphlets, in museum exhibits, and in movies like The Gods Must Be Crazy. But their current reality, marked frequently by discrimination and poverty, is ignored by most media.

You can see a more general video about the !Khwa ttu center on their website. What has me excited about the project is that it is able to preserve dying cultures and languages, generate jobs, teach new skills, and educate others all while staying sustainable from its tourism revenue.

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If you ever visit Cape Town I highly recommend taking the hour drive to !Khwa ttu to check things out. Their meals are delicious, the photographic exhibit is impressive, and the staff are absolutely lovely. Plus, you’d be supporting a very good cause. Now we just need to get them blogging. :)

Children Dance in the Richtersveld

by on December 5, 2008 at 9:42 am

Take a look at South Africa’s Richtersveld as seen through the eyes of Nama children, who danced for us on the banks of the Orange River, along the Namibian border.

It was followed by a picnic lunch consisting of grilled fish, game stew, salads and cheese……and of course, a taste of the local beer. You’ll be incredibly moved and if the dancing alone doesn’t bring on a smile, the face below most certainly will. See if you can find her in the videos.

Children_at_richtersveld_tours_lunc

Videos of their performance below:

3.8Km underground – My experience in the deepest mine in the world

by on December 5, 2008 at 2:26 am

3.8km is a long way whether you look at it vertically, horizontally or any other way you can think of. Now think of going down. Deep down in the pit of the Earth.
TauTona is AngloGold Ashanti’s Mine near Carletonville in Johannesburg. Let me be straight with you here, it’s deep and you don’t really […]

America Gives South Africa Tourism Love

by on December 4, 2008 at 7:00 am

The United States has overtaken Germany as the second-biggest market for South African tourism, according to Wendy Tiou, Global Manager of Communications for South Africa Tourism.  (The U.K. is number one, of course).

We spoke over lunch at Moyo, an open-air Johannesburg restaurant set in a park near the zoo.  Moyo serves dishes from all parts of the country, including delicious curries, wild game and desserts that I’d never seen before and wish to meet again.

Moyo_outdoor_restaurant_at_zoo_lake

Even more interesting than the food is the setting, with singers and dancers and drummers, and lamps that look like happy white jellyfish.

During the middle of the interview I had my face painted in a kind of sunshine warrior design.  How often does that happen to you during lunch?

South Africa is hosting the next World Cup, in 2010.  The World Cup, as most Americans don’t know, is the world’s biggest sporting event.  We hosted in 1994. Brazil won, remember?  Perhaps we can build on Obama’s victory and cement our improved relations with the rest of the world by finally appreciating “soccer.”

There are already signs counting down the days, even the seconds, until the first match.  As every host country has learned, preparations are overwhelming, but Ms. Tiou sounded confident that stadiums will be ready and there will be plenty of beds for the 450,000 visitors that are expected.  The country is eager to play host.

Tourism has grown substantially overall, not just from America.  And why not?  It’s a gorgeous country, the weather is great, the people are interesting, it has a fascinating human narrative, dynamic, cross-cultural, full of challenges and opportunities, and is defining itself anew.

If you want adventure travel, vineyard outings, ancient human history, city culture – it’s all here, and with the infrastructure, exchange rate and English language to make the journey an easy one for Americans and other first-world dwellers.  It’s a long haul, but if you have a couple of weeks it’s well worth the jet lag.

Meet the San People of Southern Africa

by on December 3, 2008 at 10:22 am

A mere seventy kilometers outside of Cape Town sits the San Culture & Education Center, a center dedicated to culture and training for Southern Africa’s First People, the Bushmen, now called the San.

The center, otherwise known as !Khwa ttu is designed to be a living celebration of past and present San culture.

Their 850ha nature reserve is surrounded by rolling bushlands, birdlife, game, West Coast farm buildings and fynbos. Formed as an NGO, the center is a joint venture by the San people and a Swiss philanthropic foundation (UBUNTU). !Khwa ttu’s CEO is sexy Michael Daiber, a blonde South African crocodile Dundee with perfectly weathered skin and khaki cotton clothing head to toe.

Michaeldaiber_san_center_ceojpg

For the first time in 10,000 years, there’s a central place for all the San people wherever they may be living in southern Africa to go for education, inspiration and growth. When they first thought about where to hold the center, Botswana and Namibia were considered but ultimately southern South Africa was chosen despite the fact that it houses fewer San people than the three considered.

This is their ancestral land so it is here they should be able to speak in their original language and learn how to pass it on to the next generation. The San language has numerous dialects (!Khwa ttu employees Andre Vaalbooi and Kerson Jackson – both of them San people, go into detail about the language, giving examples of various dialects in a movie we shot below).

Only four elderly San still speak older generation dialects because it simply wasn’t passed on to the next generation over the years. Why? Apartheid had a lot to do with it. Afrikaans farmers wouldn’t allow their San workers to speak their own language.

Knowing that their children might be punished by their Afrikaans boss (baas-man they would have called them), it was safer not to teach their children their native tongue. The result is near distinction of certain dialects as the last few generations learned Afrikaans instead and passed on “it” as the mother tongue.

How unnatural Afrikaans must have felt to a people whose language sang rather than spoke. As I listened to them speak one dialect after another, the sounds came out as clicks, clacks, oings and mooias with lingering aaang delays that were hypnotic at times.

Frustrated by the inaccurate image people had of Bushmen around the world, one goal of the Center is to educate others about who the modern Bushmen (the San) are today. They also wanted to reintroduce certain vegetation and restore the land.

Says a very passionate Daiber, “A lot of the San people who work here have developed a sense of ownership. They hold workshops that range from arts & crafts to zoology. People come together to learn about their own identity and heritage as well as develop skills they can use elsewhere, such as the tourism industry or in a game reserve. We create an environment where they can learn and interact while maintaining self respect and dignity.”

The big challenge, Daiber maintains, is to find a foothold in the tourism industry. “We have to sell the place in a unique way so the rest of the world can see that the San people are so much more than a visual they might have in their minds of loin clothes and bows & arrows from centuries ago.”

The center appears to be succeeding from what I could tell by talking to Andre, oddly an Afrikaans name. Andre’s facial features as you can see below couldn’t be more different from an Afrikaaner, yet the strong verbal and cultural connection to their world doesn’t seem to bother him.

Andrejpg_2

When asked how they felt about losing their language over the years because of an Apartheid way of life, he merely said “what has passed has passed.” In other words, what can we do by spending time in the past? Here, they are focused on the now and the future, which is maintaining their language and the numerous dialects as well as educating others about their culture and history.

The pictoral museum itself also shed history of the Bushmen from the beginning of time.

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The below map shows the regions where they spread.

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Below is footage we shot of Andre and Kerson giving us lessons on the why, how and pronunciation of the various dialects of the San language. It’s a fascinating watch whether or not you have some familiarity with their culture and history.

Before we explored what was past and what is now, we were served Springbok tartare with melon. It was prepared and presented in a way that might lead you to think you were in a top-end Parisian restaurant rather than a rural center in the middle of the South African bush with nothing on either side but rolling bushland, hay, trees and four lonely wind mills less than 60 kilometers away.

The main course was equally exciting and tasty as hell. Springbok curry served with rice, chutney and egg brought out some of the best flavors I’ve tasted in awhile. Southern African curry is unlike the curries from northern India and the states and share more in common with the Indian curries you can find today in the southwest of India, some of which made its way to England and Scotland.

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As it was time to leave, a playful Daiber followed us to the dusty parking lot outside of their locked gate that was opened today just for our visit since they’re normally closed on Mondays……an amazing treat since it meant that we had the place to ourselves.

Here, natural beauty is in raw form. You can actually hear the silence in a way I’ve only found possible on the African continent. I had forgotten how different the air is in southern Africa and how the place gives a new meaning and definition to the “sounds of silence.”

These sounds of silence weave its way into your memory accompanied by a late afternoon sky – diffused oranges and yellows, more yellow today, yes, more yellow.

The day after a windstorm and the afternoon after a helicopter ride around Table Mountain, the sky was calm with blue sky, a smattering of white clouds that had managed to form an impressionist-like mass by 5:30 in the afternoon as we made our way out of the dusty road and onto Stellenbosch. As I looked out the window to our rear, I could see Daiber’s Jack Russell terrior Bullet wagging his tail and watching us drive out of sight.

The New Obama in South Africa

by on December 1, 2008 at 6:29 pm