Sheepdonkey Does A Brilliant Job

Until now the sheepdog "looked after" sheep - now in South Africa the donkey (Sheepdonkey?) have taken over the job.





As stated in the video, Sheepdonkeys have reduced the loss of lambs to predators, something which I don't believe Sheepdogs achieved.

Part of a feature from AgriTV

Vodacom Super 14 Final

Not only:

the first Vodacom Super 14 Final in South Africa

but:

the first South Africa Only Vodacom Super 14 Final

and:

the first South African Vodacom Super 14 Champion

Not True, Even in Black and White

The bottle of juice calmly claims to be "100% cranberry juice" containing apple, cranberry and other fruit juice.



What it should be is 100% pure fruit juice with cranberry! Quite a different claim for the heath conscious consumer looking for the benefits of cranberry, but getting a mainly apple juice.

Hi Blood

While I am often annoyed at the level of English in South Africa, especially where it can effect efficiency and effectivity, I am also fascinated by some of the words we use.

In English we are used to biro meaning pen, scotch meaning cellotape and hoover meaning vacuum cleaner but as a white South African I miss much:

"high blood" is even used in the INTERNET e-commerce for a herbal remedy for hypertension

"checkers" for a plastic bag and brilliant advertising for checkers

"look up and runs" for packets of chicken head and feet

"zo zo" for a small room in the back yard of a house

"hippo" for the round roofed township house

just a few really interesting words, but there must be thousands - send them in and I'll start a Colloquial South Africa Website and publish if we get enough.

By the way a look at the web shows many lists, but to me mainly uninteresting Afrikaans based slang - I am sure there's something much more interesting out there.

• http://www.capeoptions.com/slang.htm
• http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/634bf/
• http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-south-african-slang-words
• http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/links.htm
• http://www.southafrica.info/plan_trip/travel_tips/questions/saenglish.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_African_slang_words
• http://www.southafrican.za.net/sa-slang.html

Machadodorp Musings II - Street Names

The street name change was facinating and a bit comical and full of symbolism. The old black and white sign showing its age and not really standing straight.


A block down the road two young guys in some sort of official bakkie putting up the new coloured sign (Batina Jele) onto the old pole. The assistant to the "sign attacher" said Jele was a local comrade in the struggle but that he wasn't sure exactly what he did because "I am still too young"

The questions is raises is why has it taken so long for the majority of the population of the area to get the street renamed and why didn't we use entrepreneurs to do the job?

Tourism Good News

The minister of the Environment today announced an increase of 4.5% in visitors to South Africa for the 9 months to September 2006 and projected that this would result in a record year for 2007. That is good news!


Of interest in the information was a 9.7% growth in American and 42.4% growth in Russian visitors. Maybe the Americans have got over their fear of flying, while the growth in Russian visitors is noted as being off a small base.

The biggest growth is in visitors from Africa (18.3%) - I hope this is not just all the politicians and civil servants we host and often pay for eg the Pan African Parliament.

Machadodorp Musings I

Sitting in the car on the corner of General Smit and Potgieter streets in Machadadorp four things catch my eye:

• the hawkers across the road selling fruit and other food under the tree - there were others on other intersections
• the empty buildings all around
• the two new buildings each with 4 rooms with road facing counters
• the two guys down the street changing Potgieter street to Batana Jele street
  

and one my ear

• Trevor Manual on radio presenting a "internationally benchmarked budget" illustrating governments growing expenditure and real successes

Together they lead to questions that are important to success in South Africa

• why do we move so slowly
• why does development not reach the "Machada dorps" of South Africa
• why don't we learn from others

that maybe link back to one answer

• we don't have capacity and expertise in the organisations spending the money

with one solution

• truly involve those who used to do the job as mentors and teachers for those who now have to do it.

Identifying Africa's Constraints Now?

The following is an extract from NEPAD's newsletter which I receive by email. It is not archived on their site - that stopped in February 2006.

Is this not our problem in Africa - after 5 years of NEPAD and 7 of the African Union, do we really still have to create "a common understanding of capacity gaps and constraints" and outline a "process" "towards developing a strategy".


Another high level group is going to meet for 3 days, probably from the Addis Sheraton, to continue identifying, analysing, formulating and conceptualising; not even reaching concretising and planning let alone the implementation stage.

I believe we have the international Development and NGO community to thank for this they have overdeveloped the planning skills and underdeveloped the doing skills through their systems.

Public Service Capacity

The following exerpt from a call for bids in the Northern Cape got me thinking


what should we really expect from the English of Public Servants - can we really accept being

"..herewith invited to the supply of ... "

should we worry that they want

"..a broiler house typical to that of a poultry farm.."

or is that just being pedantic. But lets hope the same level of English is not used in the call otherwise we start to get difficulties in adjudication and in the contract otherwise...

But at a more significant level this is obviously the start of an attempt to create jobs with taxpayers (my) money by getting into the private sector. Lets hope at least they have an experienced business man (lets not train someone with no drive to be an entrepreneur) to run things. Otherwise it will go the way of many project, examples of which I can relate from experience:

• build something fancy but most often not approipriate
• put up the sign saying who did it
  
• get the minister to cut come and cut the ribon
• see it all on TV and the Good News site
• try, with out sufficient capacity, to get it to work
• forget about it - infact don't tell anyone what didn't work, which would be very useful
• go on to the next one

Then one level more what of the municipality - well they have obviously made a bunch of people happy finding a new name and developing a great logo (only excuse the quality it was a scan from the Sowetan) but does the poor work in publishing their call reflect their real capacity.

If you can't communicate how can you manage anything, let alone a municipality and what do you do with taxpayers money - interfere with the business men who really know how to manage and control. OK so they are not all supermen, but they are not using/loosing my money.

Its all very cynical, but what can we contructive can I do about it?

Looking for the Good and Bad

I have been trying to find really good and bad news to grow my South African Good, Bad & Wierd collection.

I visited the Why South Africa Sucks Blog and found only nonsense - how these people live I am not sure, it must be misery.

I also visited the South Africa Good News Site and found news items that were just what any successful country would be achieving anyway.

So where am I going to find my stories? Anyone have any suggestions.