BOYCOTT THOSE WHO ABUSE THEM IN THE NAME OF ENTERTAINMENT !

Thank you for keeping in mind the suffering of those animals…

DBV / SPCA Upington

Which is why, she says, businesses such as the South African arm of microchip maker Intel and power utility Eskom put time, money and effort into school-level international science, engineering and technology competitions.

Chetty is just back from the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, California, where two 17-year-old boys from Upington in the Northern Cape last Friday won fourth place in the team projects category of the world’s largest high school-level science, engineering and technology competition. Intel is a leading computer chip manufacturer.

Christiaan Kruger and Wynand van Zyl created Genii, software that explains grade 10 chemistry in an engaging and interactive manner. They competed against 1600 pupils from 59 countries across the globe.

Science, engineering and technology skills lie at the root of invention and efficiency and, so, economic growth, SA’s 2009 economist of the year Mike Schussler says.

SA does not produce enough science, engineering and technology graduates to meet business demands, and to compete in the global market for these skills , says Sandra Burmeister, CEO of Landelahni, a mining, information and communication technology and infrastructure recruitment specialist.

The global budget for infrastructure spend between this year and 2020 is about 20-trillion (R151,4-trillion). SA’s infrastructure budget is R900bn.

South African-trained engineers are in demand globally and 48% of respondents in a global infrastructure survey listed a lack of skills as the single biggest constraint to progress. Yet SA produced only 28019 degreed engineers and 53342 people with other qualifications in the field between 1998 and 2008 .

Added to this, SA’s low production of information and communication technology degrees is “really, really scary” given that a World Economic Forum global technology report acknowledges that technology is “a bridge to increased economic growth and competitiveness in all economies”, she says.

Between 1996 and 2007 SA produced 17705 information and communication technology degree and diploma graduates, but in 2005 only 823 graduated with a degree in electronic engineering, and only 596 were awarded a computer science degree. In 2006 these numbers were 916 and 540 respectively and in 2007, 928 and 502.

It is for this reason that SA’s participation in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and the fact that Kruger and Van Zyl did so well in the competition, is “great news”, says Schussler. The country needs to encourage youngsters to tackle these fields.

Intel decided 20 years ago it should encourage children to see science as “cool” and to encourage and reward their participation in science. A lack of interest in science, engineering and technology subjects is a global problem, Intel Foundation executive director Wendy Hawkins says.

The science fair has grown from a competition involving 1200 children from 30-40 countries in 1992 to this year’s tussle . Seven contestants have gone on to win Nobel prizes in their fields, Hawkins says.

Intel has worked to break down the myth that engineering is for boys, to improve the teaching of science, engineering and technology subjects at school – the Intel Foundation has trained 7-million teachers worldwide. The company uses the science fair to celebrate science, engineering and technology excellence, increase the attraction of science, engineering and technology for pupils and introduce them to the wide scope qualifications in the field afford in terms of career choice.

“We chose to do this because we learnt that many kids make choices … that close the door for them (in terms of career choice),” says Hawkins.

The four South African pupils who participated this year were “best of category” winners in the 2009 Eskom Expo for Young Scientists, says the expo’s national manager Priscilla Moodley.

Sue Blaine

He entered the room of Laurenique Cloete, who was studying for a chemical engineering exam. “He came in the room and threw me on the floor. He told me he would kill me if I made a sound and took one of my socks and stuffed it in my mouth,” Cloete said.

“Then he asked me if I was a virgin and told me to pull down my pants and lay on the bed. I was so scared I started crying and he said he was joking before he threw me into the cupboard.”

The robber took two cellphones and a laptop before fleeing.

But the 21-year-old student from Upington kicked her way free and set off after the robber with her stun gun.

“I wasn’t even thinking. I just grabbed the Taser my mom gave me, ran around the corner and saw him at the gate of the hostel,” she said.

“I just went for it and shocked him over and over until I was completely sure he would not get up again.”

Campus security held the suspect until police arrived. Provincial police spokesman Colonel Andre Traut said police were investigating the incident.

By Lavern de Vries and Kowthar Solomons

It cancelled the Air Mercy Service and opted for an an alternative arrangement with the military to save money, department spokeswoman Lulu Ntsie said.

The savings would be used to increase the number of doctors at the Gordonia Hospital and recruit more ambulance personnel for Kimberley and Upington.

Due to the geography and population distribution of the Northern Cape, patients often had to travel vast distances to reach medical care. To get to Kimberley Hospital, the province’s only provincial and tertiary medical facility, some patients had to travel up to 1400km from the farthest corner of the province.

The AMS had been in use for more than 10 years. The department had for some time been concerned about its cost and ongoing need to invest more money in district and regional hospital services.

“Concerns about value for money have also been raised by the office of the Auditor General and the portfolio committee of the Northern Cape Legislature.”

Ntsie said Upington’s Gordonia Hospital was being developed as a regional hospital and providing an increasing number of secondary hospital services. There were also 15 district hospitals in rural towns across the province.

The smallest of these, the Kakamas Hospital in the Siyanda District, had 30 beds. The largest, the Tshwaragano Hospital in the John Taolo Gaetsewe District, had 183. – (Sapa, June 2010)

Zimbabwean War Veterans and Robert Mugabe's thugs forcing a white commercial farmer off his property

HARARE – South Africa’s ruling party ANC is planning Zimbabwean style land invasions after the FIFA 2010 World Cup, amid reports Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF and War Veterans Association will provide crucial support for the programme, sources in Zimbabwe said on Monday.

Controversial African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President, Julius Malema, is set to visit Zimbabwe for a series of meetings with Zanu PF counterparts.

The crucial visit will go a long way in exchanging ideas and preparatory stages for both logistics and mobilisation for sporadic land invasions across the country.

A member of the Zanu PF security department told our reporter that the basis of Malema’s visit to Harare is a follow up to a secret discussion between President Mugabe and his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, three weeks ago.

The source said when South African President Jacob Zuma visited Zimbabwe during the coalition talks between Zanu PF and the MDC, he discussed at length, matters ranging from the British media’s personal attacks on his private life during the recent visit to the United Kingdom and the need to expedite South African land reform.

It is at this stage that Mugabe converted Zuma into his camp, and the two leaders agreed to join hands in actively assisting each other in the land reform and indigenisation process.

This week, a high-level delegation in the South African security forces, intelligence and media with close links to the ruling party ANC are travelling to Zimbabwe and they will spend three months training at the Zimbabwe National Army’s Staff College.

Senior Zimbabwe National army officers who led Zimbabwe’s land invasions will train their South African counterparts and impart knowledge based on their experiences.

A source said, South African land invasion factor is the reason why Zimbabwean President Mugabe has identified Jabulani Sibanda as the prefered choice to lead the Zimbabwe War Veterans Association in the association’s reported power struggles.

Sibanda’s speaks Ndebele and this is an important factor in his abilities to communicate with South Africa’s ANC land invadors, the source said.

Zanu PF Youth League national secretary for administration Leslie Ncube said Malema was visiting Zimbabwe to discuss and share ideas on “youth empowerment and revolutionary tactics”.

“The ANCYL president will be arriving next week. It will be a three-day visit and other executive members of the ANC youth league will accompany him,” Ncube said.

The Zanu PF youth official said the ANC and his party have enjoyed cordial relationships that date back to the liberation struggle adding these ties would be further strengthened by Malema’s visit.

“We share the same revolutionary history and they (visiting delegates) are coming to learn from our agrarian reform and indigenisation.

“The ANC is about to expand its land reforms, and we will share advice and discuss how resources should be equitably distributed to the youth and also how they can benefit from natural resources such as mining,” Ncube said.

Speaking to South African media, Gugule Nkwinti, the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform accused white farmers of scuttling the land reform programme by frustrating government’s willing buyer willing seller policy through inflating prices.

He warned South Africa risks sinking into chaos as the patience of new black farmers is running thin as evidenced by sporadic farm invasions.

“If South Africans who own land　 don’t recognise the reality on the ground　 and can no walk the mind with government in terms of what is proposed right now then in fact they are the ones who will be responsible for creating conditions of chaos which can be worse than what has been witnessed in Zimbabwe,” said Nkwinti.

Africa’s economic giant needs R 75 billion to acquire 80 million hectares of land by 2014 but this target will not be reached as national coffers are running dry as a result of a litany of service delivery issues that needs to be addressed such as a long housing back log, water and electricity deliveries to millions of households.

Nkwinti said the South African government is working on a policy aimed at addressing the land inequalities urging farm owners to be more flexible in land redistribution negotiations.

He said the new policy is about preventing going the disastrous way of distributing land like the one witnessed in Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe’s government forcibly took land from previous white owners in chaotic scenes that left many dead since the inception of the programme in 2000.

“This about preventing Zimbabwe,” said Nkwinti.

He did not elaborate on whether his government will consider amending the constitution to enable it to forcibly take land like what happened in their northern neighbours where the government had to pass legislation to change the constitution allowing it to compulsorily acquire land from white farmers.

Nkwinti said just like in Zimbabwe where about 4000 white farmers owned most of the country’s arable land, land in South Africa is concentrated in the hands of a few land owners, most of whom are foreigners.

“We have a major monopoly of land ownership in South Africa and we must break that monopoly,” said Nkwinti.

Nkwinti earlier this month told parliament that the government was adopting a “use it or lose it” policy to encourage increased production capacity but his weekend comments appear to be a shift towards a more radical policy.

Thousands of poor black South Africans, most of whom still live in abject poverty because of the apartheid era system are waiting for land promised at independence in 1994 and often repeated in campaign speeches by current President Jacob Zuma in his quest for political office last year.

Just like Zimbabwe, South Africa inherited an unjust land ownership system from the apartheid governments which parceled out all the best farm land to white farmers, leaving blacks to arid land not fit for agricultural purposes.

The South African government has in the past said it will not go it the Zimbabwe way and often move quickly to crush land related protests and attempts at invading farms owned by white farmers though it has largely been unable to stop farm murders but this time it appears it is starting to feel the people power.

Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe – once a net exporter of the staple maize grain – into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and skills training.

Please note that this article was published by the Zimbabwe Mail and I don’t know if this was a hoax or not.

Puna Moroko, lawyer for one of two suspects, told reporters that his client had been throttled and threatened before the murder.

He also withdrew an earlier claim that at least one of the men was sexually assaulted by the far-right leader.

The case, which has attracted worldwide attention, will resume next month.

Large crowds gathered at the court in Ventersdorp, including supporters of Mr Terreblanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) as well as a group of black workers who were dancing and singing.

Police formed a barricade outside the building but proceedings passed without incident.

‘Death threat’

Speaking to reporters outside court, the lawyer for 28-year old Chris Mahlangu said his client had been assaulted by Mr Terreblanche.

Mr Terreblanche “throttled him and said ‘I’ll kill you because my cattle are missing’,” he said.

African viewpoint: Songs and death

Terreblanche: Love and hate

“Then he said he stopped working and started sleeping at a nearby farm until he [Terreblanche] sent one black guy… to plead with him to come back.”

Mr Terreblanche’s body was found on 3 April after he was beaten to death.

The murder was initially claimed to be linked to a wage dispute.

But police have now said they are investigating other causes amid reports that those accused acted in self-defence.

Despite previous assertions, Mr Moroko meanwhile dropped the claim that Mr Terreblanche tried to have sex with his client.

But he said he could only comment on his own client and could not speak for the other 15-year-old defendant, who is represented by a different lawyer.

Mr Terreblanche was leader of the AWB, a white supremacist group, and believed that whites and blacks should be kept apart.

AWB secretary general Andre Visagie has dismissed the claims.

“It is clearly that they hunt for a motive for the murder which they can’t find and they are trying out everything now, including an effort to make Mr Terreblanche to look bad in any possible way,” he said.

The 15-year old has declined bail and is staying in a police safe-house.

A bail application for Mr Mahlangu has been postponed until 10 May.

BBC News

The Times Explorer has kicked off and is coming to a dorp near you. Prepare for an invasion by journalists in our specially marked VW Caravelle.

The Explorer project, from the Sunday Times and Times LIVE, last ran a decade ago. It will involve 10 groups of journalists crossing the country and documenting their travels and travails from north to south and sea to sea.

The deputy editor of the Travel & Food supplement of the Sunday Times, Paul Ash, and his team embarked on the first leg of the expedition. They will traverse Namaqualand, Springbok, the Richtersveld National Park, Augrabies National Park and the vineyards around Upington as they make their way to Cape Town.

“So far, we’ve ambled through the country, taking the long way around to Ventersdorp – mostly to avoid potholes . an entire section of the N14 seems to have disappeared into the earth,” Ash said.

“We’ve seen lots of mealies and even more cows. Off to Wild West Saloon now .”

Teams will be made up of a writer, a diarist or a multimedia producer, and a photographer.

• BE PART OF THE EXPLORER EXPERIENCE

Readers can tweet us on https://twitter.com/timesexplorer or at explorer@sundaytimes.co.za to suggest places to go – your favourite restaurant, or a cool sight to explore. We will update you on what we find through blogs, photos and tweets, and a full story will appear weekly in The Times and in Travel & Food.

Grey took 22 teams on tour to the Northern Cape to face sides from Duineveld, Upington and Kakamas. Grey proved why they are the No 1 school in the country as all 22 teams won their respective matches.

The feature game saw Grey run riot as they scored eight tries against Duineveld.

Wing Jan Serfontein starred for the visitors as he grabbed a hat-trick while flyhalf Johan Goosen kicked eight conversions.

‘We are very happy with our performance, the forwards really impressed me,’ director of rugby Dries van der Wal told keo.co.za.

‘In the past we had a huge pack of forwards while this year they a lot smaller. But they are a mobile unit and they got us quick ball for our lethal backline.

‘A part from Jan and Johan, [flank] Tyron Schultz, [scrumhalf] Nicol Linde and [No 8] Neil Jordaan also had a great game.’

By Gareth Duncan

John Lennon went on to sing that though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all and now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Well, in South Africa we have never counted the number of potholes we have on our roads. But if we did, they would probably fill the universe.

Three recent trips have convinced me that our minor roads may become impassable in the event of no action being taken. The first one involved driving down the road from Leandra to Standerton. Even though I was in my old trusty Landrover Discovery, I had to slow to a virtual halt twice in order to weave around a whole section of potholes. Moreover, the experience was made even more hazardous by the trucks that were belting down the road as though it were a motorway. What it must do to their tyres, heaven knows.

The second trip was around the side of the Pilanesburg National Park and the third was from Dullstroom to Lydenburg. In these two cases, it was the single, very deep pothole that you suddenly come across over the rise which created the danger.

There have been some marvellous pothole photographs doing the rounds on the internet, including one featuring a giraffe in a pothole with its head sticking out. But, seriously, how do we fix the problem? Speaking as a total amateur on road maintenance, I have three recommendations.

Firstly, no more tenderpreneurs who get contracts because of their connections instead of their skills as a cost-efficient service provider. On every road, we should have a regular billboard at intervals showing the name of the contractor, telephone number and person to contact. Just like an estate agent with a photograph as well. One has to create a line of accountability by knowing whose neck is on the block. If the road is dangerous, the company has to start repairing it within 24 hours.

Secondly, for the real country roads, we should do what they do in India – allocate stretches of the road to local communities to maintain at a fixed cost per year (not per pothole because that would create an incentive to enlarge the problem). They would be given the sand and stone required, and every day they would inspect the condition of the road to make the necessary repairs.

Thirdly, we have to improve our rail network to get more cargo moved by rail. If Warren Buffet is prepared to make the largest investment of his life in an American railroad, then this industry must have good prospects. Oil is becoming a scarce commodity, its price is bound to rise dramatically in the recovery and mass transport systems will once again be in vogue as a cheaper alternative to cars and trucks. Obviously, you will continue to need both modes of transport in order to maintain flexibility.

I may not be turning you on like John Lennon wanted to do in the song. But we must have the debate before our rural towns and villages are once again turned into isolated communities without access to markets; and we cannot travel from the cities to see them.

CLEM SUNTER

While there won’t be any FIFA World Cup football on their doorstep, the large region has been busy getting up to speed in order not to miss out on the football euphoria in the country, and officials from the province are determined not to be left in the lurch as they look to welcome fans who will be travelling between some of the host cities.

Part of that plan is to lure visiting fans into making a pit stop in the province during their travels as they follow their teams in South Africa. For example, a journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town can easily take one via some of Northern Cape’s towns that serve as travel hubs, including De Aar, Colesberg and Upington.

And located less than two hours away from Mangaung/Bloemfontein, the capital of Kimberly is positioning itself as an accommodation alternative for the thousands of football fans who will descend on “Bloem” to watch matches at Free State Stadium.

Cape Town prides itself on being the “Mother City,” Port Elizabeth enthuses on being the “Friendly City,” Johannesburg raves about being the “City of Gold,” and so the list goes. But while all three of the above-mentioned cities enjoy international pedigree, not much is known about the Northern Cape Province nor the towns located there. However, Northern Cape is now crafting a new image for itself. A small glance at their colourful brochure provides an insight with the bold promise of “unique prime destinations” in the country.

Say hello to Kimberly
Kimberly is the most well-known city in the province. It is one of the oldest cities in the Northern Cape and boasts a rich history and a number of adventurous activities that include quad biking, taking long walks in the desert, visiting museums and a host of other things.

No matter that they will not host any matches, Northern Cape Premier Hazel Jenkins sees the long-term benefit for the area, which will host the Uruguayan delegation. “The hosting of a World Cup team brings a number of benefits to the people of the Northern Cape. The tourist potential to the Province is enormous in that we will be provided with an opportunity to profile the Northern Cape as a desired destination to the followers of the team.  As a result the ailing bulk infrastructure network will receive attention,” she said.

“For the football loving people of the Northern Cape that will not be in a position to experience the thrill of watching their favourite teams compete in person, the Northern Cape Government will make available six Public Viewing Areas (PVAs) throughout the Province with another nine in smaller centres. The public viewing areas will emulate the atmosphere at the stadiums, and it will allow football lovers the chance to converge at a central point to watch all games live,” Jenkins added.

Renowned for its semi-desert landscapes and diamond production, the Northern Cape Province is one of the lesser-known yet still tourist-friendly places in South Africa. One of the must-do things when in the Northern Cape is to take 4×4 rides through the desert. You can also enjoy the experience with hired quad bikes as you peer through the Namaqualand and Bushmanland.

Running through the town of Upington, the Orange River is one of the famous waterways in South Africa since it is the longest river in the country. A four-hour canoeing experience from Upington will enable you to feel a part of the other side of wildlife, and one of the most sought after things to do there is to have breakfast on the banks of this historic river

www.fifa.com