GOLD, GOLD, GOLD, GOLD! September 8, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Uncategorized.Tags: gold, medal, Natalie Du Toit, Oscar Pistorius, paralympic
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Natalie Du Toit won our first gold medal at the Beijing Paralympics when she won her 100m butterfly event in the pool in a world record time.
Not to be outdone Charl Bouwer claimed gold in the 400m freestyle (class S13) in a new world record time of 4:14.02.
Natalie claimed her second gold medal in the 100m freestyle (class S9) event and we hope to see a few more gold’s from her soon!
Philippa Johnson added the fourth gold in the Individual Equestrian Championships (Grade IV).
Now we are waiting for Oscar Pistorius (the “Blade Runner”) to strike gold, he will be running the 100m, 200m and 400m events. He is a double amputee and races with prosthetic legs.
Well done to all our paralympic athletes, we are very proud of all your achievements, even if you do not win a medal, you do us proud just by being there!
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SOUTH AFRICA FACES ANARCHY September 2, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in News.Tags: anarchy, ANC government, ungovernable
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South Africa risks sliding into anarchy if level-headed people within the ANC as well as other influential people in society do not speak out against dangerous utterances which undermine the country’s constitutional democracy, legal expert, Professor Extraordinaire Shadrack Gutto has warned.
Speaking at the inaugural lecture of the Tshwane University of Technology/Pretoria News Intellectual Public Lecture Series, Gutto said South Africa was experiencing an absurd situation, where functionaries of the ruling party were labelling the courts as “counter revolutionary”, and were threatening to make the country ungovernable if the courts made decisions which were not favourable to the ruling party.
Read the rest of this article written by Babington Maravanyika (a black person) by going to this link:
This is a MUST read for all those who are interested in politics in SA!
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BUNDUBLOGGERS INCREASE YOUR TRAFFIC August 28, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Uncategorized.Tags: bundu, traffic
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I joined “Bundublog” during March 2008, in South African speak “Bundu” means “in the bush” or at the back of beyond, somewhere far away from city life. Bundublog is a free wordpress blog open to all those of us who live on the African continent. It is great because you get to know fellow Africans from our continent and learn more about their country and customs.
Many bloggers will agree with me when I say that you have to have a passion for the subject you choose to write about and you must make it interesting for a third party to read. I have chosen to write about South Africa, its people, their customs, general news, etc. I try to vary the subject matter and to tell the truth as I see it and this then attracts comments from people all over the world who have not experienced the type of things we experience in Africa.
I am still very much a “newbee” at this, but I did have success in attracting traffic to my blog by reading other blog posts from various blogs and trying out their tips. I will list a few of the successes below:
One blogger challenged people to the “30 day challenge” and he maintained that if you can write one post a day for 30 days that the traffic to your blog would increase dramatically. Of course you must not write rubbish, keep it interesting and not too long. After the first 4 days I could see that his challenge was going to be a winner for me and I just watched my daily traffic stats increase. Apparently if you post daily there is more likelihood that the search engines will pick up your posts.
Another tip is to try and blog about something very current and of interest to the world. For example when Nelson Mandela turned 90 years old the world was very interested in the occasion therefore if you had posted a piece about him, his birthday, etc. you would have had many overseas visitors to your blog. The same can be said about the Beijing Olympics, especially the opening ceremony.
I also found a site called “Entrecard” and they have helped me to attract a lot of new people to my blog and in doing so I once again made new friends in this community. It is free to join and has tremendous advantages. Have a look at them by clicking on the “E” on the advert you see to the right of this post, join them and see your traffic increase. The idea is to visit the blogs, read and comment on as many posts as you feel you want to, drop your card on them and most of the time they will then visit your blog and drop their card on you.
There are obviously many more tips to increasing your traffic, but I do not want to make this a long post, just try and make your blog user friendly and do not clutter it up with so many things that it takes ages to load in your visitors browser. If I have to wait for more than 2 minutes for the blog to load I tend to want to close that page and go to the next blog.
I have also asked a few people to visit my blog and to give constructive criticism and reviews on it and that has helped me as well. Go to the following link and ask them to review your blog:
I hope this has helped some of the new Bundubloggers out there, remember the whole point of the exercise is to enjoy yourself and to meet new people to share ideas with!
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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTINUED August 27, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in History.Tags: , affirmative action, whites
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Relax Max asked a few questions in his comment on my recent post on Affirmative Action in South Africa and I am going to try and elaborate a bit more to improve understanding of the system in our country.
It is quite a huge subject to cover in the South African context, therefore I will not do an indepth post, just a few highlights, etc.
First of all, follow this link to go to the SA Labour Department’s website to see their definition of Affirmative Action:
http://www.labour.gov.za/basic_guides/bguide_display.jsp?guide_id=5848&programme_id=2670
Also click on the link on this page to see the “Employment Equity Act”.
In 1998 the following was reported on CNN about SA planning to adopt AA:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9810/08/safrica.affirmative.action/
We have a huge majority of blacks in SA as everyone is aware, but prior to the ANC’s take over we have had a history of the minority (whites) paying the bulk of the tax revenues collected and a large portion of this was used to uplift the majority (blacks) i.e. schooling, hospitals, etc. There was only so much that could be done with the taxpayers money given the HUGE majority of blacks who were reliant on upliftment!
The whites actually made the blacks too reliant on handouts instead of teaching them to become self sufficient, but imagine the huge task for a minority race to try and help the majority to be educated, uplifted, taught skills, etc. The present Government cannot manage it either, despite all the International aid they received, there just is not enough resources or skills to cope with the upliftment of the multitude of blacks in South Africa.
Also bear in mind what a big gap there was between the two groups, the whites coming from a skilled and educated background from Europe and the blacks from a traditional “African rural” background with no “first world” skills.
Many people believed that the ANC should have rather gone the “class” route as apposed to the “racial” route when they implemented Affirmative Action. Why? Because there were Blacks, Indians and Coloured people who had the skills to TRULY qualify for a skilled job and who would have been able to handle the position well and they should have been given the opportunity to enter this type of job ahead of a white individual. Go to this link to read more about it:
http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2228
The mistake the ANC made was to go the “racial” route! Now we have a enormous problem on our hands and once again they want to blame Apartheid for this instead of admitting that they threw the unskilled blacks into the deep end and said: “Sink or swim!” and of course the majority sank. To try and understand the enormity of the situation and the absolutely rediculous position we are in at present, go to this link:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=79&art_id=vn20080827060000370C991228&set_id=1
So to answer your question Relax Max:
“No, the goals have not been met (they were not well thought out goals anyway and were set too high to achieve) and although a lot of blacks have moved upward in the employment ranks and are earning huge salaries, they are not efficient or effective in their posts as they were given their positions because of their colour not their skills.”
“The majority of the whites still have a good standard of living compared to the lower “class” black people, but the young white people have to seek employment overseas as they have limited opportunities in South Africa.”
So to conclude, Affirmative Action did not succeed in South Africa and should now be phased out and people should be employed on merit, not colour! There are thousands of vacant positions in government and municipal offices waiting to be filled, therefore if white skilled individuals qualify for the jobs they should be employed urgently!
When the ship is sinking (like we are) then differences should be set aside to save the ship and action should be taken to correct the position.
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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN SOUTH AFRICA DEBATE TO PHASE OUT August 22, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in News, Uncategorized.Tags: , affirmative action, whites
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Good news for white South Africans!!!
The ANC has opened the door to a debate on whether a sunset clause should apply to affirmative action, after Kgalema Motlanthe, the new minister in the presidency, announced that the government would consider phasing out the programme. (Ref: The Business Report.)
The affirmative action policy was set in 1998, when labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana piloted the Employment Equity Act through parliament. The act sets targets for companies to meet so that their workforces become demographically representative.
It has been welcomed by the Afrikanerbond as well as by the most strident supporter of the programme, Jimmy Manyi, the employment equity commission chairman and Black Management Forum president.
A clearly pleased Solidarity yesterday said the union had been in talks with ANC president Jacob Zuma and his deputy Motlanthe - both before and after the watershed Polokwane conference last December - to shift the ground on affirmative action. Motlanthe had suggested that a joint ANC-Solidarity task team should discuss the matter, the trade union reported.
The union (Solidarity) argues that a moratorium should be placed on affirmative appointments in scarce and critical positions, and that young people should be exempted.
The Afrikanerbond said that Afrikaners are flowing out of the country while jobs are deliberately kept vacant in all spheres of the government. While Dirk Hermann declared “the end of the Jimmy Manyi era” and a sign of a new willingness of the government to engage, Manyi said Hermann had misinterpreted or misunderstood the issues involved.
Motlanthe had specifically referred to taking into account scientific considerations, noted Manyi. In this context, he pointed out that in top management positions blacks held about 20 percent of the posts - far off the 87 percent target set in terms of equity legislation.
Once the targets for designated groups - women, coloureds, Indians, Africans and the disabled - were met, the need for legislative teeth would fall away, Manyi said.
Thus he had no difficulty with the statement by Motlanthe, who said: “Perhaps if we take an approach in an objective and scientific way, we can then have a way of phasing it [affirmative action] out rather than say, ‘Let’s do away with it.’ You may find that we do away with it prematurely and settle with a problem.”
The time is long overdue to end this type of discrimination, especially to those born after the Apartheid era, why must we lose our young people to overseas destinations when there is such a shortage of engineers, scientists, etc in our country.
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MILLIONS OF RANDS WASTED AT BEIJING OLYMPICS August 18, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in News.Tags: Beijing, olympics, wasted
3 comments
Apparently a large number of rooms (conference) were hired in a luxury hotel in Beijing by the South African Olympic administration with the view to using them to “advertise” South Africa and the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
True to form these rooms are being under utilised and when a spokesman for the SA olympic administration was queried he came across as a person who has no communication skills and does not know about the cost factor versus “advertising” and “goodwill” he should have had.
When I sat listening to this interview I thought that my “gardener” could have handled the situation better than the inept man they had sent across to organise the programme to provide information about SA to the world.
Once again the tax payers money is being wasted because they do not employ people who are qualified for the job to go and represent South Africa.
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NEW PROPOSED LAND GRAB LAW REMOVED August 15, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Politics.Tags: grab, land, south africa
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The new proposed land grab law has been removed from Parliament discussion and we can thank all the opposition party members who stuck to their guns about this issue which they rightly declared was “unconstitutional.”
The ANC may hold a large majority, but the small minority is making sure that they publicise all the negative things the ANC tries to railroad through Parliament. If this new law was implemented it would have had dire consequences for the landowners of South Africa and we could have gone down the same road as Zimbabwe.
Thank you all concerned and please keep your eyes and ears opened in the future as well and continue to be our watchdogs out there!
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WHEN WILL THE “ZUMA” BOMB GO OFF? August 10, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Politics.Tags: corruption, zuma
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A bit of history first for my foreign readers.
Jacob Zuma was South Africa’s Deputy President until he was asked to step down when charges of corruption was levied against him.
For a number of years now he has been in and out of court trying to defend/stop proceedings against him. He has huge support from the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA).
When one watches the news coverage of Mr Zuma when he comes out of the court house and addresses his followers, one can see that he does nothing to discourage their mass action threats, in fact he seems to encourage it.
Words like: “We will kill for Zuma” and “No Zuma, no country” are chilling to hear. Who are they going to kill? Are they going to go on a rampage and kill indiscriminately or have they specific targets in mind in the ANC or the legal fraternity that they will kill?
The MKMVA made it clear that a legal defeat for ANC president Jacob Zuma “will not be tolerated”.
“We want to make this message very clear. We are not going to allow this country - or any other country - to destroy the ANC or its leader, comrade Jacob Zuma. We are going to make sure that Zuma becomes the next president of this country, no matter what. No Zuma, no country,” the organisation’s deputy national secretary, Ramatuku Maphutha, told Independent Newspapers on Sunday.
Mr Zuma is now the ANC President and will be their candidate for the next general elections to be held in 2009.
If the court case is held before the elections and he is found guilty, what will happen?
If he is elected as our next President and he is found guilty thereafter, what will happen?
I have spoken in depth about the “African mindset” in previous posts, and the world has seen what happened in Zimbabwe recently when their veterans took matters into their own hands. Life is cheap in Africa, they do not care how many innocent lives are taken!
The above-mentioned two South African groups have no regard for the justice system or for our Constitution and if they carry out their threats and start filling the minds of their followers with “killing” we will see mass anarchy that will be a thousand times worse than the recent Xenophobic attacks. I believe that it will mainly be black on black violence as the various factions fight each other, but many innocent people can die if they are caught up in the middle of it.
Mr Jacob Zuma can stop this, but will he?
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BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008 OPENING CEREMONY August 8, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Sport.Tags: 2008, ceremony, olympics
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Words can hardly describe the awesome opening ceremony held today at the Beijing Birds-nest stadium. The sounds, sights, dancing, music and firework displays were beyond description.
I really liked the 29 footsteps depicted with fireworks “walking” across the night sky of Beijing.
Well done Beijing/China, you outdid yourselves and the world watched in awe as you showed us so many different faces of your country and its people’s, all 56 different ethnic groups!
I learnt so much today just from this opening ceremony and I know that a new benchmark has been set for others to try and emulate or better in the future.
I managed to get these photo’s off the net
Now let the games begin!!!
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NATIONAL STRIKE, DOES IT HELP? August 7, 2008
Posted by frostygirl in Boycott.add a comment
Striking is good if it achieves what you want it to, but is this present national strike achieving that?
From what I understand they are striking because of high food, fuel and electricity prices. Therefore their grievance is against Eskom and the “fat cats” who set the prices of the various products.
If we now read of the chaos, looting, etc these striking workers are causing then one wonders by how much more the prices will be increased to accommodate the losses incurred.
Read this story:
and this one:
My thoughts are that if we really want to bring the prices down then we should consider a boycott of as many places as possible.
Stop buying luxury goods for one month!
If the whole nation goes on a diet i.e. only eat very BASIC foodstuffs and try to purchase as little as is humanly possible, the “fat cats” will feel it very quickly in their pockets and this might force them to reduce prices.
If you agree with the above idea, how about starting an email drive to all your friends asking all South Africans to STOP buying (as many goods as possible, especially luxury goods) for one month and see what effect it will have!
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