A different view on current affairs & history
Our first stop would be Makgadikgadi, a vast wilderness of salt pans and rolling grasslands and an ideal stop over en route to the Okavango delta, Botswana.
That night we would not sleep under the stars as there were nocturnal animals that prowled the area. To get a feel of the extent of the salt pans, the next day we drove for hours on it before heading back to the Francistown – Maun Road.
Rob Liemer might have been a Chartered Accountant & my boss at Barlows Heavy Engineering but his two loves in his life were the bush of Botswana & repairing Land Rovers.
Rob’s love of the bush manifested itself in his annual two to three week migration to Botswana. Being an accomplished motor mechanic, Rob did not take the road trip through Botswana but rather the bundu bashing route.
To mitigate the risks, he fitted his long wheel-base Land Rover will 500 litre tanks, water containers & storage bins that contained all conceivable manner of spares imaginable.
A Personal View – March 2014
An act that I witnessed during this morning’s 21km run through Sunnyside, the Hillbrow of Pretoria, made me contemplate what the state of racial integration amongst South Africa’s children really is.
I am convinced that a child is born colour-blind, not in the literal sense of being unable to distinguish the various colours of the rainbow, but rather how they are able to interact with children of other races without concerns about their race, religion or class.
A Personal View – March 2014
In China, the history & significance of the Long March is well known. But steeped in propaganda, the truth is not known to the Chinese people.
During the 1920s & 1930’s, China was a very unstable country. The Chinese Emperor Puyi ruled from 1908 at the age of 2 years old until his abdication in 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution when he was 6 years old. He made a brief appearance to prominence again when the Japanese appointed him Kangde Emperor of the puppet state of Manchukuo [Manchuria] after its capture in 1931. He then ruled until the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945.
A Personal View – April 2014
The concept of romance & marrying somebody that one loves is a fairly recent innovation in human affairs. If one believes that this is an outdated practice especially in Western Society, I will disabuse you of that fact.
Let us take the contemporary case of Shrien Dewani. Firstly a caveat: I have not been following the case nor am I aware of his sexual orientation but what I am aware of is that he was obligated to marry somebody that he did not want to. Despite being classified as a desirable or stunning woman by most normal males, this fact has no bearing on whether he would reciprocate her love or make a desirable marriage partner. Clearly he would not.
A Personal View – March 2013
From Day One of the Oscar Pistorius Trial, the sequence of events was plainly established: all witnesses would be subjected to a barrage of cross questions by Oscar Pistorius’s council, Barry Roux, all in an attempt to poke holes into their testimony or at best to discredit them.
In this Advocate Barry Roux has excelled.
A Personal View – April 2014
Theoretically in terms of the South African Constitution all languages are guaranteed equality of treatment but is it possible or even desirable in such a multilingual country with nine official languages?
A family history will illustrate how “transient” or flexible the language issue really is. My late maternal grandmother [nee Nel] was born in the 1870s to 1880s on a farm in the Middleburg District in the Eastern Cape. With a paucity of other white families in the area, her natural play mates were the children of the farm workers. Naturally Xhosa became her stronger language as most of her communication was with her friends, the black Xhosa speaking children on the farm. At the time her family spoke a pidgin version of Dutch which was prevalent at the time.
A Personal View – April 2014
Like most government enterprises, Telkom shares common traits with other governmental departments & institutions as if it is hardwired into their DNA irrespective where they were located. This is not a South African phenomenon but a world-wide one.
The example that I would to share is something that occurred in the late 1970s & early 1980s. In retrospect, it is no more ludicrous than the episode that arose some 10 years ago but it would have been no less tragic as it would have stymied progress in South Africa.
Throwing down the gauntlet, Mike & Kurt were gone. With their long strides – Mike because of his long legs & Kurt, well, because of his long strides – they easily increased the gap between George & I. I strained to keep the gap as small as possible but to no avail. They steadily drew ahead. I could almost hear the strains of Straus’ Radetzky March that Kurt was humming to himself. Eventually I consoled myself with the fact that as the first of the team into Coffee Bay, they would have to resolve the transport issue which now became the focus of our concerns. It was upper most in all our minds at this juncture.
The next day presented the same challenge as the day before, a surging enraged river hoping to do its worst. Not enamoured with the prospect of another treacherous crossing in dubious boats with equally dubious Sea Captions, that option was quickly discarded. With insufficient rations to allow for any delays to the schedule, there was no alternative other than a long haul up river to find a suitable ford. Turning back was not an option. A second treacherous crossing with Captain Treacherous was out of the question.