graaff reinet

Acclaimed Author Alistair Morgan Returns with The Land Within

Alistair Morgan, the first non-American to win the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, follows his acclaimed debut novel, Sleeper’s Wake, with The Land Within, to be released in September:

After an unexpected request from his father, Henry Knott returns to the Karoo farm on which he spent a fractured childhood. Painful memories force him to revisit a tragedy in which he was fatefully implicated. Henry has to come to terms with how this event has shaped his adult life, his marriage and the conflicted emotions he feels towards the place of his birth.

The Land Within traces the deep connections between tragedy and love, regret and longing.

About the author

Alistair Morgan was born in Johannesburg in 1971. In 2009 he became the first non-American to win the Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Alistair’s highly acclaimed debut novel Sleeper’s Wake was published in 2009 and was the winner of the SALA 2010 First-Time Published Author Award. In 2012 it was adapted into a feature film. He currently lives in Cape Town.

Book details

• The Land Within by Alistair Morgan
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143530336
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At 80, South African playwright Athol Fugard is still turning out plays at a rate that would be daunting for a dramatist half his age. A crucial witness to the warping effect of apartheid on his country’s soul, Fugard has continued in the post-apartheid era to track the difficult moral journey of characters heeding and resisting the national imperative of reconciliation.

His latest play, “The Blue Iris,” receiving its U.S. premiere at the Fountain Theatre, is in keeping with the distilled, backward-looking, frankly mournful style that has dominated his late works. It shares with “The Train Driver” — produced at the Fountain, Fugard’s Los Angeles home, in 2010 — a brooding over past injustices, public and private, rooted in the very soil of this hard, majestic land.

Set in a burned-out farmhouse in the arid Karoo landscape, this stripped-down, modestly resonant drama revolves around a bereaved farmer, Robert Hannay (Morlan Higgins), his domestic and companion Rieta (Julanne Chidi Hill) and the ghostly visitations of Sally (Jacqueline Schultz), his artist wife, who died shortly after a fire destroyed their home and her paintings.

Robert is filled with remorse over how he treated his wife. The final words between them were heated, with Sally expressing her fear of being left alone as a lightning storm approached and Robert insisting that he carry out necessary business for the farm — a conflict that cuts to the heart of their marital woe.

“I had persuaded her to leave her green, gentle world in Cape Town and share her life with me, here in the Karoo,” he reflects, in one of his many somber flights into memory. He lured her with visions of “the magical carpet of flowers” rolled out in the spring, without letting her know that the rain doesn’t always come and that there are years when there’s not even enough water for a small colorful patch of garden.

One painting has survived the devastating fire. It’s a water color of a blue iris, a flower that blooms out of dry hard cracks in the earth and contains enough poison to kill a full-grown ox. Sally felt unsatisfied with her rendering, confiding to Rieta that she captured its delicacy but not its lethal secret.

Beauty and death, love and fury, attachment and resentment — these polarities, projected onto the Karoo terrain, play out in the domestic triangle of Robert’s home life. The relationship between Robert and Rieta, a younger black woman, remained latent for reasons that have as much to do with racial history as Sally’s wounded presence. More anecdote than action, “The Blue Iris” derives what little forward thrust it has from the discovery these two characters make of their true feelings.

The play’s anguish often seems more real than the dramatic circumstances. Fugard may be metaphorically grappling with his own plight — that of an aging author who has devoted himself to chronicling his country’s ethical quandaries at some steep personal cost. “The intellect of man is forced to choose/ Perfection of the life, or of the work,” Yeats wrote, and Fugard seems to be calculating the hidden toll of his artistic legacy.

When evaluated on the level of language or character development or plot execution, “The Blue Iris” can seem lacking. But the play is bolstered by an attribute that has made Fugard such an exemplary moral guide for more than half a century — his ability to stand in judgment of himself.

Higgins embodies Robert’s guilt so completely that the production practically topples with tragic self-recrimination. Coated in the dirt of his character’s trade, Higgins’ Robert invokes the image in Shakespeare’s sonnet of the dyer whose stained hands reflect a life overtaken by his profession.

The production, under Stephen Sachs’ direction, ramps up the vehemence for understandable reasons (this is a short play but not an insubstantial one). But the performers could use a steadying hand.

On Jeff McLaughlin’s beautiful wreck of a set, a junkyard of old domestic dreams, the actors have some trouble settling in. At times they threaten to burst the bounds of the playing area with a theatrically heightened grief, much like the way the fire has destroyed the home that is now being sifted through for clues about the past. They are more effective, however, when the emotion emerges directly from the situation and not when it appears to be supplementing a drama resembling a sketch.

“The Blue Iris” may not represent the author of “Boesman and Lena,” “‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys” and “Valley Song” at the peak of his powers, but it provides tantalizing insight into an artist who continues to do his country and world theater proud service.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

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‘The Blue Iris’

Where: The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave. L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 16.

Tickets: $30 to $34

Contact: (323) 663-1525 or http://www.fountaintheatre.com

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas in the Karoo basin is receiving full Cabinet attention, although no declaration on whether a moratorium on fracking would be lifted could be made at this stage, Cabinet spokesperson Jimmy Manyi said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a post-Cabinet briefing in Pretoria, he said that a clearer picture on the future of fracking would emerge at the next Cabinet briefing, which would be held in two weeks’ time.

“Cabinet is doing everything in its power to ensure that this is dealt with thoroughly,” Manyi said.

The Department of Mineral Resources has placed a moratorium on fracking, pending the completion of a report on the matter. The report would assess the potential costs and benefits of the exploitation of the Karoo shale gas resources, which have been estimated at 485-trillion cubic feet.

A report compiled by Econometrix, and funded by Shell, in March estimated that fracking could add between R80-billion and R200-billion to the country’s yearly gross domestic product if only a small portion of the speculated shale gas resource base was explored.

Nonprofit organisation Treasure the Karoo is opposing shale gas exploration, saying fracking is unsustainable, water thirsty and would damage the environment.
 

To subscribe to Engineering News’s print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.

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Farber, who lives in Montreal, Canada, has given the 124-year-old August Strindberg play Miss Julie a local twist, setting it in the Karoo, instead of Sweden, to “capture the incredible complexity, beauty, tenderness, brutality and possibility that we are capable of as South Africans”.

The production premiered at the National Arts Festival, in Grahamstown last month, before a two-week run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.

Farber’s adaptation looks at contemporary South Africa as “a post-traumatic society” and the “knot of inheritances and legacies that entangle lives in the aftermath” of the trauma.

The story revolves around the relationship between a black farm labourer, the daughter of his baas, and the woman who has raised them both.

Such is the power of the sex and class war in the production that it has an age restriction of 16 years and older.

Farber’s production, which features Hilda Cronje (Mies Julie), Bongile Mantsai (John) and Thoko Ntshinga (Christine) has had the UK press spellbound.

Lyn Gardner, of The Guardian, gave it a 100% rating, as did the London Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday, and The Scotsman.

Gardner wrote in her review: “The sound alone merits an award, but so do the actors – as savage and unbound as the production. Brilliant.”

Mies Julie will return to South Africa at the State Theatre, Pretoria, on September 5 and run until October.

Farber’s show is not the only South African production earning rave reviews in Edinburgh.

Zakes Mda’s ever-popular And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses, The Sewing Machine (adapted and directed by Hennie van Greunen) and Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act have been popular every night since the Edinburgh Festival Fringe began on August 3. It ends on Monday.

South African comedians Loyiso Gola and Dave Levinsohn have been rocking the Assembly Roxy venue with their joint one-hour routine, Barely Legal: The 18-year-old Democracy.

An announcement on whether or not hydraulic fracturing for Karoo shale gas will be allowed could be made in a fortnight, after the next Cabinet meeting, government spokesman Jimmy Manyi said on Wednesday.

Briefing journalists in Pretoria following Cabinet’s latest meeting, he said the matter of hydraulic fracturing was now before it “and receiving full attention”.

Once this was completed, all interested parties, including the media, would be informed.

Pushed to put a date on this, he responded: “A more accurate picture will emerge at the next Cabinet briefing… [which] will provide a bit more detail.”

South Africa’s digital migration television launch is set for the 26th and the 27th of September in the Northern Cape, Karoo region.

Nonetheless, the Department of Communications (DOC) has a R7 billion shortfall to fund before migration can be completed.

According to IT Web, the deputy director-general of the DoC, Themba Phiri, told the Select Committee for Labour and Public Enterprises a week ago that it was very clear the country could not meet the SADC deadline, as there was not enough time to complete the work and there were also funding constraints.

“DOC needed a total of R7 billion more in funding to address a shortfall to rollout digital TV,” Phiri was quoted saying by IT Web.

He however, told the committee that SA would meet the ITU timeframe, as it still had a full three years to wrap up the entire project.

How much will you pay for Digital TV Signal?

Every South African household with a TV set will be forced to pay R700 for a set top box (STB) or will lose their free TV signals, City Press reported few months ago.

The announcement by Communications Minister Dina Pule in government-run print ads indicated that South Africans would have to fork out about R700 to buy a STB and a new antenna, it said.

The government will only be subsidising a portion of the cost for the “poorest of the poor” households, but no plan has yet been announced on how it will work practically, it also reported.

Turn on:

Digital TV is expected to be ignited up on 26 and 27 September.

Job Creation:

DOC is expected to create several categories of jobs along with migration.

In the manufacturing sector, about 800 and 1 000 opportunities expected to be created, which include more jobs at existing factories and new jobs at new start-up small and medium companies.

Related Stories:

http://www.thenewage.co.za/59826-1021-53-SAs_digital_TV_to_switch_on
 

Independent Newspapers

Parliament in Cape Town. Photo: Matthew Jordaan

Let’s construct a tale. There is a government tender to build a toll road between the new hydraulic fracturing supply hub – Beaufort West – which has turned overnight into the Las Vegas of the Karoo along with Murraysburg.

Industrial activity and economic expansion followed the 2013 greenlight by the government for exploration and then mining of shale gas, which big companies like Royal Dutch Shell, Bundu Oil and Gas Exploration and a few others have discovered is like an underground sea.

The epicentre of the 500 trillion cubic feet gas find, Murraysburg, has become the new Kimberley.

Properties in Beaufort West’s tree-lined Bird Street are now commanding prices like those in Camps Bay and Clifton. But Beaufort West is not a patch on Voortrekker Street in Murraysburg, which has simply become the Saville Row of the Karoo. In the two years since the green light and ending of the exploration moratorium, both Beaufort West and Murraysburg have exploded economically.

The Western Cape government believes that by 2017 eight new primary and high schools will need to be constructed to supply the two now sprawling cities. A Karoo Freeway Improvement Project needs to be constructed so trucks supplying sea water to the fracking wells can be sped to the drilling sites, where together with chemicals, it is used to extract the gas from the shale far underground.

Fortnam and Mason, Walmart, Prada and Harrods are planning luxury stores in the two cities. South Africa expects a 6 percent growth rate in 2017 – nearly half of it attributed to the shale gas revolution that has turned the country into a net exporter of energy – and in 2018 growth is expected to tip the elusive 8 percent. The finance minister at the time, Gwede Mantashe, is as pleased as punch with the new revenue streams and almost chocolate-covered increased tax cake.

But then a fight ensues over the new toll road. A construction company, TOO White Engineering and Construction (Pty) Ltd, can’t win the road tender from the national government because it gets only 49 points out of a 100 on the broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) scorecard. The Broad-Based BEE Act and its associated codes of good practice have bogged down many businesses wanting to take advantage of the Karoo nirvana. The road construction is just one example.

The problem was that TOO White appointed James Manyigaffe (Pty) Ltd, a crafty empowered tender procurement company which is known for its gift of the gab, to front for them. James Manyigaffe wins the contract and “the operational delivery” is carried out by TOO White.

But then the Labour Department inspectors and the crack Department of Trade and Industry “white-spotting” unit detect too many people of the wrong colour in the construction fields of the toll road. To cut a long story short, the absurd empowerment law turns TOO White into a criminal company, while James Manyigaffe is quickly cast as a black front.

Western Cape High Court Judge D’Urban Trash sends the executives from both companies to jail for 10 years for the heinous fronting crime, which in any normal society would simply be an ordinary business transaction. The protracted court battle delays the toll road by at least six months. The road construction comes to a halt halfway between Murraysburg – soon to be renamed Mantasheville – and Beaufort West – soon to be Motlanthestad.

It just proves that even in fiction the law is an ass.

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What’s new in UK ADSL2+ broadband speeds?

Ofcom’s 2012 fixed-line broadband speeds report places O2 and BE in first place for average ‘up-to-20Mbps’ ADSL2+ speeds during the evening peak.

O2 and BE managed an average peak-time performance of 9.8Mbps, and the biggest losers in Ofcom’s report are Orange and Sky, at 7.7Mbps.

BT, Karoo, Plusnet and TalkTalk are also slower than O2 and BE, but it’s not a major difference at peak-time, or over a whole day.

What does ADSL2+ broadband mean?

ADSL2+ is the technology behind most up-to-20Mbps broadband services operating over old-fashioned copper phone lines – with the exception of Virgin Media and some small broadband operators using cable, fixed wireless or satellite technology.

Virgin Media’s 10Mbps and 20Mbps services are being withdrawn by May 2013, as it sets a minimum speed of 30Mbps across its network (although it still has some off-network customers using DSL or ADSL2+).

Ofcom and its research partner SamKnows measured speeds for more than 1,000 customers of BT Retail, Karoo, O2/BE (which use the same network), Orange, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media during May 2012, to deliver the latest report.

If you’re interested in the results for superfast broadband at 30Mbps and above, click here.

What are the average UK ADSL2+ speeds?

The average speed for up-to-20Mbps broadband services (ADSL2+) has risen by just 0.03Mbps to 7.3Mbps since November 2011’s report.

For broadband users on older up-to-10Mbps DSL packages, the average speed has also gone up to 5.6Mbps, from 5Mbps in 2011.

More than two-thirds of UK homes with internet access now have a headline speed of over 10Mbps, compared to less than half in May 2011.

Who’s fastest in ADSL2+ broadband?

O2 and it’s partner, BE Broadband, are the clear winner, with the fastest daily average speed at 10Mbps, the fastest maximum average speed (10.6Mbps), and the fastest peak-time speed between 8pm-10pm (9.8Mbps).

BT, Karoo, Plusnet and TalkTalk are all a fraction behind, but the only major differences are with Sky and Orange.

Sky’s 24-hour average is 7.7Mbps, slightly behind Orange at 7.8Mbps, while Sky’s top speed is 8.4Mbps and at peak time, both Orange and Sky managed just 7.7Mbps.

Overall, the 24-hour and peak-time speeds were almost identical, with just a two per cent difference for O2/BE users and none for the other providers.

The major factor affecting the speed of all the ADSL2+ connections measured was the distance from the customer to the local BT exchange.

Who’s got the fastest ADSL2+ uploads?

O2 and BE also triumphed in the upload rankings, with an average speed of 1.1Mbps at all times, significantly faster than all the other ISPs.

BT and Orange stood out in second place, with a maximum average of 900kbps and 800kbps daily and peak-time average speeds. Plusnet came at the bottom of the league, with a daily average speed of 600kbps.

What else does Ofcom’s fixed broadband speed report measure?

The broadband experience is about a lot more than raw speed, particularly for applications such as gaming,and VOIP telephone calls.

Ofcom and SamKnows collected data on web browsing times, latency, packet loss, DNS response times and failure rates, and jitter, to build a complete picture of who’s got the best broadband services for different users.

Who’s got the fastest ADSL2+ web browsing times?

Even if you’re just browsing the internet, there’s a variety of background factors beyond raw download speed, which can affect the time it takes to download a webpage, especially in these days of pages heavy with interactive graphics, animations and sound effects.

The fastest browsing service of all was Hull ISP Karoo, at under a second, but the fastest nationals were BT, Orange and Plusnet with around one-second page loading times. O2/BE and Sky came in at under 1.5s, while TalkTalk was significantly slower at 2s.

Who’s got the best ADSL2+ latency?

Latency is the time it takes for a single packet of data to travel from a user’s PC to a

third-party server and back again. Low latency connections feel more responsive, and online gaming is an application where low latency is vital for a good experience.

Here, BT, O2/BE, Orange and Plusnet all stand out with around 22 milliseconds of round-trip delay. TalkTalk has around 32ms, Plusnet suffers around 38ms and Karoo is slowest, with 42ms latency, almost double the most responsive connections.

Who’s got the best ADSL2+ packet loss?

Internet connections parcel your data into small packets that take the easiest route they can find around the web, and they’re designed to continue working if a few packets are lost in transmission.

Losing a lot of packets will lead to poor performance for online gaming, streaming audio and video, or Skype-style two-way voice and video communications. This results in choppy and broken-up video and audio.

TalkTalk, Plusnet and Sky had the lowest rates of packet loss overall, at less than 0.25 per cent of traffic, although Plusnet and Sky’s reliability becomes slightly worse at evening peak times.

BT and Orange are just slightly behind, but still comfortably under 0.5 per cent packet loss, and BT’s performance actually improved at peak times.

O2 and BE lose their crown in this category, losing around 0.6 per cent of packets over a day, and 0.75 per cent in the evening peak. Karoo comes bottom of this league, at around 0.75 per cent packet loss.

Who’s got the best ADSL2+ DNS response times?

The world wide web wouldn’t work without the Domain Name Service, which converts numerical IP addresses like 194.33.179.25 into domain names such as ofcom.org. ISPs operate their own DNS servers, and when these operate slowly, web browsing becomes extremely unresponsive.

BT, O2, BE and Plusnet are the winners with around 22-24ms response time, followed by Orange and Karoo at an average of 32-34ms, while Sky lags behind with a 40ms DNS response time.

Who’s got the worst ADSL2+ DNS failure rates?

If you receive the messages “This server is unavailable’ or ‘Host could not be found’, it’s probably because your ISP’s DNS server has failed to translate its web address into an IP address.

TalkTalk and Plusnet are the best, failing around one a thousand DNS requests (0.1 per cent). BT, O2, BE, Orange and Sky are closer to a one in 400 DNS failure rate (0.25 per cent), and Karoo fails DNS requests about 0.75 per cent of the time.

With the exception of Karoo, Orange and Sky, all eight of the ISPs in this test suffered worse DNS failure rates during the evening peak time than across a day, although it was only noticeably worse for O2/BE, which went from around 0.3 per cent to 0.5 per cent of DNS requests.

Who’s got the worst ADSL2+ jitter rates?

If latency results in an unresponsive connection, ‘jitter’ results in an unstable connection because your PC can’t reliably predict the buffering it needs to create a stable connection. In technical terms, jitter is the rate of change of latency in your connection.

As such, it’s vital to keep jitter low for enjoyable online gaming and and IP communications. Applications such as Skype can typically cope with about 20 milliseconds of jitter without any noticeable effect.

None of the ISPs tested by Ofcom were likely to endanger this buffer, with all of them displaying downstream jitter of less than 1.5ms. Outside of peak times, all showed jitter of less than 0.75ms, and in peak-time, only Karoo rose above 1ms.

Our ADSL2+ ISPs also performed well with upstream jitter. All were under 2ms, although Orange crept occasionally above 1.5ms at peak times.

BT, Karoo, O2, BE, Orange and Plusnet are all under one millisecond of jitter, Sky and TalkTalk are just over 1ms.

JOHANNESBURG – Golfing legend Gary Player has attributed the poor performance of many of South Africa’s golfing estates to “an accumulation of mismanagement”.

Speaking to Moneyweb from his Colesberg farm in the Karoo in the Western Cape, Player said while the global economic crisis was the main cause of estates struggling, a number of errors were made in the original planning and design of some of these residential manors.

Firstly, the courses are too difficult. He said there was room for tough courses to cater for competitions, but not for leisure: “If it’s not for a championship the last thing you should do is get an architect in to come and make it tough.”

Player, who is passionate about water conservation, says difficult courses require more water: “I don’t think anyone should be given rights to a golf course, from now on, unless they’re going to use the sewerage water, the effluent water.

“I’m a farmer, I deal with water every day of my life. And I’m a golf course designer and that’s the first thing I bring up when they want me to design a golf course. I bring up the water situation.”

He also took a swipe at Shell SA that has applied for permission to explore the ecologically sensitive Karoo region for shale gas through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as it is more commonly known. Fracking is a high-pressure process whereby shale rock deep underground is fractured using millions of litres of water, chemicals and sand to allow the methane gas to escape.

Player said the Karoo’s water quality was among the best in the world. “And then you have Shell company wanting to come to the Karoo and do fracking,” whereas many countries had disallowed the process. In April last year Cabinet placed a moratorium on the exploration until a task team had completed a report on the issue.

Returning to golf estates in South Africa, Player said another mistake made was that courses were too long. Bigger courses meant higher maintenance and other costs which filtered down to members being charged a levy.

Some find themselves in financial trouble and having to bail out. “So, it’s an accumulation of mismanagement.” Player proposed that courses should consist of 12 holes as opposed to the traditional 18-hole course as many players simply did not have the time for the longer developments.

Player and his company Gary Player Design are currently involved in a number of projects overseas, including China, India, Montenegro, Cyprus and Morocco.

Asked to elaborate on developments in China, Player said that country understands the value of good publicity generated through sport. “Of all other sports in the world, golf helps tourism more than any other … by a mile.” Interest in the sport was also likely to increase now that it had been admitted to the Olympic Games. India, he said, was also trying to encourage its youth to play golf.

Besides his golfing skills, Player is also an astute businessman. Earlier this year, Black Knight International, a global holding company for the Player Group, launched a new line of the Gary Player Collection offering men and women’s golf apparel.

Player, who turns 77 this year, goes by several names: the Black Knight, Mr Fitness and the International Ambassador of Golf. He says his schedule is still hectic: “I travel seven months of the year – extensively. I’m still extremely busy and I still do 1000 sit-ups four times a week and I keep in good shape.”

He has always been a proponent of a healthy lifestyle, saying he is 75% vegetarian, cuts out fats and limits his protein intake.

“I am obsessed about how poorly people in the Western world eat.” The youth, he said, was not being educated about healthy eating habits and exercise, adding obesity was worrisome.

Western Cape pupils whose schools are closed will be moved to facilities with better opportunities, the provincial education department said on Tuesday.

“The aim is to improve opportunities for the learners concerned. We would like to place these learners in schools that are better equipped to provide a quality education,” department head Penny Vinjevold told reporters in Cape Town.

She said the 20 rural and seven urban schools facing possible closure were not ideal places of learning. The rural schools were faced largely with dwindling pupil numbers and teachers having to accommodate up to seven different grades in a single classroom.

The urban schools were plagued by a high dropout rate, poor academic performance, or buildings in poor condition.

There were 11 possible closures in the Eden Karoo, six in the Cape Winelands, five in Cape Town central, three on the West Coast and two in Cape Town north.

In Eden Karoo, enrolment ranged from 11 to 101 pupils.

Vinjevold said primary schools should ideally have between 650 and 800 pupils, and high schools between 1000 and 1200 pupils.

She said the problem was that schools with low numbers received less funding, even though their water, electricity and municipal rates were the same.

The proposal to close schools was met with opposition by various communities, the African National Congress and Congress of SA Trade Unions.

The department was criticised for targeting certain races and for a lack of transparency.

Vinjevold provided reporters with a detailed breakdown of why each school had been chosen and where pupils could be transferred if the process went ahead.

About 4000 pupils would be placed in different schools from 2013 if the proposal was approved. She said this did not mean education MEC Donald Grant had already made up his mind.

The proposed placements were a work in progress and had been compiled to reassure parents that the department had done its research.

Any person, community, organisation or civil movement could offer their input at public hearings to be held from August 18 to September 3.

Grant was expected to make a final decision by the end of September.

Vinjevold said parents should not worry about their child being placed in a school they could not afford.

“We’ve tried to match no-fee schools with no-fee schools,” she said.

In instances where a child was placed in a school with fees, an exemption policy would apply.

For rural areas, proposed transfer schools were between six kilometres and 27km from the original school.

“In many cases, the learners will find it easier to get to school because buses will pick them up closer to their homes,” Vinjevold said.

Teachers would typically follow pupils to their new schools.

The late Nomatyala Hangana(SABC)

Former Deputy Minister for Local Government, Nomatyala Hangana, has been laid to rest in Beaufort West in the Central Karoo. She died last week following a short illness at the age of 56.

Hundreds of people attended her funeral at KwaMandlenkosi in her home town in the Karoo. Mourners have described the former deputy minister as a determined and hard working person. They say she was a visionary and a leading campaigner for human rights.

ANC provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile says: “Comrade Nomatyala was one of the most outstanding leaders of the ANC who had ensured that issues of women occupy the agenda of the ANC. She ensured progressive policies within the organisation.”

 

Mourners have described the former deputy minister as a determined and hard working person.

As national convener for the 16 Days of Activism for No-violence against Women and Children, Hangana also led the campaign. She was a stalwart of the Women’s League and served on the National Executive Committee. Her death has left a void within the organisation in the province.

Paying tribute, ANCWL deputy president Nosipho Ntwanambi says Hangana was a straight-forward and firm person who always stood by what she knew was right. She says Hangana was a leader, a mother and a teacher.

She has also been described as the pillar of strength in her family. Her son, Loyiso, says: “It is always sad and painful when one loses a mother, because in our family we did not just regard her as a mother, she was the pillar of our strength. She was a mother and father of the house.”

Hangana first served as Western Cape Minister for Housing from 2001 until she was appointed Deputy Minister of Provincial and Local Government in 2004, a position she held until 2009, thereafter she retired from active government service due to health reasons.

She grew up in the dusty streets of Kwamandlenkosi township in the Karoo town before she moved to Cape Town where she established her career in politics.

“Approximately 120 people living on seven farms are isolated from civilisation due to the snowfalls in the Central Karoo district municipality,” said Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, Cape Town spokesman on disaster operations.

Heavy rains also affected people in the Murraysburg region. Snowfall in the Western Cape and other areas resulted in motorists being trapped on roads and rural towns being cut off from the outside world.

Solomons-Johannes said an unknown number of farm workers and their children were cut off in the Matjiesfontein region, with six families isolated at Klawervlei.

In Modderdrift, three families were affected; Grootvlei, four families; Renosterfontein, two families; Matjiesvlei, three families; and Wittehart, 10 families.

Cape Town disaster teams dispatched to Beaufort West brought dry wood, food parcels, blankets, and baby packs to the victims on Monday night.

“They are in an emergency meeting with the different municipalities now,” said Solomons-Johannes, adding that donations would be welcomed.

An information hotline was established and members of the public could contribute to the disaster relief operations by contacting the city’s disaster risk management centre at 021-597 6004.

People could donate fresh or tinned food, wood, paraffin, blankets, and help transport these goods.

Cape Town councillor for safety and security, JP Smith, said the city had been asked to help the Western Cape government with logistical arrangements, and provide aid to people trapped in mountainous areas.

“The city indicated its willingness to support the Western Cape government and the affected municipalities in the spirit of co-operative governance,” he said.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves high-pressure drilling into deep underground rock formations to mine for shale or methane gas. The drilling is vertical until it reaches the relevant rocks, when it will become horizontal.
A mixture of water, toxic chemicals and sand is pumped into the rock and the gas released by enlarging small fissures is pumped back to the surface.

Huge quantities of water are used in the drilling: an estimated 1 500 truckloads or about 25-million litres for each drilling. The water will have to be trucked in, because it is not available in the areas designated for fracking, mainly in the Karoo basin. Up to 30% of the water will remain underground and be subtracted from the hydrological cycle.

The chemicals are potentially hazardous and will have to be managed scrupulously. Up to 8% of the shale gas will escape in the process and enter the atmosphere, creating a problem for climate change. Methane is a greenhouse gas 28 times more lethal than carbon dioxide.

The moratorium on fracking is still in place. A likely scenario is that the interdepartmental task team report commissioned by the minister of mineral resources will be passed on to the Cabinet, which may decide to lift the moratorium. Then the regulator, the Petroleum Agency of South Africa, will grant existing applicants – Royal Dutch Shell, Challenger and Falcon – permission to explore.

The applicants will begin to frack immediately to establish whether the shale gas production is viable. Under existing mining laws, exploration can occur for up to nine years and an exploration right is usually converted easily to a production right.

Administrative flaws
Because of environmental and social factors, there are a number of administrative flaws in this process that the minister should correct before this scenario plays out.

First, shale gas recovery falls under the existing mining laws, namely the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002, which is a bad idea. People who make their livelihoods in the Karoo rely entirely on underground water for their survival. The risk of contamination is high – “the fracking liquid will contaminate the groundwater; there is no doubt at all”, according to the University of the Free State’s Gerrit van Tonder, a professor of groundwater studies (Daily Maverick, June 15).

Mismanagement of the toxic chemicals would have major impacts on environment, health and agriculture.

Trucking in fresh water, sand and chemicals to each well will cause immense dust pollution from the gravel roads of the Karoo. Because fracking has such obvious effects on the environment and was not foreseen in 2000 when the Act was written, it is imperative to write a new Act to cover the specifics of the shale gas industry to ensure it does minimal harm to the fragile Karoo environment. The minister of water affairs should also look at strengthening the protection of underground freshwater resources, which is not adequately covered in the Water Act.

Under the minerals and petroleum Act, the regulator is also a national agency to promote the oil and gas industry. This is a clear conflict of interest. These functions should be separated immediately. There is an urgent need for a separate, independent regulator for shale gas extraction.

Robust process
The law is also weak on environmental protection. Currently, the applicant has to do an environment management programme report within 120 days of applying to explore. But it is impossible to come up with a robust scientific analysis of risks – and plans for the mitigation of risk – in that time. Presentations to the public on the Shell application have happened, but not in the case of the other applicants.

In any case, the environment management programme report process is outmoded. It is regarded as a watered-down version of an environmental impact assessment, a more robust process. The departments of mineral resources and environment previously agreed that in future mining would be subjected to environmental impact assessments instead of in-house environment management programme reports. The environment department has taken the steps necessary to make this possible, but the mineral resources department has dragged its feet, and sabotaged the change.

The less stringent environment management programme report process will apply to fracking. But because fracking is such a risk to the environment, it is imperative that more robust assessment processes must prevail.

In practice, there needs to be a strategic assessment after the exploration phase so that future problems can be recognised and steps to mitigate them put in place. There should be no automatic conversion to a production right without a significant independent assessment of the impacts of exploration.

And what of the costs that the fracking industry will pass on to the taxpayer and to local industries?

A provincial function
Farmers in the Karoo have said they believe fracking and agriculture are incompatible. Water contamination and dust pollution could cost the Karoo its reputation for purity, ruining the reputation of products such as Karoo lamb. The minister should ensure that, to minimise dust pollution, the fracking applicants pay to tar the roads they will use to deliver water, sand and chemicals to the wells. This cost should not be passed on to taxpayers, nor should it jeopardise existing livelihoods in the region. If farms fail in the Karoo, 70 000 workers will be affected.

Hazardous waste management under South African law is a provincial function. Fracking will occur mostly in the Eastern and Northern Cape, among the poorest provinces in the country. They have few facilities for the management of hazardous waste, which will require immense resources to contain that from shale gas exploitation. Facilities will have to be put in place and people trained to manage them.

These costs should be borne by the industry and not passed on to the taxpayer. The polluter-pays principle, enshrined in our environmental legislation, should apply and needs to be negotiated before the moratorium is lifted.

Before beginning production, the industry should also be made to sponsor epidemiological baseline studies in the concession areas to establish the health status of the local population before any fracking takes place. This would allow continuous assessment and monitoring to establish the industry’s role if the health of local inhabitants is affected. The industry should also be prepared to compensate proven victims.

When the department of energy researched the country’s optimal energy mix, no account was taken of the potential of shale gas. The integrated resource plan 2010 did not include any mention of unconventional gases.

Constitutional prerogative
But the plan is meant to be updated every two years. There is currently no attempt to produce an integrated resource plan 2012 and it is unclear how the state plans to integrate shale gas into energy planning. The process is meant to be transparent and participatory, but there has not yet been any consultation with the public and affected parties.

There has been no formal public debate on the shale gas industry. Instead, the industry will come to life the minute the moratorium is lifted and the regulator approves the ­applications for exploration. This flies in the face of our ­constitutional prerogative for ­transparency as well as for public participation in decision-making.

The impacts of this industry will be long-standing. Fracking will compromise our supply of fresh water. It may contaminate the Karoo’s fragile resources and do away with livelihoods. It will add to problems of global warming and climate change. It will extend South Africa’s dependence on fossil energy rather than encouraging the use of renewables. Therefore, the industry needs much more public debate.

The government should not hand over control of our resources without applying the highest standards of monitoring and the most robust initiatives for environmental, health and livelihood protection. The moratorium should not be lifted until there is substantial agreement on these proposals.

David Fig is honorary research ­associate at the environmental evaluation unit, University of Cape Town

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 The people must have a say

The Southern Cape Land Com­mittee is a non-governmental organisation established in 1987 to support communities fighting against forced removals. We continue in the democratic era to promote equitable land redistribution and support farm dwellers and emerging farmers in the Eastern Cape and central Karoo.

Fracking in the Karoo is an important issue. The perception that fracking is confined to a struggle by white farmers seeking to retain the status quo and obstruct job opportunities is simply not true. Fracking will affect us all, especially in a water-scarce country such as ours.

We call on the government to ensure the meaningful participation of all our people, facilitated by nonpartisan institutions. We call for the extension of the moratorium on fracking to enable citizens to make an input.

How is fracking going to help our country to address skewed land ownership, or will it further compound the problem? What jobs will fracking create, for whom and how many? We believe that fracking will not address the gap between rich and poor.

What are the risks to our precious natural resources and how will this affect future generations?

We call on all South Africans to urge the government not to fall for the empty promises of multi­national companies. We call on progressive civil society ­organisations to work to protect our natural resources.

We demand that the participation process explores alternatives to shale gas. Our future is not for sale. – Phumi Booysen, on behalf of the Southern Cape Land Committee