karoo

The monthly bad news from SAWIS has been posted.  Exports of bottled wine over the year to the end of May down from 205m litres to 180m litres – showing a huge positive tendency, as WOSA would say – while bulk climbed from 161m litres to 195m litres, mostly to be distilled into Vodka for the Russian market.  Last night Frans Smit, cellar master at Spier, said another huge bulk export will depart shortly.  All further entrenching SA as a bulk alcohol supplier, rather than a producer of terroir driven wines.

Speaking of which, would the last grape farmer in the Swartland please switch off the lights?  The number of primary producers has fallen 34% from a peak of 407 in 1997 down to 267 today.  So much for the Swartland Revolution.  Meanwhile Stellenbosch is at an all-time high of 417 producers.  Seems like we should be celebrating the Stellenbosch Revolution, even if Oak City could not even get round to organizing an annual wine festival this year.  Too many drunk students was the explanation.

Vetplante reclaim lost ground from vines

But it could be worse for Swartland strugglers.  They could be farming in the Klein Karoo where succulents must be taking over from vines as the number of primary producers has collapsed 43% from a peak in 1990, to 256 today.  Let’s see what kind of spin WOSA can put on these numbers.  Although after their last desert tasting when Su and Andre let muddy dogs into a guest house to trash it, they’re probably not too welcome in the land of Hondepisbosse and Sifkoppe.  Even if they spend R1 million of industry money each year on a budget line item called “biodiversity.”

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The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project will provide work opportunities in the Northern Cape, the provincial government said on Monday.

“This gigantic project has and will create both direct and indirect opportunities for the people and businesses in the region and province as a whole,” said spokesman Monwabisi Nkompela.

This especially applied to the youth, who would get an opportunity to pursue skills in the fields of science, engineering, technology, and artisanry.

Nkompela said jobs would be created through projects emerging from the SKA, such as an anticipated tourism boom, construction of roads and other related projects.

“We need to further highlight that the greater part of the telescope has been allocated to the South African site, due to the ideal and excellent environmental conditions.”

He said the Northern Cape had proved that it had the potential to be an astronomy hub, where various scientific accolades could be achieved.

“We have no doubt that the SKA [South Africa] team will continue to amaze the science world on what it is capable of,” Nkompela said.

The SKA board announced on Friday that South Africa would share the SKA location with Australia.

The SKA will be 50 times more sensitive than the current most powerful radio telescopes. Scientists hope the SKA project will provide answers about the universe, such as how it started and why it is expanding.

Australia’s core site will be the Mileura station, about 100 kilometres west of Meekathara in western Australia.

South Africa’s main site will be outside Carnarvon in the Karoo. Satellite dishes for the project will stretch across south and east Africa.

Throughout the SA exhibit, visitors are transported to picturesque local scenes and destinations such as a fishermans cottage on the south-western Cape coast.

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• SA wins at Chelsea Flower Show

Gateways – A botanical journey is the theme of the 2012 South Africa– Kirstenbosch exhibit which won a 32nd gold medal for SA at the Chelsea Flower Show in London this week.

The 2012 Chelsea Flower Show is taking place just eight weeks before the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and just a week before the Diamond Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth (June 2-5).

As the Chelsea Flower Show’s royal patron, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the annual Chelsea Flower Show earlier this week was the 48th. Diamond motifs across the show honoured her 60 years on the throne, Diamonds are Forever was the theme in the floral art competition and a large Victorian style bedding plant display spelt out the Diamond Jubilee year at the entrance to the show.

Against this backdrop, the South African team created their 36th garden at the show this year and won their 32nd gold medal.

Nineteen of the SA exhibits to Chelsea have been designed by David Davidson and Ray Hudson, who once again showed their world-class skills to Royal Horticultural Society judges.

Organised by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and sponsored by the Gold Coin Exchange, the Kirstenbosch-South Africa exhibit was built by a team of 26 designers, volunteers and technical support.

Horticulturist Mandisa Kondlo from Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens finishes an exhibit.

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Each year, a network of South Africans living in Britain assist the team and a few talented landscapers and horticulturists are handpicked from SA and make their own way to Chelsea to assist the team.

The core built-up team that flew from SA earlier this month included horticultural staff from both Kirstenbosch and the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens in Roodepoort.

The aim of the 2012 Gateways – A botanical journey exhibit is to take visitors to Chelsea on a journey across SA.

Like the diary of a traveller, the exhibit includes a scene from the south-western Cape coast and interior (fynbos biome) extending into Namaqualand and the semi-arid Karoo (succulent Karoo biome) and onward to the northern provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (grassland biome).

The disarmingly simple design of this year’s exhibit was accompanied by meticulous attention to detail in the design, graphics and planting.

Divided into four triangles which meet at a central point, the four gardens feature four destinations in South Africa, each with a gateway entrance to provide a sense of arrival and place. The four gardens included a gracious Cape Dutch Manor House surrounded by proteas, a fisherman’s cottage in a garden of restios, a rough Karoo farm track complete with succulents and grasses, and finally, an Ndebele archway that leads to a bushveld scene complete with aloes and a baobab.

South African exhibition designer Raymond Hudson pays meticulous attention to detail in the design, graphics and planting in each of the four exhibits.

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Four superb painted backdrops were framed behind the gardens. Installed on a curve behind the frames, the outstanding landscape graphics gave a three dimensional visual effect to the exhibit.

The perimeter of each garden was bordered by a regionally characteristic entrance or wall. The protea garden was entered through an elaborate Cape Dutch gate, the fisherman’s garden was enclosed with a simple, low slung white wall. The bushveld garden included an elaborate Ndebele kraal entrance, but the karoo garden featured just a rusty fence, complete with cattle grid.

The Cape Winelands garden featured a host of protea species as well as cultivars and new hybrids, including leucadendrons (cone bushes), leucospermums (pincushions), serrurias (blushing bride) and heaths (Erica). Spectacular Madiba proteas in deep red and white were placed at the corner of the exhibit and drew gasps of admiration from visitors to the press day, who ranged from CNN’s Piers Morgan to British music legends, Cliff Richard, Roger Daltrey and Ringo Starr.

The Cape fisherman’s garden displayed an extraordinary array of Cape reeds (restios). Brilliant yellow arums were an eye-catching feature in the Ndebele bushveld garden, and the Karoo scene was dominated by grasses, vygies (Mesembryanthemaceae) and stonecrops (Crassulaceae).

Moving plants from South Africa to Britain for the show continues to be a monumental task and gets increasingly difficult as a host of regulations in both countries are tightened. This year, plants were once again held up for days by British inspection teams in Bristol and without the assistance of the British High Commission to South Africa, many of the large sculptural plants, such as the aloes, may not have arrived at Chelsea.

The aim of South Africa exhibiting at Chelsea has always been to attract eco-tourists to the country. The South African Gold Coin Exchange is the major sponsor of the exhibit for the second year in a row and a limited edition of a Gold Mandela medallion featuring the portrait of Mandela on one side and the Strelitzia on the reverse, links the icon to South Africa’s unique flora. – Saturday Star

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EYES ON SPACE: South Africa’s KAT-7 telescope, a seven-dish array in the Karoo. PHOTO: ESA ALEXANDER

Research chair in theoretical particle cosmology at Wits University, Vishnu Vejjala, said the $2-billion (about R17-billion) SKA was simply too large a project to win Nobel prizes.

“Large experiments these days are disadvantaged when it comes to winning Nobel prizes. You have thousands of people working on one project. The Nobel is usually awarded to teams of three people at most.”

The measure of success for the SKA would be the way it resolved outstanding problems in physics – like how galaxies were formed and secrets around “dark matter”, Vejjala said.

Other projects and satellite missions are collecting similar data, but the real benefit of the SKA telescope will be the scale of information it picks up.

SA will construct two of the three SKA receiver components. The main site will be outside Carnarvon in the Karoo.

Revulshionary

The main object of the SKA will be to find if there is INTELLIGENT life out there…

And to think… this PROJECT will start in Africa….

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South Africa and Australia will share the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a project that that will see the construction of the world’s biggest radio telescope complex and may reveal whether there is life beyond Earth.

The member countries of the group organising the project unanimously decided that both of the shortlisted candidate nations should host the project.

The majority of the first phase dishes will be built in South Africa, which is considered a “preferred site”, the group said on Friday.

“It’s an international, global project and one of the important things we seek to achieve is the broadest possible support for it,” Michiel van Haarlem, the director-general of the Manchester, England organising body, said at the Netherlands’ Schiphol airport, where the decision was taken.

“That’s needed, it is an expensive project and we need as many countries as possible to carry the costs.”

When its construction is completed in 2024, the telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and will be able to survey the sky 10 000 times faster than any existing radio telescope. It will allow astronomers to study the formation of the first black holes, stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, the SKA website says.

It will be able to collect signals from the origin of the universe when it’s completed.

“In 2024 we expect to be able to look back at the first stars and milkyways formed in the universe,” Van Haarlem said. “We’ll look for extraterrestrial life and try to uncover the role of magnetic fields in the forming of stars.”

The telescope will be able to observe complex molecules on distant planets, raising the possibility that it may detect life in another galaxy, according to its website.

The decision was taken unanimously by Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain, SKA Organisation member countries which didn’t bid.

“Factors taken into account during the site selection process included levels of radio frequency interference, the long-term sustainability of a radio quiet zone, the physical characteristics of the site, long distance data network connectivity, the operating and infrastructure costs, as well as the political and working environment,” the SKA Organisation said.

South Africa accepted the decision to share the e1.5 billion (R11bn) project.

“I’m ecstatic,” Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor told reporters in Pretoria.

“Of course, you want everything but getting three-quarters is pretty good in my view.”

Antennae for the project would be spread across eight other African countries, ranging from Ghana in West Africa to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of the continent, SKA Organisation said.

Fibre-optic cables twice the length of the Equator would connect thousands of dishes and other receptors, it said.

As part of the project, South Africa is building the Karoo Array Telescope, known as the MeerKAT, in the Northern Cape province.

The seven-dish array telescope will be completed in 2016, according to the Department of Science and Technology.

Other dishes will be added to the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder array, SKA Organisation said. Franz Wild, Jurjen van de Pol and Mike Cohen from Bloomberg.

Imagine if Shell had waltzed into the Karoo, led by a coterie of fawning government ministers, and announced its intentions to erect steel structures in a few thousand isolated spots and build the required roads and pipes to connect them.

Then imagine the outcry if they added that a new law, especially created for them, would be used to restrain farmers and local residents from taking their trucks, tractors and farming machinery anywhere within a radius of between 11km and 30km of the sites (depending on the intervening landscape), under penalty of criminal prosecution.

Imagine if they met this outcry by telling the assembled crowd that that’s not all: arc welders and other machines that emit electro-magnetic frequency radiation, like certain kinds of electric fencing, would also be verboten.

Yet that is exactly what the Square Kilometre Array is proposing: plastering huge telescope structures all over the Karoo, and imposing strict measures on the residents of most of Northern Cape by means of the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act, passed in 2007.

The SKA is an international project worth about R16-billion.It aims to erect several thousand radio telescopes radiating from a central core near Carnarvon containing about half the necessary receivers, and extending arms as far afield as Mauritius, Kenya and Ghana, in the hope of combining these individual receivers into a single virtual telescope with the largest collection area ever built.

Amid the celebration over having been awarded the largest part of the SKA project (Australia and New Zealand get to build one third) on Friday 25 May 2012, one editorial sounded a note of caution.

In EngineerIT magazine, Hans van den Groenendaal wrote a feature pulling together as much as he could find on whether shale gas drilling (known colloquially as “fracking”) and the SKA astronomy project could coexist without interference. He could not find much. He dug up an old editorial in which the SKA’s site characterisation manager, Adrian Tiplady, said he is opposed to any and all fossil fuels, and expressed the wish that shale gas drilling should “[j]ust stay away from the SKA.”

He also found an article I had written for ITWeb Brainstorm magazine, in which I asked both Shell and the SKA to explain their positions, especially as it relates to the part of one of Shell’s three prospecting blocks that overlaps the Astronomy Reserve protected by the AGA Act. In it, Shell declares itself to be in favour of the SKA project and commits itself to complying with the act.

For the SKA’s part, Tiplady expresses the view that the act would be sufficient to protect his science project: “Shale gas drilling near the site introduces a risk… If we didn’t have the act, and the co-operation of the various stakeholders, I would say it could have a potentially damaging risk.”

Given the limited information available on the subject, Van den Groenendaal’s speculation is that fracking might have been thought a threat to the SKA project, motivating the moratorium on the approval of shale gas exploration permits.

But frankly, the SKA project should be grateful that the people of the Karoo were not more hostile to it. Last year, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column in which I presented an artist’s impression of what the SKA might look like, and called for it to be banned on the basis that its surface impact would be at least as bad that of shale gas operations in the Karoo.

It was intended as a call for the environmentalists who oppose gas drilling to be consistent and oppose the SKA on the same surface-impact grounds. Some Karoo residents, indeed, did take the issue more seriously. Realising for the first time that the square kilometre in the name did not refer to its geographical extent (an error even a professor of biotechnology, Peter Rose, made in a shale gas debate in which I participated at Rhodes University), they asked whether, given that Karoo residents didn’t want gas drilling, they really wanted the SKA in their collective backyard.

Their point is valid. Some likely benefits of hosting much of the SKA project in South Africa are undeniable. It will be a fillip to South Africa’s credibility in international scientific endeavours and will boost its academic infrastructure. Some jobs and much infrastructure will be created, especially during the construction phase of the massive project. Many astronomers, computer scientists and project engineers will learn from the SKA, and contribute to its findings. As with any scientific endeavour, spinoff benefits are likely to emerge in time.

However, the SKA will likely create fewer jobs than shale gas drilling, and while science for its own sake is very appealing (as it should be), it has little immediate relevance to the economic circumstances of the many poor and unemployed Karoo residents. By contrast, domestic access to an abundant supply of inexpensive and clean natural gas will have economic impacts far broader than just the oil and gas industry, for which every South African will have reason to be grateful.

If even a small fraction of the economic benefits that the late Tony Twine of Econometrix predicted in a report commissioned by Shell are realised, the benefits of shale gas drilling will not only exceed the small and manageable risk the industry poses, but will also exceed the immediate benefits of the SKA project.

Meanwhile, unlike shale gas drilling, the SKA will have obvious negative effects on local industry as a consequence of the legal restrictions imposed on the region to protect the radio silence of the region for astronomy purposes.

Based on the limited information available, the SKA and shale gas operations can co-exist with relatively little conflict, although the SKA will likely have more serious negative impacts on the Karoo’s residents.

Instead of taking aim at the equally valid interests of prospective gas drillers in the vast and arid region, we ought to be grateful that the people of the Karoo were not whipped into a frenzy of opposition to the massive astronomy project. Professional eco-warriors would not have found it hard to do. DM

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By DONNA BRYSON
Associated Press

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) – Australia and South Africa will share hosting of a giant radio telescope made up of thousands of separate dishes and intended to help scientists figure out the make-up of the universe, the international consortium overseeing the project announced Friday.

South Africa led an African consortium that included Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia, and telescopes will be erected in all its partners. In South Africa, dishes will be added to a remote site in the arid Karoo desert where a smaller radio telescope project already is under way.

South Africa and Australia, which partnered with New Zealand in bidding for the project, had competed fiercely. South Africa claimed victory Friday, saying it got two of the projects three major components.

“We may feel slightly disappointed that we didn’t get the whole thing. But I think one should emphasize that we did get most of it,” said Justin Jonas, the chief South African scientist on the project. “Two-thirds of the biggest instrument in the world is still the biggest instrument in the world.”

South Africa’s science minister Naledi Pandor and scientists who had prepared the country’s bid celebrated with an Africa-shaped cake at a news conference in South Africa’s capital.

“This marks a real turning point in Africa, where we are becoming a destination for science and engineering, and not just a place where there are resources and tourism opportunities,” Jonas added.

Australia also welcomed the split decision.

“It is an outstanding result for the Australia-New Zealand bid after many years of preparation and an intensive international process,” said Sen. Chris Evans, Australia’s science minister.

The Square Kilometer Array telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and scan the sky 10,000 times faster than any existing telescope. It requires huge open spaces with very few humans.

John Womersley, chair of the consortium’s board, said the telescope will help scientists answer key questions: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is this universe we live in?”

“We don’t understand what 96 percent of our universe is made of,” he said.

The organization said dividing construction of the telescope will “maximize on investments already made by both Australia and South Africa.”

Womersley said that splitting construction between the two nations will likely add around 10 percent to the (EURO)350 million ($439 million) cost of the first phase of building the giant telescope. But he said there would be a payoff for astronomers.

“It delivers more science in phase one. The capabilities of this instrument are greater than the original design,” Womersley said.

____

Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from Amsterdam.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

continually lost in the ongoing row about the mooted youth wage subsidy is the context in which the idea is being proposed. Not just the national, but the global context.

It is a context in which there are fewer and fewer jobs for more and more job seekers. At the same time, there is a widespread assumption that there will be jobs to be had if only the millions of unemployed youth in particular were provided with adequate skills.

But both surplus capacity and surplus production, together with the ongoing development of technology, make this highly improbable. The end result is not only increased, and increasing, joblessness, but also a sharp rise in temporary and part-time work and a steady decline in the disposable incomes of working families.

As the British Trade Union Congress noted this week: “While part-time or temporary jobs may be better than no work at all, people are having to make huge salary sacrifices, reduce their hours and trade down their skills to stay in work.”

In the longer term this means major structural changes are probably necessary. In the meantime, there seems consensus that steps should be taken to alleviate the worst aspects of this crisis, which affects more than 75 million young people alone.

This is the context of the current youth wage subsidy row. In the verbal cacophony emanating from all sides, two simple truths emerge: first, youth unemployment is a critical and potentially explosive issue and, second, the labour movement is united in opposing a simple youth wage subsidy.

On all sides there is a shortage of detail, and little in terms of models for any structural, let alone palliative, measures. Yet there is evidence, over several years, of at least one highly successful project in South Africa of youth training and job placement that has, until now, largely been ignored.

There is also a degree of misinformation. Although DA leader Helen Zille claims that her party, business “and the country’s second-largest trade union federation, Fedusa” support the proposal, she is wrong. The Federation of Unions of SA, like Cosatu, the National Council of Trade Unions and the Confederation of SA Workers’ Unions, remains opposed.

Fedusa general secretary Dennis George said: “We are concerned that an unconditional wage subsidy would create a two-tier labour market open to misuse by employers who seek to maximise profit and improve their bottom lines.”

Yet none within the labour movement disputes that funding will be essential for any moves to remedy the situation.

“However, any subsidy has to be made conditional on an adequate training and educational component,” says George.

Apprenticeships and “mentoring” are mentioned as examples, although the labour movement is usually criticised for simply opposing any wage subsidy.

Commentators have also pilloried Cosatu, in particular, for being concerned only with “the bigger picture”, that is, with the search for alternatives to the crisis-wracked capitalist system.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi was criticised on this score for his statements to the federation’s international policy conference last week.

But Vavi was speaking about international policy, about the fact that the global system is in crisis and that, in the long term, remedies have to be found to deal with the system as a whole. In the meantime, he, together with the rest of the labour movement, proposes a range of measures on the domestic front under the heading of “structured education and training”.

Yet such structured education and training is exactly what is happening in a small, but highly successful, way in the middle of the semi-arid vastness of the Karoo. In the Colesberg district of the Northern Cape, the Hantam Community Educational Trust (HCET) draws its students from among one of the most historically disadvantaged communities in the country, and has racked up a series of successes.

Established 23 years ago by a group of farmers’ wives as a pre-school centre for the children of farm labourers, the trust project has developed steadily over the years. Today HCET, funded mainly by business and private donors, boasts a school from Grade R to Grade 9 with 174 learners, a primary health clinic, pharmacy, outreach programme, and catering course. There are also academic bursary and vocational training programmes for graduates, along with in-service training for teachers.

Graduates from the school taking courses as welders, hospitality workers or hairdressers are all given special life-skills training, assisted to get driving licences and provided with coaching in areas such as interview skills, budgeting and the preparation of CVs.

One of the vocational graduates, Themba Matyeka, is now an instructor in welding on the West Coast after winning the title of the country’s champion welder. Other students have gone on to tertiary education while still others, having graduated from the catering course, are now in full-time employment.

“The

simple truth is there is no silver bullet to solve this youth unemployment problem,” says HCET project co-ordinator Lesley Osler. “A solid educational grounding is essential and then we provide mentoring for our students when they go on to higher education, or into vocational training; even when they start their first jobs.”

Cosatu’s Patrick Craven admits: “This is exactly the sort of thing we in the labour movement would like to see.” It also accords with the advice of such diverse organisations as the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

As early as 2003 a study published by the World Bank revealed that it is “difficult to reverse education failures through training”. And both the bank and the ILO acknowledge that no single programme or policy has emerged that provides an answer.

On the structural front, and on a global basis, answers, let alone action, may be a long time coming. But at least a model of successful “structured education and training” does exist in a small, educational and development project in the middle of the Hantam Karoo. Whether it will be adopted remains to be seen.

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Australia and South Africa will share hosting of a giant radio telescope made up of thousands of separate dishes and intended to help scientists figure out the make-up of the universe, the international consortium overseeing the project announced Friday.

South Africa led an African consortium that included Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia, and telescopes will be erected in all its partners. In South Africa, dishes will be added to a remote site in the arid Karoo desert where a smaller radio telescope project already is under way.

South Africa and Australia, which partnered with New Zealand in bidding for the project, had competed fiercely. South Africa claimed victory Friday, saying it got two of the projects three major components.

“We may feel slightly disappointed that we didn’t get the whole thing. But I think one should emphasize that we did get most of it,” said Justin Jonas, the chief South African scientist on the project. “Two-thirds of the biggest instrument in the world is still the biggest instrument in the world.”

South Africa’s science minister Naledi Pandor and scientists who had prepared the country’s bid celebrated with an Africa-shaped cake at a news conference in South Africa’s capital.

“This marks a real turning point in Africa, where we are becoming a destination for science and engineering, and not just a place where there are resources and tourism opportunities,” Jonas added.

Australia also welcomed the split decision.

“It is an outstanding result for the Australia-New Zealand bid after many years of preparation and an intensive international process,” said Sen. Chris Evans, Australia’s science minister.

The Square Kilometer Array telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and scan the sky 10,000 times faster than any existing telescope. It requires huge open spaces with very few humans.

John Womersley, chair of the consortium’s board, said the telescope will help scientists answer key questions: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is this universe we live in?”

“We don’t understand what 96 percent of our universe is made of,” he said.

The organization said dividing construction of the telescope will “maximize on investments already made by both Australia and South Africa.”

Womersley said that splitting construction between the two nations will likely add around 10 percent to the €350 million ($439 million) cost of the first phase of building the giant telescope. But he said there would be a payoff for astronomers.

“It delivers more science in phase one. The capabilities of this instrument are greater than the original design,” Womersley said.

____

Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from Amsterdam.

There’s been a lot of work going on around Worcester – new roads, Mountain Mill shopping centre, Golden Valley Casino – and there’s a great, big, empty graded area where a housing development looks imminent.

Worcester the town remains largely unchanged – High Street full of food franchises, Church Street with pretty architecture, imposing churches and ear-piercing traffic lights for the benefit of residents from the Worcester School for the Blind.

But turning left instead of right into town at the Roux Road traffic lights, we found there’s another side to Worcester. This is the land of pin-neat homes and manicured gardens, the equally manicured golf course (established 1895), and the grand-daddy garden of them all, the Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden spreading across 150-odd hectares at the base of the Brandwacht Mountains.

As the name suggests, the KDNBG is big on water-wisdom and plants from arid regions – quiver trees, vygies, aloes. In spring, it’s apparently a bit like all of Namaqualand in one go. But it has the makings of an entertaining visit any time. There are trails, a living succulent collection, a Xhosa herb garden and Nama cooking shelter. Plus, according to our source, there are plans to reopen the restaurant and to start a concert series, as per Kirstenbosch.

Chatting to another local, we also made the happy discovery that, on this road on the first Saturday of every month, there’s a Pure Boland Farmers’ Market in the Green Shed, the Brandwacht table-grape farmers’ depot. You can buy whatever fruit the local farmers have in season as well as all the market-type goodies – koeksisters, pancakes, roosterkoek and rusks, cheeses, olives, sauces, preserves, pastries, potjies and a whole range of wines from the region’s cellars. Organiser Tharina Jonker says a lot of people come with the kids and a picnic basket and make a day of it.

But if Pure Boland is child friendly, then Summerhill further down the road is like a kids’ own happy valley. It’s a guest farm essentially, packed to the rafters for the weekend when we popped in because of the pool tournament happening in town.

 But what they also do is parties – kiddies’ ones in particular. There’s a secret garden, expectant goats, a litter of pigs, a couple of horses, pens of geese, laying chickens and petting rabbits – as well as a lame but apparently happy peahen named Penelope.

There’s also a vineyard of table grapes, a grove of olives, an organic vegetable patch and a bird-nesting box in every tree. Owners Bob and Wendy Parris seem to have enough to keep themselves out of trouble in their “retirement”.

So while we’re in out-of-the loop mode, instead of taking the long and darkened Huguenot tunnel and toll back to Cape Town, we choose the rough route up through the little old Du Toitskloof tunnel, where you can see the light at the end from the beginning.

It’s a better and cheaper option, especially for claustrophobics. Going the extra 11km on this windy route pays off and extended families of baboon line the way, adding enormously to the drive-time interest.

Getting there: From Cape Town, head out on the N1 towards Worcester. At the second set of lights, turn left into Roux Street instead of right into town. From Jo’burg, turn right into Roux Street.

Staying over: Summerhill Guest Farm has cottages from R350 a head, self-catering. See www.summerhill.co.za.

Contacts: Karoo Desert National Botanical Gardens: www.sanbi.org. Pure Boland Farmers’ Market: Tharina Jonker on 0823018561.

What else is there to see: In the area is Fairy Glen Private Game Reserve, for day or overnight visits. Among the Big Five, you can still see the poacher-survivor dehorned rhinos. Visit www.fairyglen.co.za. One kilometre from Worcester on the R60 is the Worcester Kleinplaasie Museum, a working museum where they do things like they did in the old days: bake bread, churn butter and make witblitz. See www.worcestermuseum.org.za.

Leaders of the local bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) agreed that “politics” had played a role in South Africa having to share the project with Australia and New Zealand.

Speaking to the Sunday Times after the announcement on Friday, Professor Justin Jonas from SKA South Africa said the decision was a matter of “consensus politics”.

“The independent [advisory] team had said the technical solution was a single site in South Africa. But, in reality, in big international projects there is some degree of politics at play,” Jonas said.

The SKA radio telescope, which will be completed by 2024, will be the world’s largest and most sensitive, able to probe deep into space. South Africa had been working on its bid since 2003 and was widely tipped as the frontrunner.

The decision on the host site should have been announced in April, but it was delayed after a report by the advisory committee recommending South Africa was leaked to the media.

The announcement was made after a meeting of members of the SKA consortium at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands.

Residents of Carnarvon in the Karoo were yesterday overjoyed at the announcement.

Liz McKinnon, owner of the Lemon Tree Coffee Shop, said: “I listened to the news over the radio …I think it is absolutely fantastic because this is a very poor community.”

Esau Hoorn, owner of Jumani Funerals, said: “It is exciting, but the community is unsure how it will affect their lives.” He hoped the telescope would find new planets so that one could be named after the town.

Jonas said scientists and politicians would have grown impatient over further delays in the decision-making process.

The split means that one of the three SKA receivers will be set up in Australia and two in South Africa.

The project will proceed in two phases. The first will set up about 10% of the entire SKA project and use the MeerKAT telescope being built in the Karoo by South African scientists and engineers, as well as a similar telescope in Australia, as its basis. Phase two will result in about 4000 dishes being erected in Africa.

Jonas said 10% would be split among the eight partner countries in Africa, namely Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique. Of those remaining, 50% would be placed in the Karoo and 40% in the rest of South Africa.

Jonas said if there was a technical justification for preferring South Africa, it was because the Karoo had a 1000m elevation, much higher than the Australian site .

Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said she was ecstatic that South Africa had been awarded the majority of the project, and accepted the compromise in the interest of its progress.

By
Nick Enoch

PUBLISHED:

14:15 EST, 24 May 2012

|

UPDATED:

14:50 EST, 24 May 2012

If you happened to be wandering in the desert and saw an alien on stilts – or a man wearing pink fairy wings, his torso spattered with fluorescent paint and a day-glo Native American Indian headdress – you might think you’d succumbed to the heat.

But not if you were at the Afrika Burn 2012 festival of ‘radical self-expression’ in the Karoo desert in Tweefontein, South Africa recently.

The annual creative event, now in its fifth year, saw 5,000 revellers build, sing, dance, cook or play anything which took their fancy, riffing on this year’s theme of ‘Mirage’.

And the festival-goers here certainly got into the spirit of the occasion, with costumes on display including what can only be described as ‘Boba Fett vikings’ and a giant cosmic butterfly – as well as lots of ‘mutant’ vehicles.

Just one of the low-key revellers at this year’s Afrika Burn festival of ‘radical self-expression’ in the Karoo desert in Tweefontein, South Africa

The festival, now in its fifth year, saw 5,000 revellers build, sing, dance, cook or play anything which took their fancy

Participants were encouraged to embrace this year’s theme of ‘Mirage’, and also create wacky vehicles

‘Boba Fett vikings’ at the festival; right, a fish bike was one of the more surreal forms of transport on display

Each year, a temporary city, Tankwa Town, is formed – from the imagination of participants, naturally – to play host to the fun proceedings, which is a smaller version of the Burning Man festival held in the United States.

And every year has a different theme, with past ones being time, power, tribe, dream and primal mud.

The honours for this year’s theme went to Mariella Rossi.

Her winning proposal read:

Mirage – a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce an illusion of water, people, or objects.
What is there? What is real? And what is pure imagination?
Is this a mirror of ourselves?
A shimmering reflection. Temporary, transient.
We gather on that lively line where the hot earth meets an aloof sky, and this is where we dance, sing, rejoice.
But come quick, for if you wait too long, by the time you get there, we may be gone.

The event’s website explains what participants should expect: ‘There is no audience, everyone’s part of the show! Stand up on a soapbox, start a conga snake, recite poetry, break into song, or perform random acts of ballroom dancing – step into the middle of nowhere and give it your best shot, break a leg, knock ‘em dead!’

A man dressed as a giant cosmic butterfly feels the love in his green latex leggings

One of the mutant vehicles on show, possibly inspired by Mad Max and The Flintstones

The event’s website proclaims: ‘There is no audience, everyone’s part of the show!’ – as these conjoined purple people confirm, and that silver one

Participants were encouraged to make mobile art, or mutant vehicles, which are not allowed to exceed speeds of 6mph

And to add to the creativity, they are also encouraged to make mobile art, or mutant vehicles, which are not allowed to exceed speeds of 6mph – and they must be ‘significantly modified’.

These can be cars, bikes, couches, bars… or even jellyfish, bees, mice, bunnies or zebra, said the free-spirited organisers.

This year’s festival, which ran from April 25-30, saw a host of wacky transport: zebra bicycles, multi-coloured fish motorbikes, dalmatian spot-covered three-wheelers and a silver-armadillo hatchback.

No Afrika Burn would be complete without music and, not surprisingly, anything goes – from ‘soft and dainty’ to ‘loud and large’.

So the next time you find yourself in Karoo, be sure to expect the unexpected.

A huge puppet is taken for a stroll among the fun-seekers… while more purple people soak up the atmosphere

An example of one of the ‘significantly modified’ vehicles – this one inspired by a giant silver-plated armadillo

You might expect camels or cacti in the desert… but not peroxide blonde ladies in short skirts and sunglasses

Purple was a popular colour, with this woman accessorising with faux dalmatian puppies; right, pretty as a picture was the theme of one young creative

This modified bike incorporated both fish and dalmatian themes

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Sounds a lot like the Burning Man festival in US, just different continent. We need one in Europe as well!

– Thursday, Helsinki, Finland, 25/5/2012 03:58

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Yes, Adam you sound a right T!T

– john, London, 25/5/2012 01:14

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With all those pale skins I thought there was a place in Europe called Afrika.

– i know, the truth, 25/5/2012 01:04

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T!TS!!

– Adam, Sydney, Australia, 25/5/2012 00:31

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The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

awards: A local com- munications company is in the running for top industry awards.

KC has been shortlisted in five categories of the 2012 ISPA (Internet Service Providers’ Association) Awards, which recog- nise the best internet services in the UK.

KC’s home broadband service Karoo has been named as a finalist in the categories for Best Consumer Fixed Broadband Service and Best Consumer Customer Service.

KC has also been shortlisted in the Internet Safety And Security category and the company’s KC’s internet services for businesses have also been recognised. Its broadband service is in the running for the Best Business Custo- mer Service award and its SMARTComms service is a finalist in the Best Internet Telephony category.

Artist’s impression of the 15m x 12m Offset Gregorian Antennas within the central core of thr Square Kilometre Array. (Source: Swinburne Astronomy Productions for SKA Project Development Office; Author: SKA Project Development Office and Swinburne Astronomy Productions, via Wikimedia Commons)South Africa is up against Australia in the bid to host the telescope, which will be built in 2024 in the Karoo in the Northern Cape, if the country wins the bid.

The SKA will consist of about 3 000 dish-shaped antennae spread over a wide area. The core of the telescope will be constructed in the Karoo region of the Northern Cape, with outlying telescope stations throughout South Africa, and in Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Madagascar and Mauritius.

Yesterday, the Department of Science and Technology said it would hold a media briefing this afternoon in anticipation of the announcement.

The announcement was delayed in April when members of the SKA Organisation agreed it was necessary to set up a small scientific working group to explore possible implementation options that would ensure that there was an inclusive approach to SKA, as well as maximise the value from the investments made by both candidate host regions.

The working group was expected to report back to the members at a meeting in mid-May. The report was expected to provide additional information to facilitate the site decision for SKA.

Delay ‘disappointing’

(Image: GCIS)At the time, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said she was disappointed at the delay and hoped that the SKA organisation would make a decision in the first half of 2012 and that the decision will reflect the best scientific outcome.

“We believe we have an excellent site at which exciting science will be done. We in Africa are ready to host the SKA,” said Pandor.

Scientists are expected to use the SKA to search the universe for answers about how stars and galaxies are formed and how galaxies and the universe have evolved over the past 14 billion years.

Pandor has likened the bid to host the SKA to winning the “Science World Cup” as it will bring huge investments and opportunities for the country, as well as give science and engineering a major boost.

Karoo a prime location for SKA
The Karoo was chosen as the ideal location because the area is sparsely populated yet not so remote that construction and operation costs can be excessive. The Karoo is shielded from “radio frequency interference” coming from surrounding towns by a series of mountains and hills. The area is being developed as a “radio astronomy reserve” that is legally protected against future radio frequency interference.

A consortium of countries will construct the instrument that will cost more than R15bn to build.

Astronomers and engineers around the world – including South Africa – are already working on its design. Building will start around 2016 and the telescope will be completed by 2024. It should be ready to do early science in 2020.

As part of the SKA project, the SKA South African Human Capital Development Programme was undertaken. Academics from the African partner countries and collaborating institutions beyond Africa have worked out a plan for the further development of centres of expertise in relevant science and engineering disciplines throughout Africa.

This will provide an extensive pool for scientists and engineers who will participate in African and global radio astronomy projects.

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Where have you been? Win over 1 Billion ZAR.

2012-05-17 22:18

Cape Town – The shale gas under the Karoo is a blessing from God, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters told MPs on Thursday.

Speaking at the end of debate on her department’s budget vote in the National Assembly, she said it was Ascension Day, “when Jesus ascended to heaven to sit next to God”.

Peters then suggested it would be wrong not to use hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, to exploit the resources God had left behind.

“It would be wrong for us to not use the resources that God left us with. This is a blessing that God gives us, and we need to exploit for the benefit of the people.”

The people of the Karoo were “going hungry”, she said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Peters told a media briefing at Parliament that if economical quantities of shale gas were proven to exist under the Karoo, “let us extract it”.

She said it had to be extracted safely.

Cabinet is expected to receive a report on shale gas exploration in the Karoo by the end of July.

Peters told journalists on Wednesday: “It is my wish and prayer on a daily basis that when the report is tabled… it will say to us the gas is there, and you can extract it safely for the benefit of the people of South Africa.”