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Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape, and Sanbona Wildlife Reserve in the Klein Karoo outside Cape Town, now offer  a unique walking experience dubbed the ‘Explorer Camp’, offering guests an opportunity to explore wilderness areas on a two-day walking safari. Overnight accommodation is in mobile tents that offer a night under the stars in Big 5 territory!

The Shamwari Explorer will operate throughout the year while the Sanbona Explorer will operate from October until April each year.

The mobile canvas tents sleep a maximum of two people each. All meals are included and special meals can be catered for when required.

Guests are required to be fit enough to walk at least four hours a day, and age restrictions do apply. 

For more information, visit www.shamwarigroup.com.

Published in: Legalbrief Environmental
Date: Tue 14 February 2012
Category: General
Issue No: 0248

2012-02-15 19:31

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Land

Cape Town – Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder gave the hornet’s nest of land ownership a sharp political poke in Parliament on Wednesday

He suggested that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40% of the country.

“Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” he said during debate in the National Assembly on last week’s State of the Nation address.

Mulder’s remarks provoked an angry buzz from ruling party benches, which rose in pitch when he then explained: “There is sufficient proof that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and north western Cape.”

These areas formed 40% of South Africa’s land surface, he told MPs.

Mulder serves in President Jacob Zuma‘s Cabinet as deputy agriculture minister.

He was responding to the president’s statement in his address on Thursday, that the willing-buyer willing-seller option had “not been the best way to address” land redistribution.

Emotional issue

Mulder said the question of land ownership was an emotional issue that had caused many wars.

In the South African context, Bantu-speaking people had moved down the continent from Africa’s equatorial regions, while Europeans had moved up from the Cape. They had met at the Kei River, in the present-day Eastern Cape.

“There are also differences of opinion about the influence of the Difaqane on land ownership. Read the diaries of the Voortrekkers about what they found when they moved into the interior,” he told MPs.

The Sotho word Difaqane is the term used by historians for a period of internecine warfare involving various tribal groups in the interior of southern Africa during the early to middle 19th century.

Mulder took issue with land ownership figures cited by Zuma in his address.

“The President quotes in his address the department of rural development’s figures on land reform.

“According to [these], white people possessed 87% of the land, and the government had reached only 8% of its 30% [land reform] target. I seriously differ from these figures.

Land audit

“How does the department calculate the eight percent? There isn’t a completed land audit against which we could correlate these facts.”

The Development Bank of SA calculated in 2001 that 44% of the country’s land belonged to whites, 20% to blacks, 9% to brown people and 1% to Asians.

“The way in which the department has calculated the 30% and 8% figures creates the impression that they are setting themselves up to fail.”

Mulder said he seriously differed with the claim that white people had stolen land.

Referring to Zuma’s remarks on the willing-buyer willing-seller option, he said that, in plain language, this meant the government now believed in the nationalisation of agricultural land.

However, anyone who had dealt with land reform knew the problem was not with the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle.

Disasterous

“The problem is the disastrous way land reform is being applied. There are many letters on my desk from white commercial farmers, who have offered their land to the department and received no reply.”

There were also many letters from white commercial farmers who had concluded sales agreements with the department and gone bankrupt three years later because the department had not paid them out.

Mulder asked why the department of rural development did not buy farms in the Kalahari and Karoo.

“In the Karoo and Kalahari, huge farms are available. Why does the department not buy some of that land to reach their 30% quicker? These semi-desert lands are, however, added to the 87% propaganda percentage as white land.”

Mulder said he hoped there would come a time when both white and black commercial farmers did not have to look for opportunities elsewhere in Africa.

“I dream of white and black commercial farmers who do not have to go to Africa for opportunities. The children who were born in 1994 are 18 years old this year and can vote. They only know an ANC government,” he said.

“There is no reason why such a child should not be able to buy a farm or obtain a bursary, just because he or she is white. Yet this is still happening.”

Mulder’s speech proved too much for Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who, after he finished speaking, leapt to her feet and demanded to know whether it was Parliamentary for a member “to blatantly distort history”.

Speaker Max Sisulu dismissed this, saying it was a point of information, not a point of order.

Staff Writer

MyBroadband’s Staff Writer is directly plugged into the South African Internet backbone, and spits out press releases and other news as he receives it. …

A local developer has won R50,000 for an addictive sheep game for the Windows Phone platform

Local developer Justin Southey’s “The Most Addicting Sheep Game” grabbed the honors in Microsoft’s Windows Phone Application Development competition, netting him R50,000 in the process.

“The Most Addicting Sheep Game”, which features sounds from real sheep based on a Karoo farm, has received 450 downloads so far by local and international Windows Phone users.

Other apps to feature strongly in the competition included a News24 app, which was a firm favourite for the business user. Judges enjoyed the “fresh” interface, specifically designed for Windows Phone devices, and the fact that it allows users to easily access the latest news, sport, finance and lifestyle content from the section’s screen and shows up-to-the-minute articles from 24.com’s various brands.

Another favorite was Torchbear, a social media information sharing tool that is represented by a “passing of the torch”. Users can tell where the torch has travelled and how many people have passed it as well as to where.

Also featuring strongly was Mosaic, which allows users to build mosaics using the pictures on their phone.

Southey initially designed “The Most Addicting Sheep Game” for Xbox Indie using tutorials online and sold almost 10 000 copies of the game within its first year of release. When he heard about the Windows Phone App competition, he decided to reconfigure it for Windows Phone.

“It took quite a lot of redesigning to make the game look and feel at home on a touch screen, but the response has been so worth it and the developer tools that are easily available online are fantastically user friendly, which made the journey a simple one,” said Southey.

“The Most Addicting Sheep Game” was a favorite among the judges for a variety of reasons,” says Microsoft’s Suliman Noor-Mahomed. “Not only is it incredibly addictive but it is also a quality app, with the design, structure, multi-gestures, movement and sound all being seamlessly integrated.”

Clifford de Wit, developer and platform lead at Microsoft SA, says the biggest thing to come from this exercise is the proof that the South African developer market is actually far larger than people realize and says this competition marks the start of a focused drive to highlight the talent inherent to this country.

“The talent that lies within our borders is astronomical and we really can’t wait to see how local developers take advantage of a new platform,” said de Wit.

Tags: Active, Clifford de Wit, Justin Southey, Microsoft, Windows Phone

2012-02-13 22:34

An impression of what the final design will look like. (Picture provided)

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Duncan Alfreds

Cape Town – As South Africa waits for a decision on the country that will win the bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, engineers are confident that the MeerKAT will go ahead.

“MeerKAT gets built, whether we win the SKA or not. If we win the SKA, things will change and we will have to re-plan a bit, but what we did was to align MeerKAT pretty close to the mainstream SKA thinking so that we’ll be in a position to expand MeerKAT into an SKA Phase 1,” MeerKAT project manager Willem Esterhuyse told News24.

The SKA will be structured in phases, beginning with 250 antennas in Phase 1, until it reaches a final total of over 3 000 linked radio telescopes that will give astronomers an unprecedented view of the night sky, going back billions of years.

A decision is expected in February, but it might be as late as April 2012.

MeerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope) will consist of 64 linked radio dishes near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape province and will, in niche areas, be the most sensitive instrument of its kind.

Design review

“If we don’t get SKA, MeerKAT still gets built; we have had confirmation of that on quite a few occasions from our steering committee and from the minister,” Esterhuyse said.

Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor said that MeerKAT was a boost for astronomy in Africa.

“We will build MeerKAT, but we have an exciting initiative that we’re currently trying to promote on the continent. That of building a VLBI [Very Long Baseline Interferometer] of radio satellites connected across the African continent and linking in to the VLBI network in Europe as well as the Americas,” Pandor told News24.

In 2011, a design review praised the development of the MeerKAT as well as the site in the Karoo which has been designated a radio reserve by the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act of 2007.

“We’ve got a green light for MeerKAT. In July of last year we had our system PDR [preliminary design review]. We had an international panel of experts; they were very complimentary of our efforts so far and we’re out on tender now for some of the infrastructure components,” Esterhuyse said.

Tenders for the construction of more roads and a landing strip on site has been put out and the infrastructure on the site is being developed.

“We’ve just released a tender for the MeerKAT antenna structures; so MeerKAT is happening as we speak.

“They will break soil on infrastructure this year; the first antenna we will probably start working on site in 2013 and essentially hand it over to our system engineering side toward August of 2013,” said Esterhuyse.

The project is scheduled for completion in 2016 and represents a technical challenge for the South African engineers. The design of the dishes, and most of the underlying technology, is South African innovation.

“So from the end of 2013 from an engineering side, we will be pretty much done with it and then hand over to the scientists to verify it on a scientific level,” Esterhuyse said.

– Follow Duncan on Twitter
 

Jonathan Khambula is dynamite in his one-man show Cockroach at the upcoming Suidoosterfees.

THIS year, the CEO of Die Burger’s Suidoosterfees, Niel Le Roux, says it will be a festival of love, not only because it starts on Valentine’s Day with a romantic dance in the chandelier foyer of Artscape, but because the theme of love permeates this annual arts festival.

“There’s the love of a mother and daughter in Viva la Mamma, the love between mother and son in My Name is Ellen Pakkies and Bye Ma Jaypee, and the love/hate for Metrorail in Train Smash,” explains Le Roux.

“The opera Viva la Mamma is an outstanding opera production with the Wagner Society and Lara Bye as the innovative director. And there’s comedian Casper de Vries – who rarely does festivals – who has compiled a special show for us. I also highly recommend Jonas. It is sad, relevant and spiritual.”

Auriol Hays, the husky-voiced jazz sensation performs together with a host of choir singers from Bonteheuwel with the Church of Resurrection Anglican Choir to the Koue Bokkeveld with Kromun Koor. Walter Battiss, who died 30 years ago, is celebrated and commemorated in an art exhibition.

A highlight is a concert in association with kykNET to mark opera legend Mimi Coertse’s 80th birthday this year. Other performers include Rocco de Villiers, Bobby van Jaarsveld, Juanita du Plessis and Shimmy Isaacs.

There are plays that tackle sex trafficking and tell stories about our West Coast fishermen.

Celeste Slabber-Loriston in Gif on February 17 and 18 at 1pm and 6pm

There’s a musical production set in the central Karoo, there’s cabaret, comedy and children’s entertainment.

Die Burger/RSG Tent will provide free entertainment by up-and-coming local singers. The festival features a wonderful line-up of entertainment including jazz, classical music, gospel music, theatre, comedy and visual arts.

The festival, now in its ninth year, celebrates and creatively develops Western Cape Afrikaans culture and heritage, as well as encouraging social diversity and national unity through Afrikaans.

“Our festival philosophy is to create an arts festival that reflects the diverse Cape cultures for all to enjoy seamlessly,” said Le Roux.

With the inclusion of new theatrical productions like the first African performance of Viva la Mamma, an isiXhosa drama and Jonathan Khambula’s riveting piece Cockroach, Suidoosterfees is stretching cultural diversity further and this should be encouraged in the future for healthy cross-pollination of our cultures and breaking down cultural barriers.

“We want this festival to be affordable, accessible, and include all races, class, language, religious and age groups,” added Le Roux.

Ringo Star sings on February 18 at 8.30pm

INLSA

Part of the festival’s innovative outreach includes bringing in farm workers and local gospel and choir groups from across the province.

It also seeks to offer opportunities to develop and nurture young and up-coming artists, and enables them to premiere new works.

The festival has grown considerably since its inception, with an annual attendance of over 20 000.

The festival does not have a creative director, but a programme committee who compile a programme that reflects their mission and attempts to present all art genres of music theatre visual arts film and dance.

“It’s a fantastic challenge to present new works on stage and exhibitions of a world class standard, that we have to gauge what everyone will want to see!” said Le Roux.

l The Suidoosterfees will run from Tuesday to February 19. For the full programme, see www.suidoosterfees.co.za Call 021 446 1558. Book at Computicket at 0861 915 8000.

Odidiva, vamps it up on February 17 and 18 at 9.30pm and 9pm.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) promotes science research across a wide spectrum of science and technology disciplines, from quantum physics to health sciences, and fields from nanotechnology to biotechnology.

During the past year government ramped up its bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

SKA is one of the great astronomy projects of the 21st century and it’s a project on which South Africans collaborate with scientists from many other countries.

South Africa is competing against Australia and New Zealand to host this groundbreaking radio telescope that will cost €1.5bn (R15bn) to build. Winning the SKA bid will consolidate Africa’s position as a world astronomy hub.

Specific attention has been given to nurturing the scientific strengths already built upon the back of South Africa’s geographical position – our skies, oceans, earth that contains the Cradle of Humankind – while developing new and emerging technologies necessary and critical for economic and social development.

The DST is working with the Department of Trade and Industry (the South African Renewable Energy Initiative) and the Department of Economic Development (IDC) to build solar, wind and wave industries – and most prominently in astronomy where the spin-off industries in IT have the potential to employ many science graduates.

During the last year African and global collaborations have expanded to 60 well-crafted international research and development partnerships. One example is BioFISA, a national and regional collaboration that includes 12 SADC member states, with a hub at the CSIR.

Despite significant achievements, the big challenge is on the human capital front. South Africa is not producing enough scientists and steps have been taken to boost university science.

The flagship programme, the SA Research Chairs Initiative, is being expanded – doubled from a R200m a year to a R400m a year programme – and strengthened, appealing to international scientists and South Africans in the diaspora.

It is critically important to invest in established researchers so as to assure South Africa’s international competitiveness in research and innovation, while also helping to solve some of the country’s problems in reducing the burden of disease such as HIV and TB.

Science and technology contributes to South Africa’s impressive standing in recent world rankings of innovation and competitiveness. In the Global Innovation Index South Africa came second to Mauritius in the sub-Saharan region.

In the Global Competitiveness Index the country led the sub-Saharan region, ranked 50th out of 142 countries in the world.

South Africa also ranks second out of the five BRICS countries.

It’s all about the love this year for the Suidoosterfees as it celebrates love for the arts, people and the city of Cape Town with the theme “A Festival of Love”.

In its ninth year, the festival offers talents and flavour that promises a hearty treat for theatre lovers from February 14-19 at the Artscape Theatre.

Brand-new theatre works will be showcased.

The refreshingly decadent opera Viva la Mamma is set to premiere. The role of the mamma, Donna Agata, will be sung by the baritone Siyabulela Ntale.

Telling the stories of Mitchells Plain’s past and present through music, dance, comedy and more is ’n Plekkie in die Son… Mitchells Plain se Mense.

This unique musical theatre performance, directed by Basil Appollis, features well-known brothers Emo and Luqmaan Adams, the Khoisan poet/singer Blaq Pearl, opera singer and SA’s Got Talent winner James Bhemgee and Melanie Jones.

A book about Mitchells Plain will be launched at the premiere.

The Afrikaans play Dit Voel Leeg, based on British playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s It Felt Empty When the Heart Went at First But it is Alright Now and translated by Hugo Taljaard, deals with the subject of sex trafficking and how an innocent young girl from Rehoboth (played by Isidingo actress Kim Cloete) is tricked into moving to Cape Town and forced into prostitution.

Joining Cloete is 7de Laan actress Vuyelwa Booi, with 7de Laan director Henry Mylne on board as director.

Also to grace the stage are Vinette Ebrahim and Christo Davids in My Naam/Name is Ellen Pakkies and Shimmy Isaacs in the comedy Howzit my Bra, dealing with issues around the bra and the subject of breast cancer.

The community of Beaufort-West takes centre stage with Die Central Karoo Revue, a production about a town in the heart of the Karoo, featuring music, song and dance.

Also new on the Suidoosterfees programme is Baby, based on a short story written by respected writer EKM Dido.

The festival will feature Xhosa drama Uhlazo, winner of the 2011 Baxter Theatre Zabalaza Festival, in the Suidoosterfees 2011 gem Cockroach.

Other festival favourites on the programme include Bullets over Bishop Lavis , written by 7de Laan actor Christo Davids and directed by Jody Abrahams and Bye Ma, Jaypee, starring former 7de Laan actor Chris van Niekerk.

• For more information visit www.suidoosterfees.co.za.

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It could even be a net exporter of both.

But that would depend on three things: that the estimates of shale gas reserves in the Karoo are accurate ; that government gives the go-ahead for exploration to at least find out if there are reserves; and, if the first two requirements are satisfied, that companies are allowed to drill for the gas .

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that the Karoo could be home to 485 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas reserves. That would make SA’s resources the fifth-largest in the world.

Most industry players think this number is probably inflated . Shell SA’s general manager for upstream operations, Jan Willem Eggink, says: “We agree there is probably shale under the Karoo, but we don’t know how much.”

But even if a tenth of the IEA estimate is proven (and economically viable ) it would be a significant find. To put it into perspective, Sasol’s gas-to-liquid plant in Qatar, which produces 32000 barrels of liquid fuel a day, will use 3,5tcf over its 30-year lifetime, according to Investec Securities analyst Campbell Parry.

Parry says with 50tcf, SA would be able to invest in additional gas-to-liquids plants, power generation, and possibly the development of a residential piped gas market in the Western Cape (which currently doesn’t have one).

The cost of electricity would drop as the supply of gas would be greater than demand . Nuclear power would probably be off the table. The days of worrying about load-shedding would be over.

But there’s a chance SA may not even be able to find out whether the reserves are there . The extraction of shale gas through what is known as fracking — injecting water and chemicals into the ground to fracture the rock and release the gas — is a highly contested topic.

The debate is between the economics and the environmental concerns around fracking. A burst of shale exploration and production has changed the US into an energy exporter, given it security of supply and brought gas prices down. US gas prices have more than halved in the past 10 years, says Eggink. But many believe these benefits are not worth the damage done in the process of getting the gas.

Environmental arguments focus on water risks, both of contamination and of availability of water, especially pertinent in a water-scarce country; risks to health; and social disruption from the arrival of the extractive industry.

Energy companies, on the other hand, promise they can extract the gas in an environmentally safe way. Eggink says Shell recently raised operating standards in the US; that the surface footprint of the development is small; and that water issues can be dealt with (through the possible use of brackish water found deep under the Karoo).

He also lists economic spinoffs, including a GDP boost and job creation. On top of this, Shell is risking its own capital, R1,5bn for the first phase , and more if exploration proves fruitful.

There is little way of knowing who is right. It’s easy to find case studies proving either argument . There are cases for regional economic growth, low gas prices and job creation; but there are also cases of ruined water resources.

Saliem Fakir, head of WWF SA’s Living Planet Unit , says the debate “has largely become parochialised as an energy vs environment issue” and suggests the focus should turn to a broader economic debate.

He says the argument should be about energy planning and whether fracking for gas would be the most economically viable energy option for SA.

The range of unknowns includes how much gas there is, the cost of extraction, the cost of getting it to market and where water would be sourced, says Paul Eardley-Taylor, Standard Bank’s head of energy, utilities infrastructure. The cost of infrastructure (which Eardley-Taylor says would be for government) is another major question mark.

“The economics of shale in SA cannot be compared to the US,” Fakir says. A large local resource works for an economy when the right policies are in place. SA lacks a policy for the exploitation of shale gas.

The effect of shale on the SA economy, says Fakir, depends on factors like gas prices (which he says would be higher in SA than in the US), incentives given to industry and environmental regulation.

Sasol, after a technical study in the Karoo, said at the end of 2010 it would not pursue exploration. It says while fracking is widely practised and regulated in the US it is new to SA, and a clear and well-regulated environment would have to be a precondition for an environmentally responsible industry. Others have postulated that Sasol’s decision is based on cost calculations, and that shale gas production in the US would be more economically viable than in SA.

It is in this context that the moratorium on exploration in SA is largely viewed as welcome.

Parry says many of the questions around the economics of shale can be answered only once the actual reserves are known.

Government will decide on the moratorium in March, after it has completed its study into fracking in SA.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Peninsula Energy’s (ASX:PEN) executive chairman Gus Simpson tells Proactive Investors what is in store for the company in 2012. 

He also provides an insight into the uranium market, post Fukushima.

The company could be in production late 2012, early 2013.