Category: this is south africa

Yes, Bryan races a plane, but…

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BA are flying their new Airbus A380 aircraft on their Joburg route (but not Cape Town because the runway is too short) from February 2014 and they recruited local rugby hero Bryan Habana to let us know about that by racing the plane along the tarmac.
England Rugby captain Chris Robshaw came to watch, presumably to provide the Heathrow side of things, and Bryan also brought South Africa Rugby captain Jean de Villiers along with him.

Bryan takes Jean everywhere he goes. Except Toulon.

Here’s the video:

Wow! What a finish!!

But it’s actually not the finish that bothered me so much. It was the start.
Who was that waving the flag to get them going? Why, it was model Georgia May Jagger.
But again, it wasn’t so much the model that bothered me. It was the flag.

ba flag

It’s upside down.

We’ve been here before. And this isn’t great for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it’s just plain (no pun intended) bad form. Damn rude.

And, in addition, were BA’s creatives not aware of the specific instructions with regard to the use of the National Flag, as found in the Government Gazette 22356, Notice 510 of 8 June 2001? Obviously not, because otherwise the flag would not just have been the right way up, it wouldn’t have been there at all – check out section 15(d):resflag

Oops.

Fortunately, no-one in South Africa is very good at remembering which way up the National Flag should be flown anyway. And they were far too bothered with Bryan Habana racing a big plane to notice that the flag was being used inappropriately and waved incorrectly.

Still, once this post is published and the South African public is awakened to this heinous act of disrespect, I expect outrage, several open letters, possibly an online petition and (almost certainly) a boycott. Oh, and accusations of some sort of -ism.

And in other news, I’ve just heard that Airbus have demanded a rematch. At 35,000 feet.

On Hitting Children

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Much local outrage (again) at the news that the government is considering a ban on the use of corporal punishment in the home. I suspect we’ll see one (or more) open letters written this week on the subject.

“Yippie.”

The furore has, once again, ignited the fires of indignation at alleged government interference in our private lives, and with it, brought out a bewildering defensive pride in some parents, unapologetically crowing that they hit their kids and no-one was going to stop them.

This post is not here to agree or disagree with the proposed legislation. In addition, in writing it, I’m not intending to pass comment on your choice of parenting methods either. Although, I think some of these examples are going a bit far and I was unpleasantly surprised to find the Bible thinks corporal punishment is just fine (but apparently only cos it’s preferable to Hell):

The rod is the family’s symbol of authority: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.” Proverbs 23:13-14.

Whole. Different. Argument.

So let’s not go there.

No, I just wanted to point out the strange (to me, at least) differences in the way we regard physical action against kids compared to physical action against other members of society.
To that end, I’ve taken some of the comments I saw on the subject this morning and I’ve removed any reference to kids and replaced it with a reference to women.

So now, they look like this:

My wife knows if she does something wrong, I’ll give her a hiding.

My dad used to beat my Mum, and it never did her any harm.

Sometimes, my girlfriend just won’t listen, and it’s the only way to get the message across.

My wife needs to know that when she doesn’t do as she’s told, she’ll get a good, hard smack.

It’s part of womanhood. It’s the only way they learn right from wrong.

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so acceptable. Does it?

And before some idiot suggests it, I’m not accusing you of child abuse (the accepted legal definition thereof, anyway) or perpetrating domestic violence. So let’s be clear on that.

Mischievous? Sure.
Disingenuous? I don’t know so much.

It’s a dichotomy I’ve never understood – the social acceptability of corporal punishment in kids versus the disgust at domestic violence. There’s obviously a difference between the two, but at the end of the day, it comes down to using physicality to exploit or demonstrate one’s superior power over a vulnerable individual.

There will be those who argue that the rules for adults and kids need to be different. And they’re absolutely right, but those differences should then be in favour of protecting children, not vice versa.
And then there’s the other way of looking at it: that rather than comparing adults and children, we’re actually comparing humans with humans. So what makes it right to physically punish one group, when it’s plainly not ok to physically punish another?

So where do we draw the line? And why and how exactly did we choose to draw it there?

A bit of weekend

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After a very successful (ie. winning) quiz evening at Cafe Roux last night, supporting the amazing work of the Jones Safe House, we hit Surfers’ Corner at Muizenberg for brunch and a bit of fresh air this morning.

Then home, where the kids were delighted to find a Garden Acraea (Acraea horta) on the patio:

Obviously, those two photos aren’t to scale, or that would be a butterfly of fairly terrifying proportions.
More kid/butterfly interaction here.

Unchanged exchange

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As if the constant rain, cold temperatures and miserable grey sky wasn’t enough today, I have just learned that my internet connectivity here at Chez 6000 is so slow because the local exchange simply can’t handle the amount of traffic going through it. Thus, while paying for a 4Mbps line, I’m generally very lucky to get 500kbps. And that’s a bit rubbish to say the least.

When SEACOM landed and when I got the 4Mbps line, I did think that we were beginning to approach some sort of semblance of First World connectivity.
How wrong I was.

Of course, all parties involved (save for me) are protected from any liability for this, thanks to the convenient (but standard – I’m not blaming Afrihost for this) “best effort” service clause in the terms and conditions:

Due to the fact that Telkom cannot guarantee the bandwidth throughput achieved when subscribers access the Internet utilising a DSL access line, Afrihost can likewise also not offer such a guarantee.

Interestingly, paying R200 less per month for a 1Mbps connection gives me around 350kbps. Slower, and arguably even more frustrating, sure, but with an extra R200 to spend on Carling Black Label, it might work out better overall.

The fact is that the exchange in question will definitely not be upgraded this financial year and there’s no guarantee when, if ever, it will be upgraded. Any alternative, not using Telkom lines (and therefore the same exchange) seems prohibitively expensive. Decent speed uncapped wireless offerings come in at a hefty R819pm, plus a R2000 set up fee.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas, or a money tree that they’re willing to lend me, please get in touch.

All in all, it’s pretty depressing, and if it’s holding me back, heaven only knows how the local SMEs are coping.

Foolish quota photo

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It’s a grey day, and a grey photo seems apt, but even as I post this, I’m aware that it’s a silly thing to do. Flickr is down for planned maintenance later today and you won’t be able to see it during that time.

Still, there’s more to a quota photo than just a few hours, so I’ll stick it up anyway.

high

More kitesurfing photos from that day here, here and here.