Category: this is south africa

I can’t feel my fingers

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The weekend in Cape Town kicked off with heavy rain from about 3am this morning (rather than 3am this afternoon, which makes no sense at all, obviously. My point is that it was 3am this morning, rather than any other morning).

It’s not like this wasn’t expected. One of the (many) good things about living here is that the weather is quite predictable. Stuck on the corner of Africa with literally thousands of miles of ocean almost surrounding us, it’s fairly easy to see what’s coming and warn us about it. And warned we were:

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Wind, rain, swell – lots of each of them, which surely means a trip out with the camera tomorrow.

Currently, it’s 10.2C and the pressure is 997mb. The pool is overflowing and there are puddles all over my lawn. And with the wind increasing and the pressure still dropping, it seems like the worst is yet to come.

In the midst of all this, I have prepped with homemade soup, cottage pie, pasta “thing” and home-baked fresh bread. Looking good, then.
And then we’re off to Newlands to watch the rugby. Memories of the sleet at Italy v Paraguay in 2010 spring to mind.
I’d rather be in the stands than on the field, but right now, I’d rather just watch it on TV and enjoy my soup.

Nearly there?

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This really isn’t a lighthouse blog, but…
The renovations to the Cape Agulhas lighthouse – as mentioned before on here – are still happening, although it does appear that they’ve really made some progress with things since we were last down here.

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We went for a very quick walk (my ankle is also still under renovation, remember) up and around the building.
It’s actually rather sad to see it in such a state of disrepair, although I’m sure that a beautiful red and white hooped swan is soon to emerge from the current ugly ducking in a few weeks time.

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Shocking report was shockingly reported – shock.

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When that BBC report came out, someone remarked on Facebook:

Kan dit nie glo nie. (I can’t believe it.)

I commented:

You’d do well not to believe it. Or indeed anything else that uses Ernst Roets as a credible source.

But how was I to know just how right I was?

Do 400,000 whites live in squatter camps in South Africa, as claimed in a recent BBC report. Are there really 80 “white squatter camps” dotted around Pretoria? The answer to both is no.

Africacheck.org has looked at the 2011 census and found out that those figures are (as both the ANC and the DA suggested) inaccurate, exaggerated nonsense:

The claim that 400,000 whites are living in squatter camps is grossly inaccurate. If that were the case, it would mean that roughly ten percent of South Africa’s 4.59-million whites were living in abject poverty.

Census figures suggest that only a tiny fraction of the white population – as little as 7,754 households – are affected.

The claim that there are 80 or more “white squatter camps” in the Pretoria area would also appear to be grossly overstated. Many of the places referred to are not camps at all.

AfriForum’s Roets gave the BBC inaccurate figures and the BBC took them without apparently checking, producing a skewed piece of journalism that failed to accurately reflect reality.

And this on a story that veteran journalist John Simpson put his name to. Very sad.

In no way am I suggesting that the fact that there are 7,754 white households (or the 1,868,325 “black African” households in the same situation) living – existing – in those sort of conditions, is acceptable.

I am, however, suggesting that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Even from the BBC and especially from Ernst Roets.

UPDATE: From Anton Haber:

I am appalled that a seasoned journalist like BBC world affairs editor John Simpson should produce… such a half-arsed, skewed view of reality.
This is an appalling piece of journalism, not worthy of the BBC.

My thoughts exactly.

If you can’t read this…

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If you’re having trouble getting through to 6000 miles… it’s because (and here I quote):

There is high load on the server, causing requests to be slow (and timeout) even though the server is up.

This was also the case last Wednesday, last Thursday and last Friday. And again this morning.

Afrihost, who were previously the shining example of service and stability have really disappointed me since I moved my hosting over there. And yes, I would move everything somewhere else, but

  1. It’s an absolute schlep to organise another move. I don’t have time, ability or patience, and
  2. Is anywhere really better? For every good report on a hosting solution, there is someone warning against using it.

Afrihost have told me that they are “in the process” of upgrading their servers, which should stop this timeout problem from occurring. In the meantime, if you see that “6000.co.za took too long to respond”, please keep trying. I’m still here, even if you can’t see me.

In case you need to be told

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Because some of my FB friends do: Likes don’t save lives.

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That’s the tagline of a new campaign by UNICEF in Sweden. They’re encouraging people do donate money rather than just click a button. Because while the clicks are absolutely lovely, they don’t actually do anything. They’re just an easy way to pretend you’re making a difference. It’s slacktivism at its worst.

Of course, far fewer people will put their money where their click was. But it’s worth remembering that even a single cent is still worth more to charity than any number of those likes.

(Oh, and while we’re on the subject, actually, “one like ? one prayer”, although both are worthless, as mentioned above, it’s likely to do about as much good. i.e. none.)