Category: this is south africa

Under Repair

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Cape Agulhas lighthouse is undergoing some much needed repairs at the moment, as this photo clearly demonstrates:

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Taken by Mrs 6000 yesterday, you can see that the work is fairly extensive. And it needs to be: the winter storms on the Southern Tip show no mercy.

The lighthouse will have seen a few of them, having been built in local sandstone in 1848. And the damage that those storms can do was shown clearly in the late 1960s when the light was moved to an aluminium tower nearby (note to self: find picture of this), as the sandstone had eroded and the building itself was in danger of collapsing due to excessive weathering.
Thankfully (and rightfully), it was declared a national monument and it was restored and recommissioned in 1988.

The focal plane of the light is 31 metres (102 ft) above high water; the range of the 7,500,000 candlepower lantern is 30 nautical miles (56 km; 35 mi). It rotates, giving off one white flash every five seconds. When they’re not repairing and restoring it,visitors are able to exercise their right to suffer terrifying vertigo by climbing the tower and examining the seemingly flimsy railings around the top.

Right now, I’m back in Cape Town, copying the lighthouse by having an external support structure around my right leg, which is being repaired and painted in bold red and white hoops before winter [don’t push the analogy – Ed.]. 

I miss Agulhas and I’m desperate to get back down there as soon as possible. But the 3 hour drive isn’t conducive to getting this ankle sorted and I know that sacrificing a visit this weekend is going to get that process over more quickly.

Breathtaking

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Behold, Rory Allen’s 2012 Timelapse showreel. Just… wow.

Says Rory:

This is a collection of time lapses shot over 2011/2012. Most of them are based in Cape Town but a few are from London too.

You’ll want to hit the HD button and go full screen – do that here.
And enjoy more timelapse loveliness here.

Africa

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I’m already looking forward to the third installment of David Attenborough’s Africa (we’re about 4-5 weeks behind the UK here).
With the whole resting the ankle thing, I get to watch the recorded episodes again and it’s amazing how much extra detail you notice on a second viewing.

Having already been treated to the Kalahari and the Savannah episodes, I’ve been looking for a suitable currency converter as I now want to visit everywhere I’ve seen. Together with the next episode “Congo”, things could get expensive. But then it’s the big local one which had my UK Facebook stream in raptures last month. And no, one can’t (legally) get iPlayer down here.

Having only seen clips, I’m quite intrigued to see what Sir David has to say about the the Cape, aside from his pronunciation of  “Agoolhas”, which although true to its Portuguese roots, is far from the colloquial method and would get you some funny looks in the hostelries down there.

Anyway, as I said, we’re heading north to the rainforests of central Africa ahead of that, so I still have 10 days to wait.

Africa is on BBC Knowledge (DSTV channel 184) at 1800 CAT on Sundays.

SS Wafra

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It’s 42 years to the day – and almost to the minute as this publishes at 1730 CAT – since the oil tanker SS Wafra grounded on a reef off Cape Agulhas after her engine floundered due to a leak in her cooling system.

Almost half of her 472,513 barrel cargo escaped, with some 26,000 tons of oil leaked at the grounding site, of which 6,000 tonnes washed up at Cape Agulhas. A 20-mile (32 km) by 3-mile (4.8 km) oil spill resulted that affected a colony of 1200 African Penguins on Dyer Island near Gansbaai.

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The vessel is on fire in this photo because the SA Air Force bombed it in an effort to scuttle it and er… failed:

The ship was refloated and pulled off the reef on 8 March by the German tug Oceanic, but started to break apart. To prevent further oil contamination of the coastline, the larger section was towed 200 miles (320 km) out to sea to the edge of the continental shelf (36°57’S 20°42’E), leaving a 160-kilometre (99 mi) oil slick in her wake. On 10 March 1971 Buccaneer aircraft of the South African Air Force attempted to sink her with AS-30 missiles, but succeeded only in starting a fire. The ship flounded ablaze for two days before a Shackleton aircraft was eventually able to sink it with depth charges in 1,830 metres (6,000 ft) of water.

HISTORY!

The Ridiculously Sensitive Water Buffalo Meat Issue

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In more ways than one.

Look, we’re not going to die just by eating water buffalo, goat or donkey. We might die because the meat processing plants have been breaching other regulations that we didn’t know they were either though.
But since we haven’t died yet (and here, I’m speaking for myself), it seems unlikely that that’s actually the case.

So let’s not get carried away here.

But, as long time reader, first time emailer Richard Atkinson pointed out when sending me the Stellenbosch paper – that’s not the only ridiculously sensitive problem here:

They use mtDNA PCR for species typing of the samples. My biggest criticism is how ridiculously sensitive that technique is. They would be picking up contamination from an animal that was slaughtered in the same area, or processed with the same equipment. This would obviously be a problem if found in Halaal/Kosher meat, but they never specifically state that they found contamination in those meats, which is something I’m sure they would have harped on about at length if they had to help drive the PR machine.

It’s a very reasonable point, and furthermore, there’s no mention of any controls on the methods they used (which would have raised alarm bells and prevented Richard’s concerns).
Not to go into too much detail, but mtDNA PCR is a method of analysis which could detect even the tiniest amount of DNA and present it as a possibly significant result. Which is a good thing, because there rightly shouldn’t be any “foreign” DNA in your “100% beef” mince, so the fact even a minute amount of “foreign” DNA can be detected makes the test sensitive. Sensitivity is good.
However, given that abattoirs generally don’t work solely with one species of meat, there’s likely to be a lot of DNA floating around in the areas in which our meat is processed, and it’s entirely likely that some of it may have found its way into “other meat”.
And here, over-sensitivity is bad.

So from that point of view, maybe we shouldn’t be reading too much into the results of this study. Except to perhaps question the donkey (not literally, because he’s dead and he couldn’t talk he was alive). While beef, pork, chicken and even goat and water buffalo are recognised foodstuffs in SA; donkey isn’t. So Eeyore – described in the paper as “undeclared donkey” – shouldn’t be in there:

Perhaps of greatest concern from a regulatory, health and ethical standpoint was the detection of undeclared donkey (E. asinus) in one meat sample sold in KZN as ‘quality sausage’, for which the only animal species declared was beef. Since donkey is not a species commercially processed for human consumption in South Africa, there is a high probability that this indicates a further case of intentional substitution for economic gain.

Although to be fair to the food labellers, it does appear that they never stated that the ‘quality sausage’ was good quality sausage.