This is my second Mandela Day in South Africa. Last year I helped stock a library in Soweto, and this year I am joining the American Society of South Africa (ASSA) volunteers in supporting FEED SA.
FEED SA is a non‐profit organisation committed to feeding the hearts, minds and tummies of South African children in need. Their main aim is to establish feeding programmes within townships. These feeding programmes are aimed at those who receive no other forms of funding whatsoever. FEED SA also implements the building and setting up of creches (from the infrastructure to operations), teachers training and teaching curriculum. To date, FEED SA assists 42 beneficiaries – from Alexandra Township, Soweto, Orlando West, Orange Farm, and the West Rand (around 5,347 people).
ASSA members are preparing and delivering lunches on Mandela Day to a creche in Alexandra and the organisation is also making a monetary donation to FEEDSA made up of individual members' donations of R67, (67 being the number of minutes South Africans are asked to devote to charity on Mandela Day).
For more information about FEED SA or to make a donation, visit their website .
Turbine Hall is like the (mini) Tate Modern of Johannesburg. Just as the Tate Modern is housed in the former Bankside Power Station in London, Turbine Hall started its life as Johannesburg’s Jeppe Street Power Station. Both are great examples of adaptive building use in modern cities and both showcase modern art.
But while the Tate is a museum known for its vast and celebrated permanent collection, Turbine Hall is an exhibition and event space known for its Turbine Art Fair, an annual three-day exhibition showcasing contemporary modern art for sale.
I just got home from the VIP preview party and will blog about the exhibition just now, but not tonight. Tonight I will just say, go see it!
inside one of the sound installations
You only have three days. The Turbine Art Fair runs from Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July 20 this year. What are you waiting for?
If you can't beat 'em then in the end one must join them. Today is the final match of the FIFA WC2014 in Brazil.
We will watch it in a bar in Sandton and join the throngs of South African soccer fans as Argentina faces Germany in the deciding match. Luckily, I do not care who wins - I have friends in both countries (although Lou and Serge being dachshunds are rooting for the fatherland.) I will just feed off the collective energy in the room and have a good time no matter what.
Ros and team
Shout out to my South African friend Ros who is in Rio working the scoreboard.
I have already professed my undying love for all things art deco so naturally we had to take a drive out to the East Rand to check out two art deco gems we had heard about, Springs in Ekurhuleni and the Rand Airport in Germiston.
Downtown Springs has been likened to South Beach in Miami or Old Hollywood because of its large number of small art deco buildings built during the mining boom days of the 30's. I get the similarity. There are a large number of low-slung art deco shops and businesses, and people in Springs do seem to prefer to live in Hollywood deco style bungalows.
And there are royal palm trees lining the streets adding to the South Beach feel. But sadly, no beach and no ocean.
But Springs does have the really cool deco Central Fire Station with its porthole windows ...
Rand Airport on the other hand really looks and feels like a Hollywood movie set from the 30's. And in fact, it has been used as the film set for a number of movies set in that era, such as The Amelia Earhart Story with Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.
All the vintage aircraft flying around and sitting on the tarmac adds to the throwback feel too.
And like the Grand Central Airport in Midrand, they also have a Harvard Cafe for brunch and lunch. This motorcycle makes it look more like a scene from Top Gun.
At one point I actually saw a vintage pink plane flying up above in the azure blue sky. Now that is very South Beach!
The Lonehill headquarters of African Parks is bursting at the seams. Some of us are sharing three to a room and some of us (me) are currently without a phone as a result. African Parks is negotiating to acquire more parks - 20 by 2023 - and we are staffing up to do it. Parks in Ethiopia and Nigeria, more parks in Malawi, another in Chad .... So we are seriously on the hunt for new office space. But even though we are cramped, I am going to miss this space for a couple of reasons.
First, Lonehill is very close to my home and my commute is against the predominant flow and therefore blissfully traffic-free. I drive away from Sandton during the morning commute and return unencumbered in the afternoon. That shouldn't change with the new crib as I am told we are looking to relocate nearby.
But I will miss the view from our headquarters in the Lonehill Office Park. Specifically this view ...
This is a photo of The Granite Tor, the lone hill of Lonehill as seen from our conference room. According to the Blue Plaques of South Africa (it has one),
"This hill, Lonehill, represents one of the most prominent of a number of Archaean granite tors ('Castle Koppies') developed in the central and south-western parts of the 3200 million-year-old Johannesburg granite dome. The tors vary in composition and texture, but generally consist of medium to coarse-grained, homogenous granodiorites and ademellites, as well as banded gneisses and migmatites. In some tors the granite rocks contain large feldspar crystals in a finer-grained matrix and are referred to as porphyritic granites. Tors similar to Lonehill are extensively developed in the Archaean granites of Zimbabwe, the Eastern Transvaal and Swaziland, and formed mainly by differential weathering of the faulted, fractured and jointed granites." I have not done more than gaze at the tor from afar. It sits on a plot of around 20 acres of veld surrounding the koppie, which is around 80 metres high. The plot is fenced and locked during the work week but unlocked on the weekends, allowing hikers and picnickers to climb to the top, or just lay out a picnic blanket in its surrounding grassy area. I am never there on weekends so I have yet to see it up close and personal. Too bad too because it is an extremely significant site - it has three Stone Age furnaces in the veld below the koppie which were excavated in the 1960s by Professor Revil Mason, formerly head of archaeology at Wits University.
I keep meaning to climb it one weekend, but it might take a move to a room without a view to motivate me to do it. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? Well at least we won't be able to say that about African parks if African Parks has anything to say about it.
Johnny Clegg is a music legend and one of South Africa’s most celebrated
sons. He is a singer, a songwriter, a dancer, an anthropologist and a
musical activist whose infectious crossover music, a vibrant blend of
Western pop and African Zulu rhythms, has exploded onto the
international scene and broken through all the barriers in his own
country. In France, where he enjoys a massive following, he is fondly
called Le Zulu Blanc – the white Zulu.
I saw him perform a couple of his most famous songs at the Nelson Mandela Memorial Tribute at the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory, including Asimbonanga, my favorite Johnny Clegg song. He was one of a long line of performers and speakers who were there to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. His performance left me wanting more.
photo by Anne Walsh Wertz
The opportunity arose yesterday as part of the Old Mutual Music in the Gardens concert series at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens on a beautiful winter's day. Ah, you gotta love winter in Gauteng! Temperate climate pleasant enough for a picnic in the garden on a Sunday afternoon.
Johnny was born in England to an English father and a Zimbabwean mother and was brought up by his mother in Zimbabwe. He moved to South Africa after his mother married a South African journalist when he was seven. Johnny's mother was a cabaret and jazz singer and his step-father a crime reporter who took Johnny with him in the the early 60's into the townships, exposing him to a broader cultural landscape than would have typically been available to a white South African boy.
photo by Anne Walsh Wertz
It was in the 70's at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where Johnny was by then a lecturer in Anthropology, that he conceived the concept of blending English lyrics and Western melodies with Zulu
musical structures. This blend was recognised by a South African
producer, Hilton Rosenthal, who became the champion of the project and
drove it with passion and commitment. He signed up Johnny and Sipho
Mchunu (his songwriting and performance partner at the time) to his
independent label at a time when mixing music was effectively
unprofitable because of the radio censorship of mixed music and mixed
bands.
At this time they could only
play in private venues as the law forbade mixed race performances in
public venues and spaces. Testing the law, they played at universities,
church halls, migrant labour hostels and even in the lounges of private
houses. The battle ground of public versus private performances was
often challenged by the security police who attempted to close these
down whenever they could. Many shows were closed down but not enough to
prevent the emergence of a substantial following of students and migrant
workers.
photo by Anne Walsh Wertz
In late 1979 their first album,
Universal Men, was released. The album was a musical journey into the
life of the Zulu migrant worker, living and working in the city, but
continually journeying home, caught between two different worlds.
His 40 year musical career has been rich and varied and he has amassed a long legacy of songs, albums, awards and historic appearances. Johnny Clegg performed on
all four of Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Aids Awareness Concerts in South
Africa and in Norway. Mandela has joined him on stage during the
rendition of Asimbonanga, a song written by Johnny about Mandela (and
other struggle heroes) during his period of incarceration. At every live
performance of this song, the audience, charged with emotion,
spontaneously rises to their feet. During the Cape Town and Tromso 46664
shows, Johnny also performed duets of his work with Peter Gabriel (who was in the audience at the Mandela Tribute last December.)
He has a new album out and if his performance in Pretoria is any indication, his legacy will keep on growing.
