Hi 23C° Low 6C° | 
GabiVille
9 hours, 16 minutes ago
Pendock Uncorked
1 day, 8 hours ago
The Wheel Deal
2 days, 4 hours ago
The Wanderer
1 week, 2 days agoView all Times LIVE Blogs
The Daily Show’s John Oliver not surprisingly found one on a world cup trip to SA. The meeting is revealed in one what must be of the best TV I’ve ever seen. (Far better than THE engagement video I’ve just watched).
WTF was Dan Roodt thinking – besides racist thoughts. Oliver was delighted with these pearls – “That’s a fine burgundy compared to the watery sh*t we get back home” he told Roodt.
Roodt didn’t get it all. Didn’t he watch Candid Camera when he was small and ignorant?
Watch it here - it’s quite brilliant.
Here are some extracts from international stories about SA and the world cup:
Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times:
“South Africa’s World Cup was a four-week people’s festival — which saw the normally insular car-addicted middle classes abandoning their vehicles, walking, taking buses and trains, celebrating in the streets at night or visiting Soweto township for the first time in their lives.
Since Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation dream began to fade with the rise of corruption and persistent inequality, South Africa has become a navel-gazing, insecure nation.” Read More…
I started the day at the Westcliff Hotel. I had breakfast overlooking the views over the zoo and Rosebank. I sat with my colleague hoping to spot somebody rich and famous… We saw journalists only. Back at the office it was hard to concentrate. Vuvuzelas blowing, people singing – way too much excitement. It’s great. And we’re all delighted to be here now in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Sandton apparently was fabulous. I couldn’t go, but here’s a picture.
Travel with good sat-nav that doesn’t take you through dangerous areas. Try Satpack Travel.. And you get a panic button!
“Crime is a bit like sunburn. Everyone knows it’s a risk in a country like South Africa, but if you take the right precautions you can still get out there and have some fun”
The news has just broken that a young man in Stellenbosch died after falling ill with swine flu. It’s the first swine flu death in SA. The Western Cape Health Department’s Faiza Steyn confirmed this saying, “We’ve had our first fatality. This case is related to the latest H1N1 virus.”
The 22-year-old student who died on July 28 was confirmed by the MEC for health in the Western Cape, Theuns Botha, to be Ruan Muller. He was admitted to the Stellenbosch Medi-Clinic with pneumonia.
We don’t know yet whether there were any other conditions he suffered from. I feel desperately sorry for the young man’s friends and family.
On a recent holiday Marianne Schwankhart took these pics. I feel like going on a similar holiday. Don’t you? Space, quiet, endless landscapes…
Specially like this one:
From the Office of the US press secretary:
The President has asked Ambassador Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative, to represent the United States at the inauguration of the President of South Africa on May 9. The President congratulates the people of on another successful election – the fourth in the post-apartheid period – and looks forward to a close working relationship with the incoming administration in South Africa. Ambassador Kirk will be accompanied by senior members of the President’s administration.
In an editorial today the Washington Post says “As South Africa and its client (Zimbabwe) more cynically calculate, Mr. Tsvangirai’s appointment will compel the United States, Britain and other Western governments to lift sanctions and renew economic support, thus preventing what would otherwise be the inevitable collapse of Mr. Mugabe’s regime”
Some of us (me included) have been fretting about the ethical implications, for our leadership, of having five wives or one wife and two lovers. But I came across this which has put everything into perspective. (I grew up with every possible kind of sibling due to multiple marriages in my family.):
“Now we are living with a lot of remarriages and blended families, which is a form of polygamy. You can have ongoing obligations to the children you had by your first partner living in the hut across town, through child support and alimony, and the same obligations to your current family. So in terms of kinship ties, and the economic relations inherent in those kinship ties, we’re no different than a kind of “pre-modern” polygamous society.”
