Magaliesberg Madness - Van Gaalen's Trail

Last Saturday, whilst people were recovering from their hangovers or getting ready for the Amazing Race, I went for a little wilderness jog at the Van Gaalens farm in Hartbeespoort. There were two races a 20km race that I stayed well away from and a 10km race that I decided to do. The prize giving for all runners was a chicken prego roll. Some very fast people got money.


It was my second trail run and I wanted to see if I had learnt anything from my previous run.

Lessons supposedly learnt:

Lesson 1: Don’t start at the back.

Lesson 2: I am fitter than what I think.

Lesson 3: 9 year olds are extremely fast so don’t let your male ego get to you when one smashes you by 10min.

Lesson 4: Bring your own beer either in a hydration pack or leave it at the finish if you can wait that long.


First thing that I did wrong was start at the back. I thought that since the race was longer than my previous race the people would be a lot fitter. I was wrong. Once again I was stuck trying to get past people on a single track. There was a benefit here; there were some beautiful young ladies that I had to pass. Not the easiest thing to do and it slowed me down a little but I am willing to make some sacrifices. The bloody slow blokes in front of me were just irritating but that was my fault from starting behind them and not their fault.

Second thing that I did wrong was assume that I was relatively fit due to a 5km race I ran previously. The truth is that I AM NOT THAT FIT. There are loads of pictures on the race website of people that look like the course is a breeze and only one picture of a person that looks exhausted and as if he is going to die. The course was covered with photographers and they all took pictures of me. This morning they found it in their hearts to put one of the pictures of me suffering on their website. I did finish in the top 20% so I guess that I am not as bad as I make myself out to be.

What I did learn was how to stay ahead of the 9 year olds. Due to the distances there weren’t any 9 year olds. The other lesson that I learn was to make sure that there were beers at the finish; they opened the bar first thing in the morning. I also went to look for the chef before the race started just to make sure that the chicken breasts for the prego rolls were cooked correctly.

An added attraction to the race is that you can get the family to join you and make a day of it. There are things to entertain the kids like a jungle gym, two old tractors, farm animals and large fields for the kids to run around and play in whilst the adults picnic or eat at the restaurant. My little godson’s highlight was when a helicopter landed on a helipad in front of the farm's restaurant.

Trail running is becoming like a drug, I cannot wait for the next race. Unfortunately I have got a slight tear in my left calf muscle so I am not sure that I will be fit for the next run on the 7th November. Ryan Sands had better look over his shoulder, next year he will have a new challenger.

Sharks, Sharks, Sharks

One of my favourite hobbies is scuba diving, I try to get into the water as often as I can but living in Johannesburg makes it very difficult. My favourite dives are shark dives. I really get a huge kick out of diving with sharks, any sharks.


Don’t get me wrong, I am not a crazy daredevil that is trying to kill himself. Sharks have got a bad reputation because they are misunderstood. I have just watched an episode of “Ultimate Survival” where Bear Grylls was on a raft and some Tiger Sharks came to investigate his raft. He made a big deal about how dangerous they were and how he has to be careful or he could be eaten. Stories like this are what give sharks a bad reputation. Tiger sharks are dangerous and they can kill you but it is very rear. From what I saw in the documentary they were only investigating his raft, since they are curios animals, and in not point was his life in danger. Of course Bear Grylls is a professional and he knows that he is safe so he is just going for some drama in his program but is his warning totally invalid?

No, it is not. He spoke about being careful when you jump into water from your raft without knowing what is around. Last year in June a lady was killed by a White Tipped Oceanic Shark because she saw a huge shadow in the water and dived on top of the shadow to see what it was. The white tip is an aggressive shark but it is safe unless you jump on top of it. So sharks are dangerous if you do stupid things without thinking about the consequences. You have to remember that you are in the shark’s territory and the shark is not in your territory.

I have dived with Zambezi sharks (Bull sharks), Tiger sharks, Black tips, white tips and manta rays. I am not the most experienced but I am very aware of the dangers and I am not going to put myself into a dangerous situation or do something without thinking that will put me into a dangerous situation.

To help me learn about sharks is a group called Sharklife, a NGO that concentrates on protecting sharks. One of the ways that they raise money is with shark awareness. In these courses you learn about sharks, how to identify them, feeding habits, where to find them, etc. To fully qualify in each course you have to dive with the shark that you are studying. You have to study a minimum of 5 sharks and do 30 shark dives to become a master shark diver. These courses are recognized by PADI as specialty dives. The money raised by Sharklife goes towards studying sharks in their natural environment, shark conservation and furthering shark awareness.

We are lucky, in South Africa, that we have three of the best places in the world to dive with various sharks. They are the Protea Banks and Aliwal Shoal on the Kwazulu Natal coast and then Cape Town is a fantastic place to dive with Great Whites, mainly False Bay where you can watch them breach.

My Christmas present to myself this year is to sign up for the Sharklife courses and write about them on this blog. I cannot wait and I am going to be upset if I am not able to get to the coast where I can see the sharks and complete the final part of the various shark qualifications.

The Bang Bang Club

I have recently finished a book about a group of amazing photographers called the Bang Bang Club that worked in a difficult period in South African history. Many people from all over the world have heard about these guys due to the fact that a movie in honour of them is just about to be released. I am sure that is has got a Hollywood twist to it but that doesn’t mean that it will not be good.


The period that they talk about in the book is the 1990 – 1994 period. This was a difficult time for many people all over the world. With the Baltic wars in Europe, the wars in Malawi, Somalia, etc in Africa and there was in the gulf war in the Middle East, it was a time of trial for everyone. But there was also a war that was not that publicised in the rest of the world and that was the one in South Africa.

The entire period was not totally negative for South Africa. There was a huge turn around where the South African white population overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to allow a free election where the whole population can vote. It was a first for South Africa and led to parties like the ANC and PAC allowed back into the country. We also got small and large incentives from the International community who allowed our South African sportsmen back into the international scene, business was promoted in South Africa and foreign companies that had left due to apartheid moved back into the country. All fantastic things but all that were prompted by the same source, a move against racism.

This move was also that led to the war that was spoken about in the book. It was a war that was seen as a battle between the Zulus and the Xhosas but as a matter of fact it was a third force that was the dominant force they used the Zulus under the Inkatha Freedom Party to fight there battles. As a white South African we watched the news and we were told that the reason why there was this battle was because the “Black Savages” were not able to govern themselves and they were returning to their traditional warfare. This is what people from Africa do, or so we were told. They kill each other even though the white people tried to tame them, what a load of hogwash. The liberal parties and the ANC accused the ruling party for sabotaging their freedom and the work that Nelson Mandela was trying to do so we can have a clean election. During the “Truth and Reconciliation” trials that occurred years later we found out that the liberal parties were correct and the National Party, the ruling party, has setup everything and fed arms to the Zulus.

What was I doing during this time? I was just about to finish school and then I had to do my obligatory military service. I am not a brave sole and I didn’t want to join the army to fight against people that were only looking to get their freedom. My family and I believed that a war was going to break out and the ruling party would send all the youngsters into the townships to sort out the problems. Our thoughts were not unfounded, a lot of our older friends were sent in as “Peace Keepers” and some of them did not come back. I was not happy to participate in this battle and die for something that I didn’t believe in so my only other option was to go to prison as a traitor. So I left South Africa and went to live in Italy.

These guys chose a different approach to the conflict; they decided to document it in pictures. The main group consisted of four photographers but it actually included a group far. Unfortunately two of the 4 died right at the end of the hostilities, just as everything was about to end and their dream of a South Africa free from racism was about to start. The amazing thing is that thousands of poor black people died in this battle but Nelson Mandela, once he had agreed and committed to the elections, spoke about the death of Ken Oosterbroek, saying that he doesn’t want to see anymore deaths like his. That shows me two things, the first that these photographers were seen to have made a difference in the struggle and the second that still, to the end of the war, a death of a white man had a bigger sway than that of the thousands of black men, women and children that died.

This last comment of mine can be criticized and torn to pieces and I can understand that. What was amazing about this book is that the writers, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, mention a lot of names of people that took part in the freedom struggle. What I am trying to say is that the photographers remember the sacrifice that was made by the strugglers and they found it very important that they should be remembered. Unfortunately they could not mention every name they heard or every person they met.

I loved the book and I have recommended it to the rest of my family and some of my friends. It is important to know the full South African history, it doesn’t matter what colour, religion and ethnic heritage we are from we are still South Africans and we share one history. There are a lot of young and old that do not believe that what happened actually happened, they believe that it was all just an over exaggeration of the truth or just fabricated by older story tellers but it is a true history.

I spend a lot of time in townships talking and watching people that grew up in this period or that grew up from parents that suffered in this period and were still affected. It is very sad and disturbing but what really amazes me is that a lot of these people have no hatred in them. They see me as just another South African and not as a person of white skin that made their lives difficult, as some of our politicians try to make out. It shows you what an amazing country we have and what an amazing future we have the potential of creating together.






 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
El Club Del Bang Bang (Instantaneas De Una Guerra Encubierta)
The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots From a Hidden War.(Book Review): An article from: African Studies Quarterly

Pictures from Boipatong and Sharpeville



The Bus that we did our street parade in.



A kid that wanted his picture taken before the street parade

The sister of the above little boy

Sweet kids that were waiting for the street parade

A future Springbok running after our bus

Don't worry it is not real

Chicken coop or local home

Amazed by the street parade

Local industry

Local industry

Production of anything but clean air. Power station in Sasolburg

Leeuwkuil Pan

Water coming from Leeuwkuil Pan

Water coming from Leeuwkuil Pan

Street Parade for Jet Nteo, Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup Winners

A trip to Boipatong and Sharpeville

A couple of weeks ago I said that I was going to look into global warming and I have not written anything since. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly I did what I said that I should not do and got lost in all the amazing facts in Wikipedia, second I have been involved in two football tournaments where kids from all backgrounds have a chance to improve their lot in life by playing and doing well in the tournaments. That is the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup and the Danone Nations Cup World Finals.


What I want to talk about is the place that the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup took me to. The winners of this cup are Jet Nteo from a place called Boipatong, a township in a city called Vanderbjilpark which is about 90km from Johannesburg.

Even if you speak to South Africans about Boipatong they will not know what or where you are talking about. Our current captain of the South African Football team was actually born in Boipatong but not many people know that. As a matter of fact I only found that out this weekend. More importantly Boipatong is famous or infamous for something that happened just down the road in a place called Sharpeville.

I went to Boipatong to take part in a street parade to honour the winners of the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup, Jet Nteo, and little did I know that in doing the street parade we would end up driving through Sharpeville. I was not born when the event took place but I learnt all about it at school and it blew my mind. I was brought up in Apartheid South Africa but I never bought the Apartheid and racism legacy.

So what happened in Sharpeville? On the 21st March 1960 about 5000 to 7000 protestors marched on the local police station to protest against South Africa’s Pass Law and the police panicked and opened fire and killed 69 people including 8 women and 10 children. They also wounded 180 people including 31 women and 19 children. This is known as the Sharpeville Massacre or Sharpeville Shooting.

What was the Pass Law? Since the 1920’s the movement of Black people in South Africa was controlled by Passes that Black, and more correctly all non-white people, had to carry around with them. The first time this law was implemented was by Earl Macartney in 1797 to restrict the local black tribes from moving into the Cape Colony but in 1923 the idea reached new levels.

Black people were designated what we called Homelands where they were supposed to have come from. Only people that could prove that they had been born or had lived for more than 10 years in a town could live in the town but only in the townships that were given to them. Many people were moved from the only homes that they knew to these townships. What the pass did was allow you access to White areas for a certain time period and only to certain White areas or if you lived in one of the homelands you could get a pass that allowed you into a town but only for work. These people would live in hostels that were built for them. They were horrible places with bad plumbing, little light and just generally speaking bad living conditions.

A practical example of how it worked is that a Non-White person would live in a township close to a White area, and then during the day they would be able to go into a White area too work, after work they would have to leave and go back to the township. Some of the luckier people had domestic work in the White Suburbs and they were allowed to live in the servant’s quarters on the White person’s property but they were not allowed to be seen after dusk walking the streets.

That is the Pass Law simplified but I am sure that you can imagine how horrific it was. Families were split; people were imprisoned for not having their passes with them or being in the wrong area or being in a certain area at the wrong time of the day etc. It was terrible for the poor people that had to live through it. I can remember when I was small when I saw my grandparents helping their domestic workers (Elsie and Anna) to reapply for their passes. I could not understand why they needed them and how come they were so desperate to get their passes.

There was another part to the pass law. Black people were only allowed to work in positions in companies where they too up a position that was below the lowest level a white person could take in that company. That made sure that white people always had better jobs that black people. Today people complain about the government’s affirmative action scheme but it is far better than the job preservation that the apartheid government had instituted.

What happened in Sharpeville was after many years of resistance to the pass laws. The ANC decided that they were going to march on the 31st March 1960 to protest the pass laws but the PAC thought that the ANC would not win their protest so they held their own protest 10 days earlier than the date set by the ANC. The PAC’s objective was to march on the local police station without their passes and offer themselves up for arrest. Roomers have it that the PAC intimidated local people and forced them to participate in the march. Even though they were coerced into coming to the protest the protest was quite festive.

There are a lot of accounts as too what happened and the truth and reconciliation commission got close to finding out what happened but no one really knows exactly what happened. The story goes that the protest started with 5000 – 7000 people at 10AM but soon the amounts swelled to over 20 000 people. Once the larger group and more disgruntled group arrived the festive mood changed into a more aggressive mood. The local police station felt under pressure and called for reinforcements. About 130 police arrived supported by 4 Saracen armoured cars. The police were armed with Sten sub-machine guns and the crowd were armed with stones. They flew in Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers to try to disperse the crowd but all that happened was that the crowd responded by throwing stones. They managed to hit three policemen and after a while the police tried to arrest a protestor. There was a little bit of a scuffle and the crowd moved in on the police station. The pressure got to the police someone opened fire which sparked fire from other police men. The protestors dispersed as quickly as possible but it was already too late, people had died. Most of the people that were shot were shot in the back trying to flee the slaughter.

The result was a huge international outcry. The shooting was condemned by the UN, on the 1st April the United Nations Security Council passes resolution 134. There were protests in many countries in sympathy of what happened. In South Africa the ANC, PAC and other black groups protested and marched, striked and rioted. Over 18 000 people were arrested when on the 30th March the state declared a state of emergency. The PAC and ANC were banned and what soon happened was that the peaceful marches that had led up to the massacre changed to armed resistance. The ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the PAC formed Poqo, both military divisions. In 1961 South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations.

This was one of many horrific stories of the apartheid era but this one had a huge backlash. The people that died did so pointlessly but I personally believe that they, together with many other people in many other situations, helped lead to the end of apartheid. I believe that they should be honoured as roll models to the young of today because they stood up for their rights. As a matter of fact, today we celebrate the day as Human Rights Day. Now there is a museum that was built in dedication to them. It is something to visit in South Africa.






Sharpeville (A Day That Made History Series)

Shooting at Sharpeville : The Agony of South Africa