Category Archives: South Africa

Underwhelming ticket sales? Not when it comes to finding Accommodation

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Finally had time to start booking accommodation today. I immediately regretted taking nearly two months to start looking. I was definitely not expecting such long term planning by those who had partaken in the ticket process. For months, I had heard anecdotes of people who had turned back tickets or who did not know how they would get to South Africa. This definitely lulled me into false sense of having no urgency in booking places to stay.

That sense was reset today as Alisa and I went down the list of backpackers and hostels and Bed & Breakfasts in the areas located near in the host cities (Rustenburg, Joburg, Bloemfontein, and Pretoria). Granted it was only one day, and I have been able to map out our first 10 days, it is no where near as affordable as we had once thought. I had figured 50 USD per day including food, but we are looking are more like R450 (60 bucks) only on lodging. This is going to significantly impact our budge, but seeing as its only a 16 day stretch that we need to be near match locations, hopefully we can balance it out by staying at some lower end places later on our trip. Many of the more affordable places were predicably already booked, so we’re having to go more midrange, but even that doesn’t help considering most places are raising their rates by 400%. I knew rates would be higher than when we were there in 2007, but this is quite the extreme. We can only hope that rates will come back down once the world leaves ZA in mid July.

In more uplifting news, we got a great rate on a car for a 15 day period between the 10th and the 25th. We went through Tempest Car Hire, who far and away had the best rates. Seeing as Alisa, nor I, have much experience driving with an automatic (our ‘privileged’ upbringing playing a part), we decided to simply stick with an automatic, and we were able to secure a Toyota Corrolla (or like model) for less than 1,000 USD for that period (R6300 to be exact). A significant amount of coin, but this is the most critical period for getting around, and not making it to a match because of transportation delays would simply make any money we saved worthless in the end. If you’re looking for a car hire in South Africa, definitely check those guys out. We looked at Avis, Thrifty, Aroundabout, Budget (who require international drivers licences), Imperial/Europcar, Kenning, Kulula, and 1First. Europcar was the closest by R500.

We’ll be sure to let you know the service and support that they offer for their discounted rates.

Hopefully tomorrow will see finalizations on the lodging part as Alisa and I are waiting for South Africans to wake up right about now and start writing us back….

2010 – Year of African Football

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Since the World Cup in Germany in 2006 concluded, I have had South Africa on my radar as the place I want to be in 2010.

Since graduating from UC San Diego, in my free time that I haven’t been interning, I have refereed over 250 youth and adult soccer games in an attempt to save up enough to fund my the expenses that a return to South Africa and the events of a World Cup would entail.

The football calendar in 2009-2010 has been packed with major tournaments taking place all over the African continent. First, the U-20 World Cup in Egpyt followed by the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria produced exciting football and two new world champions in Ghana and Switzerland respectfully. The African Cup of Nations picked up in Angola at the beginning of the 2010 calender year, starting off with the attack on the Togolese football team, who inexplicably traveled by coach, were attack in the enclave of Cabinda, where a civil war as not concluded. Why Angola thought that Cabinda was sutiable for matches, and why CAF allowed this site selection still has not been explained. The tournament ended with Egypt cementing their status as a legendary team with a third consecutive championship (oddly though, this team has yet to qualify for the two World Cup during is era of dominance).

When FIFA told me that my application for tickets came through with all 5 games that I requested, the pieces started to fall in piece.

Now the plane tickets are booked, the task of planning out the trip pre- and post- World Cup begins. As the three weeks that I have tickets for during the tournament writes its own itinerary, the 2 weeks before and after have to be planned to make sure that our time is best spent getting to where we want to be.

The first match starts in Rustenburg on 12 June, where the US will play England in their opening match of Group C. Then it is on to Johannesburg for the match against Slovenia 6 days later. We head down the N1 to Bloemfontein for South Africa’s final group match against France on the 22nd, then straight back up the N1 to Pretoria where the US will play Algeria 24 hours later. Finally, we have tickets to the Second Round game back in Bloemfontein on the 27th, where if the US finishes second in their group, they will meet the winner from Group D (Like Germany, but could be Serbia, Australia, or Ghana). If the US finishes top of the group, or does not advance, obviously that game would not mean as much, but considering my previous ties to England and Slovenia where I spent significant time growing up, it would not be a loss to go to that match to cheer them on instead.

Time is fast approaching to arrange for accommodation and travel during the tournament. It will be curious to see if it is as tourist filled and as crazy as some predict or whether it will be a bust as some naysayers are predicting. I have been surprised to read how many people who won tickets in the lottery subsequently will not go to SA due to cost of travel. Alisa and I have no intention at staying at hotels during our time in SA if it can be avoided, thus hopefully escaping the heightened prices that established places will be set to charge unknowing visitors. However, planning in advanvce at the places that we frequented on our previous jaunts around Southern Africa has proved best when done weeks in advance, not many months. Thus our planning does not have the same urgency as one who needs to book nice hotel reservations months in advance. Though, we do need to sit and plan where we want to be and how to get from place to place.

Could Green Be the Color of the Future for Africa?

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Special Report – Business of Green – Leading Africans to Responsible Recycling – NYTimes.com

This interesting article should be seen as the way forward to many African economies. I think its quite odd that African industry should be expected to develop in the same way as European and American industry came of age during the Industrial Revolution. African economics need to find areas of the market that North America and Europe have either no desire or no substantial lead in those sectors and to exploit it to their advantage.

I’m sure the image of using Africa as the dumping ground for computer and electronics parts is not one that African tourism industries want to promote. But what if Africa became the worldwide leader in recycling electronics? The continent would be able to carve out a niche in the global market that is in high demand. Obviously, countries like South Africa and Nigeria have a leg up on the competition due to their substantial infrastructure, and they should put the pedal down and encourage more high potential growth industries to establish hubs in their country. Again the image of black Africans managing and working in a recycling plant that takes the West’s junk and turns it back around and ships it back might not be an image that is welcome. But it would provide jobs, would provide a endless stream of products, and has a solid long-term future. Can anyone imagine a world without electronics, or their rubbish? Someone will have to be willing to collect and destroy or recycle the parts, why not Africa?

The way out of poverty for the continent is each country to exploit markets that are currently considered small, but necessary. Matthew McConaughey’s movie Sahara, where the villans are running a disposal plant in Mali that can vaporize toxic/nuclear waste by harnessing solar power immediately springs to mind. The problem in the movie is that while storing the toxins as they wait for disposal there has been leakage into the underground water system. But the concept of a waste disposal system is ingenious. And while no one might necessarily set out to tell all the toxic waste producers in the world to ship them their barrels of sludge, think about how profitable a recycling/disposal plant like that would be. Factor in the shipping costs, the taxes payed on the profits, the high-tech/green jobs that would be created and you would have an industry that could be highly profitable for the private corporation and the country. Granted the investment in such technology would not be local, and the highly trained scientists might not be originally local, but that shouldn’t be a reason for dismissing the concept. Importing overseas talent would be a temporary measure as the nation’s government can then make an investment (through the tax proceeds of the new industry) in their country’s technical institutions to produce the scientists and technical hands to replace the expatriates that start out working at the plant. 

Thomas Friedman is one of the loudest voices pushing for a green revolution, and if he is to be believed ‘green’ industry is the next big thing. Hydroelectric power from the Congo, solar power from the Sahara, recycling plants in South Africa could be all part of an industry that could be led by those on the African continent. Creating that monopoly on green industry could inspire a new century of growth that would see the continent become an equal of the industrial north. The symbiotic relationship that could be created would be sustainable for both north and south economies, and just as important, for the planet.

High level of AIDS myth in Recent Study Caused by Zuma – Zille

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Zille blames Zuma for Aids myth – Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source.

Not quite sure why this lady is continueing to attack Zuma and the ANC. She brought the full brunt of the ANC and ANCYL on her when she said he put his wives at risk for HIV/AIDS (which no one seemed to think is a given seeing as he has had sex with an HIV+ women and presumably continues to have sex with his wives), but now Zille is using a new study by the University of Stellenbosch that 27% of those youth survey believed  “they could prevent HIV infection if they bathed after sex”. 

I have to admit that during my time in South Africa, I would never have guessed that 1 in 4 youths believed such a myth. Perhaps it was because I was in a university setting that filtered out some beliefs, but this has to be a shocking finding to those in the Health Industry and HIV/AIDS groups. 

This Zuma-slant seems to be a reoccurring problem with the DA’s tactics at the moment. They start fights and say things in interviews that they know will get the ANC’s attention and cause a backlash. This carries over from the campaign of ‘Stop Zuma’. The DA needs to quickly get over that mindset and start to function as a proper opposition or they’ll soon alienate all those people they seek to win votes from.

Instead of going after Zuma over the wives stuff, the DA should be showing that the example that Zuma sets on HIV/AIDS does indeed filter down to the young people of the country. But now the debate is going to be construed in a Zille-Zuma fight and not about the real issue of education people on protection from HIV/AIDS. This also has to surprise people who believed that since the era of AIDS denialism in South Africa that significant progress had been made. The study shows that much more is needed in terms of broad public education, as people in university would see AIDS myths exposed, students that are not fortunate enough to get into that academic setting must be targeted by the education campaigns.