Lucky Packet: 11 Stories from South Africa This Week

Everything from unidentified flying objects over Durban’s UFO-like stadium to women taking to the roads of Cape Town – to fix them, no less – to reminiscences about walking the famed “camino” trail across northern Spain, those are a few stories you might not have seen this week.

1. Good grief, green light a UFO?

The week started with a “UFO sighting” above Cape Town, which set off a Twitter buzz a bit like the crazy spaceship-shaped clouds did a few weeks back. While the clouds were fact, the UFO, which also appeared in Johannesburg and Durban, was merely a launch for a new product.

2. Tanzania in the news – for good things.

Only weeks after Tanzania elected a fabulous new president, John Magufuli, who has vowed to clean up corruption and scandal in the country, Forbes Africa named Tanzanian businessman Mo Dewji its person of the year. The industrialist and former MP, the richest person in the country, is said to be worth $1.1 billion. He is also the founder and financier of the Mo Dewji Foundation, a philanthropy that provides scholarships for poor Tanzanian children. He dedicated the award, at the ceremony in Johannesburg, to his employees and the workers on his farms. Dewji beat out South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the chairman of the African Union, and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others.

3. On the camino trail in Spain.

People from around the world walk the famous pilgrimage across the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela every year. So many South Africans do it, in fact, that there has been a Confraternity of Saint James of South Africa since 2006 (Santiago is Spanish for St James). Jean and Marc Degenaar of Somerset West walked 800 kilometres along the “camino” over 31 days in late 2014, and Marc’s picture of Jean in a church in Tardajo won this year’s first prize in the local Camino de Santiago calendar.

“We only had 31 days so did a bit of bussing when we had ailments like tendonitis and Marc had a bit of a tummy bug,” says Jean. “We started in St Jean Pied De Port in France and crossed the Pyrenees the first day. The official end is Santiago de Compostela, but we then took a bus to Muxia on the coast and walked south to Finnesterre with a sleepover in Lires.”

Marc Degenaar’s other photographs from their walk are so spectacular, we got a few of them to show off. If they don’t make you want to walk the camino, nothing will.

4. Muscle up with Cape Town firefighters for 2016.

The City of Cape Town has launched a calendar showcasing 12 of some of the city’s hottest men and women in fire fighting, and proceeds from its sale will help raise funds for The Children’s Hospital Trust, specifically for burn patients. The firefighters are known for their charitable works and often visit the Red Cross Children’s Hospital. Besides the bods, the Hello FireFighters Calendar 2016 is filled with useful tips about fire prevention and staying safe when a blaze occurs.

5. Durban an Art Deco hotspot.

A story from an Architectural Digest earlier this year (but only now coming to our attention) identifies Durban as No. 5 in a list of 10 Great Art Deco Cities in the world. Johannesburg and Cape Town get lots of media for their Art Deco buildings, but now it’s time for Durban to shine. AD said that the coastal cities Art Deco treasures include the Colonial Mutual Building on West Street “that contains what might be the only Art Deco antelopes in the world”.

6. Winging it to the Cape and Zanzibar.

A direct flight from Gatwick to Cape Town starts this month (and runs until at least 2017) with Thomas Cook Airlines. Christoph Debus, chief airlines and hotels officer for Thomas Cook, was quoted as saying: “Cape Town really is a wow destination for our customers.” At the same time, low-cost pan-African airline fastjet starts flying between Johannesburg and Zanzibar from January 2016.

7. Raging – with heart – in Plett.

Last Friday, some 9,000 school leavers from across the country arrived in Plettenberg Bay for the official opening of the 10-day festival known as Plett Rage. At least another 6,000 were expected to join them. Even though the kids are aiming to have a good time, for the past four years the town has also had a programme going on at the same time called the Rage 4 Good, which focuses on uplifting the town’s youth. “It also seeks to inculcate a sense of social responsibility in the youth attending Plett Rage,” Nicola Probyn of Firecracker, the initiative’s marketing agency, was quoted as saying.

8. Love me, love my dog.

The National Council for SPCAs highlighted an extremely gruesome video showing pitbulls being used for dog fights in South Africa, often to the death, which, though illegal, they say has become a huge problem. In this case a young female was chained and dragged around, her mouth duct-taped closed. (The dog apparently died.) Last week the accused in an Atteridgeville dog-fighting case reportedly did not show up for sentencing, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. The NSPCA post of dog-fighting comes at the same time as its campaign that “ABUSE leads to ABUSE leads to ABUSE”. If people abuse animals, the organisation says, they probably abuse women and children too.

9. Trevor Noah on Abuse – Almost.

Talking of abuse, Trevor Noah reportedly wanted to use “The Daily Show” as a platform to raise the issue of domestic abuse by scheduling R&B singer Chris Brown (infamous for allegedly beating up then girlfriend Rihanna) as a guest. One report this week said, “While many staffers (at The Daily Show) disapproved of the booking decision, Noah allegedly hoped to use the interview to bring light to domestic abuse issues. Our sources confirmed that Noah brought up such a possibility during an all-hands meeting on Monday afternoon.” In the end, Brown was replaced by another guest, apparently because staff members felt Noah would not be able to handle the tough subject head-on the way his predecessor Jon Stewart would have.

10. Equality on the roads for women.

Cape Town’s transport authority has appointed an all-women six-member team to do maintenance work on roads, footways and stormwater pipes in the Southern Peninsula. They follow the first all-women team which was appointed in Ndabeni in August in celebration of Women’s Month. “The 12 women are the pioneers of a long-term process whereby the City is tackling gender transformation and the empowerment of women in the workplace,” said Councillor Brett Herron in a statement. “I am confident that this project … will assist us over time in changing perceptions about the type of work women can do.”

11. Zombies in the city?

The popular US TV series “iZombie” has an upcoming episode titled “Cape Town”. It’s a pivotal episode for characters Liv, Ravi and Detective Babineaux apparently, being the midseason finale in the series’ second year. Try as we might, however, we couldn’t find out what the connection was to the city or even if there was a connection at all. The show airs 8 December on the CW channel, so anyone overseas who gets the CW, let us know what the connection to Cape Town is.

http://youtu.be/tOTl6TydvJU