Yolandi Groenewald

When Kaya FM breakfast host Bob Mabena visited the Kruger Park, he thought he would be won over by the roar of lions or the speed of a cheetah. But it was birds that held his attention most. "You know what, I never thought I could go birdwatching," he said. "It is very funny, but I quite enjoyed it."

Well-known artists including Hugh Masekela, Tshepo Tshola, Jabu Khanyile and Busi Mhlongo are furious because a prominent music promoter has not paid them for a concert in Port Elizabeth six months ago. Now their agent, Chissa Artists, has initiated legal action against the promoter to recover the outstanding R200 000.

Angry staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal are squaring up against management over the "unsuccessful" amalgamation of the former universities of Natal (UN) and Durban-Westville (UDW). They say that six months after the merger took effect, they are still working under two different and unequal sets of employment conditions — with former UN staff favoured over the UDW cohort.

Four years ago the beach at Sodwana in northern KwaZulu-Natal could have been mistaken for the Ben Schoeman highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg. Returning from a swim, you had to remember to look left and right before crossing the beach back to your towel. Has banning 4x4s from South Africa’s beaches been a good or bad thing? We investigate the pros and cons.

Grassy Park and Lavender Hill in Cape Town do not usually inspire visions of tranquillity and beauty. These suburbs, situated on the Cape Flats close to Muizenberg, have traditionally struggled with poverty, crime and other social problems. It is the last place you would expect to find the Western Cape’s only population of hippos. Yet smack in the middle of these Cape Flats suburbs you will find one of Cape Town’s jewels, the Rondevlei Nature Reserve.

Public service watchdogs have voiced concerns about Maud Dikgetsi, a woman entrepreneur who built her communications business on Northern Cape government contracts while married to one of the province’s ministers. The case raises further concerns about the growth of "crony capitalism" in South Africa.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67042">’It’s not unethical, it’s just empowerment'</a>

As the row around mining coastal dunes in the Eastern Cape heats up, St Lucia is finally showing returns from choosing nature-based tourism rather than mining. <i>Earthyear</i> looks at the where and how of a R432-million ecotourism investment.

The government’s proposed Risk Equalisation Fund (REF) for medical schemes can only work if it is introduced with a mandatory medical scheme membership, a senior medical scheme official believes. The idea of the REF is to spread the medical schemes’ risk factors across all schemes, with low-risk schemes in effect subsidising high-risk ones.

Despite achieving the best matric results in the country for three years in a row, the Northern Cape is not benefiting from the knowledge of school-leavers in the province. "We are suffering from a massive brain drain," a worried Tina Joemat-Pettersson, provincial minister of education in the Northern Cape, told the <i>M&G</i>. "But we believe that we can turn it around."

South Africa will have to import up to two million tonnes of maize this year to feed its population, largely as a result of drought, said Bully Botma, chairperson of Grain South Africa. South Africans consume five million tonnes of maize a year. Last year the country produced a surplus of 2,2-million tonnes of the grain.

Peter Phillip, the owner of Makulu Makete game farm in the north of Limpopo Province, has been forbidden to use the "g-word". "People have grown so tired of me talking about grass that it has now been reduced to the ‘g-word’," says the former mine magnate turned conservationist. Yolandi Groenewald takes a look.

Luxury lodges earn millions of dollars each year from foreign tourists looking for an exclusive African getaway. The tourism industry is growing into a juggernaut of the South African economy. Yolandi Groenewald takes a look at some of them that are spreading the benefits of tourism beyond their own bulging pockets.

A dumping site is never a pleasant place to visit, but the dumping site of Overstrand in the Western Cape looks more like a holiday resort. In fact, it is not even called a dumping site, but a landfill. The Overstrand community has succeeded in creating a safer, cleaner place for everyone to live in.

Playpumps have made collecting water in many rural areas fun. Children on brightly painted merry-go-rounds make the task easier for thousands of women who walk a long way to a water source. The merry-go-rounds’ action pumps water from an underground source into an overhead reservoir, using a patented South African invention called a playpump.

<b>Finalist – Corporations:</b> Eskom Abalindi Bakery
Life in rural South Africa is not easy for millions of impoverished citizens. Umzinyathi in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal, is no exception. But an investment by the Eskom Development Foundation of more than R200 000 in a local bakery that was struggling to make ends meet has offered the community a ray of hope.

Venda is one of South Africa’s most impoverished regions. Luxury lodges in the bushveld representing the best of Limpopo’s blooming industry appear as unapproachable monuments to the shack-dwelling communities that surround them. But Shiluvari Lodge is helping a nearby community, Elim, to develop skills and encouraging visitors to support the villagers by buying their unique crafts.

Stormsriver Adventures has become one of the largest new job creators in the eco-adventure industry in South Africa. The company only employs locals — all of whome live within a 25km radius of the business. The company also only buys goods from local businesses and has started up a catering project designed to empower women in the region.

Tourism has been touted as a crucial means to empower poor communities. But sadly most disadvantaged communities trying to make a living out of the industry still do not receive their fair share of tourism revenue. Jennifer Seif is an American with a big South African heart who is out to promote fair trade in tourism.

A week of intensive spin-doctoring has failed to settle critical questions facing the biggest and most complex of the tertiary education mergers taking place in South Africa — between the University of South Africa (Unisa), Technikon South Africa (TSA) and Vista University Distance Education Centre.

Investigative journalism is a cornerstone of media practice in a democratic society. Rhodes University is running a course this month that aims to equip prospective investigative journalists with the necessary skills to function in this fraught and competitive area.

After a hard day at work a game ranger heads for home, never knowing if he will reach his family. So says Tim Snow of the Game Rangers Association of Africa, striving to ensure better protection for rangers. In addition to taking on poachers, public ignorance and even aggressive tourists add to the hazards of the job.

South Africa needs its own Robert Mugabe, say squatters in the Hartebeespoort dam area. They are fed up with constant evictions that have forced them to move from one farm to another. They have also threatened to occupy a farm they believe to be owned by President Thabo Mbeki.

Emotions boiled over at a land conference recently, revealing deep rifts in approaches to land reform in South Africa. Heated exchanges also suggested a split in government views on the matter.