Only in South Africa » Living in SA

Parking Pay Station

Pascal Parent — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:23:05 +0000

This photo was taken at “The Glen Shopping Centre”, my question is how do I pay the 6 Rand (close to $1) for the parking?

Unfortunately, in South Africa, you are often expected to pay for parking anywhere you go. This is to supposedly secure your vehicle and content, though I am unsure of that. The problem is that pay stations are either missing or not maintained, so you end up running around to either find one that works or going to the management office to be able to get out. I already find it a rip off as the shops pay a levy (often linked to their turnover) for this but to also make me loose time is the bitter pill on top. Unfortunately, the practice of payable parking at shopping malls has widely been adopted around the country so going to another shopping mall does not help.

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Tolerance in South Africa

Pascal Parent — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:01:15 +0000

As I have written in the past, we have some serious issues in South Africa, but I suppose this applies to any country worldwide.

In this case I am going to focus on what I personally encounter every day while driving.

Our (South African) taxi industry, for those of you that are thinking “yellow cab”, it’s not that kind of taxi. These are minibus type taxis (Toyota Quantum Ses’fikile) usually capable of taking from 10 passengers upwards, most commonly 16 at a time..

In recent years, this industry has become more demanding and capricious, in fact I would offer the opinion that at this stage they have little if no regard for the law or any other vehicles on road.

Since actions to prevent this or even curb it are not evident, the lack of action would seem to suggest that the South African government merely bows to their demands. The latest tabled demand is the cancellation of the demerit “point” system as implemented in other parts of the world.

The case made by the Taxi Associations and drivers is that this will cause a large job loss and I can only agree. They drive so badly that within a month few will have a valid drivers license. (See here and here)

The bottom line is the South African taxis are a danger to all that drive on South African road. Considering that as all South Africans are aware of the dangers that the Taxi Drivers pose, I was disgusted that MTN, one of our mobile operators, has leveraged from this on a advertising campaign on one of our main highways and even more so that nobody seems to care about the Taxi’s or supporting this clear and present danger on our roads.

Does this mean that we have given up? That we will continue to tolerate or accept such behaviour? I pay taxes and toll road fees. I know that I certainly will not.

[Editor’s note: The article was edited by the ever diligent Michelle Ashburner after publishing]

South Africans You Should Meet

Pascal Parent — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 13:56:14 +0000

It’s not every day that a friend come “online”, even less so when it is as ambitious as a podcast. Michelle Ashburner, someone I consider being a good friend, has just done that.

In her own words about South Africans You Should Meet:

Welcome… and we’re South African!

This forum is about South Africans who are doing amazing or wierd, funky?, different, world-rockin’ or breath-holding things.

So if you know a South African, anywhere in the world, that is doing anything amazing or different that we can all be proud of, think about or support or there is a South African you would like to meet – then let me know, I would love to interview them and shout it out from the top of the Milky Way of the World Wide Web.

Proudly South African
Michelle Ashburner

Michelle I wish you the best from a proud South African, I can’t wait for the first instalment and may there be many in the future.

You can go over to http://www.southafricansyoushouldmeet.com/ for more information.

Airport, Airlines and boredom

Pascal Parent — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:05:06 +0000

Here I am in the mother city, I have been here for work for 2 days now and returning home. Here is how my trip began…

Wednesday, I arrive at O.R.Tambo International Airport (a.k.a. Johannesburg International Airport) bright and early to avoid the morning traffic, both on the road and in the airport. I took 30 minutes to check in in the fast line, then a further 20 minutes to get to the boarding gate. All in all, I was lucky that I got to the airport early. The story unfortunately does not stop here… I got to the gate 5 minutes before it opened, only to find out that the flight was delayed by 15 to 20 minutes, no reason given. After 30 minutes, we were told that the flight was delayed indefinitively… I stuck around, some 20 minutes after we were told of the further delay we finally boarded, only to wait another 30 minutes on the plane. Total delay 1 hour and 10 minutes, like I did not have other things to do.

On arrival at cape Town International Airport, I go to pick up my rental car, only to find it heavily scratched and no reports on the rental agreement, I wasted another 30 minutes at this… Got to my client and worked all day, that went relatively well, considering. From there I left to my hotel, only to discover that it was along one of the national highway, the busiest of Cape Town.

During the night came past ambulances, police, racing cars, … And then the weather, the wind howling very loudly, it awoke me, followed by the noisiest rain I can remember in years. Needless to say I eventually woke up well un-rested and with a headache. I got to my client bright and early, 7:15 to be exact and today was a good day, I wish I could have more of those. Until…

I got to Cape Town International Airport, dropped off my rental car without an itch, I was feeling good. Went to check min, no queue, no hassles, a perfect transition. And then… The check-in lady tells me, your fight has been delayed by an hour…

Well Kulula.com you should get your house in order.

Edit Note: The delay on my return to Johannesburg was caused by a serious thunderstorm over the Gauteng region causing the authorities to close the airport for safety reasons.

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Shout for a safer South Africa

Pascal Parent — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:10:49 +0000

As you know I don’t often deviate from photography on this blog, but from time to time there is something to, well, shout about and this is the case. Head over to Shout for a safer South Africa, an initiative to create awareness around the raising criminality and raise funds to combat it. They currently only accept SMS donation for the song in return but you will also be able to download it for a R20 from their website as of next week. Now when you consider that a downloadable song will cost you R10 the donation is really cheap. There are comments on YouTube that you can downloaded it for free from YouTube but then is that not defeating the purpose and joining the criminal element?

I want to thank to Danny K, Kabelo Mabalane and the other 37 great South African artists that made this possible, a good idea for a good cause. And if you worried about where your money is going go to Shout for a safer South Africa and click on the question mark icon on the left and check out the sponsors.

For a united, crime free South Africa, let’s Shout!!!

Mail and Guardian injects some humour every day.

Pascal Parent — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:14:21 +0000

Mail and Guardian has launched ZA News a daily satiric and funny look at the South African news of the day.

Thank you Mail and Guardian for making me laugh.

Rea vaya Bus Rapid Transit System a step in the right direction?

Rea vaya Bus Rapid Transit System a step in the right direction?

Pascal Parent — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:05:46 +0000

It’s not every day that I blog about news, in fact I have tried to avoid it since the re-launch of “Only in South Africa” and focus, on puns intended, on photography. There are days I feel like sharing thoughts and today the urge has won over my better judgment.

Rea vaya Bus Rapid Transit System is most probably one of the cornerstone of a new era in a dismal, near non-existent public transport in South Africa, in theory it is a cheap, fast, safe and reliable means of transportation to and from major population centres. The first of these was launched today between Johannesburg and Soweto and thus creating a new way to travel between home and work that has been monopolised by the local communal taxi industry. An industry who believes itself above the law and whom government has done nothing against until today.

In short, Rea vaya Bus Rapid Transit System is probably the most significant project towards a safer South African urban road network ever.

Freedom of speech

Pascal Parent — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:02:17 +0000

Nanado’s Chickenland has released a new ad in South Africa just before the elections, using Julius Malema, the president of the ANC Youth League, as a cornerstone.

The ANC Youth League proceeded to order the Ad removed from both television and radio saying it was derogatory, see links bellow for more info. Julius, if you want to be a public figure get used to it! It’s not racism or derogatory, it’s a fact of life in a true democracy! Look at France they have a program called “Les Guignols” and they hold no punches, we owe to learn to laugh at our selves too, that includes the ANC senior members and any other public figures.

Links:

Now bring back Zapiro’s controversial puppet show Z-News, which was commissioned by the SABC.

Viva Nandos Viva.

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Election 2009

Pascal Parent — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:04:00 +0000

The South African elections are happening on the 22nd of this month, literally around the corner.

And here are my thoughts on the parties and candidates.

African National Congress [http://www.anc.org.za/]

Possibly the largest party in South Africa lead by Jacob Zuma.

The ANC has not learned that they should die, like all other parties of the Apartheid days. Additionally to that it’s leader is against everything I stand for freedom of speech, true multi racial co-operation and justice to state but a few. It’s leadership is corrupt to the core and only worries about it’s wallet and not ending up in jail. Their statement is anything but vague: “Working together we can do more”, more corruption, more rape, more crime, more destruction? They have a simple message to the people of South Africa “Do as we say, not as we do”, to me that is unacceptable from any leadership. They will never get my vote.

Congress of the People [http://www.congressofthepeople.org.za/]

Though an off shoot of the ANC, COPE could very well become the largest party in South Africa, lead by Mosiuoa Lekota.

If I had to describe COPE I would say it’s the new and better ANC, it’s members are generally far more upstanding and it’s policies make sense. having say all of that they have a long road ahead of them and they need to prove themselves. In short they will not get my vote.

Democratic Alliance [http://www.da.org.za/]

Originally made up of various parties now amalgamated into one, led by Helen Zille.

The DA, once described as the only true opposition to the ANC, has become one of the moral compass of South Africa, the second largest party has proven itself as a formidable contender to the presidency with a good track record to boot. They have the right agenda and attitude, one of the only truly multi racial party of South Africa led by a lady of steal. With a statment like “One Nation, One future” and “Stop Zuma” they are on the right track. A good contender for my vote.

Independent Democrats [http://www.id.org.za/]

A small but powerful party led by Patricia De Lille.

They are not the biggest, they are not the best but everyone needs a puddle and that is exactly what the ID is, they are the noisiest bunch and they get results. I think that in time the ID will have a serious future but not yet. I like what they stand for but they are too small and have no track record to speak of. Their statement make perfect sense to me “Be part of the solution”. Maybe a good contender in years to come.

South African Communist Party [http://www.sacp.org.za/]

They did not get the memo, Communism is dead. Besides, they are telling people to vote for the ANC. The assumption is the are dead as a party. no further comments.

UDM [http://www.udm2009elections.co.za]

Around since 1994 led by Bantu Holomisa.

i like the UDM like I like cute cats, their statement “Now it’s time for all South Africans” makes a whole lot of sense, why he has not joined forces with the ID or the DA is beyond my comprehension but I still wish them luck. Unfortunately far too small to be a contender.

Freedom Front Plus [http://www.vryheidsfront.co.za]

A nearly Afrikaans whites only party led by Dr. Pieter Mulder

Why this kind of party still exists in South Africa I will never understand.

Inkatha Freedom Party [http://www.ifp.org.za/]

Like the ANC the IFP is one of the Apartheid days relic and should just die like the Apartheid itself.

There are more small parties you can find a list on the IEC’s website [http://www.elections.org.za/] but the one listed here are some of the larger and best known ones.

Things found in the bathtub

Pascal Parent — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:05:04 +0000

I have been living for about 6 years in my house and have found various crawling and flying insects and spiders in my bathtub but today took the awards. I must first explain to you that I live next to a conservation area, the advantages are great as I have a rather large bird life living nearby. Living in Africa has it’s challenges though, even when you live in a city such as Johannesburg, a first world city of grand proportions. So let me introduce the visitor to my bathtub, how it got there is a mystery, but it did.

Mr Scorpion, about 3cm in length. I caught it and released it back in the wild.

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Bandwidth in South Africa – Part 2 – Usage

Pascal Parent — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:22:16 +0000

In Bandwidth in South Africa – Part 1 – Cost I discussed the cost implications of the consumer internet and as we saw it did not come cheap. In this part I will be discussing the usage trends. It took awhile to get the statistics and I can safely say that they represent a reality that I was not ready for, see Number of Users bellow.

74% of the South African users are still using dialup! And a further 24% uses ADSL 384, I unfortunately could not get the 3G, Neotel and Fixed Line usage at the time of writing. Now let us move to ADSL CAP usage.

46% of the users use 1GB or less, no doubt due to the costs involved. I was troubled by those statistics and enquired further to no avail.

The point I am trying to make with these statistics is two fold:

The challenges of writing web application in an environment such as this goes far beyond just writing code to get the site to work but adds a dimension of careful optimisation of traffic between the browser and the server in all respects caused by both the speed and cap of the link.
Is this symptomatic or can this be fixed by the landing of new cables in South Africa, will bandwidth and cap prices go down to a reasonable and reachable price? Our friends at mybroadband.co.za think so. I am sceptical and will stick with the my first statement, optimise!

Eyewitness News: New survey: ANC members think Zuma is guilty

Pascal Parent — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:17:33 +0000

A new survey shows less than half of African National Congress supporters think party president Jacob Zuma is innocent of corruption.

I read this and I have a simple question to ask, why is he put forward as a candidate for the presidency and why is he the President of the ANC? Seriously?

Eyewitness News: New survey: ANC members think Zuma is guilty

Election 2009

Bandwidth in South Africa – Part 1 – Cost

Pascal Parent — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:17:28 +0000

I am a Web Application Developer based in Johannesburg, South Africa and I have written about optimising the ASP.NET generated HTML more than once. I thought it would be appropriate to explain what I mean when I refer to the South African bandwidth environment. The answer comes in two parts, firstly the cost of bandwidth in South Africa and second the availability of internet access in South Africa. Let me tackle each separately.

The cost of bandwidth in South Africa

Firstly, the sake of simplicity I will assume a cost of $1 at R10.00, which will be close enough to reality to be acceptable.

There are a few ways that one can connect to the Internet in South Africa, none are cheap. Let me list a few:

Dial-up, yes this is still a very popular way to connect to a service provider but is very limited in bandwidth but one of the cheaper options, starting at R79 per month plus call time.
GPRS through a GSM phone, mobile but also at a cool R2/Mb outside a data bundle.
ADSL, a sore point in this country as Telkom SA has the only network that supports it, a monopoly of grand proportion. A 1Gb/Month will cost R145 plus the ADSL rental from a cool R152 per month for a 384kbps amounting to R297, it is worthy to note that there are fully inclusive offers that are cheaper at R199. It is also worthy to note that if you do not use the full allocated bandwidth given by the contract, it will be lost at the end of the month, so if one has used 500Mb the remainder 500Mb will be lost on the last day of the month, I call it theft but there is very little we can do.
iBurst, offers iBurst wireless from R49/Month for 40Mb at speeds up to 1Mbps, if you can get their signal.
3G/HSDPA is offered by all South African mobile operators and even Telkom at a cool R2/Mb or on contracts from R179/Month for 350Mb and can achieve 1.8Mbps.
WiMax, offers from 64kbps but prices are generally not published so far.
Neotel’s, our 2nd fixed line operator, offers look good from R399 including Voice, 2.5Gb data, device and more. But more than that an extra Mb will cost R0.08 but they have a small foot print and do not operate everywhere yet.

Most of the above comes with a device (modem, router or other) that is calculated in the price over 12 or 24 months.

To wrap this off, there is no cheap way to access the Internet from South Africa but to compound the problem there is currently only one international bandwidth supplier in South Africa, Telkom SA, this will be changing in a few months but will it help? I’ll talk about that in Part 2.

For more information and news go to http://mybroadband.co.za

The Global Financial Crisis and South Africa

Pascal Parent — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:26:47 +0000

Has the Global Financial Crisis affected South Africa and what are the visible impacts from a man on the streets point of view?

Disclaimer: Let me be clear that I am no financial guru, everything stated in this blog entry is from observations around me and what I can deduce from it. This is therefore an opinion that I wish to share and nothing more and does not reflect the opinions of others.

I have been tracking the effects of the “Global Financial Crisis” with interest as this may impact on my wife’s job or mine, my wife being in the inbound tourism industry would be more likely to affect her than me as I am in the IT industry. Never the less, how bad are the effects on South Africans?

To be honest, so far I can only see the over-reaction of many South African based companies, whom are retrenching or streamlining as they like to call it.

As I see it,the petrol price is about half of what it was a year ago at R5.9470 since the 4th of February 2008, and the prime interest rate at 14.00%, a far cry from it’s 24.50% peak of October of 1998 and it is expected to go further down. However, Mr. Tito Mboweni has been very conservative and in my opinion even destructive. He uses the interest rate to curb loans and spending as well as inflation to the point where many have lost their houses and cars as a result. More to the point, most companies make loans to buy the equipment they need, the rates go up and the cost of doing business goes up with it, thus driving prices higher and raising the inflation or is my layman point of view too simplistic? I just sounds logical to me.

Let me point out that regarding the irresponsible borrowing of the vast majority of South Africans was seriously curbed by the National Credit Act (NCA), I believe that was a very good step forward and may have saved us from the fate of the USA and Europe’s banking sectors and resultant financial crisis. However , I must reiterate that I think that the high interest rates hurts us badly in all other sectors.

Additionally, the fall of the Rand, now at around R10.00/USD and volatile at best, imported goods have seen a sharp increase as well as having pushed the petrol price up this must have affected our inflation, this however should help our exports and tourism greatly but will it be enough to counter balance the negative effects?

Now I hear that the consumer price index’s basket is to changed because it’s not correct, not that I understand what a consumer price index is, but I know it’s used to calculate the inflation which in turn affects the financial decision making, including but not limited to the interest rate. Now if the basket is wrong, how long has it been wrong for and how has it negatively affected us?

In short, at this time with the national elections coming up on April 22, a monetary policy committee that bases it’s decision wrong data and a government incapable of making decisions outside their own personal interest, who knows how badly we will be affected?

So far, very little else then pre-emptive measures but truthfully we are part of a world economy.

The world and South Africa is currently in the worst economic slowdown since the 2^nd World War. Although the SA Economy is faring better than expected, high interest rates and debt has resulted in consumers and companies reviewing discretionary spending. – Andre Joubert, General manager MWEB Business

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Johannesburg road block

Pascal Parent — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:06:11 +0000

I am far from objecting to road blocks, I believe that it’s better law enforcement than a speed trap, however there is a place and a time for these to happen.

These photographs where taken yesterday at about 17:30 on Barry Herzog Road in Johannesburg, unfortunately on my way home. Let me explain why I was not happy, the biggest culprit on South African roads are the communal taxis, these are “mini-vans” carrying from 7 to 24 passenger at a time and represent the largest part of our “public” transport. These are privately owned and often not healthy enough to carry anything what so ever. The South African government has been trying to regulate the industry with little success. the bottom line is these taxi drivers think that an oncoming lane is a reserved taxi lane as seen here and the pavement is used to bypass traffic. My question then is why a Police Road Block on a busy main road at home time? Do you see a mini-van being stopped? I sure did not.

Location:

Sport fans in Johannesburg

Pascal Parent — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:58:44 +0000

Sports and advertising are two things that go hand in hand but check these 2 Johannesburg buildings out!

First is the Auto & General building at the corner of Empire and Barry Hertzog Avenue in Richmond for the Super 14. They are the sponsors of the Lion Rugby Team but I’d go further to say they are also BIG fans!

Definitively sponsored by MTN who are official sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. This building is located in De Korte street in Braamfontein.

Registering for the 2009 Elections

Pascal Parent — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:19:46 +0000

Yesterday, my wife and I went to register for the 2009 Provincial and national Elections. I was rather disappointed with the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission).

Firstly their website (http://www.elections.org.za) is an outright mess, it doesn’t work most of the time and when it does is too slow. Additionally, the search is near incomprehensible and does not return any valuable information. So I decided to phone them, what a mistake! Incompetence does not even come close, I had to spell my suburb 4 times and they did not find it! So the constituency database is also incomplete. Eventually I got an approximate address of a registration station, we are now 20 minutes into the call. I suppose miracles do happen. Now, one would expect signs from the main road indicating where the registration station is located, that was too much to ask as well. I took a few photos of the station just for you, it’s the Mondeor Recreation Hall, nothing wrong with the hall just look at the signs. And we want to host the 2010 FIFA world cup? This country’s leadership owe to wake up before it’s too late! I am generally the first to defend this country but this is far from acceptable for a first call country like ours.

Snow, Frost and Johannesburg…

Pascal Parent — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:57:58 +0000

Yesterday was a cold day, Johannesburg woke up to a white cover in the form of snow. Yes the largest city in Africa for it’s altitude (1600m above sea level) was covered with white fluffy powder for the first time in 25 years. I will post some photos in the next couple of days.

Than came this morning, I had no illusions that I would see snow again, but I woke up to a sight not seen often either, Johannesburg was covered in white again this time in the form of frost add to that an eery fog and you have the perfect start of a horror story…

Till next time.

Photos available here.

Sport fans in Johannesburg

Comet McNaught

Pascal Parent — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:57:58 +0000

I got a call today from Julian and got on talking about this and that. To cut a long story short, he asked me if I had seen the comet. It has been rather cloudy so a lot of people seem to have missed it. But I have seen "Comet McNaught" and so here are a couple of photos just for Julian.

For more info go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_McNaught and there are a few nice photos on http://skytonight.com/community/gallery/skyevents/5129766.html

Sport fans in Johannesburg