Cattle consultant Erwin Church is one of South Africa’s greatest stockmen. In this interview with Heather Dugmore, Erwin, now 85, shares some of the knowledge he has gained over a lifetime of cattle. Erwin Church has advised hundreds of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State cattle farmers on farming cattle the right way over six [...]
Llewellyn Maclean is a numbers man. When he goes into a beef venture, he makes sure that the price per kilogram, kilogram per hectare and profit make sense. Farming extensively in the Queenstown/Sterkstroom district with registered and commercial Beefmasters on 3100ha (he owns two-thirds and hires one-third), he has applied an exacting table of data [...]
Processed foods are the commodity group with the highest freight carbon footprint on South Africa’s major road corridors: the Gauteng-Cape Town corridor and the Gauteng-Durban corridor. This is according to data published by WWF-SA in: Low Carbon Frameworks: Transport: Understanding Freight Emissions. ‘Based on this, we commissioned a freight transport model, completed this year, to [...]
The Nguni cattle breed is facing a crisis in which the major feedlots in South Africa are either not accepting Nguni weaners or paying several rand less for them. Why is this happening and what is being done about it? In this feature we speak to Marli Stegmann - the President of the Nguni Cattle [...]
Like a pair of odd shoes, that’s what Braamfontein was to Wits University ten years back. It did not make sense because Braamfontein and Wits are one. Braamfontein is to Wits what Greenwich Village is to New York University or what Bloomsbury and Camden is to the University of London. But the mismatch was real, [...]
He loves Mathematics, sudoku and jogging. He believes that understanding our place in the universe is far more important than the accumulation of material possessions. Meet the new Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, Dr Sizwe Mabizela. If you’re on the streets of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape at 4.30 in the morning, you might see the [...]
They’re young, they’re unskilled, they don’t have jobs, most are not well educated and they are sitting at home not knowing what to do. Lisa Garson has a plan. Lisa Garson graduated from Wits with her BSc in 1989 and BSc Hons in 1990. There are millions of very frightened young South Africans who are [...]
From Chicago to London to Outer Mongolia, Kevin Volans’ classical compositions reach beyond creed, culture or established form. Emanating from a desire for freedom, they orbit the world. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (570BC – 495BC) proposed that the Sun, Moon and all the planets emit their own unique, orbital sounds – known as [...]
When we talk about shale gas mining and fracking, we are not talking about one little well in the middle of the Karoo. We are talking about 60% of South Africa’s land surface being targeted for production. In this feature we journey through almost three years of the shale gas controversy, and question whether this [...]
He was a young god at the top of the world. From New York to London billboards featured the Blade Runner in his Flex-Foot Cheetahs – the carbon fibre legs that carried him to international fame. Nike, Clarins, Oakley, Tag Heuer …the leading brands of the world all wanted a piece of Oscar Pistorius and [...]
