The first Protected Environment in the Karoo, Eastern Cape, has been proclaimed. Called the Compassberg Protected Environment it is a critical water catchment area spanning 42 000 hectares of livestock and game farms, and including the iconic Compassberg. […]
The 1970s at Wits were a time of mass meetings, all-night vigils, marches, arrests and security police spies. The decade ushered in the June 16 uprisings and the era of Africanisation, when the SRC and the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) took a long, hard look at what it meant to be South [...]
“They’re taking over the world!” a resident from the country town of Middelburg in the Karoo stopped me outside the ‘Chinese shop’. She was whispering but it was more like a shout. “Look!” she said. I looked and I saw a bunch of Chinese people offloading a truckload of stuff and carrying it into the [...]
The new BIG BROTHER who is watching you is the giant electronic eye on the world. This not only includes online criminals and internet fraud, but also an expanding network of as yet non-criminalised activities, including pervasive forms of surveillance, such as cameras in retail stores and microchips in garments that can track your every [...]
Too much rest damages the veld and only intense livestock hoof action can restore vegetation and reverse the effects of desertification, a major cause of climate change. Four decades since he gave his first course on holistic farming in South Africa, holistic management pioneer Allan Savory returned to Graaff-Reinet for a three-day workshop. Heather Dugmore [...]
The ultimate prestige gift amongst wealthy Vietnamese who wish to curry favour with influential politicians and businesspeople is a rhino horn hangover cure. The powdered horn, priced at several thousand dollars for a few grams is packaged in an ornate little casket and presented with pride. […]
Farmers, communities, environmental organisations, geologists and water specialists are up in arms about global energy and petrochemical company Shell’s application to explore for shale gas over 90 000km2 in the water-stressed Karoo. The proposed exploration method, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, involves drilling boreholes 4-5km deep, followed by the introduction of a mixture of chemicals, [...]
Ronnie Apteker has not slept. He went to bed at three am and was up at five. That’s normal for this Wits alumnus (MSc 1994 cum laude) who describes himself as a nerd and who was one of the founders of Internet Solutions in 1993. […]
The unprecedented ‘land grab’ for mining in South Africa poses a direct threat to the headwaters of the Vaal, Tugela, Usuthu and Pongola river systems. This key water production area spanning the high altitude grasslands between KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalanga and the Free State, provides clean, potable water for Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal, including several [...]
Johann Zietsman offers 25 years of sustainable cattle production to show South African cattle farmers how to double, triple or quadruple their cattle numbers while improving the quality of their veld. […]
