Wild Coast

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence- it is a force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

"Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it."

~George Washington

SPECIAL ALERT!

Comments due by today !!!

Public Hearings: National Environmental Management Amendment Bill (36-2007)

The Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs and Tourism will be conducting public hearings on the National Environmental Management Amendment Bill (36-2007).

Deadline for written submissions: November 2nd, 2007
Public Hearings: November 6th, 2007

Attention:
Ms. Albertina Kakaza
Email: akakaza@parliament.gov.za
Fax: 021 403 2808

Click here to obtain a copy of the Bill.

Contact:
Ms. Albertina Kakaza 021 403 3765

(Note: basically the amendment appears to remove the mining industry from the NEMA (National Environment Management Act) and places overriding authority at the discretion of the minister of minerals and energy. Further, it vitiates environmental controls in favor of the commercial consequences - and allows decisions to be made by any minister or MEC .

From the Daily Dispatch (12 Oct 2007)

By PIET VAN NIEKERK

THE local subsidiary of an Australian company which plans to mine dunes along the pristine Wild Coast, has asked for an urgent meeting with Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk to discuss his perceived “negative stance” regarding the project.

The request for the meeting comes after Van Schalkwyk told Parliament the proposed mining could affect current eco-tourism activities in the area, as well as conservation initiatives.

The minister, answering questions in Parliament last month, said that mining the 22-kilometre strip at Xolobeni, south of Port Edward, could transform the area which is a significantly threatened asset.

He further said this is an area “which is globally recognised but had a rapidly degrading biodiversity”.

Environmental Affairs and Tourism: Minister Valli Moosa's 2002 Budget Vote Speech

It's not really news, nor yet history, but I hope the sentiments expressed in this speech (full speech link above... excerpted below) are carried through by the SA government.

Even this doesn't scare me too much... yet...:

Chicago Developing 'Suspicious Behavior' Monitoring System

"Over the past few years, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) has been blanketing the city with a network of thousands of video cameras in an effort to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time. Now, with the help of IBM, the network is getting some smarts. IBM software will analyze the video and ultimately 'recognize suspicious behavior,' says OEMC spokesman Kevin Smith. 'The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior,' said Smith. 'Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety.'"

"Sony and the University of Alabama are working on a gigapixel resolution camera for improved satellite surveillance. It can see 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. As well as removing annoying artefacts created by tiling images in Google Earth and similar, it should allow CCTV surveillance of entire cities with one camera. 'The trick is to build an array of light sensitive chips that each record small parts of a larger image and place them at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system. The camera would have gigapixel resolution, and able to record images at a rate of 4 frames per second. The team suggests that such a camera mounted on an aircraft could provide images of a large city by itself. This would even allow individual vehicles to be monitored without any danger of losing them as they move from one ground level CCTV system to another.'"

Letter to Xolobeni IAPs re Revised Scoping - September 2007 Final

The most significant change in the Revised Environmental Scoping Report is therefore the exclusion of the smelter from the Xolobeni Heavy Mineral Sands Project. This implies that the smelter will no longer be considered as part of the project and will also not be assessed in the Environmental Impact Assessment.

The Xolobeni Mineral Sands project is situated approximately 250 km south west of Durban and approximately 60 km south east of Mbizana and 30 km south of Port Edward in the Eastern Cape Province. The prospecting activities undertaken by TEM have indicated the feasibility of mining heavy minerals in the area. In accordance with the requirements of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) and the regulations promulgated under Section 24 of the National Environmental Management Act (Act 107 of 1998) (NEMA), an Environmental Scoping Report was compiled and submitted to the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) on 
25 May 2007.

The following downloads are available:

Eskom brochure

Map of proposed routes

Closeup of Bizana & Zwelethu Sub

Registration form - I&AP

Doctor Daniel Mashao, the chief technology officer at Sita (the South African State Information Technology Agency), announced the launch of the government-wide free and open source programme at the GovTech conference on Thursday.

While many welcomed the February announcement of government's intention to adopt and promote open source software, the subsequent months saw disillusionment within the open source community that very little had actually happened.

Mashao addressed these worries, describing what had been happening behind the scenes and showing a systematic timetable of how this process will indeed be implemented.

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE:

APPLICATION FOR THE PROPOSED RE-CONFIGURATION OF THE PORT EDWARD SUBSTATION WHICH WILL INCLUDE A COMMUNICATIONS TOWER, AS WELL AS THE ERECTION OF TWO POWER LINES FROM EROS SUBSTATION IN HARDING TO THE PORT EDWARD SUBSTATION RUNNING ON TWO SEPARATE ROUTES TROUGH PARTS OF KWAZULU NATAL AND THE EASTERN CAPE
(DEAT ref# 12/12/20/987)

In order to reinforce Eskom’s existing Distribution power line network in the KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape, Eskom Distribution (a subsidiary of Eskom Holdings Limited) is currently proposing the establishment of two power lines from Eros Substation (Harding) to Port Edward Substation, as well as the proposed upgrade of the Port Edward Substation.

This is a must read:

by Peet du Plooy

Mail & Guardian Online

24 November 2006 01:59

South Africa is energy inefficient because we don’t value our carbon resource sufficiently.

There are a number of perspectives that, together, make up the picture. One perspective deals with process efficiency -- a technological issue -- another with the structure of the economy -- how much of our economy is fundamentally energy-hungry.

Either way, improving energy efficiency will largely rely on energy becoming more expensive. It will allow us to improve our supply-side and demand-side technology, but also encourage us to shift our economy away from energy-intensive industries.

www.transport.gov.za/comm-centre/sp/2007/sp0606.html
My department through SANRAL will continue with its Public Private Partnership concession programme. It is currently developing projects such as the N2 Wild Coast Toll Highway between Durban and East London. The Wild Coast was identified as one of the areas for strategic development in accordance with government’s Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) strategy as long ago as 1995.

It will not only give access to the untapped potential of the Pondoland but in so doing address the primary inequality, namely lack of access that has led to this being the most impoverished region of South Africa. We expect to see the construction of this important road starting before the end of the year."

Fort Hare and Rhodes universities' Centres of Excellence have established an e-commerce portal to sell art and crafts manufactured by the community members of Dwesa / Cwebe.

Please support this initiative and visit their website at www.dwesa.com.

The site is maintained by the Siyakhula project - which aims at developing and field-testing the prototype of a simple, cost-effective and robust, integrated E-business platform in the rural communities of South Africa.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20070608015356178C268511

Mixed reaction to traditional affairs plan
Sipho Khumalo
June 08 2007 at 10:31AM
The move by the national cabinet to approve the proposal for the establishment of a national department of traditional affairs has been welcomed by many in KwaZulu-Natal, but is viewed with suspicion by the DA.

It was reported on Thursday that the cabinet had approved a proposal by the Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi, for the creation of the traditional affairs department at an estimated cost of R135-million a year.

"An article John Clarke has co-written with Richard Spoor says the threatened area is of inestimable cultural and environmental value. Hosting the Pondoland Centre for Endemism, a global biodiversity hotspot, it is arguably the most beautiful coastline on Earth.

Taking issue with the Australian company, the article adds, "Mining the Pondoland Wild Coast is the moral, cultural and aesthetic equivalent of quarrying Ayers Rock for granite, or the Great Barrier Reef for calcium carbonate."

Read the full Sunday Tribune article on the threat to our dunes - by Leon Marshall.

New threat to our dunes
As an Australian mining company plans to plunder the dunes of the Wild Coast, Leon Marshall ponders whether the lure of jobs and wealth creation will overcome pressing environmental concerns

May 13, 2007 Edition 2

Leon Marshall

Shades of St Lucia are hanging heavily over the Wild Coast, where dune mining is causing divisions in the community. Even the arguments are the same, as are the rising tensions that have led to allegations of threats and acts of violence.

News and breaking developments on the Wild Coast:

It must be said that this is not a political site... it is a tourism site; and news should be restricted to tourism related subjects.

For example, minister Vali Moosa said in an interview in 2002 that the Transkei Wild Coast will never be industrially exploited as it is a priceless national treasure and we will not resort to short term gain at the expense of our children's ecological heritage. About a year or so later (2003), the venerable minister then went on record saying that if the tourism market failed to live up to it's potential within 5 years then other economic recourses should regretfully be undertaken.

A billion people live in India -- one of every six on the planet. Half of them are illiterate. Only one in four has access to adequate sanitation. Some 350 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day. Yet India is also home to some of the world's most advanced high-technology firms, and New Delhi is Silicon Valley East.

Several years ago, a computer scientist, Dr. Sugata Mitra, had an idea. What would happen if he could provide poor children with free, unlimited access to computers and the Internet? Mitra launched what came to be known as the hole in the wall experiment. FRONTLINE/World producer Rory O'Connor first encountered Dr. Mitra and his experiment while directing a film on global poverty.