The cutest boy ever

For the past week I have been working at SciFest Africa, the national science festival in Grahamstown. Scifest is great actually... it is a big festival of exhibitions, workshops, talks, talkshops, games and so on, all with a science theme. And thousands and *thousands* of kids come to participate. Mostly from the Eastern Cape, but also from all over South Africa.

I was stationed at the SAAO Astronomy exhibition. I suppose they put me there because I am studying Astronomy-ish type stuff. It was all pretty intense, especially the times when there were masses of kids.

It is the International Year of Astronomy at the moment, so the Astronomy exhibition was *massive*. The SAAO was exhibiting, and the SKA, and the Cape Town planetarium, and some organisation that does Astronomy education for schools. So all of the Astronomy people had a massive exhibition with real telescopes people could use and posters and models of telescopes and planets and other demonstrations. And the biggest attraction - a big portable planetarium. Where about 20 kids at a time would go sit in this little planetarium in the dark, and look at a projection of the night sky. Then someone did a talk about the stars in the night sky (sometimes it was me doing the talks!!).

But one of the most wonderful things of the whole week was the most *adorable* boy I met today. He was in Grade 4, and he came to look at a solar system model I was showing people. And he was *so* keen. He was amazed by everything I said. So I took him all over the exhibition and showed him different things and different pictures. And he was priceless. Sometimes he was just speechless with awe. Like when I told him that stars were actually as big as the sun, just far far away. His little eyes just got big and he was amaaaazed. Wow! Wow! That's amazing! And he would just ask questions...

Ah what a lovely boy! Made my day today :)

Malema

If any of you remember... last year my birthday wish was to have tea with Julius Malema.

Well I was very excited last week, you must know. I thought my chance had finally come - I heard Julius Malema was coming to speak at Rhodes. So the day before the event I found some ANCYL people chilling on a wall on campus and offered to pick Julius up from the airport.

They laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed :)

So I didn't end up going to pick up Malema from the airport. And in the end, he didn't end up coming to the Progressive Youth Alliance meeting he had been scheduled to address. But I went along to the meeting anyway.

And aside from the fact that it was mostly 3 hours of sitting around waiting for things to happen, I had a great time.

A journ student from Rhodes put up a bit of an account of the event here. It is funny how two people can have such a different take on the same situation. As I left the venue at the end I bumped into a friend and I asked her how she felt about the event... she said she found it very disturbing. Why? I don't know really. Perhaps it is that same "Polokwane" image we saw on TV, of dancing shouting hordes of people. If you look with one eye, it is people having a good time, getting into the spirit f things. If you look with another eye, it is a marauding mass of angry violent people who are going to shoot you with their machine guns.

Which it isn't. Really. Its mostly people having a good time, supporting their party. And if the way you do that is shout "hah!" and sing songs in your own language (not english!)... well... hey, whats wrong with that?

I am a but of a Youth League sympathiser myself. So I'm probably biased :)
And they can get carried away, to be sure. And they really shouldn't mock people in their speeches. It is just coarse. And at this particular event they *really* shouldn't have lied about Malema not being allowed on campus (That really was a lie, I don't know why they did it. Probably a combination of covering themselves for not telling people Malema wasn't coming, and general anger at Rhodes admin.)

But ja. This idea of people in yellow t-shirts being angry violent neanderthals is really not ok.

The day before the meeting, after I asked the ANCYL guys sitting on the wall if I could pick up Malema from the airport, and after thay had finished laughing, we sat and chatted for about half an hour. About Zuma and my qualms about him and COPE and separation of powers and what not. And it was all very pleasant. And I saw them at the event itself and waved and they laughed at me all over again. And it was great.

I wish people could just get a glimpse of the other side of these events, and this bunch of people. And realise their fear and indignation are a bit misplaced.

Confederation cup

A conversation between my brother and I:

Laura: Let's go to a confederation cup match!
J: What's that? Tennis?

Small town drama

So there is a real drama going on in Grahamstown at the moment. I might get this a bit wrong, because it's all a bit complex. But let me try let you in on our small town drama of the hour.

So in Grahamstown we have three grocery chain stores. I think. Shoprite is on the other side of town from campus, so I don't go there much. Then in the more city centre area there is Checkers. And a block removed from that, there is Pick 'n Pay. Pick 'n Pay is in its own little mall, call Peppergrove.

Just down from Peppergrove is the BP garage, which has its own 24 hour Kwikspar. From campus it is about a 10 minute walk to Pick 'n Pay and maybe another 5 minutes to BP/Kwikspar.

So during the day students walk to Pick 'n Pay. By night they walk the extra five minutes to BP. There is a lot of night time traffic to BP - I know because I live in the area and it is *noisy* sometimes.

Ok, so here is where the drama starts. Lets call the two men involved in the drama Mr A and Mr B. The man who owns Peppergrove mall, the land Pick 'n Pay is on, is Mr A. Mr A also runs Kwikspar. The man who runs Pick 'n Pay is Mr B. Mr B also owns the houses next to BP/Kwikspar.

Now Mr A wants to expand Kwikspar. So he wants to buy the houses Mr B ownes. Mr A doesn't want any more competition, no no. So Mr A refuses to sell the houses to Mr B. Now of course, Mr B is ticked off. And Mr B is Mr A's landlord for the Pick 'n Pay building. Mr A and Mr B have a lease agreement for the Pick 'n Pay shop, so Mr B can't do anyting about that. So Mr B buys the land on the *other* side of the Peppergrove mall. And starts building a new mall, so he can put a new Superspar in the new mall. Which will be slightly closer to campus.

Part of Mr B's plan was to use some of the land from the local cinema, to have enough place to put up the new Superspar in the "new" mall, which is a wall away from the present mall. The cinema were behind on their rent to Mr B, so Mr B was going to cancel the lease with the cinema and demolish part of it for the new mall. Shame for the cinema, but they are just empty so often, I don't think they make enough money to justify having three cines. Anyway, so Mr A gets smart and approaches the owner of the Cinema. He buys shares in the cinema to keep it going and enable it to make rent payments. So Mr B can't kick them out and use the land for Superspar.

Yup, thats it. Or something like that. It is all a bit confusing. There is a Dispatch article about it here.

What a drama, hey!

The Pick 'n Pay recently extended their opening hours to 6:30 am to 10 pm. Thinking about it now, they are abviously trying to steal the 24 hour Kwikspar's early morning and night time customers!

We, the people of Grahamstown, watch with interest!

Teachers' politics

I came across a story on iol today, where Naledi Pandor warned political parties not to campaign in schools (Article here). It is a good thing, I think, that she made a statement about this.

It reminded me of a story I read in Business Day in January. Apparently teachers in Gauteng had been holding political meetings during school hours. Ronald Nyathi, the chairman of the Gauteng branch of SADTU (South African Democratic Teachers’ Union), defended the teachers rights to do this, because apparently "the Labour Relations Act allowed the union to call meetings during working hours, which it had “always” done and would continue to do." and "Teaching hours lost would be made up in the early mornings or in the afternoons"

Nyathi also commented that the schooling in his area would “not be stable” until Jacob Zuma became president (Article here).

Which was all pretty bit dubious. Teachers bunking school to attend political meetings?

The DA, IFP and ANC all condemned Nyali's statements.

Last year Nyathi also told parents from a school in Alexandra to keep their kids away from school the next day: “not a single pupil should be at school tomorrow because they will be exposed to extreme violence.” This was after the provincial education department suspended a whole lot of teachers at that school for not teaching.

Unions are important to protect their members from exploitation, of course. But they shouldn't be protecting people who are not doing their jobs. And they certainly shouldn't be doing it violently. Particularly if children are involved.

What a bad precedent to set to kids!

I found another interesting article from last year, a bit of an overview of political battles being played out in schools:

... organisations wanting to flex their political muscles in schools are doing so to the detriment of children...

... a trend by the South African Democratic Teacher Union (SADTU), in particular, to use threats in schools to get what they want. Earlier in 2009 there were reports that, after teachers were reprimanded in Alexandra for not teaching children, Sadtu threatened that every child who came to school would be met with violence.

A memo came to light from Sadtu, which wanted to put a stop to curriculum training by the Gauteng Department of Education, because such training takes place on Saturdays and in the afternoons on weekdays. Sadtu said teachers must be paid overtime for the courses.

"Anything that extends beyond the working hours and conditions of service of our members will be a declaration of hostilities," the letter read.

"We are in a state of perpetual readiness as Sadtu to disrupt these meetings and declare war on anyone who is arrogant to disregard this call." Article here.

Hmmmm... so I do think Naledi Pandor's warning was well placed. This is something to keep an eye on as elections approach!