The time is now … excitement is palpable here at Liz at Lancaster …  Can you feel it.  First sound this morning I heard was vuvuzelas. Get your ear plugs  out …. !!
  
 
Dogs have their SA Bandannas, my son came to get some bincoluars on the way to the game.  He is determined to [...]

Our transformation challenge: The Blue Bulls show the way! 
By Steuart Pennington in South Africa     The Good News Newsletter    no 263 01   June 2010
“It just shows how far we have come as a nation” were Victor Matfield’s final words as he reflected on the Bulls semi-final  in Orlando Stadium, having said earlier “Hearing vuvuzelas and boere-musiek [...]

Carnival- float meets Christmas -Tree meets Giant- Flower- Arrangement.  Driving around ‘the Parks’ (greater Rosebank), I often see the amazing technicolour cart decorated with everything that glitters, shimmers and  flutters.   
Yesterday I stopped to meet the creator .. Solly .. who proudly told me the history of his trolley. As far back as the mid 1960s, Solly collected tin, alumimium and [...]

In Jozi, on every suburban pavement, busy intersection and traffic island, is a group of hawkers selling flags, mirror covers, soccer glasses, beaded key rings  and all things promoting the national flag.  It is in the traffic that most Jozi-ites purchase their symbols of support for Bafana Bafana  and enter into the spirit of national festivity and pride.  I have [...]

I tend in my blog posts to focus on Jozi and its surrounds, but this time I am going a little further afield.  Packed with a thermos of coffee and the inimitable South African ‘padkos’ (food for the road), I drove down with my son to Port Elizabeth nearly two weeks ago.   At the near mid-way mark at [...]

 Chris Thurman enagaged in conversation with Prof Philip Tobias world-renowned paleo-anthroplogist at the Boekehuis this Saturday.  In addition to his ground breaking work with hominids, Tobias has also been very influential as an anatomist, a geneticist, is an expert on medic-legal ethics and  … is a keen lover of cricket!  With a twinking eye and a razor sharp sense of humour [...]

I have a school friend called Carol who has lived out of the country since the mid 1970s but has returned often since the 1990s. Recently her mother died. She had been living at a frail care facility down on the southern Cape coast and had been looked after with loving gentleness by wonderful care-givers. [...]

I have had the privilege of being provided with beautifully handcrafted cloths, intricately decorated with beads and safety pins to sell to guests.  Through a guest staying here at the guest house I met up again with  Mbhanyele Jameson Maluleke, whom I had first met whilst I was still at Wits.  Mbhanyele Jameson runs a group project [...]

Yes we are spoilt. South Africa faces so many challenges, challenges with which both locals and the rest of the world are ALL  too familiar. However a day like this last Sunday makes up for a lot. In the spring, SAPPI a very large paper making public company, generously sponsors concerts at the National Botanical [...]

Janine Hobbs from Cotswold Gardens, an excellent 4 star guest house in Saxonwold , sent me this wonderful oh so South African story:
Janine writes:
Yesterday I took a trip to Nasrec to work out the exact kilometres from my place to Soccer City.  Well this mlungu [white person] took the wrong turn off and got so lost [...]