Provinces of South Africa

South Africa is currently divided into nine provinces. On the eve of the 1994 general election, South Africa's former homelands, also known as Bantustans, were reintegrated and the four existing provinces were divided into nine. In December 2005 the 12th amendment of the constitution changed the borders of seven of the provinces*. The provinces (numbered corresponding with the map below and with the capital in parenthesis) are as follows:

1. Western Cape¹ (Cape Town) abbv. WC
2. Northern Cape (Kimberley) abbv. NC
3. Eastern Cape (Bhisho) abbv. EC
4. KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg²) abbv. KZN, KZ, or KN
5. Free State (Bloemfontein) abbv. FS
6. North West (Mafikeng) abbv. NW
7. Gauteng (Johannesburg) abbv. GP or GT
8. Mpumalanga (Nelspruit) abbv. MP
9. Limpopo (Polokwane) abbv. LP

* On 18 August 2006 the Constitutional Court ruled that the part of the 12 amendment dealing with the transfer of Matatiele from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape was unconstitutional due to insufficient consultation.

¹: The Prince Edward Islands are a South African territory in the sub-antarctic Indian Ocean, for legal purposes considered to be part of the Western Cape.

²: Pietermaritzburg and Ulundi shared being capital of KwaZulu-Natal during 1994–2004.

South Africa's rising wave of crime

For many blacks, the jobs they thought would come overnight with democracy and the end of apartheid have never materialized.

By John Hughes

from the August 24, 2007 edition
The Christian Science Monitor

Johannesburg, South Africa - In the boardroom of South Africa's legendary black newspaper, the Sowetan, there hangs on the wall the following injunction: "What have you done with your freedom, South Africa? Don't let it go to waste. Cherish it."

It is now 13 years since South Africa turned its back on the oppressive era of apartheid and, in a remarkably peaceful transition, embraced democracy. Much has been accomplished as blacks and whites sculpt a new, multiracial nation. But the warning in the Sowetan's boardroom is a reminder that democracy must be nurtured to flourish.

While many of the fruits of freedom have gone to the former black revolutionaries who now hold cabinet posts, sit in Parliament, and hold other government positions with substantial salaries and perks, there remain large numbers of blacks whose impatient, and perhaps unrealistic, expectations of the transition from white power to black have not been met.

Shantytowns have not been replaced with affordable housing. Water and electricity and other basic requirements of the infrastructure to support democracy are still lacking for many. Official agencies are sometimes bastions of bureaucratic incompetence and corruption. In Johannesburg, it can take more than four months to get your car license renewed. Some citizens say they circumvent the system by "buying" their renewals – slipping a bribe to a licensing officer.

South Africa has just outpaced India as the country with the highest incidence of AIDS in the world, and critics say the government has been tardy in grappling with the problem.

Though opportunities have arisen for some upper-class blacks to prosper in business, many others still live in squalor. For many, the jobs that they thought would come overnight with democracy have never materialized. Unemployment is running around 25 percent.

Thus the big cities such as Johannesburg have become seedbeds for robbery and violent hijacking, making crime South Africa's biggest problem. Sometimes it is the work of individuals; sometimes the work of organized gangs. One black editor, while in no way supporting the old apartheid regime, remarks wryly: "There was no city crime or unemployment in the old days. If you were a black without a [residence] pass and a letter from your boss saying you had a job, the police would run you out of town. Today, whether you are black or white, you take your life in your hands if you walk downtown at night."

Crime is apparently not racially motivated. It is black upon affluent black as well as black upon affluent white. It is the war of the have-nots against the haves. Last month Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's black ambassador to the United Nations, returning from New York to Johannesburg, was tracked from the airport to his suburban home, where his party was held up at gunpoint by robbers demanding wallets, cellphones, and luggage. One of the party was shot in the scuffle.

In the coastal city of Durban, David Canning, the white editor of the morning newspaper, the Mercury, was similarly victimized in his suburban driveway by a group attempting to hijack his car. In the melee, one of the robbers shot Mr. Canning through the driver's window. The robbers got away. Canning recovered.

Such incidents are reported daily. Tourism minister Martinus van Schalkwyk warns that fear about safety is the main reason foreign tourists cite for not visiting South Africa. Though statistics are hard to confirm, officials say murders may run as high as 20,000 a year, one of the highest per capita rates in the world.

In Johannesburg, homes and offices lie protected behind high walls topped with electrified wire. Security cameras and steel gates are common. The building housing British Airways is guarded by dogs and security officers with automatic weapons, dressed like members of a SWAT team. At the US consulate-general, where the threat may be from terrorism, as well as local crime, even Embassy-owned cars must negotiate hydraulically operated pylons, then a caged area where security officers check with mirrors under the car and open hoods and trunks, before permitting access.

Hijackings are so frequent that some car owners have the registration numbers of their vehicles painted on the roofs of their cars so police helicopters can better trace them. Says one diplomat: "A kid who might have to work 20 years to buy a car, says, 'The heck with that, I'll just go out and hijack one.' "

Such are the challenges confronting a society in which prosperity for many of its citizens has not yet kept pace with political change.

• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, has just spent a month in Africa.

Cape Town, South Africa

The worlds most beautiful city

Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad /ˈkɑːpstɑt/; Xhosa: iKapa) is the third most populous city in South Africa, forming part of the metropolitan municipality of the City of Cape Town. It is the provincial capital of the Western Cape, as well as the legislative capital of South Africa, where the National Parliament and many government offices are located. Cape Town is famous for its harbour as well as its natural setting in the Cape floral kingdom, including such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Often regarded as one of the world's most beautiful cities because of its geography, Cape Town is the most popular South African destination for tourism.

Cape Town was originally developed as a victualling station for Dutch ships sailing to Eastern Africa, India, and the Far East more than 200 years before the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town quickly outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope. It was the largest city in South Africa until the growth of Johannesburg and Durban.

The Duggar Family

Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar and all 17 of their children!!! What a fantastic family. God Bless each of them. "Children are a heritage of the Lord..." -- Psalms 127:3. Visit their website, and learn more about the Duggar's by clicking here, or on the title above.

God has opened many doors for them to share that children are a blessing from the Lord! They have been featured on four Discovery Health / TLC documentaries entitled,“14 Children and Pregnant Again!”, “16 Children and Moving In!”, “Raising 16 Children!” & “On The Road With 16 Children!”. They have appeared on national and international TV shows including The Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Italian Public Television, KBS (Korean Broadcasting System), Discovery Home & Health (UK & Australia), Jimmy Kimmel Live, Fox News Network, CNN, MSNBC and others. They have done numerous interviews with radio talk show hosts around the world as well as magazine and newspaper articles in China, India, New Zealand, Australia, France and Germany. The Duggar’s desire is to make Christ known and for others to see that the Bible is the owner’s manual for life.

As a family project the Duggars built a 7000 sqft. home debt free! Both Jim Bob and Michelle are licensed real estate agents.They often host and facilitate the Jim Sammon’s Financial Freedom Seminar. Jim Bob served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2003 and was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Springbok Rugby Tribute

South African Rugby Rocks!!!

The Springboks, Bokke or amaBokoboko are the South African national rugby union team. The Springboks (or Springbokke in Afrikaans), as they are commonly referred to, compete in the Tri Nations alongside the New Zealand All Blacks and Australia, as well as competitions such as the Rugby World Cup. Although they did not compete in the first two World Cups in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to sports boycotts of South Africa, they did make their debut in the 1995 World Cup, hosting it as well. They defeated the All Blacks in the final, which is now remembered as one of the greatest moments in South Africa's sporting history.

The Springboks play in green and gold jerseys and have been playing international rugby since 1891, when a British Isles side toured the nation, playing South Africa in their first test on July 30. Today the Springboks are regarded as one of the best rugby nations in the world. The current head coach is Jake White, and the captain, John Smit.

Couch potato cats

By FIONA MacRAE, Daily Mail
Last updated at 21:36pm on 6th August 2007

Mice can relax. Even nesting birds can sing a little more cheerily.

Their number one enemy, it seems, is getting so fat he can barely be bothered to get off the sofa for a night's hunting.

Vets have found that cats are imitating their owners' couch potato lifestyle.

As a result of eating more and exercising less, more than a third of cats are overweight and the number of cases of feline diabetes has risen five-fold in 30 years.

Edinburgh University researchers estimate that one in 230 - or up to 400,000 pet cats - is diabetic. Danielle Gunn-Moore, a professor of feline medicine, said: "The lifestyle of cats is changing. They are tending to eat too much, gain weight and take less exercise.

"Unfortunately, just like people, cats will over-eat if they are offered too much tasty food, particularly if they are bored and have little else to do.

"While cats would naturally exercise outside, many cats are now housebound - perhaps because they live in a flat or because their owners feel that it is too dangerous to let them out - so they have little to do all day but eat, sleep and gain weight."

In addition, stressed-out Britons are increasingly relying on cats for companionship.

Professor Gunn-Moore said: "Cats are now the number one pet, they are more popular than dogs. People get in late and they don't want to walk the dog.

"They want the cat there as a companion and if it's outside chasing mice, it's not going to be there as a companion."

Vet Elaine Pendlebury said much of the problem was because of owners giving their cats calorie-laden treats.

She said: "People are feeding them things like sausages from their own table. Sausages are quite high in salt and quite fatty.

"If you want to give your cat a treat, give it a small bit of boiled chicken or, even better, play a game with your cat."

The diabetes study, published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, looked at the veterinary records of 14,000 cats, coupled with questionnaires filled in by owners.

Cats are not the only pets to be losing the battle of the bulge. A quarter of dogs are clinically obese and overweight rabbits and even hamsters are also a common sight in vets' surgeries.

Something the Lord Made

Just finished watching Something the Lord Made on HBO. Fantastic cinema folks. Very moving, very inspirational. Please watch it yourself when time permits. It's available on DVD. My words cannot do it justice, so I shall borrow from those of a contributor on the Internet Movie DataBase, as well as selected excerpts from Wikipedia -- GSD


This is absolutely one of the most inspirational movies I've ever seen. The story line was great - The life and times of one of the greatest surgeons the United States has ever produced (Alfred Blalock), played by Alan Rickman, along with his lab assistant Vivien Thomas, played by Mos Def. The acting was superb. If anyone has studied medical history, we are perhaps more familiar with the work of Denton Cooley and William Longmire. Both have spots in this movie, as students of Dr. Blalock. I highly recommend this movie. It is very much a surprise how the lives of these two men - Blalock and Thomas could have been overlooked for so long. Because of their work with "Blue Babies", they both have achieved immortality. The rating of "R" stems only from the sometimes strong (but very real) language.


Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985) was an African-American surgical technician who helped develop the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was an assistant to Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Without any education past high school, Thomas rose above poverty and racism to become a cardiac surgery pioneer and a teacher to many of the country's most prominent surgeons.

Vivien Thomas was born close to Lake Providence, Louisiana. The son of a carpenter, he attended Pearl High School (now known as Martin Luther King Magnet High School for Health Science and Engineering) in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1920s. Even though it was part of a racially segregated system, the school provided him with a high-quality education. Later, when Thomas' savings were wiped out, he abandoned entirely his plans for college and medical school, relieved to have even a low-salary job as the Great Depression deepened.

Thomas showed an extraordinary aptitude for surgery and precise experimentation, which led Blalock to grant to him the privilege of more freedom in the execution of the protocols. Tutored in anatomy and physiology by Blalock and his young research fellow, Dr. Joseph Beard, Thomas rapidly mastered complex surgical techniques and research methodology. He and Blalock developed great respect for one another, forging such a close working relationship that they came to operate almost as a single mind. Outside the lab environment, however, they maintained the social distance dictated by the mores of the times. In an era when institutional racism was the norm, Thomas was classified, and paid, as a janitor, despite the fact that by the mid 1930s he was doing the work of a postdoctoral researcher in Blalock's lab.

Alfred Blalock (April 5, 1899 – September 15, 1964) was a 20th century American innovator in the field of medical science most noted for his research on the medical condition of shock and the development of the Blalock-Taussig Shunt, surgical relief of the cyanosis from Tetralogy of Fallot--known commonly as the blue baby syndrome--with his assistant Vivien Thomas and pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig.

Born in Culloden, Georgia, Blalock entered Georgia Military Academy, a preparatory school for the University of Georgia, at the age of 14. Having graduated from the University of Georgia with an A.B. in 1918 at the age of 19, Blalock subsequently entered Johns Hopkins Medical School, where he roomed with, became tennis doubles partner to, and began a lifetime friendship with Tinsley Harrison. Blalock earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins in 1922. Hoping to gain appointment to a surgical residency at Johns Hopkins due to his admiration of William S. Halsted, Blalock remained in Baltimore over the next three years, completing an internship in urology, one year of an assistant residency on the general surgical service (his contract was not renewed), and an externship in ENT. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts in the summer of 1925 to begin a surgical residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, but left for Vanderbilt "without ever unpacking [his] trunk."

In July 1925, Blalock joined his good friend Harrison at Vanderbilt University in Nashville to serve as first chief resident in surgery under Barney Brooks, who was Vanderbilt University Hospital's first Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Surgical Service. Blalock was active in teaching third and fourth year medical students, and as a result was placed in charge of the surgical research laboratory. While at Vanderbilt University he worked on the nature and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. Experimenting on dogs, he found that surgical shock resulted from the loss of blood, and he encouraged the use of blood plasma or whole blood products as treatment following the onset of shock. This research resulted in the saving of many lives during World War II. Unfortunately, Blalock met with frequent bouts of tuberculosis during his Vanderbilt years. His first paper on shock, published in 1927, was actually written by his friend Harrison based on the data that Blalock had completed but could not compile due to his illness. While at Vanderbilt in 1938, Blalock attempted to produce pulmonary hypertension in experiments joining the left subclavian artery to the left pulmonary artery. Although these experiments failed in their purpose, he returned to this idea years later.

When Blalock was offered Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1941, he requested that his assistant, Vivien Thomas, come along with him. They formed a very close relationship that would last more than 30 years. Together they developed a shunt technique to bypass aortic coarctation. While they were working on this, Helen Taussig presented him with the problem of the blue baby syndrome.


In the normal heart, there are four separate chambers; the two top chambers are known as atria and pump blood simultaneously into the two bottom chambers, or ventricles. Blood first enters the heart at the right atrium, which then empties blood into the right ventricle, which pumps the blood into the lungs through the pulmonary artery to get oxygen. From the lungs, the blood enters the left atrium through the pulmonary vein; the left atrium empties into the left ventricle, which pumps the blood into the aorta and from there reaches the rest of the body. Because it is responsible for getting blood to the entire body through the aorta, the left ventricle is usually the biggest and strongest chamber of the heart.


All very fascinating indeed, I encourage you to read more by visiting your local library or searching the Internet. -- GSD

Ronnie takes a Catnap

Nothin' like a Sunday afternoon catnap!!!

Freight Team Wonders

Edwin, on the electric pallet jack, talks with Randy.

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse

Security Camera Footage



Emergency workers in Minneapolis have shifted their focus from searching for survivors to trying to recover the bodies after a major bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River during rush-hour traffic on Wednesday.

The collapse happened shortly after 6 p.m. local time, sending a massive cloud of dust into the sky and terrifying onlookers during the height of rush hour.

At least seven people were killed in the dramatic collapse and 60 were taken to hospital. About 20 people are still missing and may have been involved in the collapse, and the death toll is expected to continue to rise.

Click the heading above, "Minneapolis Bridge Collapse" for bridge info/history.

General Patton on the Global War on Terror

Awe-inspiring performance! General George S. Patton out of retirement, rants about Iraq and the modern world situation!!!

Anybody that call's Majority Leader Harry Reid (US Senator, NV-D) a son-of-a-bitch is okay with me. In fact, for the record, I too think Senator Reid is a son-of-a-bitch!!! I have a list of other senators and representatives that could also be added to the list...