At a time like this…

Is it me or are the wheels coming off? asks Chris Bennett

WE HAVE strikes threatening to completely ruin next year’s football fiesta, the KZN government displaying a novel new style of insanity by firing close on 300 doctors (M&G 3/7/09), aeroplanes falling out of the sky and my grocer running out of poppadums.

As if that were not enough we have the spectacle of the bread making industry colluding to cheat the public; and the supermarkets (of which four biggies are involved) caught up in the same disgraceful shenanigans. And this, nogal, at a time when people are losing their jobs and food is almost beyond the reach of the increasingly sidelined poor.

Actually I shouldn’t really include Daryl in all this. He is the grocer of whom I speak, and highly at that.

The shopping centre at Munster serves a wide variety of customers and provides them with most of the essentials of life, and a lot of the not so essentials as well. There is a garage and a service centre, a good bottle store, a post office of note, and a number of hardware, gardening, swimming pool and other services at our service. The supermarket, Daryl’s home from home, is very good, sometimes excellent. At the moment the essential out of stock is poppadums. Many Herald readers will, rightly, take me to task on that one.

I know it is not the fault of the managers of supermarkets should events that are beyond their ken occur, such as head office stuffing up delivery or the auto teller breaking down, but life being what it is, customers blame those hard working managers for everything. Unfortunately that is part of the joy of being the manager of a supermarket. It is called flak. It is not difficult to sympathise with these good people; as I have said before in this column, people, by and large, are dreadful.

But there is an underlying theme to all these trying and painful episodes.

The football crisis seems to be upon us because someone somewhere has not done his homework properly and the unions are upset. The firing of the doctors, when there is an acute shortage of those excellent souls, shows little but contempt for the government's employers: that would be you and me. The aeroplanes fell out of the sky because someone somewhere had not done his homework properly. The passengers are the ones who paid the appalling price and are, sadly, in no position to be upset.

The sufferers in the pricing fiasco are the customers of all the supermarkets. Daryl is at least aware of this and doubtless he is also appalled.

In Munster we enjoy one of the most stable and peaceful lifestyles in this country, and we would like to keep it that way. I asked some of the residents of Thongasi and Nzimakwe what they thought; given that a lot of them, quite reasonably, do not think, the results were quite revealing. The Munster Centre and its Spar supermarket were the heartbeat of the area.

A few days ago I read the front page story of this most excellent newspaper and learnt of the amount of money involved in paying a bunch of junior clerks to do what are, at best simple, and at worst menial, tasks.

Minds like mine are not easily given to boggling. I have seen a few things in my trips around the block over the past half century, but for municipal workers, some of whom appear to do nothing, which is perhaps a good thing, to receive salaries and bonuses (bonuses?) of the order mentioned in this story is farcical.

It will, of course, end in tears. When the money runs out.

United Nations

During a visit to the village of Nzimakwe on the southern KwaZulu-Natal coast of South Africa, UN workers Marianne Olesen and Richard Bennett were the guests of Michael Nkosinathi Diya.

In the picture are Michael Diya, his sister Lindiwe, Marianne Olesen from Denmark, Richard Bennett, from New Zealand (Marianne's husband) and Miriam Diya, Michael's elder sister with her baby. Marianne and Richard live and work in Kathmandu. Their home is in Denmark. They paid an all-too-short visit to South Africa in June 2009.

The southern coast of KwaZulu-Natal is known for its spectacular beaches and beautiful climate. The main activities are sugar cane and banana growing, game fishing and tourism.

Ice of the tipberg…

CHRIS BENNETT recounts a delightful and hectic few days with his family.

REDISCOVERING that my brother and I are as different as two peas in a pod, has been a persistent theme during the past few days. He and my sister-in-law, Marianne, arrived in Durban after a long haul flight from their home in Kathmandu.

At the airport we had a coffee, and when paying for it Bro (Richard) asked “Do you tip in this country?” Laugh? It all ended in tears; the laughter, that is.

You see my brother Richard is a New Zealander, a country in which offering anybody a tip is not only scowled at, it is seen as an insult, largely because it carries an implication of superiority. And, when you think about it, it is a b it of an insult. Rather like giving a man a job that is beyond his capabilities, or including him in a sports team when he is second rate, because he has a black skin.

I found it interesting that New Zealand is at the top of the last Time magazine poll of the hundred best countries in which to live, with Denmark in second place. My sister-in-law is a bit miffed because in 2007 Denmark was number one and NZ number two. Marianne is Danish.

Seeing the beautiful coast through their eyes was enlightening. A daily walk on the beach was a treat; the visiting couple are great mountain walkers in their base country, Nepal.

The tipping thing recurred and recurred. It is a deplorable practise; the worst offenders being those establishments which arbitrarily add 10 percent to the bill. This is little short of fraud.

Why cannot restaurateurs employ their waiters honestly, on a salary? Why can’t shopping malls, whose profits scarcely bear thinking about, pay the car guards? I shouldn’t have to pay to take my business to your shop; any more than I should pay for service in a restaurant, be it good, bad or, worst of all, indifferent.

It is no good saying that I should tip for service. I am entitled to believe that any restaurant worth its salt would make sure that the service is of the highest standard. And as we ate at several places I needn’t tell you about that.

It seems to me to be a great pity that there is no training available for the people in this part of the world; training in hospitality that is. And if there is then it seems to be either ineffectual or a well-kept secret.

My brother and his wife work (in separate agencies) for the UN; in Richard’s case with the HRC, a body that deals with human rights. Marianne has been working with women and children in India for more than 20 years, and is fluent in Hindi. Their work is stressful, but a visit to this sublime part of the world left both of them refreshed and yearning for more – and raring to get back to work.

Which was a good thing; my brother was recalled to his post about half way through their visit to help sort out a looming problem.

Before they left, a tour of Thongasi and Nzimakwe was arranged by my friend Michael Nkosinathi Diya. It revealed a lot about the way in which our diverse nation lives and works, and brother commented on the parallels between SA and India. We were offered warm hospitality at Michael’s home; I don’t know who was the more delighted, the Diyas or the visitors.

And no, I didn’t tip Cedric, the nephew who served (with suitable deference) the refreshments.

Roads memorial…

The recent frisson of interest in the bedevilled new road project for the South Coast had Chris Bennett hunting around a bit.

PORT Edward is one of a string of little towns and villages along the east and south coast of Africa that have seen an interesting three hundred years or so. Some, like Port Elizabeth, have grown to huge conurbations, while others, like Port Shepstone, have grown to be of local, rather than national importance.

Then there is Port Grosvenor, between Port Edward and Port St Johns, now little more than a building or two and some poignant memories.

Port Edward came into being as Kennington, the same name as the south London suburb in which the great Oval cricket ground is to be found. In the case of Port Edward, the name Kennington was used because the founder’s name was Ken (TK Pringle).

Pringle, according to TV Bulpin, bought the area from Edward Stafford, after who Stafford’s Post is likely named. In 1924, in this case according to Eric Rosenthal, Pringle gave the village which had grown near his homestead, Banner Rest*, the name Port Edward, in honour of the visiting Prince of Wales, later to be the less than salubrious Duke of Windsor.

This sleepy little town has developed in a rather higgledy piggledy way; that is until now.

Rumours of roads, at least a road, have abounded in this area for a long time now. The recent announcement in the Herald of the implementation of plans to build the new N2 has woken things up a bit. Many local business people have worked hard, and successfully, to improve the lot of the little town, which now boasts an excellent shopping centre at the robot (there is only one).

Visits to the website for the new road have produced very little. I eventually gave up my attempts to find a proposed route for the road. The main topic of conversation and stoep talk around here these days is ‘where will it go?’

Where indeed? Given that the road, serious and plentiful objections notwithstanding, will be built, it would be nice to know where.

A friend not entirely unconnected with all these rather grandiose plans has suggested that it might be more practical and cheaper to build a new road across the lands from Southbroom to the low-level bridge on the old Ezinqolwezi-Bizana road and take it from there.

Should the road sail through the middle of Port Edward, which would bring, to my mind, little advantage to the town, what happens when it meets the rickety bridge at the crossing to the casino? I say rickety because it should be remembered that hooligans blew the thing up late in 2002. I gather it has never been the same since, and who can blame it? On top of that it is scarcely more than one lane wide.

I can’t help wondering, taking into account about a hundred years of administrative neglect in this part of the world, what would have happened if some bright spark had built a railway line from Port Shepstone down to Mthatha. But then, seeing that we have thrown most of the train sets away, maybe that wouldn’t have helped much.

As somebody said, we live in interesting times.

*By the way, does anyone know how Banner Rest became Banner’s Rest. There never was a Mr Banner, after all.

Tweaking the tweet…

CHRIS BENNETT has been poking his nose into other peoples business.

 

CURIOSITY has driven me to investigate Twitter, and find out if it is as mindless as it sounds.

 

It is and it isn’t. My research over a few days last week coincided with the bizarre events in Teheran which were then dominating the news. I had read in last week’s Time magazine an article by one Steven Johnson, an

American technophile and writer. The article is worth reading, and you should find it if you search Twitter (try googling search-twitter) for #timetwitter.

 

For some time now a number of friends and others who should know better, have been asking if I am on Facebook. Well, no, not as such.

 

I have visited Facebook and found out for myself what was meant by the discomfiting phrase ‘social networking’. I was immediately reminded of a time many years ago, when we had a half-decent radio service, of the tendency towards what I call the static cling and creep of talk shows.

 

Talk shows, in which the anchorman of the station uses a phone line to give listeners (screened) access to the airwaves, emerged in South Africa in the later 1980s. The first thing that the powers that be in broadcasting discovered was that talk shows were a lot cheaper than using clever people to make programmes, which meant the expenditure of a lot of money on things like royalties for music, staff to write and devise, and produce programmes.

 

Most people listen to radio because of the companionship it offers, especially to those on their own. They are aware of another presence who is, if he knows his job, addressing them as an individual, and an intelligent one at that. For older people, of whom there is no shortage on the South Coast, radio is a godsend.

 

You can listen to the radio and do just about anything. Radio is interactive; it requires the listener to excercise his imagination, whereas television simply numbs that marvellous human faculty.

 

Radio educates; television entertains. Radio also reassures, and stills the fretting mind.

 

 

 

Kate Chisholm, the radio critic of the Spectator, recently wrote about the release of statistics showing that more people in Britain listen to the radio now than ever before since its inception.

 

But money is money, and the programming bathwater of yesterday was thrown out along with the baby of  inventiveness and stimulation.

 

Social networking, such as Facebook and Twitter, seems to have attracted incalculable numbers of followers, and probably for the same reason in the rapid rise of talk radio some years ago. Which is in some ways not surprising, but in others is.

 

It is not surprising because there is a distinct similarity between Twitter and the text message, or SMS as we clumsily call it. On Twitter, which can be transmitted via the net or from your smartphone, your message is limited to 140 characters, which includes punctuation (few people use it), mood indicators (? and !) and spaces between words. These messages are called ‘tweets’. And so they should be.

 

But it is also surprising that so many people have been swept up in the wave of enthusiasm which is currently engulfing the airwaves of the chatterati. The reason I say this, and remember I have spent several hours on line looking at this lot, is that it is all so meaningless and toe-curlingly shallow. 

 

A point I should make, though, is that having followed the ructions in the aftermath of the Iranian election on Twitter (#iranelection) is that the network outstripped all other media forms for the simple reason that the messages were coming in real time; and that at about 20 a second.

 

So, although, as some boffins think, tweeting may be here to stay, I shall not succumb to being a twit. 

Nothing wrong?

The antics of our political leaders before the election, and now the games of the Brits, gave CHRIS BENNETT something to think about.

 

"I HAVE done nothing illegal," said the British politician. Like most British politicians lately, he was squirming about the publication by the daily Telegraph of his expenses claims.

 

I remember some years ago, when I was working in this paper's newsroom, we had on more than one occasion office bearers in our local council who were also under some scrutiny, by this paper among others, for their conduct in the matter of openness and honesty.

 

Not so long ago we had the spectacle of supporters of our new president saying he had done nothing illegal. Well, actually that was never proved; but you get my point. It is not about legality; it is about humanity.

 

Just because something is not illegal does not mean it is right. What happened to the moral compass, and its twin brother, moral courage?

 

What has become of our sense of right and wrong? What became of the old fashioned idea of making a clean breast of things?

 

There is nobility in holding public office, whether it be here or in the mother of parliaments; a nobility that is also to be found in selfless hard work. Somehow the two go hand in hand.

 

The modern febrile tactic of resorting to the letter of the law is pathetic. It does little more than imply guilt on the part of the accused. As the French put it, so very neatly, “Qui s’excuse, s’accuse”. He who excuses himself, accuses himself.

A word no longer used, but like so many old words, pithy and apt, is “inwit”. It was formed in Middle English from in plus wit, the latter meaning the mind as the seat of consciousness and intelligence (we continue the same idea when we talk about native wit or we describe somebody as having a quick wit).

To have inwit meant that you had an inward sense of what was right and wrong. Think halfwit.

 

But enough of the thieving magpies.

                                                             *********************

Winter is with us again, which will mean wrapping up for walks on the beach. The four-thirty afternoon sky has a greyness to it, and there is almost a chill in the air. Winter is always a time for slowing down a bit, and thinking about what has gone before in the year, and what one has done; it is a time for pondering what lies in  the year ahead.

 

Lots of great people have said some glorious things about winter. They may have been talking about the cold, hard and long winter of the northern region of our world, but we have our winters too, though they are milder and shorter.

 

Shakespeare’s Duke of Gloucester spoke of his ‘winter of discontent’, a marvellous expression. Incomparable in its misery, Lord Byron wrote in Don Juan of the ‘English winter, ending in July/To recommence in August’.

 

Here, down on the idyllic coast, the winter brings very special things. The whales, of course, are perhaps the favourites of many. They come here to be away from the Antarctic bitterness, to find safe haven to calve and school their young. Then there are the dolphins and the sardines, accompanied by all the frenzy and excitement of a festival; and, of course, the holidaymakers.

 

In just over a week we shall reach the winter solstice, mid-winter’s day, June 21. The sun will start its return journey to our hemisphere and the days will get longer. It never ceases to amaze me how short our winter really is.  

Ruins of wrack…

Many of the postings in this blog are originally published as my weekly column in the South Coast Herald, a weekly paper for southern KwaZulu-Natal. The beach in question is in the pic.

LAST weekend the tide dumped a great swathe of seaweed along the beach near my house; a great ruddy brown mass of the stuff. It was all atangle with different varieties of sea vegetation, which had a rich lobsterish smell, reminding of one of the advantages of living close to the sea; and there are many.

 

I am not sure why it should be called seaweed; it is, after all, a medley of sea vegetables. Much of it is edible, although seemingly not appealingly edible enough to arouse the interest of the locals.

 

Ruins of wrack wound around strands of half a dozen other types, and beautiful bright green golf ball like things, all related and all algae, according to my reading of the two books I have on seaweed. I chew a few of my favourites, upright codium (codium extricatum) and its other fleshy relatives.

 

There is surprisingly little rubbish, although the occasional reminder of the presence of South Coast fishermen is to be seen in the odd ball of tackle - hook, line and sinker.

 

Lately I have enjoyed the fruits of the council’s labours. The storm damage of a couple of years ago, which wrought havoc on our shores, has now been repaired. Not only repaired but repaired with some thought. The wrecked staircase down to the beach a short distance south of the Impejati estuary has been beautifully rebuilt.

 

What is more the wooden and concrete detritus that scarred this useful amenity have been removed and the sand around it combed; presumably by seven maids with seven mops. The council, whom I imagine are responsible for this fine effort, are to be congratulated warmly.

 

There is a certain pleasure in seeing the results of others’ work, when those results are worthy of admiration. In this cynical age, when we are, understandably, preoccupied with corruption and the theft of our taxes by those in places of trust, it is encouraging to know that there are those in our councils who not only know what to do, but how to do it.

 

Similarly the road in which I live is a dirt track that is graded about every six months. As it slopes down the tarmac at the T-junction every heavy shower creates ruts and crevices. The council have now laid a stretch of gravel on the surface, for which those of us who live there are grateful.

 

Maybe those seven maids have also been using their new brooms to sweep clean.

 

Reading up for the paragraphs on seaweed I consulted Seaweed, a handbook on the benefits of the vegetable, by Valeri G. Cooksley, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang, New York (2007), and Two Oceans, a splendid guide to the coast around our country, by Branch, Griffiths, Branch and Beckley, published by David Phillip, Cape Town and Johannesburg (1994). My copy of the latter is a fifth impression (2002).

 

My reading of Two Oceans seemed to imply that wrack is found only on the West Coast; however, I was not going to miss the chance to use the headline to this column.