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JOHANNESBURG- South Africa had exceeded its target revenue commitments for the 2010 Soccer World Cup by $500 million (R3.6 billion) and the excess was expected to reach $1 billion, Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the 2010 local organising committee, said last week.

Revenue commitments had already reached $3.5 billion compared to the targeted $3 billion, Jordaan said at a meeting to review preparations for the World Cup.

"We may reach $4 billion given the indication of more commercial partners."

Companies have already invested up to $150 million in the event.

Jordaan said South Africa's business perspective was to secure all of its revenue for the next four years.

He said the greatest challenge facing the country in preparation for the World Cup was the provision of infrastructure.

In this year's budget, the government had allocated R17.4 billion to improve the efficiency of public transport and building of stadiums ahead of the tournament.

The other challenge was the scarcity of match tickets.

Jordaan said there would be about 3 million tickets available to the expected 350 000 tourists and fans in the entire country.

"If we are lucky, we [South Africans] can get 1 million tickets," he said.

Jordaan said the major problem with tickets was not price but availability. Therefore, fan parks were proposed around host stadiums in nine cities, in other African countries and abroad.

New build stadia include the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit.



Some of the challenges included visitors' accommodation, transport and logistics.

Adam Brown, the organising committee's senior executive manager of match events, said the issues were based on capacity, as there was not enough accommodation for visitors.

"There are about 55,000 rooms required for the World Cup," Brown said. He said there were 25,000 rooms contracted from hotels, with 19,000 contracted back in 2003, when the World Cup bid was announced.

"We have also signed a memorandum of understanding with SANParks for the Kruger National Park to commit between 2,500 and 3,000 rooms from their lodges and bed and breakfast facilities" said Brown.

He said there were about 1,500 bed and breakfasts contracted across the country.

The majority of the rooms would come from hotels but they "are expecting about 35,000 rooms from hotels and the rest from lodges and B&Bs", he said.

Southern Sun's managing director, Helder Pereira, said the hotel had sold 74 percent of its 12 000 rooms to world football body Fifa for the World Cup. However, 2009 would be more demanding than 2010 for the South African hospitality industry.

"There will be huge accommodation requirements in 2009: the British Lions tour, the FIFA Confederations Cup as well as the elections."

Labels: 2010, development, nelspruit, sport, world cup

JOHANNESBURG- A South African and a Mozambican company are to construct a R4-billion liquid petroleum pipeline between the two countries, reducing South Africa's reliance on Durban harbour and offering some hope that inland fuel prices might drop in the long term.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has issued a licence to build the pipeline from Maputo to Kendal in Gauteng, via Nelspruit, to Petroline RSA. They will build the pipeline jointly with Petroline SARL of Mozambique.

This pipeline follows the construction of 865km of pipeline to supply natural gas from Mozambique to Mpumalanga and Gauteng, successfully completed in 2004.



Nersa agreed with the option to build the new pipeline from Mozambique, instead of a larger 24-inch line from Durban to Johannesburg, because it would be cheaper. Detailed design and environmental impact assessments for the project, already approved by the two countries, are currently under way.

According to Petroline RSA director Pinky Moabi, construction will start at the end of the year and the pipeline should be fully operational by the end of 2009.

"We hope that fuel prices will drop in Mpumalanga and some parts of Gauteng, because we will be getting fuel directly from the coast of Mozambique, and we know that fuel prices are lower on the coast than in inland cities," Moabi said.

According to Petroline, the pipeline will carry 3.5-billion litres of fuel a year and supply 25% of the fuel demand in Mpumalanga and Gauteng.

The pipeline will run from an existing coastal fuel storage depot at Matola Harbour in Mozambique to Nelspruit, where an inland depot will be built, complete with rail and road loading infrastructure.

ABSA economist Chris Hart said that the pipeline's effect on prices would in all probability be felt in the long term. "The pipeline is unlikely to have an effect on fuel prices in the shorter term as the consumers would have to pay for it," Hart said. However, the pipeline "might cut costs to a certain extent in the main market in the long run.

"Currently, about two thirds of South Africa's fuel is imported," Hart added. "There is refinery capacity shortage in the country."

The licence to build the pipeline went to Petroline ahead of state-owned Petronet, which Nersa spokesperson Nhlanhla Cebekhulu put down to Petroline's strong empowerment credentials.

Separately, it emerged that another pipeline is under consideration from Phalaborwa to Maputo.

Palabora Mining, the country's biggest copper producer, may develop a steel plant with the Mozambican government in Maputo, a project similar to that investigated by Enron in 1997.

The project under consideration includes an expansion of the port and a pipeline to transport magnetite, a type of iron ore, from Palabora's mine in South Africa, the chief financial officer Charles Asubonten said on Friday.

Palabora produces the steel making ingredient, magnetite, as a by-product of copper mining. Palabora, controlled by Anglo American and Rio Tinto, plans to raise magnetite production further after a 27 percent jump in output last year. Iron ore prices rose 19.5 percent last year and will increase 9.5 percent to a record this year, their fifth consecutive annual gain.

Shares of Palabora rose R2.68 to close at R71.68 on Friday. The shares more than doubled in price over the past 12 months. Palabora had between 240 million and 270 million tons of magnetite, Asubonten said.

That would be sufficient to support a steel plant at the port in Mozambique's capital. He declined to comment on the cost of the project, the size of the steel plant being studied and the steel makers that Palabora has talked with.

Enron, which filed the biggest-ever corporate bankruptcy at the time in 2001, and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) had planned to develop a steel project in Maputo port nine years ago.

The mill, costing $2 billion (R14 billion), would have produced 4 million tons of steel annually, using Palabora's magnetite and gas from Mozambique's Pande field, which is now operated by Sasol.

Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 ended plans to build the plant, while the IDC quit the project two years earlier.

"The original project was going to be a steel slab plant," Abrie Audie of the South African Iron and Steel Institute said on Friday. "Both Highveld Steel and Vanadium and Mittal Steel are expanding, so you have to ask if there is a market."

The pipeline from Phalaborwa to Maputo would have been about 300km long, according to a 1997, Mozambique News Agency report, citing then transport minster Mac Maharaj. Magnetite could be transported through the pipeline in slurry form, Asubonten said.

Palabora's magnetite exports rose about 30 percent in the past year and will increase again this year, according to the annual report. Asubonten declined to disclose volumes.

Labels: development, mozambique, nelspruit

JOHANNESBURG- The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), a quasi-governmental body, has announced a R3.2 billion investment to establish two new South African biofuel projects.

Biofuel is a sustainable source of energy derived from plants that can yield ethanol or be further processed to produce an alternative source of diesel. South Africa is currently the world's seventh largest producer of ethanol from plants, which can be used to power specially adapted vehicles.

One of the projects will be near Hoedspruit in Mpumalanga and the other at Cradock in the Eastern Cape.



Both projects are at the detailed engineering study level. The studies are due for completion in September. Construction is likely to start in January. First production is set for early 2009, project leader Noel Kamrajh said yesterday.

The IDC funding parastatal is likely to take a 49 percent stake in both projects, with 25 percent warehoused for empowerment and community groups.

The remaining 51 percent interest will be taken by the CEF and outside partners, who are yet to be selected.



The plan is for the Eastern Cape project to use sugar beets to produce about 90 million litres of biofuel each year, and the Mpumalanga venture to make 100 million litres of fuel from sugar cane.

The IDC and CEF are also looking into the production of 150 million litres of biofuel made from sweet sorghum and sugar cane in Pondoland, which spans KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

A fourth project aims for production of 150 million litres of biofuel a year from maize in Ogies in Mpumalanga. Here the maize will be bought from local farmers or traders. The fifth project is to produce 100 million litres of biofuel from cassava in Makhathini in KwaZulu-Natal.

Kamrajh said this strategy would allow a mandate for blending ethanol into petrol at a maximum level of 8 percent.

This required the production of 1 billion litres of bioethanol a year and could contribute 1.3 percent to gross domestic product. These were sufficient incentives to kick-start the biofuels industry, according to Kamrajh.

The draft biofuels strategy proposed a 30 percent rebate on the fuel tax for ethanol, while the proposed rebate for biodiesel was 40 percent.

Kamrajh said that for the IDC's biofuels projects to succeed, there needed to be a 100 percent fuel tax rebate.

The IDC's biofuels projects would be viable at between $50 and $75 a barrel. An oil price below $50 would require incentives for the biofuel sector.

Labels: development, hoedspruit

SKUKUZA (SANParks)- Lower Sabie is a very old camp originally built in the 1930s. It has a special place in many people's hearts. However, the infrastructure is old and in need of upgrading.

In 2001 a major development project was launched to bring Lower Sabie closer to accepted KNP hospitality standards. This was a complete redevelopment of the main complex including the reception shop and restaurant.

The project was expanded to include the development of a tented camp and a swimming pool. A new filling station followed.



This project had a big impact on the guests and the guests were unhappy with the disturbance during the construction phase. In fact, there were many letters of complaint and we understood that the construction of the upgraded facilities would have severely hampered the "sense of place" of Lower Sabie, which brings guests back to this camp. However, when the development was finally completed it was a big success and very popular with the guests.

The situation regarding the accommodation units has now been identified as a priority and as a result a new project was launched to redevelop the river view bungalows at Lower Sabie.

After much planning and development and redevelopment, the ideal pilot unit has finally been built. The reaction of the public to this unit was very positive and we are going ahead with the upgrade of all the units to this standard.

This is a however a slow process and unfortunately impacts on the guests in terms of noise and construction disturbance. The new contractors moved into Lower Sabie in February this year- this is relatively quieter than other months.

Nevertheless, Lower Sabie is unique compared with other camps in the Park (and indeed in South Africa with other accommodation facilities) in that it is busy throughout the year so a "quieter season" does not really exist. The complexity of this upgrade and the amount of renovation means that the construction will probably go on for most of 2007.

This development is vital to ensure that SANParks gives its guests value for money the ambience of the camp is not destroyed.

To reduce the impact on their guests that this major construction is sure to have, SANParks has made the decision to close a large portion of the camp so that the development can progress as fast as possible. The work not only includes the upgrading of accommodation units, but also other services like water, sewerage and electricity.

Naturally, it is always difficult to give the exact date when the work will finish (as weather, supplies, logistics and other factors can often hold up the process) but we expect this project in Lower Sabie to be completed by the middle of 2008.

On completion, Lower Sabie will have a new row of river view bungalows that will be bigger than the existing ones as well as providing a kitchen facility in the units.

They say that "the tented camp will also be upgraded to improve the facilities based on feedback we have received from the guests. We are also planning to redevelop the camping area to provide an even better campground for our campers. We are also planning to upgrade the family cottages to improve their standards. We will however not be losing our budget accommodation as we try to make the camp accessible to as wide a range of income groups as possible. The budget units will only be getting renovation work done to them."

"This is a very exciting time for us as we want to give our valued guests an experience to remember and once all this development is finally completed, we believe that we will have the best camp in the Park."

SANParks concludes that, "on behalf of the Lower Sabie team, we would like to thank everybody for their patience and understanding during this difficult time and we trust that we will be able to finally produce a beautifully upgraded Lower Sabie that everyone can be proud of.

Labels: development, lower sabie

HOEDSPRUIT- A group of ten educational volunteers has recently arrived in Hoedspruit from the United States, the UK and Australia. Employed by the local not-for-profit organisation Amazwi (meaning “voices” in Zulu) the volunteers bring experience in writing, editing, publishing, photography, public relations, and marketing.



The organisation was established by Maggie Messitt in 2004, and will open a School of Media Arts (SOMA) in March 2007. SOMA will offer an adult certificate program with training in narrative journalism to unemployed women from Acornhoek and other local communities.

Several of the volunteers will also participate in the Amazwi Writers & Artists Residency Program, while others will spend their time in Hoedspruit establishing "A. Magazine"- Africa’s first non-fiction literary journal.

Amazwi was recently awarded a grant from the Lonely Planet Foundation, part of the world’s largest travel information company. The grant money, equivalent to approximately US$15,000 or 105,000 ZAR, will be used to establish a regional narrative-form newspaper. This publication will serve as the cornerstone of curricula for Amazwi’s School of Media Arts (SOMA).


Amazwi volunteers enjoy a traditional meal in Rooiboklaagte, a section of Acornhoek, during a community tour.

Messitt and her volunteers have moved into their new offices in Hoedspruit. In addition to headquartering the South African/U.S. organization’s operations, this space will also host the first class of the Amazwi School of Media Arts (SOMA). Amazwi’s offices are located at Hoedspruit Crossing, next to Imagine Africa Safaris.


Thoko Makwakwa, sangoma (traditional healer) and local tavern owner, teaches Amazwi volunteers about throwing the bones. Photo by Sheri Booker.

For more information on Amazwi, please visit their Web site: www.amazwi.org.

Labels: acornhoek, bushbuckridge, development, hoedspruit

PHALABORWA- The Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) signed a R270m deal this week with the Ba-Phalaborwa municipality in Limpopo to facilitate development in the area.

"This programme includes various projects to provide communities with basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity; improve road and rail infrastructure; upgrade sports and community facilities, and enhance economic opportunities," said DBSA manager for strategic initiatives Gwede Mantashe.

"The bank, together with other stakeholders such as government departments, will make available over the amount of R270m to fund the Sustainable Communities Programme in the region."

The deal was signed yesterday.

Labels: development, Phalaborwa

Friday's launch of the Kruger to Canyons (K2C) Biosphere Reserve near Hoedspruit is seen as an important step in the economic development of the Central Lowveld region, which straddles the boundary between Limpopo and Mpumalanga.

Stretching from the Blyde River Canyon to the Kruger National Park, the Biosphere incorporates the 1.5-million people, mainly rural poor, who live there.

It is the fourth internationally recognised Biosphere in South Africa. The others are in the Koegelberg, West Coast and Waterberg regions.

In September 2001 Kruger to Canyons was registered by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) as the the 411th Biosphere Reserve in 94 countries worldwide, under its International Man and Biosphere Programme.

According to the Programme, Biosphere Reserves are regions where internationally important protected areas, like the Kruger National Park, lie next to human settlements.

People in the area may have been displaced when the reserves were declared, remaining on the margins and increasing pressure on local resources, exposing entire ecosystems to stress.

Restricted or prohibited access to communities' historic resource base may have changed land-use patterns for the worse.

The people living in the Kruger to Canyons reserve are predominantly black (97%), unskilled, illiterate and rurally based.

Morgan Lewele, Chairperson of the Biosphere Initiative, said the launch came after seven years of consultations between all involved.

"The realisation that we all have a responsibility to protect the environment has created a common bond between us," Lewele said at the launch. "Our mission will be to maintain the K2C biosphere as an eminent conservation and development model."

Public meetings were held during the consultation process, where biosphere components such as core areas, buffer zones and transitional regions were identified.

At the launch, a Unesco certificate confirming Kruger to Canyon's biosphere status was handed to Collins Chabane, Limpopo MEC for the environment.

Chabane told the gathering that the biosphere reserve concept sought to place environmental protection at the centre of economic development. Ecotourism was expected to create a large number of jobs, he said.

He also announced the launch of an educational programme to promote environmental protection and the responsible use of natural resources.

"We have not merely inherited this land from our forefathers; we've borrowed it from our children," Chabane said.

The reserve

South Africa is the third most biologically diverse country in the world, according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. The K2C biosphere contains widely diverse landscapes, ranging from 300m above sea level in the east to over 2,000m in the Drakensburg Escarpment.

Kruger to Canyons is the third-largest Biosphere in the world. It is home to game, commercial and crop farming, tourism and related enterprises, as well as 149 mammal, 510 bird and 57 fish species.

The average rainfall ranges from 368mm a year to 3,000mm on the plateau. These two factors help create a wide variety of habitats and niches for flora and fauna.

The K2C Biosphere covers three biomes: savannah woodlands, afromontane forests and montane grasslands. These protected areas cover some 4.8-million hectares, including transfrontier and escarpment regions.

These make up a unique constellation of public, provincial, private reserves and natural resource areas.

In terms of Unesco's Man and Biosphere Programme, Biosphere Reserves offer political processes to stimulate the sustainable use of resources within a framework of economic empowerment and growth.

The philosophy is one of development and public participation through education, training and involvement in research and monitoring.

Each Biosphere Reserve has three zones: a core area devoted to strict protection, a delineated buffer zone where only activities compatible with conservation objectives can take place, and a transition zone used for sustainable resource management in cooperation with local communities.

Development

The 1.5-million people living in the K2C area are predominantly black (97%), unskilled and rurally based. There are huge social and economic inequalities.

Most of the people live in poor-rural conditions: only 50% functional literacy, high levels of male absenteeism, low direct incomes and a high percentage of young people.

Ninety percent live outside urban areas, compared with a national average of 35%. Some 20% of the population is under the age of four, and half are under 15 years old.

A high proportion of the population is not economically active, with households relying on subsistence farming, old-age pensions and remittances from relatives working outside the area to survive.

Limpopo has the lowest per capita income of the provinces in South Africa and the highest unemployment rate: almost 51% of the rural population is jobless.

There are a number of development initiatives under way in the Kruger to Canyons region. They range from broad empowerment to the transfer of ownership and conversion of marginal agricultural land to commercially viable ecotourism destinations, such as the governmental Phalaborwa sub-corridor initiative, to the establishment and registration of a new community school, the Hope School.

There is an effort to establish what will probably be the last consolidation of privately owned game lands into an official nature reserve in the Central Lowveld region, the Blyde-Olifants Conservancy.

Part of this effort is the inclusion of local community interests through the Maburuburung Trust.

See the official central government release on SouthAfrica.info here.

Labels: biosphere, development, hope school, maburuburung

HOEDSPRUIT- Schooltime at Southern Cross School near South Africa's renowned Kruger National Park makes for a pleasantly odd scene. Teachers and pupils are not cloistered in classrooms. Instead, they wander through the grass and bush, or sit in the shade of trees, joined in earnest discussion.

The school has the same syllabus prescribed for the rest of the country's schools by the educational authorities. But the teaching methods employed are radically different.

Southern Cross uses nature as a teaching tool. The teachers and their pupils go out into the veld in search of phenomena that can be used to study anything from mathematics and the physical and social sciences to language.

Jumbo Williams, the school's headmaster, speaks of the school's mission with almost evangelical zeal, speaking of turning students into disciples and "spreading the word" on the importance of environmental care.

"When they leave school, we want them to be champions of the natural environment," Williams said. "We must make people understand the impact of what we are doing [to the environment]. We need a global citizenship that buys into the idea that we need to look after our planet."

To emphasize the point, he shows the school cap. The front has a depiction of the Southern Cross, a celestial constellation that ancient sailors used to help guide them when they were lost. The back of the cap says, "A School for the Planet."

Nature as a Blackboard

The school sits on 100 acres (40 hectares) in the corner of a game estate near Kruger National Park. Animals live in the wild on game estates.

The adobe-style, thatched-roof buildings blend with the surrounding bush and look rather like an upscale hunting lodge. A 40-bed boarding house has a sweeping view of the northern Drakensberg, South Africa's longest mountain range. To get to class, students travel a path known as the Warthog Trot, a winding trail through the bush that's also used by giraffes, kudu, wildebeests, and impalas.

Warthogs "mow" the lawn. The school's idea of a pet includes an injured python that the students are rehabilitating so that it can be re-released into the wild. One experiment involves training bats to live in special bat houses rather than in the attics and chimneys of local lodge owners, where the flying mammals wreak havoc. Classroom shelves are crowded with Stone Age artifacts collected in the area.

The classroom for preschool tots is set slightly apart from the rest of the school. The first lesson of the day might be mathematics, but it's anything but typical.

Rather than using abstract lesson plans such as "Count how many apples Mary has in her basket," the children visit the nearby water troughs to count how many different animals came to drink during the night, based on the number of different tracks they find. Older students might be asked to calculate how much water will be consumed over weeks and months, based on the overnight drop in the troughs' water levels.

"It's amazing how much math is to be found out there," Williams says.

Language, speech, and debate classes focus on current conservation issues. A recent student debate centered on whether animals in the wild should be watered during a severe drought. In another example, the discovery of a dead animal could lead to an investigation of where it fits in the food chain, how and why it died, and what constitutes its environmental niche.

Preparing Future Conservationists

The idea for the school originated with Sue Godding, who at the time was managing a game lodge in the Thorny Bush Reserve, which is attached to Kruger National Park. When her children reached school age, rather than leave for the metropolitan areas as many lodge-management couples do, she decided to try to start a school that offered a top-shelf education and also made use of the exceptional natural environment.

Godding views nature-based tourism as one of South Africa's national treasures. She is driven by the conviction that the country needs to generate leaders with a firm understanding of the environment and the need to preserve it.

"We do not want to turn out game rangers but leaders in all fields who, when needing to make an important decision, can do so with a sound knowledge of how this world is to survive in these modern climes," she says.

Another parent, Heidi Smith, soon joined Godding. Williams, who as director of studies at a school in Johannesburg was well known for his enthusiasm for hands-on environmental education, also became involved. The three agreed on a basic concept "which amounted to taking education and dropping it on nature," Godding said.

The land for the school was donated, and three businesspeople with connections to the area helped raise funds. Southern Cross opened in January 2002 with 40 pupils. Enrollment today is well over 100.

Passion, Williams says, was his ultimate criterion for the teachers he selected from 250 applicants.

Outreach and fund-raising efforts continue. A scholarship fund has been established to increase the number of pupils from the poorer black communities in the surrounding areas. Students studying to become teachers through correspondence schools can gain practical experience by sitting in on classes and observing.

A third program is being developed to train teachers to spread the word on the importance and value environmental protection, sustainable development, and conservation.

The National Geographic article is here.

Labels: development, education

HOEDSPRUIT (Kruger Times)- Hlanganani, meaning ‘unity’, epitomises the essence of what is turning a poverty-alleviation project into a viable self-help entity.

The Hlanganani Arts and Crafts group comprises 28 members, all unemployed, who earn a living through their art or craft that is sold at the shop at the Phalaborwa Gate of the Kruger National Park.

The Section 21 company, boasting its own constitution and committee, did not happen overnight. Hlanganani Arts and Crafts developed from Phalaborwa Arts and Crafts, which was based on a similar idea, but a lack of vision, infighting, bickering and not enough management and business skills had it on a road to nowhere.

The Foskor Development Trust assisted with essential training and the KNP provided business premises for the group to operate from. From this foundation, the members regrouped, reorganised and renamed themself.

Strictly governed by its new constitution and new vision it has grown into a unified, viable and budding project. Each member is rewarded for what she puts in. A management meeting every Thursday ensures, amongst other things, that strict quality control keeps customers satisfied.

The project qualified for the National Craft Imbizo in Sandton last year and has again for this year's show.

With the income generated by her contribution, Anna Makhubela, chairman of the group and a single parent, has supported her three children for the last six years. Elizna Breitenbach’s, husband was retrenched by the Palabora Mining Company last month, making her income critical to their household.

According to Anna, Noreen Meredith, treasurer of the project, was key in getting the group to where they are today. “Maybe God gave us this lady,” she said.

She also thanked Derek Mashele, previously of the People in Conservation Department of the KNP, for his major contributions in getting the group through difficult times.

by Lynette Strauss, Editor, Kruger Times

Labels: development, Phalaborwa