@2 Beanolini - well it's certainly indicative of how most people have moved on completely, especially in the bright consumer glitz that is Joburg.

It's great that we're able to ride the shiny coaster of growth and democracy and opportunity (not to gloss over the serious dips that might unrail us completely from dodgy corrupt politicians to crime and AIDS - where bacteriophages might come in handy) but it's too easy to forget where we've been, what we've come through.

My 22 year old adopted black brother, for eg, refused to vote in the last election - even though people died so he could - because he felt it didn't have anything to do with him.

This reminds me of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

Not the museum itself, which is a harrowing, humbling and human reminder of the atrocities South Africa endured (including our own Stasi-like Special Branch police force who spied on people, tortured activists with the wet bag technique among others, and killed people in custody by throwing them out of fifth storey windows, later attributing the deaths to off-hand explanations of "oh he slipped on the soap") - but the museum's inappropriate proximity to a major theme park / casino complex.

It's a tad unnerving, standing in the gallows room, where nooses have been hung for every person executed under the death penalty only to hear screaming. Even more so when you realise the screams are not some tacky sideshow sound effect tacked on to the exhibit, but coming from delighted punters on the rollercoaster just outside.

@35 Woolie.

Ah, where were you a year ago when I was desperate for a virus (or virus motif)?

I settled on a mini-chunk of ethically harvested compressed carbon after ten months of exploring other options. The final wedding ring does feature skull flowers, venus flytraps, swallows, rabbits and a flaming heart laser engraved in bright pink resin. So, it turned out okay.

But a satellite tobacco mosaic virus sounds awesome.

Well it's certainly more thought-provoking art than Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull (or most of his work, actually).

I desperately wanted a virus in my engagement ring rather than a diamond. Why should a compressed bit of carbon have cornered the market as a symbol of love. A virus is a far more appropriate and hopelessly romantic metaphor. After all, a virus is alive, contagious, and, in some cases, millions of years old.

But which virus to choose? The common cold isn't terribly exciting, but trying to get through customs would have been a mission with anything more serious. Anything to declare? Just cholera in my ring...

Unfortunately, I didn't get any further with it. My fiance declared me a morbid freak (no doubt like several posters here are about to do) and after exploring several other options including lunar rock, nanobots, petrified water and fulgurite, I ended up with the damn shiny rock.

As an aside - an AIDS activists couple I interviewed in Cape Town described their love as "an infection."

RE: necklacing - let's not forget that the National Party apartheid government's third party agents were responsible for stirring up some of the worst violence in the run-up to the 1994 elections, playing off political and cultural rivalries between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC. That's not to excuse atrocities like necklacing, but let's contextualise it.

As for crime rates, Hobnob, my brother-in-law is a reservist on the South African Police's Crime Response Unit which is frantically overworked.

They battle with budgets (his vehicle's siren and hooter is out of order, but the van doesn't get down-time for repairs because it's needed in action, which means he has to barrel through red traffic lights with only the lights to warn oncoming traffic).

And yes, they struggle with communication - from crime victims who are so shocked they can't remember their own name, let alone address to radio personnel in the control room who aren't necessarily familiar with the area (Xhosa operators in Cape Town know streets in Langa backwards - and how to pronounce them - not so much Rondebosch, and vice versa for operators from the burbs. Let's not forget we have 11 national languages and an education system STILL recovering from apartheid)

The cops also have people wasting their time from hoax calls to lonely old folks who call in and ask for a specific inspector to come check out their false alarm and have a cup of tea, calls to complain about loud music.

I can't speak for your police station or the incident in question, but there is a possibility that they didn't respond because they were attending to a much more serious case.

The cops are also horribly underpaid and given little respect in the community.

In my cynical opinion, it's kind of obscene that police officers from low income areas like Khayelitsha who earn R2500 a month (US$331 or the equivalent of 100xMcMeals to put it in terms of buying power) and put their lives on the line have to deal with rich housewives whining about their R25 000 flatscreen TV being stolen.

I'm astonished that there isn't MORE corruption (which is apparently very low among working cops who take their integrity very seriously, it's only when we get up to Jackie Selebi level that it goes to hell).

And as bad as crime is (despite the falling crime rates, especially in Gauteng, where Hobnob lives, currently ranked second best province in the country to live mainly because of the sparking economy and rapidly dropping crime), it's VERY much worse in low income areas, where people can't afford private security firms, or heck, in shacklands like Nyanga, where much of the township doesn't have electricity. Those streets are very dark and very scary at night.

Yes, crime is a problem. My middle class friends in nice suburbs bitch about break-ins or car theft or the occasional rare hijacking, but my friends from the townships have to deal with stabbings and gangsters and being shot in the leg for a cell phone, as happened a couple of months ago to a friend walking to the station.

Again, let's put this is in context.

It's not like crime started in 1994, it just got democratised.

Thanks for covering this.

I'm so angry about Mugabe trying to wrest back control and the South African government's inability to do anything but "wait and see" (as well as the UK's patronising squeamishness about getting involved in a former colony). Thank the FSM for the trade unions.

This should have been a real victory for democracy but instead Mugabe is turning it into a violent and oppressive spectacle showstopper for his violent and oppressive regime.

I'd love to see the Tibet protests extended to include boycotts of China for propping up a horrendous tyrant.

We need international pressure on Mugabe to step down or for Mbeki to get off his quiet diplomactic ass and do something.

If democracy matters at all, if it has any meaning, the world needs to intervene.

I'd recommend people go through Sokwanele's Flickr collection - the harrowing images bring home (hard) what is really going on in Zimbabwe.

Aaaaargh! Why do we all have to be Carries or Samanthas or Charlottes or Mirandas? Do women only come in four different flavours?

And by that classification, we can also assume our sample of six participants are also all crazily upper middle class with very little in common with the rest of humanity.

What about female desire in 68 year old new divorcees? Or female desire in single teen mothers in housing estates? Or female desire in rape survivors from the DRC?

The only "truth" here is that putting together six hot young women in a dorm under the guise of doing sex research makes for great TV ratings.

(disclaimer: haven't watched the show, downloading the torrent now, so forgive me if my assumptions made based on the press release are off)

Megsy,

As much as I love Harpers, their pithy round-ups can be too glib.

I haven't seen the footage in question, but there have been several articles on it in the local papers. Some have suggested that the encounter was fully consensual (if drunken) until the time that she passed out, at which point, apparently , he stopped. (as I said, I haven't seen the footage). He then went on to have fully consensual sex with the OTHER woman, who pulled him over to her, in the same bed.

It's further complicated in that the two were already having a sexual relationship.

As yet, she hasn't pressed charges. Or maybe that should be she hasn't pressed charges or filed a complaint.

We'll see what happens, especially after she sees the footage in question.

That DOESN'T mean that it WASN'T sexual assault just because they'd had sex before. Rape is rape and sexual assault is sexual assault whatever has happened previously (rapes happen in marriages too) And, it goes without saying that if someone is unconscious, it's automatically non-consensual.

I've written several stories on rape and the sexual offences courts in South Africa, which has one of the highest rape rates in the world. It's a horrifying and devastating violation one in four women in this country will experience.

I take sexual assault very seriously.

What I was drawing attention to is that this story is more complicated than the open-and-shut case Harpers presented in one short and snappy line.

But then maybe sexual assaults are often complicated, affected by warped cultural values (that bullshit miniskirt-meant-
she-was-asking-for-it defence), gender issues and the complexities of relationships and sex.

And this messy ugly and very public incident (consensual or not) should be used to open discussions, to debate, to educate.

Pieter's photographs are phenomenal From what he told me, they're not just travelling performers, they're also money lenders / debt collectors. Hard to argue that you just need a little more time when there's a slavering hyena on a chain in your house. Pieter's also taken phenomenal photos of albinos, Ghanaian honey collectors (in homemade bee suits made of bark and leaves), Botswana's high court judges including Unity Dow, (a story I was privileged to work with him on as part of his series on uniforms) and Rwanda ten years after the genocide. He's one of South Africa's hottest photographers. More amazing images at www.pieterhugo.com.
-Lauren

More on the Big Brother Africa alleged sexual assault (not so clear cut it seems) at:
http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=600763

Keep in mind it's a kids show, 7-11. So, really, not like South Park at all.

And, in South Africa, the challenge is that we're talking to kids from hugely disparate backgrounds - from high income well-educated urbanites to kids in undeveloped rural areas where you have to walk two km to the nearest tap to get water.

In the market research we did, it was really interesting to see the difference between kids' perspectives.

In a scene in episode 1, there's a minor fender-bender and 10 robot cops immediately rock up on the scene. High income kids from the suburbs picked up that the robot police force was oppressive.

But kids in the townships (US equivalent of the projects, only even more desperately poor, underdeveloped and crime-ridden) had a very different take. "The police are good. Because they actually came." It was very sobering.

Aaargh! Our URBO site has crashed due to the heavy traffic.

But you can still watch the video in three parts on YouTube.

Part 1 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4BopbZ---c
Part 2 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nriFS6mHCH4
Part 3 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W5oA-iyOHc

Or just catch the highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYPnnp36PfA

UPDATE: More info on the show for anyone interested.

It's a sci-fi comedy series (which makes it as much a Star Wars rip-off as South Park, LittleVoice with a smidge of Harry Potter and Futurama in there too).

It's weird and silly and irreverent but we do try to take on big issues relevant to kids.

Not, unfortunately youth apathy in politics, which is true of most countries, not just SA, because our target market of 7-11 is a ways away from that.

But we have taken on AIDS and why it's important to take medication as well as eating fruit and veg in an episode when the kids tackle an evil virus monster with a multi-pronged attack.

We've also done disability, dodgy cell phone videos, acne, celebrity, junk food, the war on terror (really), racism, environmentalism, and now DRM through lunatic plots involving mutant sock monsters, burping apedroids, viciously cute fighting toys, a guy-in-a-bear-suit-in-a-shrimp-suit and the staple prerequisite of any kids’ show: lots of giant robots.

- Lauren