Whales, whales, whales!
This winter has been a bonanza for whale lovers.
Whales of both Humpback and Southern Right varieties have been streaming along our shores these last two months, up from the Antarctic to calve and, who knows, maybe do a bit of sightseeing.
They tell their babies: “You will not believe it, but all this coast used to be beautifully lit up at night. Just darkness now…”
I heard of a WhatsApp group, Whales of the North Coast, so joined to see what was up. And there is a great deal of up.
This very enthusiastic group seem to spend their days glued to binoculars and keypads, broadcasting messages of whale sightings all and every day, with discussions about the habits of whales, identification marks and so on.
Whether this has been a particularly good year for sightings or there have been more than usual heading north, I don’t know, but there’s no reason not to believe that the Dolphin Coast cannot match the Hermanus “Whale Coast” for activity.
After the Courier ran an article about the group, membership swelled by a few hundred. Founder Friso van der Wal has recorded some wonderful footage of whales, calves and dolphins with his drone. One of the videos can be viewed on our website and others are on Instagram @frisovdwal.
I have learned a lot about whales.
But watching a social media group like this makes me seriously wonder about people.
The admin person asks: “Please press ‘Like’ or an emoji heart, thumbs up etc. if you like a post. Do not clog up the feed by commenting ‘Wow,’ ‘Beautiful,’ ‘Great video,’ and so on.” So, what do people do? You guess right. ‘Wow,’ ‘Beautiful’…
I have a dog like that. Doesn’t listen to a word I say unless it’s ‘Dinnertime!’
***
Old-school political commentator JP Landman, in his monthly newsletter that always tries to look for the positives in South Africa, draws parallels between SA and the history of the fight against crime and corruption in America, Singapore and Italy in the last century and in present-day China.
He believes Ramaphosa’s government is making progress in strengthening various crime-fighting units such as the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) and Investigative Directorate of the NPA, as well as combining efforts with SARS.
Specialised units such as the Asset Forfeiture Unit and Commercial Crimes Unit have been put into play.
By his reckoning, more than R20-billion of dodgy payments by Eskom and other government bodies has been recovered or frozen, with a lot more in the pipeline.
The spanner in the works is still the SA Police, which was Zumaed into near-total collapse.
It is not generally known that when private shareholders wanted to sell embattled Tongaat Hulett to suspect buyers, namely Zimbabwean tobacco giant Simon Rudland, SARS stepped in with a tax bill that sank the deal. A pointer, says Landman, to a coordinated fight against crime.
“One lesson from the US experience is that progress is incremental, uneven and slow. But there is progress. Monies recovered, cases enrolled, new institutions created, capacity strengthened… all of this is happening in South Africa.”
It is heartening to hear a positive note now and again, against all the doom and gloom.
***
Changing the subject, here is a little-known snippet of South African history.
Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital and founding father of communism, had a sister, Louisa. She thought her brother was full of **it and when she married a fellow called Jan Carel Juta, they emigrated from Germany to Cape Town.
Jan and Louisa were opposites of brother Karl. They were firm believers in capitalism and in 1853 started a shop, JC Juta, Bookseller and Stationer, in Wale Street. You may recognise the name.
Juta’s are publishers of academic textbooks, legal documents and scientific works right up to this day. Louisa died in Rondebosch in 1893.
True story, you can look it up on Wikipedia. When I told this to my old running mate, Malcolm Mann, he said he wasn’t a great student of history but he had heard that Karl had another sister.
Her name was Onya and they say her name before every race in athletics.
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