About the video:
This video was made to remind people that the world is only interesting because of its diversity. If you wish away one culture, and then another, and then another… eventually you will be left with one simple destructive culture (that will then find character traits, within itself, that it can hate).
Look at the positive things in other cultures: the food, the beauty, the sense of humour, the rhythm, the creativity, the strength, the love, the education, the family, the peacefulness, the music…
South Africa and the world have such beautiful diversity in its people. Appreciate the diversity, and stop Racism, Culturalism, Ethnicity, Ageism, and Sexism…

The method:
The video was made using the stop-motion technique. i.e. Take a photo, and move something slightly, then take another photo, and move it again… and so on. It ended on 700 photos, but a few are repeated in the video for effect.

Meaning of the video:
I used normal baking flour, on a dark background, in order to emphasize the contrast of the black and white colours. In the video, black needs white, and white needs black, because you would not be able to read black text on a black background (and vice versa).
The flour makes the shape of South Africa because I am a South African, and the recent racial tension inspired me to make the video, but I didn’t focus the video specifically on SA because I think the problems are universal. They also directly relate to culture, language, religion, and any big differences in groups of people.
The “shaking of hands” signifies meeting new people of a different culture, in order to break the stereotypes that we place on different people.
The thing that looks like a comet, is supposed to be an old school soccer ball! Sport transcends language barriers, and is definitely one link that can help unite a country and the world. Soccer is the biggest sport in the world played by so many different cultures, and gives us something in common, with “other” people.
The sun and moon, shows the balance of the dark night, with the light day.
The heart is love, because that is an essential ingredient in the recipe for peace and unity.
The song:
The song is called “Vuli Ndlela” (translates to “Open the gates”), and was released by Brenda Fassie in 1998 on the album “Memeza”. The language is Zulu (one of the 11 official languages in South Africa).
This specific song is not related to the video or racism directly, but Brenda was considered a voice to the disenfranchised blacks during Apartheid.
The story in the song is: Brenda telling the” gossipers” of the village to “open the gates”(vulindlela) and not to be jealous of her son, who is getting married to a beautiful woman.

Made by:
Ching Chong Cha (aka Cliff Beddy)

South Africa has just finished hosting the biggest sporting event in the world and if there’s one thing that stood out, it was our Ubuntu, our warmth and our leadership. The question on our minds is how to keep growing that spirit of unity and respect for one another. Lead SA is an initiative that aims to to remind us that it is in our power to change ourselves and our country, that we all have the ability to lead.

A call to all South Africans to stand Up for South Africa and our future.

The 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup is now a proud part of South Africa’s sporting and, much more important, a proud part of its national history. It was an extraordinary experience of the power of human energy to create magic for millions of people inside South Africa, and for hundreds of millions around the globe. 

Shari Cohen, an international development worker in the public health sector, writing in the Huffington Post, was so typical of so many people who got it all wrong – and now have it all right. 

An extract from her first blog on June 11^th 2010:

That a child of ten years of age is living alone in a run down mud hut with barely a roof and no food, and is expected to care for his/her younger siblings because the parent are either dead or so ill they cannot care for the children anymore, all while a nation celebrates an excessive and obscenely expensive global sporting event is almost too much to really contemplate.

When I think about the media opportunities that a World Cup stage provides, to say it’s already a missed opportunity is a gross understatement. It is a crime. Shame on FIFA for not supporting the host country in at least shining a light on urgent social issues. And shame on the South African government for not pushing FIFA to do so. 

On June 15^th 2010 she wrote:

I went on a rant the other day regarding the cost of the 2010 World Cup versus all the critical needs South Africa is facing and whether or not the most vulnerable of this country would gain anything from having the World Cup hosted in their country. 

To say that I was blown away at the hospitality South Africa has shown the rest of the world would be an understatement. 

To me, Ubuntu is the acceptance of others as parts of the sum total of each of us.And that is exactly what I have experienced during the lead up to, and the initial days of this World Cup. There is nary a South African citizen that I’ve met on the street, or in shops or restaurants or hotels, that hasn’t gone out of their way to greet me and make me feel like I am home. And I don’t mean that in the trivial, “Oh, aren’t they nice, homely people here…” sort of way. I mean real, genuine interest and questions. People seriously want to know where I come from. What it’s like where I live. How does it compare to where I am now. What do I think of South Africa. Oh yes, and what do I think of Bafana Bafana… The questions and conversations are in earnest. They are honest. And they are had with enthusiasm and thirst to know more. South Africans are drinking deeply from the cup of humanity that has been brought to their doorstep. 

I have been truly humbled on this trip. And while I have my gripes regarding development here, I cannot say one negative thing about how South Africa has handled its duties as host and hostess to the world. If I could say one thing to sum up being here during this once-in-a-lifetime experience, it would be that I’ve learned the value of Ubuntu, and that when found and offered in abundance, the world is indeed a better place to live in. 

I am a cynic, no doubt about that. And yet I have to admit, I’m a little teary just writing this because I leave for home next weekend and I will be leaving a little piece of myself here in South Africa. I just hope I have learned enough to bring back a little piece of Ubuntu to my homeland, where perhaps with a little caring and a little water, it will take root as naturally as it does here, in the cradle of civilization. 

As the 2010 Cup slogan goes, “Feel it. It is here.” Well, I have felt it, because I am here. Thank you South Africa, for giving me this unexpected gift. I am humbled. 

On the 6^th July 2010, she wrote:

I can see now that South Africa can accomplish anything it sets its collective mind to. I can see now that I was wrong so many trips ago, thinking that South Africa could never change, that it was a hopeless situation. I am almost embarrassed now at how little faith I had in this country. I see the potential where before I saw none. I see the hopefulness, where before I saw only despair. I know social change takes time, even generations, to actually see its results. But I hope – truly, sincerely – that the South Africa I now know is here to stay for a very long time. I can see now that she, as a unified country, can accomplish anything when she sets her mind to it.

I will be blowing my Vuvuzela here in the USA (much to my neighbour’s disdain), each time I hear of a successful achievement in South Africa. I don’t mean this in a patronizing way at all, I mean it in the spirit of Ubuntu, because I see now that you are all my brothers and sisters, and your successes are my successes. I wish you well South Africa, on your journey post-World Cup. 

Shari displays a lovely honesty.  What a challenge for us all to keep the spirit of Ubuntu alive and not allow the extraordinary levels of energy to subside.

When I moved with my young family to South Africa in 2006, the country was famous for three things – violent crime, AIDS and Nelson Mandela – and the chances of encountering the first two seemed larger than meeting the third.  We took a house on the outskirts of Cape Town protected by infrared beams, bars in the windows, metal “rape gates” in the doors and, in the street outside, an armed private security patrol.  After six months we were burgled; a year later it happened again.
 But by then, reality was overtaking preconceptions.  There was crime; a lingering, sometimes lethal racial intolerance; and an excruciating inequality between town and township.  But that was offset by growing integration in the cities; rising affluence in places like Soweto, the huge African township on the edge of Johannesburg; and a new broad-mindedness that saw, for instance, the villagers of Limpopo accept as their champion the runner Caster Semenya, whose gender had been challenged after she won the world 800-m championship last year.  The beauty of the place – the Cape sea, as cold and clear as ice, the stillness of the Karoo desert – lent the nation a serenity for which we were wholly unprepared.
 Meanwhile, South Africa’s preparations for the soccer World Cup, such as the building of new trains, rapid bus systems and airports, spoke of a country on the move.  Even the country’s struggles gave it a vibrancy.  Friends in England would talk property prices.  Friends in South Africa would debate the country’s future.  After a year, we bought a house with a thatched roof and thick white-washed walls and, thinking we’d never find a better place to raise a family, decided to have another child, a third daughter born last month.  When a friend used the Afrikaans phrase vrek plek, meaning “place to die in,” to describe our new house, we understood that she was talking not about violent crime but a home.
 If our ideas of the country were changing, so were my impressions of the continent.  I’d read of an Africa trapped in a monotony of war, famine, genocide and death.  And the grim stories were there.  But Somalia, Darfur and Congo turned out to be the exceptions in a place where the norm was increasingly diverse, galloping opportunity.  On my reporting trips, I was meeting coffee moguls in Rwanda, biofuel entrepreneurs in Liberia, offshore bankers in Mauritius and jazz impresarios in Ethiopia.  Moreover, if you were backing China, I realized, you were backing Africa, because China was backing Africa with billions a year.  African growth was averaging 5% to 7%.  Africa’s middle class was bigger than India’s.
 But knowing, strangely, is not always believing.  Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu tells a story about visiting Nigeria from apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and the pride he felt at spotting two black pilots manning an internal flight; only to panic when the plant hit turbulence that “those blacks” would crash.  Many South Africans were aware of the new reality but still imprisoned by their old perceptions.  I knew Africa was changing, but making the continent’s case in print was not the same as banishing the ingrained doubt from my mind.
 It took an opening whistle to do that.  If the big idea behind staging the World Cup in Africa was to change outside perceptions of the continent, the surprise bonus is that it has allowed Africans to believe in themselves.  The arrival of hundreds of thousands of fans was sudden, giant, cacophonous confirmation.  And just as our faith caught up with our facts, it got better.  South Africa scored a beautiful first tournament goal.  Ghana beat the U.S. to reach the quarterfinals.  Hardly a crime was reported.
 Perhaps the most remarkable sight of the tournament came on its second day, outside the stadium in tiny, rural Phokeng.  In the hours before the England-U.S. game, 44,000 fans in face paint and fluorescent wigs stepped off their coaches into a dusty African village, asking if there was anywhere they could have a beer.  After a few moment of hesitation, the owners of 10 houses and a local shop threw open their doors, set up giant braais (barbecues) of chicken in their yards and started handing out quarts of cold beer.  It was perhaps the most peaceful and gently inebriated meeting of two worlds in history.
 Years of agonizing challenges no doubt lie ahead of Africa.  But for a month, we’ve been living something wondrously different.  At a rock concert in Soweto the night before the opening game, Tutu tried to put it into words.  “Can you feel it?” he exclaimed.  “You can touch it!  It’s unbelievable!  I am in a dream!”
He was – I think- talking about Africa’s future.  It is here.

In his home of Namibia, John Kasaona is working on an innovative way to protect endangered animal species: giving nearby villagers (including former poachers) responsibility for caring for the animals. And it’s working.

John Kasaona is a leader in the drive to reinvent conservation in Namibia – turning poachers into protectors of species.
As the assistant director for the Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) , Kasaona works on ways to improve the lives of rural people in Namibia by involving them in the management of the lands they live on – and the species that live there with them.
Kasanoa’s Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program helps rural villages set up communal conservancies, which manage and use local natural resources in a sustainable manner. Essentially, it’s about restoring the balance of land and people to that of pre-colonial times, and allowing the people with the most interest in the survival of their environment to have control of it.

http://www.irdnc.org.na/

It is said that one of the biggest decisions humans must make is whether to treat the world as a “friendly” place or as an “unfriendly” place. That decision determines many of your outcomes!

A nice alternative to the noisy Vuvuzela so favoured by soccer fans in South Africa.

Dr Bruce Copley a leading holistic animator and pioneer of corporate drumming in South Africa, has made an exciting discovery that transforms the Vuvuzela into a sweet sounding multi-noted musical instrument. This revolutionary discovery – a world first – offers a simple, creative and effective solution to the controversial white noise produced by the Vuvuzela.

What needs to change is not the vuvuzela but the player and this is exactly what the Rainbow Vuvuzela demonstrates so sweetly and simply.

The Rainbow Vuvuzela ensemble comprising students from the Muizenberg High school and featured in this clip are now after only a few hours practice, producing sweet music, sounds, songs, rhythms and dances. Their first public performance was at the AfriOceans Warriors Conference in Cape Town on 6 May 2010. They will also be showcased on ARD German television, South Korean National television and featured in the popular SABC 2 Rainbow Rhythm series.

In this clip Dr Bruce Copley demonstrates the large variety of sweet sounds that can be produced with a conventional Vuvuzela.

Fact:

The Vuvuzela, when blown the traditional way, produces a B-flat note of 130 dB which is enough, when held at close range to the ear for 2 minutes, to permanently damage the hearing.

An awe inspiring video and super music, one cannot resist listening again and again.

The act of playing music with people of different cultures, religions, economics and politics is a powerful statement. It shows that we can find ways of working together and sharing our experiences with one another in a positive way. Music has the power to break down the walls between cultures, to raise the level of human understanding.
~ Mark Johnson, founder, Playing for Change

From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe.

If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived!

“There is no religion higher than the Truth” (PowerPoint Presentation)

“What is really important is your behaviour in front of your peers, family, work, community, and in front of the world.”

- Dalai Lama