Chat to President Zuma on Facebook & Twitter - He will Get on His iPad to Respond

Portia Mvubu

President Jacob Zuma on his iPad

President Jacob Zuma is a man full of surprises, but we already knew that from the two court cases which he completed without a conviction before his presidency. During his state of the nation address on 10 January 2011 he yet again proved that he is an unpredictable man when he told us that he sometimes visits social networks such as facebook and twitter. Earlier in the day it had been reported that the president had saved his speech on his iPad.

On Thursday evening I almost fell off my seat when I heard President Jacob Zuma saying he is on Facebook and Twitter and uses this as a communication tool to address problems faced by citizens. He was in the middle of thanking those who made the event possible and went on to say: “I would like to thank the mainstream media, direct contact media and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.” For a while I thought he was just staging until he quoted issues raised by some Facebook ‘friends’ of his and assured the nation that these issues are going to be attended to.

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'Songs of Migration' is Pure Musical Joy

Nondumiso Shabangu

Photo:www.markettheatre.co.za

Like most people you would find it very strange that I am a huge Hugh Masekela fan. I know how cliché that sounds but that is the truth. You can imagine how excited I was to finally get my hands on the tickets to go watch the musical, “Songs of Migration”. I get to the Market Theatre very early to witness one of the 101 things I want to do before I die and that is to see Hugh Masekela on stage with his legendary trumpet. With great suspense we wait for the show to start only to be told that one of the main acts has fallen very ill due to that the show is cancelled. I was shattered but all hope was not lost I re-scheduled for the next following Sunday as disappointed as I was. I was not willing to watch another show or ask for a refund.

The following Sunday the show went on as planned. I think it’s a story that most Africans would be familiar with as this is a continent of migration. Even today one finds people leaving their countries of birth to find employment in other parts of the world. Some move for education purposes.

Viking Fans Real Winners on Monday

Photo: http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/

The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) may have lost its match against the University of Johannesburg (UJ) on Monday night, but the fans made sure that there was enough entertainment and motivation for the Vikings on Monday night.


The scoreboard was in TUT’s favour for most of the game and suddenly about ten minutes before the final whisle the scoreboard suddenly moved from 23-19 all the way up to 23-33 favouring the University of Johannesburg. Tshwane had many missed opportunities and bizarre passes to UJ players.

Outside the pitch though, on the stands, the match received a bit of the African flavor without the vuvuzela. There was singing that would often be found in football matches and some die-hard rugby fans of the older generation just couldn’t get it. Some of the oldies were pointing and shaking their heads with disapproval, but that didn’t stop the fans from enjoying themselves.

Student Games, Music & Carwash

Toppieshoek Creating Bonds

It seems like it was only recently that the 2010 group of first year journalism students at the Tshwane University of Technology went to Toppieshoek, but it has actually been a year. Last week the two groups of the new budding journalism recruits went on their team building exercise where they played around with water, wood and blindfolds. The purpose of the exercises they are forced to partake in is to make them become a strong bond.

The serene surroundings of green mountains and the Hartbeespoort Dam also make it easy for them to let their hair loose and enjoy themselves before embarking on their academic studies.

One of the games they play forces them to find a rope while they are blindfolded. Once they have found this rope they then have to work as a unit and create a triangle. Some of the teams execute this perfectly but there are those who bicker, fight and argue and end up not completing the task.

Another task that forces them to work as a team requires them to lie down and use their feet to move a bucket of water from one side of the line to the end. If they don’t work as a group on this task then they end up wet.

All the exercises the budding journos do in Toppieshoek allow them to get to know each other, communicate and work as a team as they will be expected to during the three to four years they will spend at the university.

After the compulsory tasks, those who can swim then had a chance to splash around in the TUT facility’s swimming pool and by the end of the day some of those who had arrived in Toppieshoek as strangers left and chatterboxes who got along with everybody. Let’s toast for 2011.

Fun in Toppieshoek