Misplaced loyalties

Emotional Zimbabwean refugees pray whilst they sing and dance during a rally held by the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum in Johannesburg.

This situation in Zimbabwe has actually turned into a farce. It is blatently obvious to anyone that something is not right there, but our President, Thabo Mbeki, who usually likes sticking his nose into other countries matters, seems to think everything is alright....

Is he blind, is he stupid, is he ill-informed about the situation?
No, I dont think so... I think that he is one of a few African leaders that has a misplaced loyalty to Mugabe, as he was one of the first black liberation leaders in Africa. Zimbabwe was a role model country that fought the so-called oppressors and won. The rest of Africa still see him as that man, a man he stopped being a few years back. Maybe, they should let go of Mr Robert Mugabe, and focus on the Mad Bob that we have now.

Guilty of being black...

South African Human Rights Commission chairman, Jody Kollapen delivers the commission's findings that the Forum for Black Journalists not allowing whites to join is unconstitutional.
Today I attended the findings announcement at the HRC regarding the Forum for Black Journalists. The FBJ forced a few white journalists to leave a briefing by ANC President, Jacob Zuma recently. The commission found that act unjustified and unconstitutional, so rather than eat a bit of humble pie and admit that it is as wrong as a forum for white journalists only.
What do they do?
They say that they are being found guilty of being black and have decided to have a convention of all black organisations to discuss the matter, now- how the hell does that do anything to help black or white journalists?
It simply makes the whole matter a bit more petty.
If they had half a brain, they would simply allow white journalists to join, who knows they might actually have something worthwhile to add.
Who are the racists now?

Mandela gets a Grammy

The Soweto Gospel Choir meet with Nelson Mandela at his foundation in Johannesburg to show him their Grammy they won for best traditional world music album.Everytime I shoot Nelson Mandela, the light is brutal, there is a bunch of photographers, TV guys and a few reporters with stars in their eyes. It's always a bit of a squeeze... the ruck, as I refer to it, where everyone jossles for the best position before he comes out, but as soon as he does everything changes and the good positions become bad, so my strategy is to simply wait at the back and shoot through all the heads...

It's worked everytime so far.

Paris in Alberton

I was really disappointed with a local national newspaper this Saturday, I was at the My Coke Fest concert on Friday night with Stars that included 30 Seconds to Mars (may I add, the girls seem to love the Hollywood movie star posing as a rocker with a black guitar, swearing every two seconds, wearing guyliner, and thinking that makes him rock and roll, but thats another story), the Kaiser Chiefs,
Good Charlotte, Muse, Chris Cornell and Korn... So, who do they run on their front page, #@$%ing Paris Hilton on the side of the stage taking a photo of her soon to be ex-boyfriend/ ex-husband/ film-producer...

So, not to be outdone, here's a pic that I took of Ms Hilton about to take a picture of her soon to be ex-boyfriend/ ex-husband/ film producer...

The rock that made me roll.

After busy days on Thursday and Friday, I decided to relax, take some pics of animals at a nature reserve just outside Johannesburg.

This place is real nice, with tigers, cheetahs, white lions, rhinos, hippos, you name it.

I got some real nice shots, but what really sticks out from my day is the cheetah, I had The Citizen's 300mm F2.8, which is a big lens, and was taking a few shots of this cheetah when something seemed to rustle its feathers, so to speak. It got very angry, hissed, and the hair on its back stood on end, not wanting to lose the shot, I kept the camera to my eye and started to run for a new angle and ran straight into a very large rock, smacked my shins real hard and ended up rolling in the dirt. I manged to save the lens, but my legs were not that lucky.

I haven't had shins that sore since I was a youngster pretending to be good at skateboarding. I can just imagine that damn cheetah having a good laugh to himself.