Tembisa Protest

Protesters block a road during a service delivery protest in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, near Johannesburg, South Africa. The protesters blockaded roads with rocks, bottles, burning tyres and various other things they could find. The protest is mainly about the community wanting to buy electricity from Eskom directly and not from the Municipality, which they claim is full of corruption and nepotism.

Little Hasan

The Gift of the Givers medical team had been in Mogadishu for few days, before they moved into an area that has been under the control of al-Shabab for years and they went into one of the only buildings that was in a decent condition in the area. They transformed it into a fully functioning hospital overnight. There was a large group waiting for them in the morning, the range of ailments was endless and the doctors got down to the business of helping the people.

5 year old Hasan Mohamed was one of the first seen. His arm was broken a few weeks earlier and some untrained people put his arm in a cast, but it was too tight causing his arm to swell drastically. His case was not the worst by a long shot, but you could see that he was nervous and scared.

As I sat with him and his father whilst they waited and then watched Dr Livan Turino change his cast and show the type of compassion they had probably never seen before, I knew that the Gift of the Givers team was in the right place.

After a simple changing of his cast, I could see that his nervousness and fear had gone, even his father seemed more content.

Hasan was just one of hundreds of people that the Gift of the Givers team helped, many of them much worse off than Hasan, but as he left in his fathers arms, I felt privileged to be in Mogadishu to see the great work that the medical team was doing.

Destruction in Mogadishu

The remains of a African-Union tank in a crater in the middle of the road passing by the former Presidential Palace in Old Mogadishu.

The gutted remains of the former National Assembly buildings.

Some of the destruction of Old Mogadishu in the distance, as seen from one of the IDP camps in Mogadishu.

One thing you can't get away from in Mogadishu, is the scale of the damage caused by the decades long war. I can't imagine the ferocity of the fighting that has caused this amount of damage. Every single building in Old Mogadishu, without exception, has thousands of bullet pockmarks in them. Another thing that surprised me is that they are on every side of these buildings, meaning the shooting was coming from every angle. Trees, poles, the few remaining lamposts and barriers, everything is covered in bulletholes of various sizes, some of these buildings have been blown away by tanks, RPG's and various other weapons.

This is scene of a donkey cart on KM 4 in the new part of Mogadishu, I shot this scene above on 8th September 2011, on October the 4th 2011, militant Group al-Shabab blew up a truck bomb at the Ministry of Education, (just to the right of this frame) killing over 70 students waiting for results of their scholarships. So, the destruction continues...

Springbok Send-off

The event held at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, Johannesburg to send the Springboks off on their mission to defend the William Webb Ellis trophy and to remain the World Cup champions in New Zealand at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Some of the Springbok rugby team on the stage during the send-off.

Springboks Fourie Du Preez, Bakkies Botha and Butch James sign posters on their way to catch the Gautrain to the airport.