I was shocked to read that the police are probing allegations that the people answering the 10111 number in Port Elizabeth are taking bribes in order to delay emergency alerts.  There are apparently claims that the telephone operators delay the dispatch of police vehicles or other emergency vehicles to the scene of the accident to allow the tow-truck drivers and private ambulance drivers who have made deals with them and bribe them, to get there first.  

In other words, they tip-off their paying contacts, who may be far further away from the scene of the accident, and then delay notifying the police and other sources so the people who have paid them can get there first.  Apparently, two-truck drivers and medics have confessed to the Weekend Post newspaper that they do pay the call centre staff to delay dispatching the police to the scene and the police are now going to investigate these bribery and corruption allegations.  It is a terrifying indictment of our society and of an obsession for material greed that would allow operators like this to put the lives of people at risk, so as to make an extra buck, and it is a frightening reminder sometimes of the stories one has heard, particularly involving some medical negligence cases at State Hospitals.

Things I don’t like:  Hair in my sushi.  Staff members who cannot tell me they have made a mistake and instead try to cover up or worse, lie.  People who use criticism as a way to try and negotiate. People playing political or social games instead of just doing the right thing.  The malicious gossip spreaders and trouble stirrers who seem to cause more trouble than ever do work.

Things I would like people to invent:  Earphones and a car kit that as you step into the car it magically unwinds itself and is put into your ears.  It would prevent me having to always find them underneath the files and yank the cord until I can get it.  Of course, if Mercedes could fix the Blue Tooth car kit in my car I would not need the earpiece.  What are your pet dislikes, and what would you like people to invent?

I read an interesting article recently about a case that a motorcyclist, who became a paraplegic 25 years ago as a result of a pothole, has against the City of Durban.  The attorneys delayed the case and proceeded slowly with it so that they could bring it at a time when the laws were more favourable.  In 2011 the City of Durban conceded liability and agreed to pay 75% of the claim of Scott Taylor.  They had issued the summons timeously in 1990 and so clearly they have played a great tactical game, but are very upset now that with the case set down for trial in late August, the City of Durban has not arranged for the client to go for a single medico legal expert appointment of their own.  

They have not arranged for Scott to go and see their own medical experts, so at the moment the case will proceed without the benefit of their own experts. That is a very similar situation to what we often face against the Road Accident Fund, although typically speaking these days they do use their own doctors more often than not, and certainly some defendant firms are far better organized and ready than others.  In many cases however when one gets to court, the other side, who have known about the trial date for at least a year, suddenly say that they now need to send the client to their own experts and that obviously then leads to most unfortunate and unfair delays.  The courts obviously want to ensure that the litigants are able to present their case properly, and have to give them a postponement in most cases in order to do so.  

The best-known Para Olympic athlete in the world is going to be spending quite a bit of his time at Weskoppies Hospital in Pretoria soon.  It is going to be extremely interesting to see what the reports of the various experts say when they are delivered to the Court and both sides and our firm utilises for its clients two of the experts that have either seen Oscar Pistorius or are still to see him.  The court has allowed him to visit as an outpatient, but officials from other psychiatric hospitals said that that has very little value.  They say they need somebody to be there all the time and to sleep over, for them to observe the person on a continual basis and make a decision.  The medical specialists have been asked to determine whether Pistorius could appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions and act according to that appreciation and we will all know the answer to that on 30 June 2014 when the matter is back in court.  Like most court cases this one is proving to be quite unpredictable, there are various twists and turns in the case that we all probably thought would be wrapped up in three or four weeks and it is most likely that it will finally be heard in July, if there are no more twists and turns before then!  

It seems like only a few weeks, or a few months ago, that my staff and I were all discussing how Sandton City was filled with tourists, waving flags, and the World Cup was just about to begin.  It is just about to begin in another country now, and it is just a reminder of how quickly time flies.  On Saturday afternoons I often take one of our domestic assistants to the taxi rank, and it is amazing how quickly I find that, especially if you have the same task, that same time of the week has come around again.  In winter it feels even faster, because the days are shorter and literally the weeks melt into each other and apart from remembering that was a stressful or less stressful week, I just cannot believe how quickly things go by.  That does not mean, if you are waiting for some money or something important, that time goes by quickly, it just means your life goes by quickly!  It does not feel to me that I opened my law practice almost 19 years ago now, or that about 18½ years ago I could barely afford to pay my rent and how difficult it was to attract and get clients at the beginning.  

In the legal profession there is always a new crisis or a new problem that you are facing, and it always seems like the most serious ever – despite the fact that for the last 19 years you have been told every 6 months of a new problem, a new Act of Parliament, new regulations, new practices or rules of the Road Accident Fund, and it sometimes leads to you living your life as one crisis after another, always feeling that you have to overcome the next challenge and the next biggest problem, even though, compared to the challenges of the past, they really are not very significant.  I am not sure what the answer to all of this is, but if you have any tips on slowing down life, and I am not talking about lazing about by the pool on Saturday afternoon, let me know!

The Champions League Final takes place on Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid in Barcelona.  It is a huge football match, particularly with the World Cup ahead.  The tournament has one of the fairest formats, with teams playing each other at home and away before the final, and going through on the goal aggregate and it features all of the best teams in Europe.  The fact that two Spanish teams have made it to the final really indicates that at the current time their football teams are the strongest in Europe and it is also obviously a big sign, ahead of the World Cup, to the prospects of the Spanish team.  To be the club champions of the whole of Europe is obviously something to aspire to and I am looking forward to watching the game. 

Europe’s highest Court ruled recently on old links that users can find on Google relating to individuals.  The case began when a Spanish lawyer found that when he put his own name into Google, the search came up with notices dating back 9 years as to when he was bankrupt and had to sell his property.  He said that he had long since sorted out his financial affairs and it was unfair that this information continued to be shown on his record.  

He appealed to Google to take the information down, they refused and he brought a court case.  Europe’s highest Court has now agreed with him, and so it is going to be a considerable amount of work for Google in future, but people living in Europe will be able to demand that links to bad information about them can be erased after a certain time, unless there are particular reasons why they should not be.  The European Court of Justice essentially ordered that Google must allow online users to be “forgotten” and the debate now is whether or not it is good that you cannot check up that the person you are going on a date with, for example, has a very bad track record or a history of bad behaviour.  The information will of course still be on the websites, but search engines will be obliged, on request, to remove links to those websites containing older information depending on the circumstances.  This would never be allowed in America because of their First Amendment Rights, but it certainly does raise an interesting picture as to whether or not people want, for example, pictures of them drunk, or in a provocative pose in next to nothing which they took in their youth, to follow them around for 15 years.  What do you think?

We live in an age where the second you start shouting at somebody, or lose your cool and say something ridiculous, you can almost bet that somebody is either going to make a video of it on their phone or recording it in some way or other.  We have seen it recently with the owner of a basketball team in America who advised a mistress that he did not want to see her coming to his basket ball stadium with black men and her publication of that phone call has led to him being banned from the stadium he owns and banned from any involvement with basket ball.  It is obviously going to make it somewhat difficult for him to sell the team at top price because anybody who buys the team from him will know that although of course the team will have a value, the seller cannot afford to be incredibly difficult.  

One of the problems these days is that people tend, when they plan to record an incident, to go goad people into losing their temper and it might very well be that what you say is later taken out of context.  I do not mean in any way to compare this to the basketball case, but the problem is that we all say things we sometimes regret, we all say things at times that are either nasty or inappropriate and which we don’t really mean.  In the past, you could apologise for saying it but now, before you know it, it will be on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else and simply nobody will be interested in how sincere your apology is, the background to why you said what you said and once simply has to be so much more careful than ever before what you say – and it is not just what you say publicly or on social media – you will have to be careful about what you say to friends, or as in this case, to one’s mistress!

One realises just how much of a big business international sport is when one hears the announcements of deals like the one whereby NBC has paid $7,75 billion for the exclusive rights for the next 5 Olympics.  Television companies literally bid billions against each other to secure the exclusive rights for the coverage bearing in mind that in most cases we are talking about the exclusive right to the coverage in their country only!  NBC in America does not have most of the major sporting events – ESPN for example has most American football and so the Olympics have become terribly important to them as this is the one sporting event they have had over the last few decades.  Citing their close relationship with the international Olympic Committee, it was revealed that they did not even bid against other television stations – the figure was just agreed between NBC and the IOC.  It reminds me, and this is a slightly different topic, of discovering an excellent advertising strategy and that is that Investec found that television rights and stadium advertising in South Africa were far more expensive, when it comes to rugby, than they were in New Zealand with the result that they have not really entered into many advertising agreements in South Africa and that most of the stadium advertising you will see for Investec involves stadiums overseas and in particular in New Zealand.  It is not because New Zealand is a market of theirs – in fact, I am not sure that they have any presence at all in New Zealand and I certainly know that their Australian presence has not worked out, and it is something they are reversing – it is simply because they can advertise in the stadium in New Zealand and get the same coverage on TV, for considerably less than they would pay for the same coverage, for example, at Loftus Versfeld.  Ultimately, it is all about what is shown on TV, and it does not matter to the advertiser whether the product is coming from New Zealand or from next door – just as long as their advert is shown at the most effective rate.

I am happy to announce that we have just opened a branch office in Brooklyn Bridge Office Park, Pretoria.  We have many matters in Pretoria and many clients and we do believe that this will give us a scope to be able to provide our services to a bigger target audience who may not have been comfortable travelling 50 km to Johannesburg.  The new offices will allow us to assist more people living in Pretoria and Centurion with their Road Accident Fund claims and personal injury matters.

We also handle a number of matters in the Pretoria High Court, given that the Road Accident Fund’s head office is in Pretoria and this has also given us the ability to now take over the work that we had to pay other attorneys to do in the past in Pretoria. Court rules provide that you must have a physical office within 15 km of the court, and if you don’t you then have to appoint a correspondent attorney in that area.  Correspondent attorneys generally do the work of filing documents and papers and not the actual legal work that we do that leads to a settlement and the fees charged in this regard have in recent years been ridiculous.  Our offices are situated on the 2nd Floor of the Parkdev Building, 570 Fehrsen Street, Brooklyn Bridge Office Park in Brooklyn. 

It is hard to run a business and be sensitive to criticism.  Unfortunately, I always had a bit of a thin skin when it comes to that, especially if I don’t think the criticism is warranted.  For me, it probably started in Std 6. We moved from Durban North to Hillcrest in KwaZulu-Natal and I changed schools from Northlands Boys High School, which I think is now known as Northwood, to Hillcrest High School.  There were about 180 pupils in Std 6 and about six weeks after I arrived, at the end of the year, the end of the year exams were written.  I thought I did pretty well to come 10th in the entire Standard, despite having just moved there, but my mother did not agree – telling me that she was so happy that we have moved from Durban North, because she would be so ashamed that I had gone from first in Std 4 and always being a top student, the whole way down to 10th.  I was pretty impressed, because I think not only was I there for a limited time, but I never really worked particularly hard.  

It is the same with clients – I am quite happy to listen to valid criticism, and one does get valid criticism, but I’ve never had much time for people who are unhappy with their result, for example, when we know that given their injuries and the case law, we have achieved an amazing result.  You also get clients, and I am sure this is true of all businesses, who complain just as a negotiating tactic – although that is wasted on me, because I’ve never ever lowered my fees on the basis of a client’s complaints.  Criticism that is constructive is far more useful, but criticism that is solely intended to achieve a transparent result can’t really be taken seriously.

I used to look forward to the Golf Digest Top 100 Courses in South Africa issue coming out.  It was an annual edition and it lists the top 100 courses in South Africa and I think it is widely accepted as being the most influential and important list when it comes to South African golf courses. Two years ago they announced that it would only be published in future every two years and the latest edition, which will be valid until April or May 2016, has now recently come out.  

The number one course in South Africa is The Links at Fancourt, which I have played and which I do believe is the number one golf course in South Africa.  Second is Leopard Creek, followed by Gary Player and then in fourth position we have the number one golf course in Gauteng, which is Blair Atholl.  Serengeti, which I expected to do well once it finally entered the charts made it to 21st place and Country Club Johannesburg’s main course, Woodmead, where I play regularly, made it in to 25th position.  I was surprised to see Pecanwood only drop a few places to 30th, as the bunkers certainly lack sand, but Pecanwood does have a good holiday vibe to it with the magnificent backdrop of Hartbeespoort.  Eye of Africa, which is a course that I enjoyed, is also a new entry at No 40 as was Houghton at No 62.  Houghton has been around for years, but this was the completely remade Houghton from a few years ago.  Rocklands came in at 51st and Dainfern at 69.  The vast majority of the top 10 courses are in the Cape with only two Gauteng courses having made the top 10 and of course Gary Player is at Sun City, which is in the North West Province.

I have always felt that there are too many public holidays in April and May.  Perhaps I’ve had a very difficult year thus far, but it was one of the first times that I actually appreciated that there were quite a few holidays.  I don’t think however adding on the election day on 7 May 2014 is particularly helpful, and certainly none of this is good for South Africa’s economy or productivity.  It may be that we have too many public holidays, but I also think part of it is that we have too many public holidays all at the same time of the year.  I understand that they commemorate special occasions and historic dates, but it would be good if we could look past that, look at the interests of our economy and see where we could move them – in other words, why not a public holiday once a month on a Friday, for example, so that everybody can have at least 12 long weekends a year instead of having an off day in the middle of the week, or having a public holiday in one week on a Tuesday and on a Thursday – it does not really make sense, and it does not give workers the benefit that they would have if it was attached to a weekend and they could then take three days off.  

I think it is about being pragmatic and understanding that a special day can really be celebrated on any day – it does not always have to be on the exact historic day and that many people over the years will have forgotten for example what the holiday on 16 December was actually initially about.  There are enough religious holidays in April, and I think all the holidays relating to historically important days need to be spread out during the rest of the year.  I think most people in any event celebrate having a holiday and not the occasion and perhaps if on the date of the occasion they are not actually on holiday, it might give them more of a chance to discuss with fellow workers the significance of that important day, or read in newspapers about what happened on that day.  People who are not going into work on that particular day are most unlikely to pick up a newspaper and actually read anything about that historic occasion and so you might well get more appreciation for the day if people go about their normal lives on that day, talk to friends and listen to and read the news.

The election results were pretty predictable, but the election was certainly conducted in a very good spirit and I think South Africans are masters at this.  You could see the reaction in the Rand – which went, in 24 hours, from when the election began until the results were trickling, from R10,52 to R10,32 to the Dollar and that means if it stays that way, we will be rewarded with lower petrol prices at the end of this month again.  It is a sign of international confidence in South Africa that we have once again pulled off a peaceful election.  

It is certainly not a sign of confidence necessarily in the ruling party, and one only has to look at the election results in Gauteng over the last 10 years to realise that the ANC is being sent a message that they must shape up or accept that in about 10 to 15 years they will be voted out of power.  Ten years ago the ANC received 68% of the votes in Gauteng that is now down to 53,5% already.  It is amazing how predictably we are following precisely the patterns that have happened in other countries where the liberation party has slowly lost favour and the best example would be Zimbabwe where the ruling party’s majority support comes, without belittling anybody, from rural people who are generally far poorer and less educated.  They have lost support in the urban areas and when one looks at Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria you see exactly the same pattern slowly happening in South Africa as well.  If one takes poorer provinces and more isolated towns, the ANC’s support is almost as strong as ever, but it is in the urban areas where city dwellers, who are generally more sophisticated and better educated, are beginning to get fed-up.  I think there is still a lot of loyalty towards the ANC, and I fully understand that, but unless they cut down on corruption and improve themselves considerably in terms of economic policies and job growth, I think they are going to run into problems.

The population is not entirely naïve, and there is a limit to how many times you can campaign on the basis of 6 million new jobs.  I cannot believe that anybody truly believes that in 5 years’ time we will have 6 million new jobs, but the ANC has promised that and so let’s hope for the sake of the country that a miracle happens and somehow they deliver on this particular promise.  Of course, and that is a part that always worries one, there are other lessons to be learnt from Zimbabwe and that is when all else fails and you cannot deliver jobs and prosperity, then you can start blaming white people and start threatening to nationalise everything and deal with things that way.  That is probably more the approach of the EFF, who not only have learnt nothing from Zimbabwe, but greatly admire Robert Mugabe.  I don’t believe we would ever go down that route, because we have seen how disastrous it is economically and when we have such a perfect case study, just north of our country, on what not to do, it would really be foolhardy to try and imitate anything that the leader of our neighbouring state did!

I have noticed, more and more over the years, that to win the Oscar for best movie, or to win some of the acting awards, you have to be in a movie of significance.  It has to tell a social or moral story and for example, Charlize Theron could not win by being beautiful – she had to be turned into an ugly woman in a role, before she could win an Oscar.  Was Monster really her best acting performance ever or is the award a recognition of brilliant work over a few years, finally acknowledging one great performance?  It is the same with this year’s awards, now that I have seen all of the movies, because it is hard for me to understand why 12 Years a Slave is allegedly better than Captain Phillips.  

I understand that The Wolf of Wall Street may well have been less serious, and probably was not going to win the Oscar but personally, having watched Captain Phillips and 12 Years a Slave recently on BoxOffice on DSTV, I really thought that Captain Phillips was the better movie.  Tom Hanks’ performance was excellent and it was really a gripping drama, which is also based on a true story, that I think anybody would enjoy watching.  There was nothing wrong with 12 Years a Slave, but just found it was a very heavy movie, and while it is important to put across the messages that one has to see in heavy movies, it was unrelenting in terms of the violence, the assaults and the behaviour that went on during slave times.  It tells the true story of a black man living in New York, who was kidnapped during the slave trade and sent away from his family to the plantations in the South where he experienced a truly horrific life until eventually he was freed.  It needs to be seen and it is certainly a superb movie, but I preferred Captain Phillips and American Hustle.  I would be interested to hear your thoughts if you have seen 12 Years a Slave or Captain Phillips.

Valeant is a pharmaceutical company in Canada and they recently made an offer to buy Allergan Inc.  I like Allergan, because I think one of its products is unbeatable in terms of international demand, particularly from women. As a result, I bought shares in the company some time ago.  The bid by Valeant led to a big jump in the shares of Allergen which were up 78% since I bought them in any event – not to mention the decline of the Rand during that time which has made it an even better bet.  The point I make, because I do like to promote long-term ownership of shares, is that everybody can find winners on the Stock market with a little bit of hard work themselves and intuition.  Is it really that hard to know that Botox is an absolute winner, has no competition and that whatever company has it is going to be assured of increasing profits over the years?  It may be debatable as to whether or not toll roads will take off in South Africa and whether one could invest safely in Kapsch Traffic, which is why if you do, and they do work out, you will show a much bigger profit, but there is also safety in a guaranteed winner and that is Allergen’s main product and crown jewel – Botox. 

Of course, it is always easier to say that once the share has gone up 78% and the truth is, it is certainly not a bargain now, but one has to look around and see what businesses and products are booming.  When I bought MTN shares when they were R13,00, people were writing in the newspaper saying that MTN had tremendous problems because it was getting paid in cash in Nigeria and they had to build special rooms to store all the cash in and everyone thought that was a security concern!  I thought that must be an opportunity of a lifetime and was it so hard, 10 years or so ago, to spot that one was not going to lose on mobile phones?  I set a target for myself of R100,00 for the share price and when it reached that price I sold.  It is of course way past that now (R218,00) and you can imagine what some of the original staff, with their share allocations, are worth now.  Yes, the market can be a gamble and it is certainly not cheap now, but there always have been, and always will be, buying opportunities to buy growing companies at good prices before they reach their very peak.

I was very happy to read that Wits has scrapped the 4 year LLB.  I am all for making it easier for people to enter a profession and not throwing unnecessary obstacles in their path.  Unnecessary obstacles were requiring them to study Latin, or Afrikaans, before they became lawyers and the ANC did away with those laws in 1994 and 1995 – incidentally, both of them were subjects I did not study at University.  However, there was much to be achieved by requiring that before somebody studied law and became a lawyer, that they had to have another University degree – and that could be on any subject or any field of their choice – whether it was Arts and Humanities or becoming an engineer or a doctor or studying B.Com.  It provided, as I have written about it before on Lawblog at www.lawblog.co.za, an education for the person and did not just lead to a 22 year old law graduate who had no other background or field of expertise.  

In a recent interview on 702 Wits explained this by saying that they wanted people who entered the legal profession to have a greater philosophical understanding of law, to understand its place in society, to be more mature and to have a better grasp of ethics. I am not belittling people who have become lawyers in recent years by simply studying one law degree, but there is no doubt that they, and society would be better off if they have the benefit of having more of an education, before becoming lawyers and I think that Wits, who are probably the leading University in South Africa, have obviously seen the light first, and has made this move.  Other Universities will follow in due course.  

It is not really going to cost most people much more, either financially or in time – Wits’s own survey showed that only 30% of students who took on the 4 year LLB, without any other previous degree, were finishing it in the four years in any event, so the vast majority were taking longer than 4 years to finish that degree.  If they did a BA Law degree, they would only have to do a 2 year LLB meaning that they would get their two degrees in 5 years, only one year longer than the 4 year LLB and taking the same amount of time as 70% of students who did the 4 year LLB alone in any event.  

I think the best words of advice I ever received, when I left school, were that one of the teachers approached me and told me not to go and do a B.Com degree first, and told me that that is a qualification and that nothing beats an education and I really feel that, especially growing up in the final years of the apartheid era, that getting a BA degree at Wits University was an education for me.  I am happy that Wits has once again led the way and you can rest assured that the other major Universities, although not the smaller ones that are selling law degrees simply to make money, will follow in this regard in due course.  Wits conceded that one of the motivations was that some law firms even sent back some of their law students and asked them to study another degree before carrying on with law, whether it was an LLM or any other degree, and certainly for a long time the legal profession has been advising that although a 4 year LLB is a great way to boost huge numbers of people into the profession, which it has done, it certainly has had its drawbacks.  Many people with a 4 year LLB may turn out to be fantastic attorneys, both society and the profession as a whole will be better off with more people qualifying for a legal degree the way it used to be, and that is by getting another degree first and then obtaining the LLB.  Many people forget that in the old days you could become a lawyer without another degree and at that time the degree was called a BProc but the BProc, which is what you receive if you never got another degree first, was so underrated by employers that eventually it became a worthless degree and it was essentially relabelled as the LLB – which until then had been a post-graduate degree only.  In a way painting over the BProc with the LLB paint has clearly not put a new gloss on it for employers or for the legal profession, and it looks like we are going back to the way things were in the first place, although of course those who choose not to have a first degree will appear to be able to continue making that choice – but not if they go to the leading University in the richest province in this country.

I was 19 years old when Nelson Mandela was released, and having been brought up in a family where my mother had me read Albert Lethuli’s Let My People Go when I was 13, I was overjoyed.  Before the 1994 elections I joined the ANC, obtained my membership card and voted for the ANC in those elections.  That was a very different ANC to the organisation that we have 20 years later, which is why even two former ANC Cabinet Ministers are telling people not to vote for the ANC.  

I am personally not going to be voting for the ANC, because no matter what they have done, in terms of the new South Africa and how it is a far better place than the apartheid state we lived in before, they have very little to be proud of in recent years.  I don’t believe that people should continually be thanked for what they did 20 years ago, and even if they are to be, they need to be told that the current way in which they are governing South Africa is not acceptable.  The corruption is not acceptable, Nkandla is not acceptable, their efforts to hamstring the justice system and a variety of cases against the President and others are entirely inappropriate, and I don’t think there can be many attorneys in South Africa who believe that the way in which certain matters are handled have been in the interests of justice in South Africa.  It would be a tragedy if the ANC were to be told that as a result of their recent poor management of our country, this means nothing to the people and they are returned with the same majority they always have.  

They will win, and they will win handsomely, but they certainly need to win with a smaller majority than in the past and unfortunately the polls are not showing that.  I do hope that everybody applies their mind to their vote and wonders whether or not the ANC need to be returned with the same huge majority they’ve had in years gone by, or whether or not, instead of getting 65% or 66%, they will not learn a lesson and perhaps look at their presidential candidate if for example they win with only 60% of the votes.  They will not, they will almost certainly get more vote share than that, but I think if they get 60% of the votes they will certainly learn that the South African public is going to hold them accountable.  If they are returned with the same majority yet again, there will not be anything for them to learn, because the electorate after all would have told them that they are as good as they were 10 and 20 years ago – even though it is not true. We get one chance every 5 years to tell parties whether we think they are going in the right direction or not and we must all use that chance.

Rhino poaching is not a new topic and it has been covered a lot in the last 2 or 3 years, but it is getting more and more out of control.  I was stunned by some of the figures contained in a Sunday Times article recently.  The Rhino poachers, who largely come from Mozambique, cross the border in huge numbers – up to 80 armed incursions are made into the Kruger Park every month.  80% of that Rhino horn invariably goes to Vietnam and the poachers who normally work in groups of three, make R100 000,00 a horn.  The article explained that one of the poachers is the shooter, one carries food and the third one carries the water and an axe to cut the horn.  The horn is ultimately sold for between R300 000,00 to R600 000,00 a kilogram.  It is frightening to think that there is essentially a war going on in the middle of the Kruger Park with 47 poachers killed and 66 shootouts last year and thus far this year 108 poacher groups have been spotted with 30 men either shot dead or arrested.  People who have nothing are obviously going to risk death for R100 000,00 and apparently the most dangerous time is around the full moon, because that is when they enter Kruger Park and start shooting Rhino’s with 55 Rhino’s being killed in the Kruger Park during the month of March alone.  

These are shocking statistics and while the people are starving we will need to do something about the poacher villages along the Kruger Park border with Mozambique.  To make matters worse, those responsible for trying to stop the poachers, say that it appears that almost everybody working in the Kruger Park is giving the poachers’ information.  I know that a lot of people have different ideas on solutions, but they need to start some of them now – whether that is getting the army having some practice on the Mozambique border or flooding the market with legal Rhino horn to drop the prices and to make it less worth it for people to risk their lives for R100 000,00 for a night or two in Kruger Park, or both of those together, but a solution has to be found with the numbers of black Rhino down to 800 already.

We all know that exercise is good for one, and it is just amazing how many surveys continue to show the benefits.  The latest one now relates to skin and research by McMaster University in Ontario, Canada has revealed that a regime of exercise in mice led not only to health benefits and living longer than the sedentary mice, but also to their skin being in a better condition.  The University followed that up with a test on male and female volunteers who had not spent much time in the sun, so as to avoid those with obvious sun damage to their skin, and when they biopsied skin samples from them to compare those who exercise and those who did not.  They also got a group of people who have not been exercising much, to start exercising by working out twice a week by jogging or cycling for at least 30 minutes.  

The results were apparently astounding and they are not sure exactly how, although they believe it is related to a substance called myokines which is created when you work muscles.  They found that the subjects, who were generally 65 or older, who exercised had skin that was the equivalent to non-exercising people aged 20 to 40 and that even for those who had previously been inactive, they could achieve dramatic results just be beginning to do exercise.  Again that is moderate exercise – it’s not running 2 hours at a time every day of the weekend competing in long distance races, which can in itself be damaging to the skin.  

Once again, everybody knows that exercise is good for you, but more and more research is beginning to show that it is good for you in a multitude of ways that people never imagined – now down to even your skin quality.