The view is showing 10% of the full MeerKAT First Light radio image. More than 200 astronomical radio sources (white dots) are visible in this picture. Before MeerKAT only five were known (indicated by violet circles). This image spans about the area of the Earth’s moon. SKA South Africa
Something hugely important is happening in a vast, quiet stretch of South Africa’s Northern Cape province. A new radio telescope operating at just a quarter of its full power is revealing the universe’s secrets one image at a time.
MeerKAT will ultimately become part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. Once it’s completed some time in the decade following 2020, the SKA will be the world’s largest radio telescope. The project is shared between South Africa and Australia. It’s not just its size that sets it apart from other radio telescopes but also sensitivity and speed. At full power, the SKA will have 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of the best existing telescopes.
It will see more, and see it faster. It can explore the universe and answer some of humanity’s biggest scientific questions – like, “Is there life out there?” and “How are galaxies formed?”
All of this lies some time in the future. But already, MeerKAT is yielding remarkable results.
Despite stock theft having fallen by 1% across the country, the farming community believes the crime has risen on the ground.
The African Farmers Association of SA (Afasa) believes that the national crime statistics released on Friday (2 Sep 2016) portrayed stock theft as having fallen due to a large number of farmers not reporting the cases.
The statistics showed that there were 24715 cases of stock theft reported in the 2015/16 financial year, down from 24965 in 2014/15.
However, in six of the country’s nine provinces stock theft increased, with Limpopo and Mpumalanga leading the pack with increases of 5.4% and 6.6%, respectively.
Trailing behind were Gauteng, Northern Cape, Western Cape and North West.
Carnarvon – Farmers in the Kareeberg area in the Northern Cape say while they have realised there is no escaping the prospect of having to give up their farms, they must be left in a position where they are able to relocate and continue farming.
This as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project in Carnarvon pushes ahead with plans to purchase a further 130 000 hectares of land for inclusion in the conservancy area of the multi-national science project.
Fanie Dippenaar shared the viewpoint of farmers in the area during the Agri Northern Cape Congress in Kimberley this week. He says the fairy tale has now turned into a nightmare.
Mnr Piet Karsten is aangewys as AGRI Noord-Kaap se boer van die jaar by die AGRI NK 2016 Kongres. Baie geluk Piet, julle verdien dit!
Geskiedenis oor die Karsten Groep
Piet en Babsie Karsten stig hul familie boerdery in 1968 op Kanoneiland wes van Upington langs die Oranjerivier. Jare later in 1980 koop hulle die plaas Roepersfontein, wat nou die hoof kwartiere vir die Karsten Groep is. Kliek hier vir meer inligting oor die geskeidenis.
Karsten Groep Filosofie
Die Karsten Groep is een van Suid-Afrika se voorste landbou-ondernemings gerespekteerde plaaslik sowel as internasionaal vir die uitnemendheid van sy produkte, voorpunt innovasie en integriteit in sy omgang met mense, diensverskaffers en kliënte.
Karsten Groep Visie
Die Karsten Groep streef daarna om produktiwiteit ten einde winste te verhoog en om produkte en markte wat ons in staat sal stel om meer werkgeleenthede te skep ontwikkel verder te optimaliseer.
Besoek gerus die Karsten Groep se webtuiste vir meer inligting – kliek hier
Johannes Möller, Piet Karsten, Henk van Wyk
The Constitutional Court has ruled that the Land Restitution Amendment Act is unconstitutional.
Photo: Wikimedia
Various organisations – including Agri SA – challenged the Act, saying there wasn’t proper consultation with the public before the bill was signed into law.
The Act reopened the land restitution process for another five years in 2014.
The court declared it invalid today, after finding that Parliament had failed to allow for proper consultation before passing the law.
Agri SA’s Annelize Crosby says this means that a new amendment act needs to be tabled within the next 24 months.
“The court has now determined that no new claims may be entertained up and until an amendment act is brought to Parliament. This may well buy some time for all the stakeholders who had concerns about the reopening,” she said.
PRESS RELEASE
The Congress of South African Trade Unions under the leadership of its Deputy General Secretary, Cde Solly Phetoe, will be visiting the farm workers and farm dwellers in the North West farm of Rooistad in Klerksdorp tomorrow, 28 JULY 2016, to fight their illegal eviction by the new farm owner. This workplace visit will be done jointly with the department of Rural Development and Land Reform in the province.
These poor farm workers, who have spent their whole lives on that farm, are being evicted with no regard to due legal processes by the new owner. The federation is intensifying its campaign of defending vulnerable workers ,and will be mobilising all progressives in the area to defend the workers against these unfair evictions, from a farm where they have lived for seventy {70} years.
This is part of the federation’s ongoing Back to Basic campaign, where the leadership is conducting workplace visits to deal with all challenges facing vulnerable workers across all the sectors of the economy. The federation is also ensuring that these workers are allowed to vote for their preferred representatives in the upcoming local government elections on the 3rd of August 2016.
The DGS of COSATU will also be joining National Union of Mineworkers during the union’s door to door and recruitment campaigns in the area of Marikana, Rustenburg on the same date of the 28th July 2016 .The visit at the farm will start at 08h30am and the Marikana campaign in the afternoon.
COSATU is deeply troubled by the farming sector’s total disregard for the country’s labour laws. We have seen a troubling continuation of the illegal evictions of farm workers and farm dwellers, who are not even given insufficient time notification or alternative housing.
Most of these workers are not even allowed to visit the graves of family members and friends on other farms after being evicted. Their graves are sometimes desecrated or destroyed and their live stock confiscated by farmers during these evictions.
We cannot allow generations of farm workers, who were born on the farms, where they work, to be treated and evicted in the same way they were evicted by the evil apartheid regime.
While, generally, the country has made strides in improving workers’ labour and human rights, there is still a lot that needs to be done to protect farm workers. We are encouraged by the efforts from the departments of Rural development and Labour Reform and Labour to enforce labour rights on the farms ;but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. We expect these departments to invest more resources to protect farm workers and also the Human Rights Commission needs to play its role to protect vulnerable farm workers.
