"We must make sure that at least there is some cushion for the poor so that they don't fall even lower than they are now. "That we must do. But we must also see it is important we do certain things that would reduce the dependence of the people on grants," he said. This included encouraging small business and co-operatives." All of these things, so that people don't think it is sufficient merely to hold out their hands and receive a handout, but to understand that all of us, as South Africans, have a shared responsibility to attend to the development of the country"

This is an excerpt of then President Thabo Mbeki’s speech to community development workers at an indaba in 2008. Mbeki certainly wasn’t revered for his theories, including the whole “HIV doesn’t cause AIDS” fiasco, but he may have had a point here…

What make South Africa so different?

The question is, why is it that South Africans have adopted a culture of expecting handouts? Contrary to common belief, handouts are not an inherent African ethos.

As one Nigerian put it in Polity.org.za "... They say once you put two Nigerians together, then you have a market. They're selling something to each other.”

That makes a lot of common sense. It means there’s always someone needing some services or products and willing to pay for them. So, isn’t it a matter of figuring out what people need and then making or buying and reselling these services or products?

As poor as Zimbabwe has become (only from an economic point of view!), “you don’t see beggars on street corners there the way you do in South Africa” says Jane Lyne-Kritzinger from Youth Dynamix. So, what does that mean?

Has the new government created a NEW problem?

Zuma was quoted in a City Press article in October 2014 entitled “South Africans must wakeup!” when he said “due to the extensive roll-out of services after 1994, South Africans had become dependent on the state.” He was making the point that nowhere else in Africa had so much been done to address the plight of the poor, yet you don’t see protests and strikes anywhere else. He went on to say, “Our people are waiting for government. Our people are not used to standing up and doing things.”  

What do South African youth think? 

Interestingly, even though the South African government has ploughed billions into infrastructure development and education, the youth continue to have a strong lack of belief in government. 85% of South African teens, according to YDx research, agree government is not living up to its promises. YDx research also shows that 73% of teens are worried about getting a job. 

This continues to be one of the biggest stress factors for youth in SA. And they often get lured into crime and expect handouts and social grants just to make ends meet. Linked to the high youth unemployment rate, YDx research also shows that 87% of SA teens are worried about South Africa’s economic performance; with 51% of teens saying they would like to leave SA (for a better job / opportunity / or education overseas).

The consequences of being a nation that expects handouts…

Children brought up in a handout environment may naturally grow up thinking this is the norm so they develop an attitude of expectancy. What will the country do for me, what will my employer do for me, what will the richer do for me? And the list goes on.

This level of expectation is also evident in terms of their aspirations and dreams. Research conducted by YDx shows that youth are exceptionally materialistic: Desperate to catapult themselves out of their current situation and directly into a world filled with expensive brands, possessions and fame.

Our research also shows that although it is good to dream, goals without practical steps are just empty dreams that never get realised.  So many young people have no idea HOW to practically realise their dreams and potential.

They have no steps in place to make it work or become successful. Not only do the youth expect handouts, other elements, such as the instantaneous nature of technology; and easy access to media ooze with aspiration value.

You see successful people and celebrities who never talk about the hard work, the effort and time that goes into accomplishing things.  Because the youth only see the seeds of success, they expect wealth and success to come by easily. 

Youth Dynamix is a specialist youth and family marketing and research agency.

Website: www.ydx.co.za

SEO & Online marketing solutions for small businesses On the 22nd of February, SERP SEO Solutions launched it's host of out-of-the-box marketing solutions via it's innovative online store.

Along with the launch they are running a competition giving away web design vouchers valued at R1000. SERP is a provider of Marketing Services for website developers. They offer a powerful range services aimed at providing website owners with access to tools & services used to help improve a websites local search visibility. To celebrate their launch they are giving away vouchers to be used at their site. Some of their many services include- Article writing, Web Design, Monthly SEO Packages and more.

Visit their web-page at www.serp.co.za/competition and read the competition guidelines to stand a chance to win a R1000 voucher which can be used for any of their services. Competition closes on the 18th of March 2015.

Contact Information:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.serp.co.za/contact-us

Tonya Khoury, the MD of media monitoring company, ROi Africa, is happy to update you on  the progress actor, Ivan Zimmermann, has made on the 12 000 km Tour d’Afrique.

“Yesterday it was one month since Ivan departed from Cairo on the Tour d’Afrique to raise 12 000 tins of food for Can-a-Kilo,” she says.   “Ivan is set to arrive in Cape Town on 9 May as part of the Leaders Never Quit campaign, which is supported by ROi Africa, the South African Institute for Chartered Accountants (SAICA) and Sage Pastel,” she adds.  

Ivan said yesterday, “I arrived two days ago in Gonder, Ethiopia, as a broken man. The first shower I had in eight days could not wash away any weary emotions. It could only wash away the dirt from my sticky skin. I have now covered more than 3 000km of the 12 000km journey and so far I happen to be in third place overall.”    

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a dream that has become a reality. A dream that will test me to my limits, but also a dream that will show the world that leaders never quit,” adds Ivan.  

Ivan will be available for interviews on the following days:

12 Feb: Bahir Dar (Ethiopia)
18-19 Feb: Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)
25 Feb: Yabelo (Ethiopia)
2 Mar: Marsabit (Kenya)
8 Mar: Nairobi (Kenya)
11-13 Mar: Arusha (Tanzania)
21 Mar: Mbeya
24 Mar: Chitimba Beach
To book an interview, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / 012-643 0436.  

For more information on Ivan’s quest, go to www.ivanzimmermann.com.

Tins can also be donated to Can-a-Kilo tab on Ivan's website.

NAME: Tonya Khoury 

E-MAIL: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
CELL: 073 874 5377
WEBSITE: www.roiafrica.com
TWITTER: @tonyaroi / @roiafrica
FACEBOOK: /roiafrica    

Darren August takes us through a few of the experiences and relationships with his own teachers, growing up, which changed his life. He retells the stories of others too, and will surely awaken your school memories. As an experienced motivator, the book leaves not only teachers encouraged to inspire others, but everyone else will feel inspired to reach their potential and live their calling too. 

This book offers a few giggles as we see things from the perspective of a child, but is mostly introspective of the role we play in the way in which children perceive themselves. Teachers and parents will find it particularly motivating – with practical ways you could change young lives, for good. 

This book is a great resource. It’s a celebration of teachers, as instrumental parts of society – it will definitely have you thinking of the teachers that have impacted your life. Scheduled for release in October 2014 – this book is set to motivate every South African reader to once again restore the dignity of ‘The Noblest Profession”. 

About the Author 

Darren August is the Founder and CEO of Dazz Consulting – A dynamic training organisation committed to seeing people thrive and succeed.He is a Corporate Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Life Coach, Entrepreneur, Radio Host & former Lecturer.He is passionate about Life; People and Education and together with his wife – Arlene, they believe in maximizing every opportunity to impact the lives of others. 

To order, for interview requests and other queries, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

During the last year, Tonya Khoury, MD of ROi Africa, has established herself as one of the most credible sources for media monitoring statistics in South Africa. Since the funeral of former president Nelson Mandela, to date, Tonya is a regular face on some of the foremost media like, SAFM, Carte Blanche, ANN7, Beeld, Associated Press, Rapport and 702, providing reliable and insightful statistics on the Oscar Pistorius Trial, the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup, the 2014 Elections, the Olympics, the Nkandla debacle and many more leading news stories.  

Khoury recalls how she initially started providing statistics to the media. “I was surprised by the amount of coverage the death of former president Nelson Mandela yielded and decided to share these statistics with the media. After that I started following and analyzing coverage of the Oscar Pistorius Trial I followed it from the start, devoting hours every day to finding new angles to cover to keep publishers and readers engaged, providing them to journalists, and feeding content to social media sites. Every morning and some evenings, daily stats were sent to a growing list of contacts,” she recalls.

At the beginning of the trial, she reached out to the four main media houses who own most of the channels in South Africa. The first publisher to pick up her stats, 702, asked Khoury to read them each morning on the radio show set up to cover the trial. The media quickly contacted her for more information, so they began emailing stats updates once or twice a day. “From there the demand got bigger and bigger, as new news stories and global events broke,” she adds.

According to Mathapelo Matjokana, the producer of the Afternoon Talk with Ashraf Garda Show on SAFM, one of the first media to use Tonya’s statistics on a regular basis, says that, “With the arrival of Khoury’s statistics people were able to understand, for example, the Oscar Trial better as complex legal matters were broken down into simpler terms. It also allowed them to follow the World Cup and Olympics through a bird’s eye view with these analyses.”  

Amalia Christoforou, Managing Editor of the Oscar Trial Channel (Carte Blanche) adds that Khoury’s analysis offered a simplified and entertaining comparison, giving a local and global assessment of news around the trial, as compared to other breaking news. Joshua Carstens, producer of Afternoon Drive on Radio 702, says, “It helped me focus on what is important and what the audiences are talking about. In essence it made the scene less cluttered.”   

The producer of the Jenny Crwys-Williams Show on Radio 702, Gary Oberholzer, added that, “Certainly for our #OscarExtra presenters to be able to frame the growing or waning media interest, to describe the trends from a bird’s eye view, Tonya’s statistics were crucial. Especially on something as lengthy as this trial.“  

Christoforou agrees adding, “”The ROi Africa analysis graphically depicted the way in which the OP trial narrative and news was able to sustain local and international audiences and media attention, which is unusual for a story that has spanned so many months with so much dipping and peaking of elements of interest . A large focus of the Oscar Pistorius Channel was depiction of the way in which the narrative of the trial was digested online through digital media platforms and social media platform users. The ROI Africa stats gave us in-depth analysis of this world and the way in which it was ingesting and delivering the trial story.”

The statistics of ROi also provided the media with new avenues to generate content. Matjokana adds that, before ROi they never used to have a roundup of stories that have made headlines globally throughout the week and when she and presenter, Garda, saw the value that Khoury brought on to the show with updated and reliable statistics, “we realised that it could be of interest to our listeners”. 

Garda concurs and adds that, with the detailed, colourful, credible and immediate statistics Khoury set herself above the rest by delivering this information regularly and on the turn. “To add, Khoury was not just the communications spokesperson for the information - she was the embodiment of the statistics. She literally ‘lived’ the statistics, which showed in the way she presented her statistics over the radio. She delivered the stats in a most engaging, spontaneous manner and that's really important when dealing in the radio and TV space where information must not only be credible but it has to be delivered in a most entertaining way.”  

Laura Wiener, 702 Producer, add that what made Khoury’s statistics so crucial is the fact that it was credible – “It is important for us at the Oscar Extra channel that the statistics be credible and accurate as we would not want to be disseminating inaccurate information and statistics to our listeners,” she stresses.    

Catrine Malan, freelance journalist of the SABC, echoes this, adding that finding statistics for a case like the Oscar Pistorius Trial, isn't that hard. “What is hard is finding the experts, who are able to explain and put these statistics into context in a manner that is understandable to even a teenager sitting at home. We found that expert in Khoury. She has the ability to summarise and compare not only the most important but also most talked about statistics out there.”    

Garda concurs, adding, “I love the fact that Khoury is adept at delivering the contact via email, then chatting about in air and at the same time tweeting the information. That synergy and convergence of platforms is really important to what I do on air,” he emphasises.   Malan concludes that Khoury’s work has always been spot on. “Especially on the trending topics like Oscar / World Cup, etc. her opinions and analysis was a top quality expert opinion that we will definitely use in the future,” she concludes.  

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Tonya Khoury                                        073 874 5377
E-mail:                                                 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Twitter:                                                @tonyaroi / @roiafrica
Facebook:                                            Facebook.com/roiafrica      
Website:                                              http://www.roiafrica.com 

Indie games are fast becoming a trend in South Africa, catching on from the overseas markets. These days, children and adults alike are playing mobile games as never before. People are always hungry for something different, which is where indie games – or ‘independent’ games – come in, providing players with something other than the mass-produced mainstream products.

Now, Somerset West can boast with its very own game studio that started turning its cogs in February this year. For its first month of existence, the studio was run out of the founder’s mother’s basement – typical indie game studio protocol, if history is anything to go by. Now, running from a house close to De Hoop Primary School, the studio focuses on creating mobile games (such as their recently released Afrikaans game, Fanie de Beer) and has oodles of style, creativity, skill and initiative.

While the Apmil Game Studio has only been up and running for a few months, the people who daily put their shoulders to its wheels have been building up relationships for the last three-and-a-half years. Even though the studio officially started up in February, the idea of an indie game studio had been brewing in the mind of Studio Head, Pierre Bezuidenhout, since 2011. Pierre started lecturing in the Animation Department of Cape Town’s City Varsity in 2011 – and this is where he met the three students who would later join him in this grand venture.

Pierre, as leader of the team, is Apmil’s Programmer and Technical Director. He has previously worked in advertising and animation for Wicked Pixels in Woodstock and held the position of lecturer at Concept Interactive as well as at City Varsity. His impressive skill set includes a sharp eye for detail as well as design flair and programming aptitude in different digital languages and platforms – he is also quite the people-person. Altus Barry is the Technical Lead, taking charge of rigs, renders and other related tasks. Mabet van Zijl did her major in 3D Narrative and, as Generalist, leads Apmil’s marketing and writing in between her usual workload. Louren Hattingh takes the roles of Lead Animator and Concept Artist. While each person has their area to lead, the workflow runs with a ‘rock-paper-scissors’-style in which one falls under the delegation of another while dealing with respective area-specific tasks. Sitting around a whiteboard, each armed with a marker, they discuss character design, story line, player motivation, level arrangement, time constraints and load division before jumping in with the actual development.

The first released game, Fanie de Beer, is a 100% physics-driven, full 3D, indie puzzle game with a distinct South African flavour. Playing as Fanie de Beer, a 12-year-old farm-boy, the player utilizes simple little rocks by tapping once on the screen to clear best friend Jaco Kriel’s fields of strategically placed, ancient landmines. Built in Unity, the game takes place in a single day – with the story starting early in the morning and ending in the evening – transporting the player through a dynamic day/night cycle and colourful, saturated farm fields as they progress through the 84 levels, meeting new mine types and increasingly difficult challenges as they go along. Written and designed in Afrikaans, then carefully translated into true farm-style English, this game is unique, fun and proudly South African. The demo is available for download from the Google Play Store, while the full game can be purchased on Samsung Apps and Amazon.

The next game in the pipeline is different from Fanie de Beer in virtually every way. Where Fanie is a very colourful 3D puzzle game with just enough back-story to set the player up for the context and flavour of the game, the current project is a heavily story-driven platform-game that takes place in a fictional world made up of parallaxing silhouettes and strange characters.

Apmil Game Studio has not only been created as a platform to build games, but also as a springboard for fellow animators, developers, designers and illustrators. It’s a breeding ground for collaboration, ideas, innovation and learning. Each person hones their skills while doing fun and challenging work through creating games and stories as well as fulfilling the creative needs of small to medium-sized businesses in the Western Cape and Gauteng.

Apmil Game Studio services include animation, app creation, game creation, rendering/stills, asset creation, video editing and UX. The creative division of Apmil, led by artist Janet Botes and writer Michelle Albinson, offers logo design, graphic design, online/web design, interactive design, writing, editing, proofreading and illustration.

Apmil prides itself on being different: Fresh ideas, innovative applications, strange and wonderful games – they are all things that receive the studio’s love and attention to detail. To find out more or to get involved, contact Pierre Bezuidenhout at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him on 082 499 3133

Studio ingredients:[A]ltus makes the bus and [P]ierre drives the bus; [M]abet takes the bus t[i]ckets and [L]ouren makes the bus move. Thus, [apmil].

Free demo: Google Play – bit.ly/fanie_demo 
Full version: Samsung Apps – bit.ly/fanie
Official Trailer: Youtube – bit.ly/fanie_trailer 
Apmil page: Apmil/Fanie – apmil.co.za/fanie-de-beer 

{pp}This course is for anyone who has ever wanted to earn their living through writing or wants to simply improve their skills. This course will give you the tools to write newspaper and magazine articles, press releases and edit copy.

{pp}Marion Scher has been one of South Africa's top freelance journalists for the last 21 years, with years of experience in the field of media and the written word.

{pp}I spend a lot of time rewriting other people’s work or worse trying to decipher press releases and editing reams of paper which make up reports. And then I meet up with other freelancers who complain of how quiet it is right now and I wonder?

{pp}As early as 1945 people started to realise that in order to write effectively and get their message across they needed to write in language that everyone could understand.