BY MIKE LOEWE

The sun was out and the attitude was right. She needed the beach and Saturday was blue.

Grahamstown can be interminable on weekends. Dunno why because I love this place. It has a wonderful way of handling time – all those seasons and moods and switches. Just sometimes, you get to Sunday night and think: “Is that it?”

But this Saturday just said: “Beach!”

Simple sun worshipping. Unselfconscious. Real. Pic: Mike Loewe

You get people who are launching their rubber ducks into the dawn ready for a day of splendour. And you get those who launch their cars onto the freeway at noon, having visited the community market, dropped a child, spoken to moms, resolved little niggling, banal issues that just won’t let you go to the beach…

But the attitude was good, so armed with FooDude’s R20-a-slice baklava, plus shortbread and beetroot relish, and one teen, we happily puttered towards Kenton. I was resolved and at peace. No surfing today. Just swimming.

Tant Hettie’s farm stall on the vlakte above Salem is famous for two cyclists bonking (remember, it means getting tired, vulnerable and unable to continue) and only one of them calling home for a pick-up! (But they both took it, and we move on…)

Now it was my time to explore the store. Rushed into her darkened garage with its ancient shelves and single fridge. What would she look like? My late aunty Esme!

Her ginger beer is awesome, and with arms jammed with jars, we left this single-looking senior in her little house under giant gums and stopped only to look at rhinos a few kays outside Kenton.

A bit of faffing around (Mermaid beach is not the same as Aviator Girl’s cove) and we arrive.

The tide is in, such a wide shallow expanse of water. Easterly churn has turned it cold, but the sand is warm (not burny) and we make our way to the corner.

Daughter is delighted, but screeches as we wobble our way into the olive-coloured deep channel and we do that heart-pumping rush across (just in case a raggy decides to cruise the bay) and we are out in the ocean, on the flats. Exposed.

She goes in to the waist (familiar?) and stretches out on the sand, hat over head, in her styling, sporty black one-piece into that combo of intense light without the roasting.

Another family joins us. The beach is otherwise empty. And did I say vast?

We let the sun onto our pale skin. Not too long, because the next door Yorky runs up and snaffles into She’s hat-covered face!

Just an hour or so hanging out on this shoreline where earth and sea create endless energy and we’re peckish. (Later we’ll eat at Ocean Basket in Port Alfred on the banks of the Kowie. A treat.)

As we mosey along towards car, there is this remarkable sight.

A woman in full beachy outfit, slacks, blouse, hat, shoes. She should be upright, but has chosen to lie flat on the sand, stretched in full repose with that vista of hills and water in the background.

Simple sun worshipping. Unselfconscious. Real.

Great attitude.

* Mike Loewe is the editor of   Makana Moon, a quirky community paper in Grahamstown. Click here to check it out on the web.

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I’ve been knocking around my old student haunt of Grahamstown this weekend on the outskirts of the Highway Africa conference as well as doing a bit of schmoozing. I had a chance to have a brief chat to New York Times investigative reporter Ron Nixon, who is also one of the brains behind a really interesting new website launched to help investigative reporting in Africa. The site’s called the Ujima Project and is well worth a look.

The Ujima Project puts Africa under the magnifying glass

So what’s it about?

Well, the founders of the site are trying to help us hacks here in Africa to access information which our governments generally don’t like us to get access too. The problems for our governments, however, is that there is an enormous amount of important information available in the US about other governments’ activities and the activities of foreign companies doing business or lobbying in the United States.

It is this information that Ron and his colleagues have put together in a wonderfully easily searchable form for journalists to access. The Ujima Project is a joint venture between the nonprofit Great Lakes Media Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors
I’m hoping to do a full interview with Ron about the site and the background behind it but while I get around to that let me show you some of the gems available on the Ujima.

Check out this record, for example, produced on a search for weapons sales from the US to South Africa.

Now, how intriguing. What on earth would South Africa be doing making such a purchase in 2007 and what specifically are these toxicological agents that it might be purchasing and for what purpose? And reporters out there want to pick up on this one?

Or this one – probably satellite parts of something, but intriguing nevertheless.

You can also dig around and find other fascinating information. Every foreign company involved in any lobbying or other activities in the US has to register with the US Justice Department and disclose their activities and the money involved. This apparently goes back to the Second World War when a Nazi Party front company was getting up to some nefarious activities in the US. The result, more than 50 years, later is that there is a ton of information available about SA companies activities in the States. Go and have a look.

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One of the coolest concerts I’ve been to is LKJ at MegaMusic Warehouse in Joburg round about 1999. It was such a jorl and Andrew, my man, his good friend, Steuart Wright, and I danced up a storm, drank a whole lot of beers and bounced out of the venue afterwards, singing our favourite tunes at the top of our voices.

“Apartheid, yakka-bo… Ceausescu, yakka-bo,” Steuart, the surfer bunny, sang with glee. Ever heard of Kissthisguy. com, a website of misheard lyrics? Well, Steuart’s is one of my favourites. Turns out he had been singing “yakka-bo” for about a decade and he took it in his stride when we put him straight. “Apartheid, had to go… Ceausescu, had to go”. Good old Stu. I never hear an LKJ song now without thinking of Yakkabo!

Well, Grahamstown has pulled off a little coup and LKJ is coming to play at the Rhodes Great Field on Saturday, the 25th, as part of his mini-SA tour. How about that for little old Grahamstown? Very cool. Turns out you can even study LKJ’s poetry if you do English at Rhodes. Even cooler!

Click here for more info on LKJ’s concert tour.

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1984 was a big year for me. Wally and I started the Power Station, I went to fetch Max as a puppy from Bennie Strydom’s farm, my first book was published, and I bought my bakkie.

What great writing from Grahamstown poet Robert Berold from his new book. I came across this great excerpt from the book, “All the Days”, on Rod MacKenzie blog at Thought Leader. It’s a tale of Berold’s favourite bakkie and his life as it wound around the vehicle. (Click here to read the excerpt on the blog.)

Besides being a great poet, Berold also wrote a great book a couple of years back about a year he spent in China teaching English at one of the country’s top universities. If you come across “Don’t Push and Squeeze” at Exclusives, snap it us. It’s really fascinating as Berold gets to know many of his students well and includes their essays in the book so you a real insight into China.

One of  Berold’s own insights really struck me: the students he was teaching were all one-child policy children and, he found, singularly lacking in angst. He deduces it must have to do with the fact that they grow up with the undecided attention of their parents.

It’s also the first time I’ve read a travel book by a South African outside Africa. Those bushwacking and bad roads travel books through Africa are so 2006.

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1. Today’s Mail & Guardian has an interesting insight into what’s going on behind closed doors at the National Prosecuting Authority regarding ANC president Jacob Zuma’s case. His legal team told the NPA at the meeting this week they should drop the corruption charges because of two new pieces of evidence.

No further details were released, but the Mail & Guardian has established that the two principal strands of evidence put before Mpshe concern:

* Mbeki’s role in the 1999 arms deal and new details of his alleged involvement in impropriety in the awarding of contracts for new defence equipment.
* Claims that Mbeki influenced the Scorpions’ controversial “Special Browse Mole” report, which raised concerns about funding and support for Zuma from Libya and Angola as well as the possibility of violent resistance to his prosecution.

What Zuma told the NPA

2.  The Times is reporting that Zuma’s legal team has pinned its hopes on potentially embarrassing tapes of Scorpions investigators allegedly discussing the case against him with former National Prosecuting Authority boss Bulelani Ngcuka. Click here.

3. And IOL’s got a good story on Willem’s Heath powerful role as deal maker in all of this. Read it here.

4. Here’s a cool little story at the Daily Dispatch about how a brewing mistake and a chance online meeting has led to a Grahamstown meadery (yup, that stuff Robin Hood and his Merry Men used to drink) earning it a world-wide reputation as a leader in mead technology. Read it here.

5. And it’s looking up at the oval. We bowled the Ozzies out for 209 yesterday and we’re going into the second day of the Cape Town cricket Test 57 without loss. Although we’ve already lost the Test series (it’s the best of three) we might at least end it with a modicum of respectability.

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