Ken Borland

The Soweto Country Club, the flagship of the Sunshine Tour’s development programme, is under threat due to the continued prohibition on golf, deputy commissioner Thomas Abt admitted on Thursday.

Soweto Country Club was designed by Gary Player and built in 1974, but fell into disrepair before a major refurbishment turned it into an iconic course in South Africa’s most famous township. Sunshine Tour commissioner Selwyn Nathan spearheaded the fundraising effort that saw both local and overseas corporates, the government and golfers themselves contribute to the revamp of a 6560-metre parklands layout that holds a special place in the heart of Black golfers and the Soweto community at large. The championship course hosted the Joburg Ladies Open in March 2019, an international event co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour.

But now the continued success of this incredible project is in question because Soweto Country Club, like the majority of golf clubs in South Africa, is in a dire financial situation due to being closed for the last 10 weeks as government imposed a Lockdown to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Soweto Country Club is absolutely threatened,” Abt said on a Sunshine Tour virtual press conference on Thursday. “One has to tip the hat to Selwyn Nathan, who championed the revamp and got funding from various tours and businesses around the world. But the club needs a sustainable platform and maintenance of the course is critical. We’ve had to re-evaluate maintenance and reduce the number of staff employed because there are no rounds of golf, no food being sold by caterers and no beverages being bought to bring in money.

“So the sooner golf clubs can reopen the better, it’s a very unfortunate situation and we’ve had to put plans in place to try and save Soweto Country Club. It’s been a tough time for GolfRSA but they have put their best foot forward and had positive discussions with the Minister, the Department of Sport and his advisors. We’ve had constant engagement on almost a daily basis,” Abt said.

Much of that engagement has been centred around trying to get government to better understand the dynamics of how golf works in South Africa, with the decision to allow professional golf to resume not having any impact without the clubs and amateur game being allowed to follow suit.

“In our discussions we’ve been trying to understand the reasons why we can’t play golf and we’ve also tried to help them understand better how the Lockdown applies to golf and Grant Hepburn [GolfRSA CEO] has engaged them on how the sport works in this country: In order for the professional game to take place, the amateur game and their facilities have to open up first and then the pros can.

“Our country seems to have it the other way round, but the amateur game supports the professional game and that message seems to have been absorbed now. In the meantime we’ve asked our professionals not to put any pressure on facilities to open. So they’re not able to do anything just yet, but the clubs and ranges have been closed for more than 60 days so we can wait a few more days to play golf again legitimately,” Abt said.

 

The KwaZulu-Natal North Coast is generally extremely degraded habitat due to the development of extensive sugarcane fields and timber plantations, as well as the high levels of urbanisation and the roads and alien plant infestations it brings.

The natural vegetation of the coastal belt is classified as Endangered; comprising Moist Coastal Forest, Thorn and Palmveld; bushed grassland and bushland thicket. But these days, as you venture north from Durban, it is just a sea of sugarcane, endless and monotonous.

The undulating topography of the area – rolling hills heading westwards to the plateau in the central regions of the province – with steep sloping ground, means only sugarcane can really be considered as a permanent crop, because the ground is either too wet or too sloping to grow much else.

The valley bottoms are where more indigenous flora is found and, having spotted a dam on the maps of the Maidstone area, I decided to head there to see what the birdlife would be like around this colonial village that was built for the employees of Tongaat Hulett Sugar Company.

But in order to find my way down to the dam, I had to negotiate a myriad of little tracks through the monoculture. Being towards the end of May, it was also the dry season and I wasn’t expecting much. But it was proven otherwise as the canefields threw up some birds of their own.

For good birding habitat, the drainage streams between canefields with irrigation water still in them proved a hit with the birds, including Whitewinged Widow, but it was still a surprise when a couple of Spurwinged Goose turned up where the water had collected into a small pool near the road.

You wouldn’t find Southern Africa’s largest duck (it’s not a real goose) in the actual sugarcane but it is generally common and conspicuous at inland waters and fallow fields, usually being seen in flight.

Two Southern Red Bishop males, surprisingly still in breeding plumage, went towering upwards in the sky nearby.

While the Stonechat was the most common bird, the Fantailed Widowbird is the common Euplectid of sugarcane fields, flying up out of the rows of green, alongside the Yellowthroated Longclaw, which is more a bird of the lower reaches of South Africa, as you head towards the sea, being far more widespread than the endemic Orangethroated (Cape) Longclaw, and flying up from the grass on the tracks that cut through the cane.

The only natural habitats available on-site are restricted to a few isolated patches of riparian vegetation along water courses, where I was able to confirm the winter presence of Redwinged Starling along with a family of Vervet Monkey, and the major feeder for Dudley Pringle Dam is the Wewe River, part of the Tongaat River catchment.

The dam itself is not very accessible but I did manage to find one spot to walk around, a launching area for a local canoe club.

Little flocks of Fantailed Widowbird, the males with their red shoulder patches, flew up out of the tall, moist grassland around the dam, over which Egyptian Geese were flying.

A Threebanded Plover, which has been recorded breeding in the area, was nodding along on the dilapidated weir, while a few pairs of African Jacana, an unlikely bird to see on sugarcane farms, were squabbling and flying around and then settling in the waterweed.

Another surprise was when a Whitebreasted Cormorant came gliding into view from around the corner of the dam, and I was delighted to see a few Little Bee-Eater hawking insects from the reeds on the dam shore.

There is more vegetation, including stands of bamboo, around the dwellings on the farm, and it was interesting to see a Fiscal Flycatcher in the same tree as the more fierce bird it mimics in appearance, the Fiscal Shrike.

A similar example of mimicry in which one birds looks confusingly similar to another highly aggressive bird occurs between the Southern Black Flycatcher and the Forktailed Drongo, with the Flycatcher hypothesised to gain some sort of advantage by looking like the more rapacious Drongo.

Coincidentally, a Southern Black Flycatcher was spotted in the tree right next door to a Forktailed Drongo.

Where is Dudley Pringle Dam?

Sightings list

Forktailed Drongo

Hadeda Ibis

Redwinged Starling

Southern Black Flycatcher

Cape Wagtail

Fiscal Shrike

Grassveld Pipit

Fiscal Flycatcher

Tawnyflanked Prinia

African Stonechat

Vervet Monkey

Southern Red Bishop

Spurwinged Goose

Redeyed Dove

Blackeyed Bulbul

Whitewinged Widow

Yellowthroated Longclaw

Fantailed Widowbird

Egyptian Goose

Threebanded Plover

African Jacana

Whitebreasted Cormorant

Little Swift

Litte Bee-Eater

 

 

Nestled between the rampant development of Umhlanga Rocks is a little 26 ha sanctuary of coastal bush, a refuge for birds and small mammals amidst all the hotels and holiday homes that are mushrooming along the coast north of Durban.

The Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve, with its coastal dune forest, reed beds, ponds and the Ohlange River’s lagoon and mouth, provides an ideal getaway for the public to spend a few hours reconnecting with nature, and there are plenty of interesting birds waiting to be discovered.

The Eastern Olive Sunbird is largely restricted to these coastal forests and it disappears readily into the thick foliage, it’s dark olive plumage lacking any of the metallic shininess of the other sunbirds.

But it makes up for this unobtrusive behaviour by being amongst the most vocal of all sunbirds, and, in a couple of hours spent in the Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve, I managed to find four different individuals singing little “whit-peep” songs from inside the trees.

As charming as the reserve is though, one cannot help but be dismayed by the pace of development squeezing it from all sides; the difference between my January 2014 visit and my previous foray to Umhlanga in 2003 was stark.

A Purplecrested Lourie flew into a bare tree above the forest and seemed to look around anxiously, seemingly perplexed by all the development going on around the oasis of green.

Nevertheless, three species of Weaver can be found in the reserve, including nesting Yellow Weavers, and there were fleeting glimpses of Tawnyflanked Prinia, as well as a Slender Mongoose scampering away into the reedbeds, just proving the wide range of habitats these carnivores can inhabit.

Common Sandpiper and Pied Kingfisher are prominent along the lagoon, while there always seems to be a Goliath Heron around.

Thickbilled Weaver can either be found nesting in the reeds or foraging on the way back through the forest.

Sightings list

Cape Wagtail

Spottedbacked Weaver

Blackeyed Bulbul

Yellow Weaver

Tawnyflanked Prinia

Purplecrested Lourie

Eastern Olive Sunbird

Cape White-Eye

Sombre Bulbul

Southern Red Bishop

Slender Mongoose

Common Sandpiper

Pied Kingfisher

Blackheaded Heron

Goliath Heron

Hadeda Ibis

Bronze Mannikin

Thickbilled Weaver

 

 

Gift Ngoepe has been making headlines this week, giving South African baseball a rare moment in the sun, and his incredible story just goes to prove that talent meeting opportunity should be at the root of all transformation or development efforts in this country.

Ngoepe became the first ever player born in Africa to play Major League Baseball when he turned out for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Chicago Cubs, the World Series champions, and made a single in his first at-bat, showing his ability as his hit registered the highest velocity off the bat in the whole game, and he then played a part in the double-play that ended the contest and sealed a thrilling 6-5 win for his team.

As is so often the case, nobody could have guessed what talent Ngoepe possessed for the quintessential American game. It was opportunity that unlocked the door and changed his life, leading to him becoming a tremendous role-model for all the less privileged people with sporting dreams in South Africa.

That opportunity came in the most extraordinary, and yet typical, South African way. His mother just happened to be employed as the cleaner at the national baseball headquarters in Randburg and Gift and his younger brother Victor, who plays in the Gulf Coast minor league, stayed with her in a little room on the premises.

Given the opportunity to have a go at this strange sport that is so foreign to most people on the continent, Ngoepe’s talent rapidly became obvious.

Of course there is a gap of several years between that and making history this week, filled with sacrifice, perseverance and a determination to fulfil his dreams. The joy of becoming the sixth South African and the first Black African to sign a professional baseball contract in 2008 gave way to the hard work of spending nine years in the minor leagues.

The magnitude of his achievement and the character of the man is shown by the reaction of both his team-mates and the Cubs to Ngoepe’s special day.

He was warmly greeted by his team-mates when he came on to field at second base and his single was wildly celebrated in the Pirates’ dugout, with chants of “For the Motherland!” and there were tears all round. The Cubs rolled the ball used for the single into the opposition dugout so Ngoepe could keep it as a memento.

The wonderful story of Ngoepe is in stark contrast to the other big sporting news item of the week, the almost certain demise of Lonwabo Tsotsobe.

Once the number one ranked bowler in international limited-overs cricket, Tsotsobe is the latest player to be charged in the corruption web that began with the machinations of Gulam Bodi.

The story of Tsotsobe features all the talent and even more opportunity than Ngoepe’s. The left-arm paceman comes from a well-off family in the Eastern Cape with strong sporting links, his sister Nomsebenzi being a former captain of the national women’s rugby team.

Tsotsobe had all the backing and opportunity in the world, but he lacked the work ethic and determination that so clearly drives Ngoepe. Conditioning, which is really just about hard work, was always a problem for Tsotsobe, and eventually the Proteas management lost patience with him.

Seduced by the bright lights and a glitzy lifestyle, it was perhaps inevitable that Tsotsobe would ultimately fall victim to the lure of easy money.

And yet there are current rising stars like Andile Phehlukwayo and Lungi Ngidi, who stand poised on the edge of stellar international careers having risen above similarly disadvantaged childhoods as Ngoepe, both being the sons of domestic workers.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20170429/282437054017674