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After South Africa’s battle with the record-breaking drought of 2015, Prof Andries Jordaan from our Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa(DiMTEC) saw room for improvement in dealing with this kind of disaster.
Drought impact
Commercial farmers who are usually net exporters of food crops and communal farmers who own the bulk of the country’s livestock, were all hit hard in 2015. Most of the latter had no resources to spare as the drought progressed. The concern about the drought’s impact on the country’s food production and availability resulted in a joint goal of preventing food scarcity during future droughts.
Prof Jordaan’s visit to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the US, several years ago prepared him to better equip communities in South Africa to deal with drought situations. “I recognised that in spite of the impact DiMTEC has been able to make on disaster preparedness, a gap remained in disaster response in South Africa.”
Sharing knowledge
In August this year Prof Jordaan again visited the NDMC. This time he requested a few key players in South Africa’s agriculture and disaster response communities to join him. With him were Janse Rabie, head of Natural Resources at AgriSA, a nonprofit organisation that functions as an interface between the government and about 28 000 South Africa farmers, and Moses Musiwale Khangale, director of Fire Services for the South African Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
The South African delegation met with and learnt from climatologists, geospatial technologists, and outreach and planning analysts.
Concert was music to the ear
2009-10-20
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The special gala concert as part of the inauguration of the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, was also a celebration of the diversity and harmony. Concert goers could feast on music covering centuries, genres and continents. In the early part of the programme early and classical and contemporary music were presented and in the second half concert goers could acquaint themselves with indigenous African music and jazz.
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Prof. Jonathan Jansen and his wife, Grace (on his left) listening to a performance at the gala concert
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| Ms Annette Bester, Hesma van Tonder, Mariechen Jansen and Alet Olivier |