Latest news with #SunCity
TimesLIVE
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Inaugural Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival celebrates traditional music, culture and fashion
The SABC and Sun City are excited about the inaugural Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival, an eclectic celebration of traditional music, culture and fashion. The groundbreaking collaboration sees Sun City partner with the SABC's nine African language stations. 'Ziyakhala' is a slang term that roughly translates to 'it's happening', or 'the party's on'. The festival is taking place on June 28, featuring traditional maskandi music artists Mthandeni Sk, Sjava, Qadasi and Maqhinga. The event promotes authentic local music from artists Ringo Madlingozi, King Monada, Cassper Nyovest, Dr Nothembi Mkhwebane, Makhadzi, Lwah Ndlunkulu, Ntate Stunna, Gen Muzka and five-time Grammy award-winners Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The selection of artists will allow South Africans from all cultures to experience the nation's diverse musical offerings. Nombuso Buthelezi, Sun City's head of events, said: 'We are excited that this truly unique partnership will allow us to touch all corners of the country and reach lovers of traditional SA music who will experience a one-of-a-kind cultural celebration at Sun City Resort'. Thinasiphelele Sixaso, SABC general manager for public service radio, said: 'The partnership will allow a seamless and authentic amalgamation of leading voices in the entertainment space to speak directly to their audience and share their love for South African music and culture with them. 'The SABC is the custodian of the country's cultural expressions and music heritage, therefore our role is to tell the creative industry stories through our African language stations, which are the perfect platforms to enrich the cultural heritage of SA. We are excited that our stations play a critical role in supporting traditional artistic expression through partnerships such as this.'
The Citizen
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival pulls musical heavyweights for first showcase
The event will take place next month. Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival is a celebration of traditional music, culture, and fashion. Picture: Instagram/Screenshot The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), in partnership with Sun City Resort, is gearing up to launch the inaugural Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival—a celebration of traditional music, culture, and fashion. The event will take place next month, on Saturday 28 June, at the Sun City Superbowl in the North West. The festival is a collaboration between Sun City and all nine of the SABC's African Language radio stations. The SABC's General Manager for Public Service Radio, Thinasiphelele Sixaso, said this partnership reflects their ongoing commitment to celebrating tradition through music and media. 'The SABC is the custodian of the South Africa's cultural expressions and music heritage, therefore our role is to tell the creative industry story through our African Language stations, which are the perfect platforms to enrich the cultural heritage of South Africa,' Sixaso added. ALSO READ: R&B is alive and well: Sasha Keable and GoldLink join festival line-up in South Africa Ziyakhala Mo Sun City Festival: A weekend of heritage, sound and style The festival has pulled Mzansi's musical heavyweights for the line-up. From maskandi to Afro-soul and hip hop, the line-up includes some of the biggest names in local music: Mthandeni SK, Sjava, Qadasi & Maqhinga, Ringo Madlingozi, King Monada, Cassper Nyovest, Dr Nothembi Mkhwebane, Makhadzi, Lwah Ndlunkulu, Ntate Stunna, General Muzka, and the internationally acclaimed Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Beyond music, the event also promises a weekend of cultural and fashion celebration. Nombuso Buthelezi, Head of Events at Sun City, said this is not just a festival, but a curated cultural experience. 'This truly unique partnership will allow us to touch all corners of the country and reach lovers of traditional South African music who will experience this one-of-a-kind cultural celebration at Sun City Resort.' NOW READ: 'A faithful God': Oscar Mbo and partner welcome their first baby
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Kansas and America share important history with apartheid and the nation of South Africa
Former senator Nancy Kassebaum served as chairwoman of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs and helped develop sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector) During my 1980s college years, our student group urged the university to divest from any South African interests. Many campuses nationwide saw students protesting that country's legalized system of racial oppression, apartheid. In that era, roughly 30 years from the civil rights movement, the fight against apartheid had gained traction in politics and in popular culture. The 1985 protest song 'Sun City' played on a loop on video music shows, while President Reagan seemingly coddled the regime. Most people, however, may have forgotten the role of Kansas and the United States in this winding human rights saga. First, some perspective. White South Africans represent 7 percent of the population but own 72 percent of the land. Black South Africans represent 81 percent of the population but own 4 percent of the land. White South Africans are not oppressed, though the late comedian Robin Williams once rhetorically asked the white minority there: 'Does the name Custer mean anything to you?' Apartheid, which means 'apartness,' mirrored American racial segregation. A person's race determined where people could live, where they could work, and whom they could marry. This month, President Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House meeting, peddling a false narrative of 'white genocide' there. Trump, while aggressively deporting immigrants of color, recently welcomed 59 white South Africans who he claimed were fleeing oppression. If there is a genocide, why are only 59 people trying to escape it? It's important to note that truth matters little to this president. What is important is the continued building of a false, white grievance narrative for his base. He's reassuring them that he's for them. Always. The more news media press him about this, the deeper and wider his base's roots of loyalty strengthen and spread. Nevertheless, Kansas and America had an interesting connection with South Africa, apartheid, and with the jailing and eventual release of Nelson Mandela, who would eventually rule the nation that imprisoned him. Former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassabaum, then chairwoman of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, helped develop sanctions against the apartheid regime. President Regan vetoed the legislation, but Congress overrode his veto. The sanctions, along with international pressure, helped dismantle that system. A Kansan stood watch over apartheid on its deathbed. President Clinton dispatched Ronald Walters, the noted political science expert and co-architect of the historic Dockum sit-in, to South Africa to monitor elections that would spell the end of apartheid. Walters, also an architect of the Congressional Black Caucus, knew Mandela, who phoned the Walters' home in 2010 after Walters died. Another Kansan, Gretchen Eick, now a retired professor of history and award-winning author, lobbied against apartheid for 30 years and was part of the final 1986 passage of comprehensive sanctions over Reagan's veto. 'A stunning experience!' Eick wrote via email. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who researched apartheid as a Harvard student in the 1980s, told The Wichita Eagle years ago that he'd grown interested in South Africa because its issues had reached that campus. Kobach said then that he didn't oppose sanctions, but he thought disinvestment removed American companies from fight. Those companies, he said, could form a powerful anti-apartheid bloc. He reportedly wrote his senior thesis at Harvard about how South African businesses had become politicized. Kobach based that report, for which he won a campus award, on research conducted during a 1987 visit there. Harvard professor Samuel Huntington advised Kobach's work, and reportedly believed South Africa should pursue a 'policy of simultaneous reform and repression,' said a review in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. Black South Africans faced brutal repression, and the U.S., under President Kennedy, helped imprison Mandela. NPR, in a 2016 interview with a former CIA official, reported Mandela's 1962 capture happened because of a U.S. tip to South African officials. That capture and arrest led to Mandela's nearly 28-year imprisonment. According to Time magazine, when the South African government released Mandela in 1990, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted a 'senior CIA operative' regarding Mandela's capture. Within hours of Mandela's arrest, operative Paul Eckel said: 'We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.' Our country played dual roles in Mandela's life. It delivered him to his captors but also lobbied South Africa not to hang him for treason and later applied political and economic pressure to end apartheid. And our 'Free State,' played a small role in Mandela's and in that nation's liberation. Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Sky News
22-05-2025
- Health
- Sky News
'Attacks on staff are common': Inside hospital saving Haiti's malnourished children
In a simple breezeblock and cement building, cholera patients are attached to drips as they lie sprawled on hard, wooden beds. In one section, two young boys stare into the distance through listless eyes. They are very poorly, the staff tell us, but now they are here, they will survive. Medical staff check on their patients in the relatively cool interior of the wards, while outside the sun beats down on the grounds of the rough and ready interconnected buildings of the Fontaine Hospital in Port-au-Prince. The hospital is built amid the slums in an area of Haiti's capital known as Cite Soleil - or Sun City. This suburb is widely regarded to be the birthplace of the gangs of Port-au-Prince, and this section of the city has been violent and dangerous for decades. Civil society doesn't function here. Indeed, the Fontaine Hospital is the only medical facility still operating in the gang-controlled areas of Cite Soleil. Without it, the people who live here would have no access to doctors or medical care. I'm standing in the cholera ward with Jose Ulysse, the hospital's founder. He opened the hospital 32 years ago. It's a charity, run purely on donations. Mr Ulysse explained that the increasing gang violence across the whole of Port-au-Prince, and the chaos it is causing, means people are herded into displacement camps, which in turn means that cholera outbreaks are getting worse. "Cholera is always present, but there's a time when it's more," he told me. "Lately because of all the displacement camps there is a great deal of promiscuity and rape, and we have an increase in cases." As we spoke, I asked him about the two young boys, and a small group of women on drips in the ward. "Now they are here, they will be okay, but if they weren't here and this hospital wasn't here, they would be dead by now," he replied when I asked him about their condition. We left the cholera ward, cleaning our hands and shoes with disinfectant, before moving on to the next part of the hospital under pressure - the malnutrition ward. "Malnutrition and cholera go hand-in-hand," Mr Ulysse explained as we walked. In the clinic, we meet parents and their little ones - all the infants are malnourished. The mothers - and important to note - one father, are given food to feed their babies. Those who are in the worst condition are also fed by a drip. One of the giveaway signs of malnutrition is a distended tummy, and most of these babies have that. Poverty and insecurity combine to cause this, Mr Ulysse tells me. And like cholera, malnutrition is getting worse. He explained that when the violence increases, parents can't go to work because it is too dangerous, so they end up not being able to make a living, which means that they can't feed their children properly. The medics and hospital workers risk their lives every day, crossing gang lines and territories to get to the hospital and care for their patients. The reason why this hospital is so popular is because staff show up, even when the fighting is at its worst. Despite their meagre resources, the Fontaine Hospital's intensive care unit for premature babies is busy - it is widely regarded as one of the best facilities of its kind in the country. A team of nurses, masked and in scrubs, tenderly care for these tiny children, some of whom are only hours old. They are some of the most incredibly vulnerable. I asked Mr Ulysse what would happen if his hospital wasn't there. "Just imagine, there isn't a place where they can go, everyone comes here, normally the poorest people in the country", he told me. But he stressed that the only way the hospital can keep going is through donations, and the cuts to the US government's USAID programme has had a direct impact on the hospital's donors. Attacks on hospitals and staff working in the toughest areas across Port-au-Prince have become common. We filmed outside one of the two Médecins Sans Frontières facilities in the centre of the capital, where work has been suspended because their staff were threatened or attacked. Medical personnel from the health ministry in Port-au-Prince tell us over 70 per cent of all medical facilities in Port-au-Prince have been shut. Only one major public hospital, the Le Paix Hospital, is open. The Le Paix Hospital's executive director, Dr Paul Junior Fontilus, says he is perplexed by the gang's targeting of medical facilities. "It makes no sense, it's crazy, we don't know what it is they want," he said as we walked through the hospital. The hospital is orderly and functioning well, considering the pressure it is under. They are dealing with more and more cases of cholera, an increase in gunshot wounds and sexual violence. "We are overrun with demand, and this surpasses our capacity to respond," he explained to me. "But we are obliged to meet the challenge and offer services to the population." 7:17 Gang violence is crushing the life out of Port-au-Prince, affecting all of society. And, as is often the case, the most vulnerable in society suffer the most.
News24
17-05-2025
- Automotive
- News24
Toyota Gazoo Racing unveils striking Sand Beige livery ahead of SA Safari Rally
Toyota Gazoo Racing will sport a striking Sand Beige livery for the upcoming Safari Rally. The livery pays tribute to the hue that adorns Cruisers and Hiluxes of passionate Toyota owners. Toyota Gazoo Racing has opened an impressive new motorsport hub in Kyalami, Gauteng. Paint colours like Rosso Corsa, British Racing Green and Bleu de France are synonymous with motorsport, having adorned legendary racing cars through the ages. Now, Sand Beige can be added to that list. The popular light brown colour that adorns a large chunk of the Toyota Land Cruiser 70s sold in South Africa has been employed on the Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux Ultimate T1+ for the upcoming South African Safari Rally that kicks off near Sun City on Sunday, 18 May. The team has historically run black or white cars along with the red and white Toyota Gazoo Racing logos but felt a change was necessary for the first home round of the W2RC world championship. Also, finding a home on the rear quarter panel is the now iconic 'It's not a bakkie, it's a Hilux' phrase. The Sand Beige colour is an iconic Toyota hue and is well-loved by Cruiser owners operating in the South African farming and overlanding community. It makes it a great fit for the pair of racing bakkies at their home round of the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) in front of their passionate fans. The two cars run by Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa will be piloted by Saood Variawa, Francois Cazalet, Guy Botterill, and navigator Dennis Murphy. Following their second-place finish at this year's Dakar Rally, Henk Lategan and co-driver Brett Cummings have made the step up to the European-based Toyota Gazoo Racing for the remainder of the W2RC season. They will be behind the wheel of a similar Hilux Ultimate T1+ campaigned by that team. Similarly, veteran Toyota driver Giniel de Villiers will be in contention aboard a Hilux campaigned by the privateer outfit Team Hilux Rally Raid. Toyota Gazoo Racing opens new facility The new livery was showcased to the media ahead of the event at the all-new Toyota Gazoo Racing Motorsport Hub, located in Kyalami, Gauteng. The facility sets a new benchmark for South African and international motorsport facilities. Construction on the 12 500 m² facility began in October 2024 to create a world-class hub dedicated to high-performance motorsport engineering, manufacturing, and development. The Rally-Raid Hub will serve as the new home of TGRSA, housing the team's race vehicles and technical departments under one expansive, multi-level roof, with room to grow in future. Designed to meet the increasing demands of international competition and continuous innovation, the facility has been purpose-built to support every aspect of modern rally-raid racing. It includes a dedicated engine room, damper laboratory, in-house dyno, and an extensively upgraded fabrication division. The machine shop has also been significantly enhanced, now featuring a full suite of 3-, 4-, and 5-axis CNC machinery, ensuring precision component production at the highest global standards. The new building dramatically improves capacity, with space to prepare up to 20 race cars, compared to just six at the team's previous base. Every workshop and support area has been designed to optimise efficiency, workflow, and quality control. This includes a state-of-the-art parts store, complete with a custom-built software system to manage inventory and logistics servicing TGRSA and multiple teams worldwide. The team at Kyalami can build ten new Hilux race vehicles per year, but a big motivation behind the upgraded facility was to enable the team to increase their fabrication and parts manufacturing capability to meet the needs of Hilux racing teams worldwide. In the last ten years, the local outfit has built close to 140 racing Hiluxes of various iterations, and a large majority of these cars continue to be raced by teams and privateers worldwide. See the world's top rally raid drivers in action From Sunday, 18 May, to Saturday, 24 May, Sun City and its surroundings will be transformed into a rally-raid central. Fans are invited to witness the magic of international rally-raid racing up close. Spectator points are free and located at each stage, allowing fans to watch top local champions go head-to-head with the world's best. General admission tickets and passes are available now via TicketPro.
