Fairlady November 2015

OK, guys, gird your loins for the last stretch – the end of the year is ne-e-e-e-a-arly here! Every year feels like the hardest one yet, but this year the plummeting Rand and escalating crime statistics don’t help. The thing is, I don’t believe the crime statistics are a true reflection of South African people in general. Visitors always comment on the warmth, humour and hospitality of all the South Africans they meet – and 90% of the time, that’s my experience too. There are so many more people out there who are well-intentioned, rather than bad; there are so many more who want to build this country up rather than tear it apart, and there are so many more who want peace than who choose violence. But one of…

winning letter ‘I learned what I could accomplish despite my fears’ I recently returned from completing the Marathon des Sables (MDS) in Morocco, named ‘the toughest footrace on the planet’ by National Geographic. I learned what I could accomplish despite my fears. By standing up and facing that which cripples me, I was able to overcome everything the desert threw at me – including temporary blindness. The MDS is a 7-day multistage self-support footrace of 250km described as ‘more hellish than hell’ by Sir Ranulph Fiennes who has also participated. I competed and finished the race for the women in my family, especially my daughter, to show them what you can accomplish if you don’t give up on your dream and if you have the perseverance to see it through.…

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• I was hoping to help one or two people, but we’ve now got two counselling centres. • We’re desperate for funding; every charity is. • I visit schools to share my experience, talk about the situation and how we can change it. At the all-boys schools it’s amazing to see how they come forward and ask what they can do to help, what they can do to stop this, how to protect their girlfriends, their sisters, their moms... They’re so willing to learn. • Most survivors are raped by someone they know, and that makes it difficult to speak out. If you’re typing on a computer to an unknown person, it’s a lot easier to share. • I feel we’re teaching women how not to be raped, instead of…

The Pretty Blog (www.theprettyblog.com) Owner: Christine Meintjes START-UP COSTS: ‘I put in about R10 000 and my partner at the time matched this. Most of this went towards website design and development. You can start with less, but we wanted something that looked very professional and we were willing to invest to achieve that.’ TURNOVER: Quite good, but it wasn’t easy getting to this point. ‘I’ve been in the wedding industry since I was 14,’ says founder of The Pretty Blog, Christine Meintjes. Back then, she assisted a wedding photographer at the weekend by carrying bags and making sure each bride’s dress was perfectly poofed for the shoot. The experience ‘formed the foundation of a very eager little entrepreneur and photographer inside of me,’ she says. Christine completed a Visual…

AT some point in your life, you’ve probably thought about what it would be like to meet a royal and be swept off your feet, twirled in a designer gown and have a sparkly tiara placed on your head. But what if it actually happened to you? What if you actually went from independent nobody to cossetted (and tightly controlled) royalty? Would it really be the kind of life you’d like to live? It’s interesting that Kate, more than any other royal, makes us think in these terms – and it might be because she’s a ‘commoner’, just like us. Well, more or less. Even though she wasn’t part of the aristocracy, as Diana was, she certainly comes from an extremely wealthy background (despite the fact that the press refer…