In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals the discovery of a wonderful piece of maritime heritage in the Eastern Cape. The article was first published on the Brand South Africa website on 10 July 2013. Click here to view more of Davie's writing.
It’s not often that a historically valuable item washes ashore at Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. But on a lazy Sunday in mid-February this year, an octant appeared on the beach.
Towards the end of 2013, veteran sheep farmer, Hilson Shuman of Grey Craig farm, near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape, made South African Merino history when he delivered his 60th wool clip to Lappersonne Wools broker in Port Elizabeth. In 2016, he broke the World Wool Clip record with 63 clips behind his name. In 2018, Hilson continued his record streak with a 65th Wool Clip. The National Woolgrowers Association (NWGA) and all affiliated sectors joined together to congratulate Hilson on this unique achievement.
Photographic research, which includes the use of original photographic images, transcends disciplinary borders and combines fields of visual history, visual studies, visual anthropology and art history.
Herein lies an ethical responsibility – the avoidance of stereotypical or abusive representations of people portrayed in these images. Readers, of course, bring their own knowledge, emotions, and imagination, thus no author can fully control how their work is going to be interpreted (Gordon & Kurzwelly, 2018).
Barville Park 1820 settler estate, located to the west of Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape, has a long tail to its history. It was one of the largest properties allocated to a settler in the region. A portion of it touched on Port Alfred itself. It included well known farms, obviously subdivided off now, however, these were all part of the original farm.
The demolition of Central Buildings has brought about a massive response from both citizens of Port Elizabeth, the wider national Heritage bodies and ex Port Elizabethans, internationally. The shock and sadness still continues.
I was devastated to witness this demolition as I have been fighting; for these buildings since 2005.
We have now lost not one, but two buildings along our Donkin heritage trail in Port Elizabeth. A sad week for tourism in PE. These documents of the past are gone, especially when seen in relation to number 7 Castle Hill museum, a provincial heritage site.
Does anyone remember Pyott Biscuits? They were the makers of Salticrax, Romany Creams, Iced Zoo and many other SA favourites. Today they’re all branded under the Bakers label and the Pyott name has largely been forgotten.
As a child my gran used to take me to walk through the gardens of the famed Old Word Concretes that have in existence since 1919. This place was my place of enchantment. The little fat cherubs and elves. I still have their pots in my garden. Well I had... I think my landscaper son has taken them away. He too is an artist and, how bizarre never having told him this story, his sculptures are in the category of outside art.
There are not many South Africans who have been honoured by having a statue of themselves erected in London. Only two come readily to mind and they are Jan Smuts and Nelson Mandela, whose statues stand proudly in Parliament Square, Westminster. However, there is a lesser known South African who has a statue which stands outside Bank Station; he is James Henry Greathead (1844-1896), the grandson of an 1820 Settler of the same name. So why is it that a boy from Grahamstown should be so honoured and what was his achievement?
In 1811 Joseph de Maistre wrote that every nation gets the government it deserves. By extension then, it also get the heritage it merits, and as building after building in our city centres continue to fall before the demolisher’s hammer, many South Africans have been left wondering exactly what they have done to warrant the destruction of so many of their memories.
In a recent article published by the author (click here to view), reference was made to a modern photographic phenomenon, namely “found photographs”. In short: “Found photographs” are discarded vintage photographs typically found at charity stores, car boot sales, flea markets or antique fairs. As a single image, any “found” or the converse thereof, “lost” photograph, has sadly lost its original context when viewed by a total str
Below is Part 3 of Mel Baker's extraordinary account of being a Prisoner of War during World War II. Click here to read Part 2 and here to download the full account including detailed footnotes. The photo above shows the main gate of Stalag XVIII A (Prisoner of War Camp in Southern Austria).
Leaving Wernersdorf
“Located at the end of a winding road overlooking a verdant valley, Healdtown was far more beautiful and impressive than Clarkebury. It was, at the time, the largest African school south of the equator, with more than a thousand learners, both male and female. Its gracefully ivory colonial buildings and tree-shaded courtyards gave it a feeling of a privileged academic oasis, which is exactly what it was.” Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom.
Situated in the Kayser’s Beach Area, Eastern Cape, South Africa the church was built in 1862 to serve the needs of the settlers who made this part of the country their home.
The church was built by the farmers of the area between the Keiskamma River in the west and the Buffalo River in the east. Frederick R Goddard, donated ten acres of his land for the church. Church records of 1862 describe the event as follows:
“At a time when the government took no interest whatsoever in our education, it was the church-founded schools who educated us, and conscientised us to the unjust realities of South African society” – Nelson Mandela
When Sobukwe left Healdtown Mission Institute for the next stage of his education, he found that most of the country’s universities were closed to blacks. Only the universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand gave limited access to black students. The premier institute for blacks was near Alice – the South African Native College at Fort Hare.
By the end of March 2018 the 14-member Africa Media Online team resident in Alice, Eastern Cape and working in the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre (NAHECS) at the University of Fort Hare, had completed the digital capture of all the material assigned to them in the current phases of the ANC Archives digitisation project.
In the piece below, Miss E Dankwerts provides a short description St Michael and All Angels in Queenstown. The details appeared in the 1978 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born on 5 December 1924 in Graaff-Reinet, a small town in the Eastern Cape known as the gem of the Karoo. He was the youngest of six children and, as was normal at the time, he was given an English name (Robert) as well as a Xhosa name, Mangaliso, meaning ‘it is wonderful’. His brothers who survived were Ernest, born in 1914, and Charles, born in 1922. His only sister was Eleanor.
The first thing I did when researching this piece of writing was to look at a modern physical map of South Africa and envision that the urban areas and the modern road network shown thereupon were on a thin film that could be peeled away. What remained on the under layer were the physical features such as the coastline, rivers, escarpments and mountain ranges. It was a clean canvas on which I could put settlements on, but before I could do this I had to determine a date in history.
