South Africa General

On 25 May 1978, the SA Navy hydrographic survey vessel, the SAS PROTEA under command of Capt C.J.H. Wagenfeld rescued twenty-six crew members from the Japanese crab fishing boat, the Kaiyo Maru No 1, which foundered off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. Shortly thereafter, PROTEA was involved in another mercy mission to evacuate a heart attack victim from the tanker Texaco Sweden off the Namibian coast. SAS PROTEA was justly rewarded that year with the award of the SA Navy Sword of Peace for humanitarian efforts.

Article from The Citizen reporting on the recue

Rear Admiral Bernard Teuteberg (retired) provided a detailed account of how the rescue effort unfolded on 25 May 1978:

“I remember the day very well. I was working on one of the survey boats (running lines to and from the coast out to the 50 m isobath) in the company of the other survey boat (Pikkewyn and Skimmer).  The PRO was operating out of sight to the north of us.  We received a radio transmission from the ship, ordering us to cease survey operations and make our way north at best speed in order to join the ship.

PRO had received the distress call from the Kaiyo Maru and had determined that the stranding was to the north of her...

A modern photographic phenomenon that has emerged is “found photographs” – these include everyday snapshot photographs taken by others years ago, but have subsequently been discarded. These discarded photographs can today be bought up cheaply by photographic curators at car boot sales, charity organisations, fairs or auctions (online auctions included). These photographs are typically found in old photo albums, boxes with photo-odds or photo sleeves holding old prints.

As a single image, any “found”, or the converse thereof, “lost” photograph has sadly lost its original context when viewed by a total stranger who would not necessarily comprehend the context in which the photograph was taken in the first place. A different context can however be provided again when “lost” images are clustered together into a theme, such as those presented in this article.

“Found” photographs ultimately do create a sense of nostalgia for some. 

Whilst any other theme could have been selected, photographs of vintage automobiles are used in this article to reflect on the concept of snapshot photography. At the time these snapshot photographs were captured, the vehicles were probably new. Today, most of these vehicles are more than 60 years old, resulting in us looking at them as classic or vintage automobiles.

This article not only reflects on snapshot photography itself but also on the visual evidence and human stories around the importance of car ownership. The photographs included provide for a visual narrative, reflecting on the cars bought, driven, occasionally raced, sadly crashed, sometimes cursed, often scrapped, potentially hated...

At 05:30 on the morning of 11 November 1918, in a railway coach standing at a remote railway siding in the heart of the forest of Compiègne, Germany signed the Armistice Agreement that brought the war to an end.

Soon after, telegraph wires were humming with the message: “Hostilities will cease at 11.00 today November 11. Troops will stand fast on the line reached at that hour...”.

Thus, at 11:00 on 11 November 1918 the guns on the Western Front in France and Flanders fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare, warfare that had witnessed the most horrific casualties – such as when on a single day in the Battle of the Somme, there were more than 60,000 casualties.

So ended the First World War, at that time although officially known as the Great War it was usually known in the common vernacular as ‘the war to end all wars’! Regretfully the common vernacular got it terribly wrong as apart from a number of local wars being fought continuously in various places in the world, two months short of 21 years later world war was again started and what we know as the Second World War commenced on the 3rd of September 1939.

Most people today are aware of the Act of Remembrance, which when possible is held annually at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

A ceremony that is carried out in many places in many countries, when people come together to...

For a greater part of the 19th century, abundant and large herds of game were common in the interior of South Africa, resulting in it becoming a “sportsman’s” paradise

Wild-life on the African continent clearly had a powerful hold on the colonial masters. Their imagination around hunting expeditions and stories were endless – multiple books were published on their adventures whilst on the continent. It was, as if, the fauna was there purely for their subjugation. Surveying earlier literature suggests that this often-senseless form of adventure was clearly widely acceptable and encouraged.

Colonial hunters were colourful figures. Combined with their colonial and aristocratic privileges one of the key factors that led to the spread of big-game hunting was the romantic European conception of hunting in Africa. Photography played a distinct role in romanticising these big game hunting adventures.

Local hunters. More than 25 springbok carcasses. Children were involved from young. Photograph circa 1880s. Photographer unknown.

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Robert Crawley, the 7th Earl of Grantham (a British peer) is a fictional character in the popular television period drama, “Downton Abbey”, set one hundred years ago. His family seat is Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, where he lives with his wife Cora, the Countess Grantham and their three daughters, the Ladies Mary, Edith and Sybil. He, being one of the landed gentry, generates his major income from tenant farmers farming on his Estate which he inherited from his father the 6th Earl. The rub is that he has no son and heir to inherit from him and his title must pass, on his death, to the nearest male heir. This is due to the law of primogeniture, which precludes the female line inheriting.

In the very first episode of Downton Abbey the nearest male heir, Robert’s cousin James and his cousin’s son Patrick are both lost at sea when the RMS Titanic of the White Star Line sinks in the early hours of the 15th April 1912 after hitting an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York. A search is made for a more distant male relative to become next in line and the family lawyer, Murray finds that it is Matthew Crawley, a solicitor from Manchester.

The 'Upstairs Downstairs' goings on at Downton continue for another 13 years (1912-1925) through six series (screened between 2010 and 2015) and rumours abound that a full length feature film is a possibility, although Maggy Smith says her character, Lady Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Robert’s...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie delves into the powerful story of struggle stalwart Albertina Sisulu. The piece was originally published on 27 December 2008 on the City of Joburg's website. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Albertina Sisulu, or MaSisulu, the anti-apartheid stalwart, midwife, beloved member of the ANC, and devoted wife of the late Walter, has spent most of her life in Johannesburg.

She married Walter in 1944 at the age of 26, and her 59-year marriage to him endured despite enormous hardships - photographs of the two of them walking hand-in-hand or her hand through his arm, leave no doubt as to their love for one another.

Johannesburg and Gauteng have honoured her, one of their most famous citizens, on several occasions. In 2003, to mark her 85th birthday and to recognise her contribution to the struggle, the City opened a centre for children with special needs in Soweto, named after her.

Albertina Sisulu (via Lucille Davie)

Passed away

Albertina Sisulu died on 2 June, 2011 at her home in Linden.

The airport road that links OR Tambo International Airport with Tshwane was renamed Albertina Sisulu Freeway in August 2007.

In 1999, the University of the Witwatersrand conferred an honorary doctorate on her for her dedication to the cause of democracy and justice. In 2007, she received another honorary doctorate...

I wrote about the Johannesburg Lithograph (circa 1937) below by Charles Ernest Peers in a recent article on The Heritage Portal - click here to view. Tracking down Peers’ presence in Johannesburg at this time led me in search of Peers, the artist. Peers was a notable and prolific artist in his lifetime. He is mentioned in the Esme Berman (1993) and has a biographical listing in Grania Ogilvie (1988).

Peers' Johannesburg Lithograph

An online search pulls up a fair amount of information on Peers. It is possible to establish when his works have been up for sale via auction (various Peers artworks either lithographs, books or prints have been listed on sites such as bidorbuy or ebay). There is also a Wikipedia entry.

Charles Peers' was born in 1874 in Northern Ireland and he died in 1944 at Higgovale, Cape Town. He immigrated to South Africa in 1904 and settled in Cape Town, where his brother was a shipping agent. He studied at the Liverpool School of Art and (possibly) at the Slade School of Art in London. Many of his early works were of ships, port and dock scenes of Liverpool and on the Mersey. There are also a good many Cape Town dock and shipping scenes. The biographical sketch records that...

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.

The college, founded in 1916, was originally intended for blacks, as the title indicated, but also had a small number of white students. Later, there were no white students, but there were coloured and Asian students. The year before Sobukwe enrolled, the college had 324 students - 260 blacks, 29 Asians and 35 coloureds. Only 31 of the students were women, fourteen students came from Basutoland (later renamed Lesotho) and eighteen from other parts of Africa. The teaching staff was overwhelmingly white.

In its time, the college nurtured many blacks who later rose to leadership. Sir Seretse Khama, first president of independent Botswana, was there in 1946. Robert Mugabe, who led the struggle against white rule in Rhodesia and became first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, graduated in 1941, as did Oliver Tambo, later the President-in-Exile of the African National Congress. And a year before him, Nelson Mandela.

Sobukwe went into the Wesley House photosynthetically, it was supposed to be only for Methodists like him but in practice it drew and accepted students of whatever denomination who hailed from the Eastern Cape, just as Methodists and Anglicans from Johannesburg preferred to go to the...

In the article below, well-known writer Lucille Davie unpacks some of the complexity behind the life and personality of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The piece was written on 23 August 2013 for the Media Club South Africa website shortly after the publication of Madikizela-Mandela's book 491 Days: Prisoner number 1323/69. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela felt particularly close to her jailed husband, Nelson, in October 1970, after she was released from serving 491 days in solitary confinement. She wrote to him on 26 October, saying: "In a way during the past two years I felt so close to you. It was the first time we were together in similar surroundings for that length of time. Eating what you were eating and sleeping on what you sleep on gave me that psychological satisfaction of being with you."

She was responding to his letter of 1 October, which read: "I had to wait for 2 weeks before I could send you my warmest congratulations for serving 491, and still emerge the lively girl you are, and in high spirits. To you and your determined friends I say welcome back! Were I at home when you returned I should have stolen a white goat from a rich man, slaughtered it and given you ivanya ne ntloya [leftover traditional beer and sour milk] to down it. Only in this way can a beggar like myself fête and honour his heroes."

Nelson was 52 years old at the time, and had served six years of his...

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.

While the overall project actually started in the last quarter of 2011 and continued into 2012, the current phases of the project kicked off in November 2015 and are due to end at the end of April 2018. By then the team will have digitised the contents of 3,576 archival boxes as well as museum objects, posters, banners and other materials. At one time we had five different workflows running concurrently – one to digitise bound manuscripts, another to digitise fragile manuscripts, another to digitise plain paper, another to digitise photographic prints and the final one to digitise slides and negatives. In all we would have captured close to 2 million pages with over 1.3 million being plain paper, over 300,000 being fragile papers and also over 300,000 being bound manuscripts. We also captured almost 82,000 photographic images and over 3,000 museum objects. The team worked exceptionally hard often operating in two shifts and at times in three shifts around the clock to keep to targets. They not only digitised the archive but ordered and documented it as well.

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