South Africa General

In the article below, Modern Mining editor Arthur Tassel takes a look at a new publication that showcases some of Africa's top geoheritage sites. Definitely one for the collection! The piece first appeared in the September 2016 edition of Modern Mining.

Readers might recall that in November last year I devoted this column to a review of Gavin Whitfield’s book entitled 50 Must-see Geological Sites in South Africa. A new publication which would make a superb complement to Gavin’s very fine work is Africa’s Top Geological Sites, which has been issued as a special commemorative volume  to coincide with the 35th International Geological Congress (35th IGC), which has recently been held in Cape Town.

Book cover

Published by Struik Nature (an imprint of Penguin Random House), Africa’s Top Geological Sites has been edited by Richard Viljoen, his brother Morris Viljoen and Carl Anhaeusser, all prominent in the geological community. In its 312 pages, it manages to cover over 40 sites around the continent and contributors include many well-known geologists. It is pitched at a somewhat more technical level than Gavin’s book (Gavin, incidentally, is one of the contributors to this latest volume) but is still, I think, very accessible to a lay reader.

The new work is profusely illustrated, of course, with masses of photos, maps, satellite images and diagrams and includes an...

If you page through archive copies of Restorica, the old journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation, one company has a regular presence as an advertiser: Gordon Verhoef & Krause. Below are adverts from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s showing significant restoration projects from around the country that the firm was proud to be involved in. Look closely for details. Thank you to the Heritage Association of South Africa (HASA) and the University of Pretoria for giving us permission to publish.

1975

1976

1976 & 1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

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The recent discovery in the cellar of a home in Saxonwold, Johannesburg of an old discoloured, brass plaque is a heritage opportunity and opens space for reviewing the motives and outcomes of the Royal Visit to South Africa in 1947.

The plaque commemorates the visit of the Royal Family to the Zoo Lake Sports Grounds on 5th April 1947. The current owner of the house does not know how the plaque came to be in the cellar of her home. She has generously passed the plaque on to the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation for preservation. The JHF has arranged for the professional restoration of the plaque by two of its members; it has been rebuffed and black enamel lettering repainted. A quality photograph will be taken and this will be presented to the Zoo Lake Sports Club, while the plaque will be presented to Museum Africa to become part of Johannesburg’s history. The Zoo Lake Sports Club’s website shows that it was renovated some years ago and it was possibly during that renovation that the plaque was discarded. It is time for a reappreciation.

This discovery has led me to delve into records of the 1947 Royal Visit. In 1947 the Royal Family (King George VI, his wife Queen Elizabeth and his two daughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret) undertook a leisurely three month journey (February to April) through their Southern African dominions (South Africa itself, Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Basutoland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate).  The trip involved 10 000 miles of travel including 4920 miles by rail (though the family flew to Rhodesia). The...

For many years, members of the heritage community have been talking about establishing guidelines for the blue plaque world. For a variety of reasons none have yet been set but renewed efforts appear to be emerging in Johannesburg. To aid the discussion we thought it would be helpful to publish the results of a survey we conducted during February and March 2014. 

The purpose of the questionnaire was to get a preliminary idea of how people would feel about the establishment of an enabling body for plaquing across the country. Key questions included whether or not minimum 'blue plaque criteria' should be set, if yes how these should be set, who should approve a blue plaque application, what role should an enabling body play, how this body should be funded etc.

If you have any thoughts on the matter please add them to the comments section at the bottom of the article.

2014 Blue Plaques Survey Results

Should formal minimum criteria be set for a site to receive a blue plaque?

44 questionnaires were submitted. Every person agreed that minimum criteria should be set (some qualified their answers). The follow up question asked respondents to explain their answer. Below are a few responses:

• As a tourist, when I travel, I'd like to know the meaning behind something. It will be confusing if everyone does his or her own thing
• Otherwise the plaque is meaningless. Every building could have one.
• Yes, they need to be special, so go to deserving places, not...

“Be quiet and calm, my countrymen, for what is taking place now is exactly what you came to do. You are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the drill of death. I, a Xhosa, say you are all my brothers, Zulu, Swazis, Pondos, Basutos, we die like brothers, for though, they made us leave our weapons at home, our voices are left with your bodies.”

In February 1917, another First World War centenary commemoration will be held. The 21st February 2017 marks the centenary of the tragic loss of 625 lives when the SS Mendi, a troop ship carrying over 800 members of the South African Native Labour Contingent, officers and crew, sank in tragic circumstances off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. The ship departed from Southampton on the 20th February and the men having made the long voyage from Cape Town were on the final leg of the journey to take them to France to work as labourers in support of the British Empire war effort. 616 of the men who lost their lives were part of the 823 South African non-combatant servicemen (or labouring members) of the 5th Battalion.

The Mendi sank in less than half an hour when another British ship, the SS Darro, a much larger vessel, smashed into the Mendi with such force that a gash opened from keel to deck to a depth of about 20 feet. There was thick fog and no lights showing, the...

On 15 September 2016, the South African Heritage Resources Agancy (SAHRA) hosted a colloquium on 'Heritage and Development'. Heritage expert Herbert Prins attended and presented a paper arguing that the heritage resources management system has failed to achieve its purpose and that until equlibrium is restored there is no chance of achieving a balance between heritage conservation and development. The full paper is published below.

After the 1994 democratic transition, the importance of heritage conservation was recognised and a new law was promulgated to ensure the management and conservation of heritage resources. 

The National Monuments Act – the NMA  - reflected on the less democratic nature of the political order that preceded 1994.  It was intended to conserve monuments, often endowed with political symbolism. In the NMA “Monument” means “any property declared under this Act to be a national monument…”  In other words a decision by the Council is all that was required.

This is replaced in Section 3 (1) of the National Heritage Resources Act - the NHRA - by a more egalitarian assessment of “cultural significance” as defined under the “national estate” as: 

“… those heritage resources of South Africa which are of cultural significance or other special value for the present community and for future generations must be considered part of the national estate and fall within the sphere of operations of heritage resources authorities.”

This implies that cultural significance or other special value is derived by taking cognisance of what the community deems to be culturally significant.

Accordingly the National Heritage Resources Act –...

Every time South Africa loses a heritage site, a part of our history and our culture is lost, as well as the possibility of understanding something new about our past. South Africa’s top ten most endangered sites speak of the fragility of our shared national heritage. Whether they are precious archaeological sites, living cultural landscapes, early commercial industrial sites, colonial edifices or working class residential areas, the tenuousness of their survival is palpable in the submissions that were evaluated. The Most Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites campaign is an annual initiative of the Heritage Monitoring Project (HMP) and the Heritage Association of South Africa to identify and raise awareness of cultural heritage sites that are at significant risk from natural or manmade forces.

This year was the first time that the HMP issued a call to the public to nominate sites of concern. Between June and August, more than 46 heritage sites across a range of categories were submitted. The longlist of submissions included cultural landscapes, archaeological and palaeontological sites, built heritage, industrial heritage, burial sites, military sites, public open space and even South Africa’s oldest nature reserve (click here to view).

Over the past few weeks an expert panel of judges has been evaluating the submissions against a set of criteria:

• The significance or importance of the site (most importantly, to the local community)
• The urgency and extent of risks or threats faced
• Feasibility of finding a solution or the feasibility of a proposed solution
• Existence of a local organisation that could...

"For young black South Africans like myself," Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography, "it was Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale all rolled into one." Of the hundreds of pages in Long Walk To Freedom, barely a dozen recount Mandela's days at Fort Hare University. Understandably so. He spent less than two years of his 94 years as a student there.

He left Fort Hare University halfway through his studies due to a student strike over living conditions, most notably food rationing. “At that moment, I saw Dr. Kerr less as a benefactor than as a not-altogether-benign dictator", he said.

His mixed emotions were not his alone. The entire enterprise of mission schools stood at an ambiguous, and conflicted crossroads. It was partisan to the colonial project, but yet educated students who were opposed to colonialism. It shied away from political involvement, and yet sanctioned the ideals of equality through its religious teachings.

Fort Hare

in a lecture titled Colonial Education and Missionary Evangelism given at UCT and published in the book Blytheswood: A unique South African mission station, Professor Marlene Caitlin states: "There are two points about viewpoints about missionaries in Southern Africa. Some think of them as agents of conquest, tools of imperialism, tools of a capitalist system, who fastened the yoke on a subject people and sapped their will to resist. Others see them...

It is hard to believe that it has only been a few decades since South Africa adopted the metric system. The shift had a profound impact on the economy and the daily lives of citizens. Many of South Africa's largest trading partners at the time were either using the metric system or had committed to moving over. This provided the impetus for South Africa to get going. The strength of the apartheid state ensured that implementation was highly effective. Below is a short overview of metrication in South Africa written by Peter Ball, retired structural engineer.

Metrication, in the context of South Africa, is defined as the change-over from the use of Imperial weights and measures to those introduced by the “Systeme International d’Unites” - SI for short.

On 15 September 1967 it was announced that a Metrication Advisory Board would be established to plan and co-ordinate the change over to the metric system. A Metrication Department, under the auspices of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), was set up to implement the decisions of the Advisory Board. A transition period of ten years was planned and this was successfully achieved by the excellent co-operation of commerce, industry, agriculture, government departments, the professions and above all the man in the street.

Prior to metrication came the decimalisation of our currency, on the 14 February 1961 (exactly 10 years before the UK), whereby the Rand replaced the former British unit of currency; the Pound Sterling (£.s.d.). It was valued at R 2-00c to the...

The question is easy to answer; South Africa was formerly part of the British Empire, which decreed that the rule of the road was to keep left in order to avoid collision, end of story.

NO not the end of story. The real question to be asked, is why does Britain (and her former colonies) drive on the left, when 65% of the countries of the world drive on the right?

If one goes back 2000 years, it is highly probable that the Romans travelled on the left as proven by wheel ruts discovered by archaeologists at a Roman quarry near Swindon, Wiltshire, England. The ruts on the left were much deeper than those on the right, suggesting that the carts, heavily laden with rock, were leaving the quarry on the left.

Although the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, the Roman Catholic Church arose to become the authority controlling Western Europe. It is highly likely that as the Romans had built the major roads of Europe (all roads lead to Rome), the status quo remained during the dark ages and when in 1300 AD, Pope Boniface VIII gave a Papal Edict telling all pilgrims travelling to Rome to keep left, he was only reinforcing the general custom.

The upheaval wrought by the French Revolution brought about, in 1794, a rule to keep right instead of the traditional left (France being a Catholic country it is reasonable to presume that prior to “Le Revolution” they abided by...