South Africa General

Jacoba Anna Hendrika Sloet was my great-great-grandmother. My father met her as a boy. She sounded like a grouchy, imposing old woman, probably racist. He says she thumped her walking stick on the wooden floorboards when she wanted the maid to come, and was scornful of “kitchen Dutch” (Afrikaans), even though, as it turned out, her husband and her mother were Boers.

This was in Durban, maybe No. 46 Alpha Road in Umbilo, which was still standing when I went to try find it with my two young sons. It was one of the only remaining houses amidst new warehouses that had sprung up in a semi-industrial area close to the harbour that is now quite run down. I remember it as a simple, maybe lower-middle class suburban house from the early 1900s, with yellowwood floors, a fireplace and a small, muddy backyard. I think it was being used for office space. A woman with bleached hair and bright leggings let us in to look around. She seemed bemused by our interest.

“There was a big avocado tree we used to climb outside,” my dad said. “Was it there?” I wasn’t sure. She lived in a few places in Umbilo, sometimes I think renting.

She was a Dutch baroness. My gran always told me that, and I thought it was one of those stories people tell about their families that are passed on down the generations with no real evidence of being true.

But after spending the past 15 or...

My primary interest as a photo historian is in historical South African photographs from before 1915, but photographs from before the 1960s are not totally excluded from my research interest. 

Most images curated in the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) are, therefore, more than 65 years old with some as old as 175 years.

So, often I walk into a charity store asking for old photographs. A comment I receive all too often is: “We discard them due to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).” or “We recycle them based on legal opinion received.”

Another disturbing comment, although not relevant to this article, is: “We discard them in that there is no interest/value in old photographs.” One charity worker recently added: “You are the only person ever to have enquired about photographs.”

Although I reluctantly accept that there may possibly be some validity in these views by charity organisations, the destruction of photographs cannot be applied as a blanket approach to all photographs donated.

The reliance on the law to justify the destruction of historical images is, therefore, absolute nonsense and largely ill-guided. Charity organisations that take this stance, willingly and knowingly partake in the destruction of South African heritage, possibly important artifacts.

The ongoing and “wilful” destruction of photographs due to the law allegedly being prescriptive around this irks me, resulting in me researching this aspect to better understand these arguments.

It needs to be said upfront that I am not a legal practitioner. Should any of the facts...

Escargot, especially smothered in garlic and butter sauce, are considered by many to be a source of gastronomic delight.

For Ms May Donoghue her encounter with a snail while dining at the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley was far from delightful: it was in fact shocking!

The café is in the foreground on the left

Ms Donoghue had ordered a “Scotsmans Ginger Float”. The owner of the cafe, Francis Minghella served Ms Donoghue: she poured some “Stevensons Ginger Beer” (contained in a brown opaque glass bottle) over a scoop of ice-cream. After Ms Donoghue had consumed a portion of her dish, her companion decanted the remainder of the bottle into a glass, at which point a decomposed snail floated out as part of the contents!

As a result of the nauseating sight of the snail in such circumstances, and in consequence of the impurities in the ginger-beer which she had already consumed, Ms Donoghue suffered from shock and severe gastro-enteritis which even necessitated a visit to her hospital!

Since Mr Stevenson, a manufactuer of aerated water products, had not sold the ginger beer to Ms Donoghue there was no contractual nexus between them. Instead she was forced to frame her claim as a delictual action (or what some jurisdictions refer to as a tort). She accordingly alleged that:

• the ginger-beer was manufactured...

It has been brought to the attention of the Heritage Association of South Africa by Mr. Anthony Wiley that an old National Monuments Council bronze badge (often called a plaque) was being offered by a seller in Wellington on the well-known web sales platform BOB (the old Bid or Buy). The seller who trades under the name De Vreede appears to have a strong reputation as a 5 star graded trader with many satisfied customers. He is based in Wellington in the Cape. The price tag was R8000 – which probably would be the cost of making a bronze replica today.

These badges / plaques are valuable and becoming rarer as more are removed from old national monuments. It would seem that vandals or misguided individuals seem to think that because such an item is old or because the National Monuments Council no longer exists (disappeared in 2000) that removing such plaques to either recycle the metal or to claim as a cool souvenir is not really “theft”. I have news for all who are interested in heritage – the removal of these old badges / plaques is THEFT.

The stolen NMC badge on the Enoch Sontonga Memorial

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Early photographs lacked the realism of the painted portrait in that the production of a photograph in colour at the time of its invention was not feasible.

A great deal of scepticism as well as excitement came about during the development of photography in the 1840s. While some hailed it as a revolutionary step in the quest for artistic realism, others were concerned about what the new medium would mean for traditional artistic practices.

The very nature of photography raised philosophical questions about art itself. If a “machine” could produce an image portraying realism, what implications did it have for the artists? The question of whether photography could be considered "art" lingered for decades, as the view was that it lacked the manual skill and conceptual depth that many traditional artists believed were integral to true artistic expression.

The early photographic processes, such as the Daguerreotype (introduced in 1839), Calotype (introduced in 1841) and the Ambrotypes (introduced early 1850s), were monochromatic images in shades of black, white, and grey. Adding colour made them more visually appealing and bridged the gap between photography and traditional portraiture which were often produced in colour.

Portrait painters, who had once enjoyed a monopoly on representing human likenesses, found themselves in direct competition with daguerreotypists. The speed, accuracy, and affordability of photographs appealed to a wide audience, making portraiture accessible to the middle-class who could not afford expensive paintings.

Following the invention of the photograph, monied sitters were not satisfied with their likenesses being produced...

The history of commercial photography began in Europe in 1839, with a slower kick-off in South Africa.

The first commercial photographer active in South Africa was Julius Léger (October 1846) – a Frenchman who first set up his photographic studio in Port Elizabeth.

The first commercial photographer to advertise his services in Cape Town on 6 April 1847, was the German citizen, Carel Sparmann, a short-lived professional daguerreotypist.

Until 1854, all overseas professional photographers to set up studios in South Africa arrived mainly from either Britain, Germany or France.

None of the early Cape daguerreotypists prospered. In December 1847, all of Sparmann’s photographic equipment was sold at a public auction at his residence. Amongst the photographic equipment auctioned, were four daguerreotype cameras. Another daguerreotypist, the Dutchman Van Zweel, did not fare any better, his studio only lasting a few months.

It was only after the daguerreotype patent had expired in 1853 that pressure was placed on William Henry Fox Talbot to release his hold on British photography, by first allowing amateurs to practise the calotype process (*) freely, followed by him dropping his application for the renewal of the patent that the pattern changed in terms of commercial photography, resulting in an influx of European photographers to South Africa.

(*) Calotype process - an early photographic technique where a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. Areas exposed to light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image.

The purpose of this...

The news that Michael Sutton had passed away was not surprising but nonetheless a gaping hole opened in me. With every recent message I had sent, I wondered which would be the last. 

Michael has inhabited my thoughts in one way or another since the fortuitous day I stumbled upon the townhouse in The Courtyards that would become my first home in 2000. When I walked in the door I just knew. Anthony (my partner then and husband now), who did not have much to say about architecture in general, and who was far more practical about making financial choices knew that we were not walking away from the encounter unscathed. We pooled our resources and were able to buy our first home.

The Courtyards (Wallace Honiball via Artefacts)

I have visceral memories of that place. The space was generous, the finishes sparse, the form simple and clean. The high walled courtyard garden was our haven. Brutal concrete beams over the terrace were covered in an exuberant banksia under which we huddled in summer. At night we shut ourselves away from the world behind sliding shutters and were woken in the morning by the slices of light through the slats.

That year, I wrote a rather amateur dissertation on Michael’s work with the...

Michael’s inimitable ink, sepia and watercolour History of Architecture drawings on peerless Watman’s paper, would grace my father’s desk for after-dinner-marking. Michael, as yet unseen by me, was this mythical being, this deaf student who could create such magic. I was enchanted and wanted nothing more than to study this history. Only by studying Architecture would that be possible. The rest, you could say, is history!

Many years later, Michael expressed his gratitude for my father’s support and his after lecture explanations of the slides that had been shown in the dark. After one of his visits to Italy, Michael gave my father a charming small watercolour painting of a street market in Rome in acknowledgment.

I probably first met Michael at the annual final year party at my parent’s house. I was struck by his good looks, his height and his shyness, as well as my own terror of not being able to understand him and having to remember that one needed  not to shout but to enunciate words clearly for him to understand what was being said. How frustrating that must have been for him, though he never showed it.

As time passed, I became increasingly aware of his wonderful buildings – rough plastered, thick walled, shuttered houses in particular. Michael’s versatility was shown in the amazing variety of his projects. The Goodman House, curvilinear in plan, with its brick walls rising Zimbabwe-like out of the rocks, the complex vaults and Cycldian island quality of the Gage House...

Hearing about the death of Michael Sutton, architect extraordinaire, on the 22 May 2024 at the age of 96, was a terrible shock, despite knowing it was imminent.

Many of us know Michael Sutton as a brilliant architect who designed masterpieces in South Africa and Greece. His life was extraordinary and his achievements were impressive.

My own association with Michael Sutton goes back to 1972 when I was privileged to work in the office of Michael Sutton and Walker for a year before studying architecture. Thereafter, I worked for the partnership at every opportunity in vacations and then again after graduating. Initially I wasn't sure I wanted to be an architect, but working with him was an inspiration and I quickly made up my mind. The office was a rollercoaster of ideas, always exciting and challenging. With the encouragement of both partners and by example, I knew that I wanted to follow in their footsteps. This is where I met Mohammed Hans, Marcus Holmes, Lynnette Alan and Robert Stasio who all shared my admiration for Michael and all of whom were lifelong friends with Michael.

Michael was born totally deaf in 1928. His sister Ann was also born deaf. Both went to school in England where they were taught to lipread. Neither of them learned to sign which, if it had been their sole means of communicating, would have made integration with the broader society far more difficult. Lipreading made it possible for them to communicate in a natural way with...

The word “tickey” was a slang name given to the lowest denomination coin issued in silver for use in South Africa in pre-decimal times during the 1800s and 1900s. It was equal to three pennies and also called a threepence or thruppence. The last of these were struck in 1960 when South Africa’s coinage was decimalized. However, for the next four years, silver 2½ cent pieces, also called tickeys, were struck until 1964 when our second decimal coin series was introduced the next year. Thirty-three years later, in 1997, the tickey (2½ cent) was reintroduced by the South African Mint as a commemorative series struck for collectors.

The word “tickey” gained legendary numismatic status, even internationally, due to South African coins like the gold Sammy Marks tickey struck in the late 1800s and the Union of South Africa’s 1931 issue, both very scarce issues.    

Origin of the name

The Dictionary of South African English (DSAE) gives various possibilities where the word “tickey” came from, but it is clear that there is no consensus on this. Past writers suggested that it came from Portuguese pataca a colonial coin, or French patac ‘small coin’ (via the French Huguenots). Others suggest that the Malay word “tiga” (three) was its origin.

DSAE notes that both Xhosa and Zulu use itiki for the coin, described by lexicographers as being borrowed from South African English, but it is possible that itiki was in fact a rendering in the Nguni languages of a Dutch or...