October 11th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Oct
11
I went along to the Milnerton flea market today, where I found this very cool thing. I made it mine for the sum of R120, and it goes well with my original program from the 5th South African Grand Prix of 1939.
May 25th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
May
25
Last Monday evening I attended a screening of Jihan El-Tahri’s documentary, Cuba: An African Osyssey, at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
As much as I was intrigued by the subject matter, I was very impressed with the standard of the documentary itself. Is far more BBC than it is Michael Moore, but it still manages to avoid pretentiousness.
Indeed, pretension would be inappropriate when dealing with the subject matter of Cuba’s military involvement in Africa between 1965 and 1994. The subject is really fascinating and well illustrated, in many cases with interviews with the key role players in the events being discussed.
Whether you are a neo-Marxist or a fan of Pik Botha, you should see this film. It depicts a uniquely different view of Southern African history which might help normalise the experience of so many of our countrymen that were involved in the hostilities.
You can buy the DVD here.
You can read the Tonight.co.za review (which sucks) here.
March 29th, 2008 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Mar
29
Seven years after new photographs destroyed the bizarre Face on Mars theory, my local community newspaper, the Tabletalk, has announced the possible extra-terrestrial origins of the human race in a front-page article that features the face prominently.
I shall be posting the image as soon as my scanner works again. In the mean time, I wrote the following letter.
Dear Sir or Madam
When arguing against the theories of Melkbosstrand writer Wayne Herschel (Facing Our Past, Table Talk, 19 March 2008), there is something far more effective than mentioning thousands of years of cultural history, a century of evolutionary science, and the fact that Dan Brown, whom he seems to believe is a serious scientific researcher, is actually a self-declared novelist, who makes stuff up for a living.
This would be to point out the preposterousness of his composite image of the so called “Face on Mars” that graces the front page of your newspaper.
The accompanying image shows one of the 1976 photographs on the left, and a 2001 photograph on the right. The bad photo looks face-like. The good one does not. Mr Herschel has reduced the quality of the good photograph by superimposing the bad one. He has done this in order to create a more compelling image, or perhaps an image that seems to show something which does not exist.
Thousands of academics all over the world have advanced human knowledge through the application of scientific methodology, and announced their findings in peer-reviewed journals. Mr Herschel’s work is constrained by no such process of validation and verification. As fascinating as his ideas are, we need to recognise that he is not so different from Dan Brown after-all, and that his works are nothing more than speculative fiction.
Andrew Freeborn
Table View
November 20th, 2007 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Nov
20
A few months ago, at a meeting of the Table View Toastmasters Club, I was a participant in “Table Topics”, the fun part of the evening when selected victims are forced to make a 1 minute, unprepared speech on a subject chosen by the “Table Topics Master”.
The theme for the exercise was sports. Everyone was asked to comment on the current status of the national sports team that the topics master chose. Other people got rugby, cricket, soccer, etc. I got jukskei.
Obviously, I have no idea how the national jukskei team is doing, but I whiled away my minute by recounting the interesting experience of watching a jukskei test match between South Africa and the USA on television as a child. As surprising as this seems, the event really happened and I hoped that the audience would find this fact interesting.
After my minute was up, someone congratulated me on being a “very good bullshitter.”
Was going to let this slight pass? Nooooo! So I wrote to Jukskei SA to discover the details of this test match. In return I received a copy of an academic paper entitled, From Pioneer Passtime to International Status: Jukskei as South Africa’s Only White Indigenous Sport, by Prof. Floris J. G. van der Merwe, DPhil (Sports History), of the Department of Sports Science, Stellenbosch University.
This paper has the following to say:
In April 1972 a delegation of American horseshoe pitchers visited the national jukskei tournament at Kroonstad to demonstrate their game. Later that year, in August, a team of South African jukskei players did the same at the World Horseshoe Tournament in Greenville, Ohio (Hambidge, 1978: 95; Schoeman, 1983: 17). During the following two years visits to and fro resulted in the Jukskei Association of the USA being founded in Ohio in 1975. Four years later the International Jukskei Association consisting of the USA, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe was founded (Le Roux, 1990: 37), thus endowing the indigenous Afrikaner folk game with international status.
Since 1979 the Association has played an active role in organising international events and Springbok colours were first awarded in 1980 when a South African team visited the United States of America (SA Sport Federation, 1981: 7).
The first official test match abroad, between South Africa and the United States, took place during the National Jukskei Championships of the United States of America. Six teams took part in Huntsville, Alabama on 27 September 1980. The other teams were Ohio, Virginia men, Virginia women, Alabama and Massachusetts (Brand, 1981: 5; Venter, 1981: 111). This was preceded in April by international competitions between South Africa, America and Zimbabwe during the national tournament in Kroonstad (Brand, 1981: 9).
Let my thanks go to Prof. van der Merwe and Mr Tinus Barnard of Jukskei SA for this vindication. To those of you who doubted me, I say, “Bwah-ha-ha! Bwah-ha-ha-HA-HA!”
September 8th, 2007 | by andrewdotcoza | old season
Sep
08
A recurring theme of South African politics is the changing of names. Controversy rages around everything from the designations of our national sports teams to our cities. While many see these name changes as a destruction of South Africa’s heritage, and “white” heritage in particular, others expound the view that apartheid-era names are hurtful to the black majority of the country and that their removal is fundamental to the ongoing process of national reconciliation.
I take the unfashionable view that the name of something is largely irrelevant. I’ve been through a few name changes pertaining to places I live or visit, and the dust tends to settle after about 6 months. I do believe, however, that all South Africans have a natural right to strive for happiness. If a particular name is offensive to someone, and it commemorates something or someone that causes them pain, change it by all means. Heritage flows with the ebbs and tides of history. The true heritage that makes us who we are lives in our minds, our memories, and our stories that pass between generations.
That said, who would want to drive down a newly rechristened road, the name of which is meaningless to us? Confusion is inherent in the process of renaming landmarks, partially because many of us find it difficult to remember names that come from languages that we have not grown up speaking.
Cape Town is currently going through the process of changing the names of certain major routes through the city. I believe that one way to expedite this process, and indirectly expedite the process of nation building, is to tell the stories of the people whom the new names propose to commemorate. By familiarising ourselves with this heritage, we make it our own. It will no longer be “black history”, but rather South African history. This is the first in a series of posts that, I hope, will go some way to achieving this goal.
One proposal that is being discussed is the renaming of De Waal Drive to Philip Kgosana Drive.
In March, 1960, Philip Kgosana was a student at the University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Regional Secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). At the time the apartheid government’s pass laws were in full force. Any black South African found outside their homes without their “dompas”, or pass book, would be arrested immediately.
The PAC and ANC had implemented anti-pass campaigns during the late 1950s and these had received massive popular support. During March of 1960, these campaigns were stepped up. The plan was for thousands of people to leave their homes without their pass books and march, en mass, to the nearest police station to present themselves for arrest. This would fill the law enforcement and prison system to capacity and make the country ungovernable.
On 21 March 1960, 6 000 protesters gathered in Langa in order to march to the police station. The local police made it known that they would consider this peaceful protest to be an attack on the police station and would answer it with force. Philip Kgosana convinced the crowd to disperse until later in the day. When the crowd re-assembled, the police charged them with batons. The crowd responded by throwing stones, at which the police opened fire. Five people were killed and many injured.
During the following week, violent protests rocked the townships and many pass offices were burned to the ground. Kgosana kept a low profile, except to meet with prominent white South African liberals and business people such as Patrick Duncan and Anton Rupert in an attempt to work with the white community to bring pressure to bear on the apartheid government.
On 30 March, all hell broke loose. Pretoria declared a State of Emergency, allowing police to break into homes, arresting people. Those who tried to run away were gunned down. In protest, 30 000 people from the township areas of Langa and Nyanga set out on foot to march on Cape Town. Kgosana, who was asleep in bed when the march started, quickly took control. The march headed peacefully down the N1 and onto De Waal Drive. Throughout, the marchers are described as being “peaceful, cheerful and unthreatening”. They obeyed Kgosana’s strict injunction against violence. Meanwhile, the South African Police were fortifying key points, such as Parliament, with machine gun nests.
It was on De Waal Drive that, in what must stand out as a beacon of hope in the bloodshed of 1960, Colonel Terry Terblanche of the South African Police decided to defy his orders openly and negotiate with Kgosana. Up to this point, a violent clash was looming, the like of which South Africa has never seen. With the police preparing for all-out war, these two men of peace negotiated a settlement. The marchers were to alter their route, avoiding Parliament, and head to the police headquarters at Caledon Square. There, Terblanche and the Minister of Justice agreed to arrange a meeting with Kgosana on condition that the marchers dispersed.
Once again, demonstrating his great statesmanship and the high esteem in which he was held by his people, this young student dispersed a crowd of 30 000. These people were victims of a brutal oppression and daily witnesses to acts of murder committed upon them by their own government.
Later, when he showed up for the meeting, Kgosana was arrested for his efforts.
It is sickening to consider what may have happened that day. If the police had opened fire on 30 000 protesters the violence of the pass-law protests would have, for the first time, burst free of the confines of the townships and happened in the centre of a major South African city. There can be no doubt that, with a spontaneous protest that large heading towards an unprepared Cape Town, the balance of power would have shifted away from the heavily militarised police force. Even if the protest had been quelled with violence, countless lives would have been lost, both black and white.
Kgosana managed to flee the country and seek exile in Lesotho, and later Tanzania. Apartheid stood for another 34 years, with the protests of 1960 being put down violently by the army, navy and police. The pass-laws remained in force until 1986. There are some who, perhaps reasonably, see Kgosana as someone who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. At a recent University of the Western Cape discussion of the event, it was asked how a crowd of 30 000 people could have failed to overthrow the government(1).
Looking at this story from a different perspective, it must be seen that Kgosana placed human life above political ends. Many protesters would have been killed, but there would have been enough angry people left alive to retaliate, on a massive scale, against the white population of Cape Town. I have had personal discussions with well respected, successful white South Africans who remember Philip Kgosana as the man who saved their lives in 1960. Perhaps I speak as a white man rather than as a South African when I say this, but I have no tolerance for anybody who complains that De Waal Drive is going to be named after “some black guy”. To these people I say: Lean the history that you claim to love so well, and then tell me that the name of Philip Kgosana is not part of your heritage.
I make no pretence at serious academic writing with this piece. I have researched the facts as thoroughly as possible in about an hour. Many of my sources contradicted each other and I have tried to produce a version of the facts that seems reasonable and matches the majority of the articles that I have read. My references are given haphazardly and corrections are welcome. It is with sorrow that I notice that the history of South Africa’s struggle is so poorly documented. There is no Wikipedia entry for Philip Kgosana, and his date of birth seems buried in the mists of time, and perhaps the Internet. Let us change this.
1: http://www.uwc.ac.za/arts/english/beyond/stories4.html
Other reading:
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/heritage/CPToverview.asp
http://www.africapetours.com/Township%20history.htm
http://www.capetown.at/heritage/history/apart_res_1960_art.htm
http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/activities/essay_worldcivil.htm
http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourctexpand.htm
Those interested should be able to verify my version of events, or come up with their own, using these links as a starting point.
