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BiographyLivingstone Mqotsi
Livingstone Mqotsi (Livie) was born in the village of Rabula in the Keiskammahoek district in the former Ciskei, now Eastern Cape, on 18 April 1921. Mqotsi…
BiographyWalter Kefuoe Fikeleph Chakela
Walter Kefuoe Fikelephi Chakela was a revered playwright and poet born on 13 April 1953 in Vryburg, a small, conservative Afrikaner town in Transvaal (now…
![Freddie Mercury [Bulsara], singer and songwriter, is born in Zanzibar, Africa.](/sites/default/files/styles/saho_medium/public/event_pics/Freddie%20Mercury.jpg?itok=Vuq6ADKe)
EventFreddie Mercury [Bulsara], singer and songwriter, is born in Zanzibar, Africa.
Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, East Africa. His parents were Parsis from Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Mercury was sent to boarding school…
ArticleInsurrections Ensemble
Can you create music that can find a home on both sides of the Indian Ocean beyond the cliché of “fusion”? Are Indian forms compatible with their African…
ArchiveAll That Glitters - Bound to strike back by Emilia Potenza
From the book: All That Glitters by Emilia PotenzaThis feature has explored the devastating changes that industrialisation brought for the majority of people…
EventMinister promises relaxation of apartheid rules and elimination of racial segregation in sports
The Minister of Sport, Piet Koornhof, announced a relaxation of apartheid rules for sport and declared that the government is working towards eliminating…
The life, times, and memories of Joe Rassool
The life, times, and memories of Joe Rassool. The book takes us back to the late 19th century Cape Colony to the early 1950s covering the family history or the…
New Generation Sculpture
During the 1980s the work of a number of sculptors working in the northern part of the country, Gazankulu and Venda, came to the attention of academic…
![B J Vorster [John Vorster] portrait](/sites/default/files/styles/saho_medium/public/bio_pics/vorster_bj.jpg?itok=ySN_t7b3)
BiographyB J Vorster [John Vorster]
Overview Balthazar Johannes Vorster (also known as BJ Vorster or John Vorster) was the Prime Minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978, after having served…
EventMartin Luther King, Junior, is born
Martin Luther King, Junior, an African-American clergyman who orchestrated social change through non-violent methods was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta,…
EventPieter-Dirk Uys, SA activist, satirist, playwright and novelist, is born in Cape Town
Pieter Dirk Uys was born in Cape Town in 1945. He studied drama at UCT from 1965 to 1965 before going to study at the London Film School. During the 1970s and…
What the lives of two South African music giants tell us about culture under apartheid by Gwen Ansell (The Conversation), 13 July 2017
Back in 2000, musicians interviewed for my book on music and politics in South Africa, Soweto Blues, regularly asserted: I’m not a politician. How could this…
BiographyKasturba Gandhi
Kasturba Kapadia was born on April 11 1869 in Porbandar, in present day Gujarat. She was the daughter of Gokuldas Makanji Kapadia, a wealthy merchant. Kasturba…
ArticleDecember 16 and the Construction of Afrikaner Nationalism
The date, December 16, holds a special significance in South African history. On this day in 1838, the Voortrekkers fought a battle for survival against…
ArticleCuba and the struggle for democracy in South Africa
The revolution in Cuba, culminating in Fidel Castro’s seizure of power on 1 January 1959, was from the beginning based on a non-racial ethos, and revolutionary…
ArticleHistory Grade 11 - Topic 3 Contextual Overview
Introduction In the previous section, we have learnt about the origins of capitalism, however, we paid cursory attention to the racial character of that…
EventAdriaan Vlok is born
Former South African minister of law and order, Adriaan Johannes Vlok, was born in Sutherland, Cape Province. He started his career in the department of…
Chapter 2 - From Crisis to Stability to Crisis
This chapter grounds the analysis of the emergence, ideology and politics, organisation and collective actions of SASO which are examined in the next three…
PlaceWindermere
Situated beside Kensington, Windermere was a settlement situated on the N1 highway in Cape Town near the Ysterplaat airbase. The Group Areas Act of 1950…
BiographyKing Mzilikazi
Mzilikazi (meaning The Great Road), was a Southern African king who founded the Matabele kingdom (Mthwakazi), Matabeleland, in what became Rhodesia and is now…
BiographyBessie Amelia Head
Bessie Amelia Head was born at Fort Napier Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa, the asylum her mother was committed to at the…
BiographyProfessor Fatima Meer
Fatima Meer was born in Grey Street, Durban on 12 August 1928, the daughter of Moosa Meer and Rachel Farrel and the second born of their nine children. Her…
BiographyPaul Weinberg
Paul Weinberg was born in 1956 in Pietermaritzburg into a progressive middle-class Jewish family. His father was a lawyer and his mother a music teacher. He…
BiographyReggie Vandeyar
Reggie Vandeyar was born into a poor family on 15 July 1931 in Newclare. His father was originally from India, who had come to South Africa to seek fortune. …
4. The ANC underground between Rivonia and 1976
The accepted view of black, and especially African, politics after the Rivonia Trial, held by historians and other scholars of South African resistance, is…
ArticleHistory Grade 11 - Topic 4 Source-based Questions
QUESTION 1: HOW WAS AFRIKANER NATIONALISM PROMOTED IN SOUTH AFRICA DURING THE 1930s TO 1940s? Study Sources 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D and answer the questions that…
ArticleHistory Grade 11 - Topic 4 Contextual Overview
Figure 1.1. With his call to put “America First”, Donald Trump is the latest recruit to a dangerous nationalism. Flagrantly authoritarian figures like Donald…
EventUniversity of Pretoria is established
The Transvaal University College, with branches in Johannesburg and Pretoria, took the examinations of the Cape University. The Pretoria branch of the…
EventThe Paramount Chief of the Zulus, Prince Goodwill Zwelithini, is officially removed as a member of the Zulu Legislative Assembly
King Goodwill Zwelithini became the eighth Zulu Monarch following the death of his father, King Cyprian in 1968 and brief regency that lasted until 1971 when…
BiographyZuleikha Mayat
Zuleikha Mayat was born in 1926 in Potchefstroom, Transvaal (now North West Province). Her father, Mohamed Bismilla, was a prominent business person who first…