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PlaceClaremont Main Road Mosque
Introduction The Islamic community of South Africa has grown significantly since the arrival of the first Muslims to the Cape Colony in 1658. The first…
ArticleThe Namibian struggle for independence – 1966 – 1990 – a historical background
During the 1960s most of Africa’s countries had gained independence except for Namibia. Geographically, Namibia is made up of savannah, dry scrub land, as well…
ArticlePeter Henry Abrahams timeline 1919 - 1985
1919 Peter Abrahams is born in Vrededorp, Johannesburg in March 1919 to an Ethiopian father and a Coloured mother. His father passed away when he was young…
David Goldblatt, TJ, 1948-2010 - review by Claire Guillot, 25 January 2011
One morning, in the middle-class suburb of Johannesburg where he lives, David Goldblatt found his camper van on bricks. "Someone had stolen the wheels during…
Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA)
The Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA) was founded in October 1954 by 61 unions mainly representing White workers and mixed unions of Coloured and…
ArticleAfrikaner Broederbond
On 5 June 1918 disaffected Afrikaners were brought together in a new organisation called Jong Suid-Afrika (Young South Africa). The following year its name was…
ArticleThe Homelands
The Bantustans or homelands, established by the Apartheid Government, were areas to which the majority of the Blacks population was moved to prevent them from…
EventSA signs treaty with Great Britain on the supply of military equipment to South Africa
Most historians consider the first half of the 1960s as a period in which the Nationalist Party (NP) Government consolidated white rule in the face of growing…
ArchiveFirst Mafika Gwala Lecture: The Arts of Resistance - Mafika Gwala and South African Poetry by Ari Sitas
At first I thought that a reading and a republishing of my Traditions of Poetry in Natal2 which attempted to situate Mafika Pascal Gwala’s work in the late…
ArticleCommunity histories in Port Elizabeth
Xhosa community The pre-1994 apartheid system of homelands or 'Bantusans' denied Xhosa people South African citizenship and attempted to confine them to the…
Freedom In Our Life Time - Notes
From the book: Freedom In Our Life Time by Anton Muziwakhe Lembede Booker T. Washington's educational philosophy of self-help and vocational and technical…
BiographySonja Schlesin
Sonja Schlesin was born in Moscow on 6 June 1888 to Isidor Schlesin and his wife Helena Dorothy (nee Schloss). The Schlesin family later immigrated to South…
EventThe Japanese government announces that South Africans will no longer be granted visas to enter Japan
Due to South Africa’s Apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s, many countries were cautious to be seen as allies with the country. Japan was one of these…
ArticleThe Group Areas Act of 1950
… as nearly a quarter of a million did by the late 1920s, their tenure was insecure as they were not legally …
Black Student Politics
It is generally recognised that mass popular struggles during the 1970s and 1980s played a pivotal role in eroding apartheid and creating the conditions for…
ArchiveThe National Committee for Liberation (ARM), 1960-1964: sabotage and the question of the ideological subject
Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in History at the the University of Cape Town by Andries du Toit. The dissertation gives…
EventAcademic and ANC politician Z.K. Matthews dies
On 12 May 1968, South African academic, African National Congress (ANC) politician, and Botswana's first ambassador to the USA and envoy to the UN, Zachariah…
ArticleApartheid Legislation 1850's-1970's
… of Racially Based Land Measures Act No 108 of 1991. 1920s The Native Affairs Act of 1920 The Native Affairs Act … of 1936 The Bills proposed by General Barry…
‘Wash Me Black Again’: African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and Kwa-Zulu Natal, 1944-1960 by Jon Soske
… many ways closer to those of Nehru. Beginning in the late 1920s, Nehru had consistently argued that Indians in Africa … of African women from Durban occurred…
EventSouth Africa and Lesotho establish a consultative committee to resolve border disputes
South Africa and Lesotho decided to establish a consultative committee to resolve misunderstandings arising from the movement of people across their common…
ArticleApartheid and reactions to it
In 1948, the National Party (NP), representing Afrikaners, won the national election on a platform of racism and segregation under the slogan of 'apartheid’…
BiographyNarriman Gadija Bazier Samuels
Narriman Gadija Bazier Samuels, affectionately known as "Ma G" throughout Mitchells Plain, grew up during the height of apartheid in South Africa. While her…
BiographyAdam Small
Professor Adam Small was born on 21 December 1936 in Wellington, Cape Province (now Western Cape) to a mother of Muslim Indian heritage and a slave descendant…
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…
Chapter 5 - TOWARDS PEOPLE’S WAR
From: The South African Communist Party In Exile 1963 - 1990 The 1980s were the culmination of the mass popular uprising, which had received its initial spark…
ArchiveThe Little Acknowledged Legacy of Steve Biko by Prithiraj Dullay, (Daily News), 08 Sept 2008
Thirty years ago in 1977 the beast of Apartheid snuffed out the life of one of the greatest thinkers in the liberation pantheon of South Africa: Steve Biko. He…
BiographyBartolomeu Dias
Bartolomeu Dias, also spelt: Bartholomew Diaz. He was a Portuguese navigator whose discovery in 1488 of the Cape of Good Hope showed Europeans there was a…
BiographySantu Mofokeng
Born in 1956, Mofokeng grew up in and around Soweto (Johannesburg), spending most of his childhood in Orlando East. Mofokeng’s initial experiences with…
BiographyHendrik Frensch Verwoerd
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 8 September 1901. He was the second child of Anje Strik and Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd. His…