On 8 January 1912 in an unprepossessing Wesleyan Church in the Black community of Waaihoek near Bloemfontein several men and one women met to create the organization that would shake the foundations of the South African nation. The South African Native National Congress would become the African National Congress eleven years later in 1923, but …
Cetshwayo’s name is not as well known as that of his uncle Shaka. Shaka had managed to turn the small Zulu tribe into the powerful Zulu nation before being assassinated by his brothers. Cetshwayo, who officially ruled from 1873 to 1879, was confronted with the might of the British Empire and history records him as …
The San people of Southern Africa first really came to the world’s attention in the 1950s with a miniseries and a book by Laurens van der Post titled The Lost World of the Kalahari. Of course, Africans weren’t unknown in the world – not only had the trans-Atlantic slave trade forcefully and violently moved people …
“Natives must be taught from an early age that equality with Europeans is not for them,” Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, author of the Bantu Education Act. In 1971, sociologist Dr Melville Edelstein, who devoted 18 years of his life to working in Soweto to improve conditions, wrote a book called “What Young Africans Think,” about the …
Again and again during the Anglo Boer Wars in South Africa, the British troops were able to quickly and effectively turn hard fought tactical victory into strategic defeat. A perfect example was the Battle of Elandslaagte, fought on 21 October 1899, during the Second Boer War. For context, an eland is a massive antelope, standing …