A trip to Boipatong and Sharpeville

A couple of weeks ago I said that I was going to look into global warming and I have not written anything since. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly I did what I said that I should not do and got lost in all the amazing facts in Wikipedia, second I have been involved in two football tournaments where kids from all backgrounds have a chance to improve their lot in life by playing and doing well in the tournaments. That is the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup and the Danone Nations Cup World Finals.


What I want to talk about is the place that the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup took me to. The winners of this cup are Jet Nteo from a place called Boipatong, a township in a city called Vanderbjilpark which is about 90km from Johannesburg.

Even if you speak to South Africans about Boipatong they will not know what or where you are talking about. Our current captain of the South African Football team was actually born in Boipatong but not many people know that. As a matter of fact I only found that out this weekend. More importantly Boipatong is famous or infamous for something that happened just down the road in a place called Sharpeville.

I went to Boipatong to take part in a street parade to honour the winners of the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup, Jet Nteo, and little did I know that in doing the street parade we would end up driving through Sharpeville. I was not born when the event took place but I learnt all about it at school and it blew my mind. I was brought up in Apartheid South Africa but I never bought the Apartheid and racism legacy.

So what happened in Sharpeville? On the 21st March 1960 about 5000 to 7000 protestors marched on the local police station to protest against South Africa’s Pass Law and the police panicked and opened fire and killed 69 people including 8 women and 10 children. They also wounded 180 people including 31 women and 19 children. This is known as the Sharpeville Massacre or Sharpeville Shooting.

What was the Pass Law? Since the 1920’s the movement of Black people in South Africa was controlled by Passes that Black, and more correctly all non-white people, had to carry around with them. The first time this law was implemented was by Earl Macartney in 1797 to restrict the local black tribes from moving into the Cape Colony but in 1923 the idea reached new levels.

Black people were designated what we called Homelands where they were supposed to have come from. Only people that could prove that they had been born or had lived for more than 10 years in a town could live in the town but only in the townships that were given to them. Many people were moved from the only homes that they knew to these townships. What the pass did was allow you access to White areas for a certain time period and only to certain White areas or if you lived in one of the homelands you could get a pass that allowed you into a town but only for work. These people would live in hostels that were built for them. They were horrible places with bad plumbing, little light and just generally speaking bad living conditions.

A practical example of how it worked is that a Non-White person would live in a township close to a White area, and then during the day they would be able to go into a White area too work, after work they would have to leave and go back to the township. Some of the luckier people had domestic work in the White Suburbs and they were allowed to live in the servant’s quarters on the White person’s property but they were not allowed to be seen after dusk walking the streets.

That is the Pass Law simplified but I am sure that you can imagine how horrific it was. Families were split; people were imprisoned for not having their passes with them or being in the wrong area or being in a certain area at the wrong time of the day etc. It was terrible for the poor people that had to live through it. I can remember when I was small when I saw my grandparents helping their domestic workers (Elsie and Anna) to reapply for their passes. I could not understand why they needed them and how come they were so desperate to get their passes.

There was another part to the pass law. Black people were only allowed to work in positions in companies where they too up a position that was below the lowest level a white person could take in that company. That made sure that white people always had better jobs that black people. Today people complain about the government’s affirmative action scheme but it is far better than the job preservation that the apartheid government had instituted.

What happened in Sharpeville was after many years of resistance to the pass laws. The ANC decided that they were going to march on the 31st March 1960 to protest the pass laws but the PAC thought that the ANC would not win their protest so they held their own protest 10 days earlier than the date set by the ANC. The PAC’s objective was to march on the local police station without their passes and offer themselves up for arrest. Roomers have it that the PAC intimidated local people and forced them to participate in the march. Even though they were coerced into coming to the protest the protest was quite festive.

There are a lot of accounts as too what happened and the truth and reconciliation commission got close to finding out what happened but no one really knows exactly what happened. The story goes that the protest started with 5000 – 7000 people at 10AM but soon the amounts swelled to over 20 000 people. Once the larger group and more disgruntled group arrived the festive mood changed into a more aggressive mood. The local police station felt under pressure and called for reinforcements. About 130 police arrived supported by 4 Saracen armoured cars. The police were armed with Sten sub-machine guns and the crowd were armed with stones. They flew in Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers to try to disperse the crowd but all that happened was that the crowd responded by throwing stones. They managed to hit three policemen and after a while the police tried to arrest a protestor. There was a little bit of a scuffle and the crowd moved in on the police station. The pressure got to the police someone opened fire which sparked fire from other police men. The protestors dispersed as quickly as possible but it was already too late, people had died. Most of the people that were shot were shot in the back trying to flee the slaughter.

The result was a huge international outcry. The shooting was condemned by the UN, on the 1st April the United Nations Security Council passes resolution 134. There were protests in many countries in sympathy of what happened. In South Africa the ANC, PAC and other black groups protested and marched, striked and rioted. Over 18 000 people were arrested when on the 30th March the state declared a state of emergency. The PAC and ANC were banned and what soon happened was that the peaceful marches that had led up to the massacre changed to armed resistance. The ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the PAC formed Poqo, both military divisions. In 1961 South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations.

This was one of many horrific stories of the apartheid era but this one had a huge backlash. The people that died did so pointlessly but I personally believe that they, together with many other people in many other situations, helped lead to the end of apartheid. I believe that they should be honoured as roll models to the young of today because they stood up for their rights. As a matter of fact, today we celebrate the day as Human Rights Day. Now there is a museum that was built in dedication to them. It is something to visit in South Africa.






Sharpeville (A Day That Made History Series)

Shooting at Sharpeville : The Agony of South Africa

Happy National Braai Heritage Day

The origins of the day go back to the great Zulu king Shaka and until recently it was referred to as Shaka's day to commemorate the fact that Shaka Zulu managed to unify many Zulu clans into one unified nation.



In 1995, when our list of public holidays were published this day was excluded from the list. The opposition party, and mainly Zulu party, Inkatha Freedom Party protested and the ANC reached an agreement and made the day what it is today.

The day has changed it's name because it represents all the different cultures in South Africa that have joined together as one nation. That meant that no matter where you come from and what your family heritage is you can celebrate the day in that heritage and still feel South Africa. To make this easier most people, including of European heritage celebrate by having what we call a braai, or in other parts of the world they call a BBQ. It is something that all South Africans can enjoy and it doesn't exclude anyone from the celebration. Due to this in 2007 Archbishop Desmond Tutu made sure that the day would from then on be called National heritage Braai day.


South African take this holiday very seriously and hardly anyone misses out on the celebration.

HAPPY BRAAI DAY :)

World Rhino Day

Yesterday was International Rhino Day according to WWF and they had a huge campaign in South Africa to help raise awareness and money for the anti-poaching cause. We were meant to blow vuvuzelas and hoot to show that we support the initiative. In the area where I work there was not a sound to be heard besides for my own vuvuzela. People were either not aware or could care but it was someone else’s problem.


I chatted to a friend of mine about poaching in general and remembered the first time I saw the results of poaching. I was working for a company that was then called CCAfrica, now known as &Beyond. They sent me to one of their camps in the Northern border between Kenya and Tanzania, Kleins Camp, to do work on their computers. There was only one computer and I was there for a week so when I got a chance I went on game drives. Needless to say the stay was fantastic; I got to see black eagles that were nesting on a cliff face just above the lodge and mounds of other wildlife. It is one of my favourite places, if not my favourite place in the world.

On one of the days we were sitting looking out from the meal deck when we saw vultures circling not too far from the lodge. There were no guests in the lodge so the lodge manager and his wife took me on a drive to see what had been killed. We came across a huge elephant bull that was lying on the ground dead. The elephant had a huge hole ripped into its belly and the vultures were climbing in and out of it, tearing the elephant apart. Seeing an elephant dead is quite rare so we took a closer look and I hate to admit it we didn’t even notice that the tusks were missing. We had not heard shots over the last couple of days so we didn’t even think that the elephant had been poached.

What alerted us was that we noticed that the stomach looked like it had burst open; a vulture and most other animals cannot tear open a hole in an elephants skin so what had happened was that the elephant had been killed long before hand and the stomach juices and gasses had expanded until the skin ruptured. Only once we saw this we looked for the tusks. Needless to say they were missing. It was a horrible site to see such a magnificent creature that had been killed for nothing. Well what I consider nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat meat and I do understand that hunting safaris bring in a lot of money for conservation but I do believe that it needs to be controlled. To ad to my above story, I was in a lodge where all the guests were out of a game drive. The game drive came back early and instead of seeing happy faces of guests that had an awesome game drive; I saw tears, anger, frustration and shock. I asked what happened and I was told that they were on the drive when a land rover full of hunters stopped next to their land rover opened up its windows and the shot a herd of Wildebeest (gnu) to pieces then they left. The hunting land rover had trespassed onto a game viewing farm and taken hunting to a new level. What kind of hunter gets a kick from blowing an animal to pieces? I thought that the fun in hunting was tracking the animal down and not the killing of the animal.

I am happy to see that a poaching syndicate was caught earlier this week. I hope that more get caught soon.


http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=49117


http://www.andbeyond.com/

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/

Global Warming Reality or Myth?

A week ago I was involved in a conversation about global warming with a friend of mine that owns a couple of coal mines. I am not the most knowledgeable person in the world when it comes to this issue. As with most people I have listened to quite a couple of news bulletins and watched a documentary or two that speaks about global warming but does that make me know enough to argue a point. By the way, my friend believes that global warning is a money making conspiracy.


Most people don’t have a problem arguing a point and have no idea what I am on about but I like to make sense when I talk and not just trail on mindlessly. So where do I begin to learn about this reality/conspiracy. Who do I have to speak to, what do I have to read? Here I was lucky, I bought a DVD called “6 Degrees Could Change the World” by national geographic. I bought that DVD at 15% of its normal price.

The DVD is very vague and covers a lot of ground in 1h 40min. It covers too much ground to convince anyone either way but it does help one find where to look. I must admit that years ago I watched Al Gores movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and found my time inconveniently wasted because there was way too much in that movie that was convenient to prove a fact. The national geographic one was done by people that do believe in global warming but in the DVD they do speak about certain aspects where people could be wrong in their estimations and beliefs. They also give some hocus-pocus solutions to the problem.

Before I spend loads of money buying books and other DVDs I can spend some useful time just browsing the internet and looking for explanations that can help me write this blog. There are loads of Al Gore websites like http://www.climatecrisis.net/ , or www.algore.com , or www.wikipedia.com and look up his books. Then there is the wikipedia page itself. You will have to look very closely here; there are loads of items to lookup and you have to understand exactly what to look for otherwise you can get caught up and learn very little that is focussed in the right direction. Of course you don’t need to be a scientist to sort out the articles but there is so much that is so interesting that you can lose your way. I just looked up global warning, global warning crisis, global warning conspiracy, etc.

I have taken these articles and now I have to read through them and find out where to next. At the same time I am going to look at the DVD again and get some sort of structure in my research. I have not decided if I am going to use the DVD as a reference and in 6 articles tell you how the earth will change, or if I am going to do something totally different. All I hope is that you are going to learn with me.



Things to look at:

The earth has been hotter that now

There has been more co2 in the atmosphere than now

In no time in history has the earths temperature changed so drastically so quickly

Fine, the earth might recover but in past periods where we have had ice-ages or periods of high heat most of the living creatures in the world have been wiped out. Will we be wiped out?

What are the stages in global warming?

Are there any geological changes that might happen due to global warming?

What is happening to our atmosphere?

Etc.

A Walk Through Hanover

On the second day of our trip Beryl offered to take us for a tour of the
town. As I said in one of my previous posts, she has become an expert in the
history of Hanover. She knows some of the most amazing stories of the town and
the town is small enough for her to have a story for nearly every house in the
town.

The walk was not that easy due to the weather conditions. The area is
extremely exposed to the elements so when a cold front comes through you get to
feel the full force of it. We got to feel the start of a cold front with huge
gusts of wind and we were sandblasted because the area is very dry.

The first thing that Beryl showed us was the Leiwater in the Leivoortjies.
That is the water that caries from “The Eye”, a natural fountain about ½km
outside of the town, to all the houses in the original town. This water was used
to irrigate all the gardens. When the houses were originally built the original
owners were granted large properties of land where they had to build their
houses next to the roads with their back gardens leading away from the road. So
once the Leivoortjies were built the water ran through various canals into the
town and then on certain days certain areas of the town got water and they would
flood their gardens and that is how they watered their gardens. Even today there
are certain houses that use this water and the local sports club uses the water
to water their lawn bowls greens.

The story doesn’t end there. Since the houses had to be built on the one side
of the road leading away from the road, there was not much space for the houses
to grow towards the roads. In due course porches and patios came into fashion
and the towns’ folk wanted to be up to date with fashion so they built porches.
The town council said that the area that these porches were built on belonged to
the town and not to the home owners so they charged them 1 penny a year to rent
the land. Apparently this tax still exists and it has gone up to R14 a year.

What have the above stories done to the town? The first thing is that it has
created a latticework of canals that have not been looked after so most of them
are blocked and water doesn’t flow through them. They are not all blocked by
nature, some of the home owners find them a nuisance and have blocked them. So
now the town looks like it has a mess of gutters. The second thing is that there
is a house design which they call Karoo Cape Dutch houses. I am not an architect
but you can see what they look like from the photos. A third thing is that the
first magistrate of the town, a certain Charles Beere, was a forward thinking
man for his time and one of the things that he forced the town to do was plant
trees. He said that people needed trees to get shade and protest the inhabitants
from the harsh karoo sun. So now you will see beautiful trees outlining the
streets.

The trees are beautiful but they are slowly being killed off and not by man
but by nature. Every year a huge flock of lesser kestrels come from Europe and
settle in the town. We were not in the town at the right time of year so we did
not see them but we hear that if they fly over you there are so many that they
eclipse the sun. The birds have a habit of choosing the same couple of trees to
roost on when they come until the tree eventually dies. The tree dies due to the
acidity of the birds guano that eventually poisons the ground and kills the
tree. This takes a couple of years but when the tree dies the birds move onto
the next tree. The locals do not do anything to protect the trees or help the
land recover below the trees when the birds are not around. So now you will find
areas with beautiful contorted trunks and branches of dead trees.

Eventually we reached a hill, now called Trappieskop. Once again Beere is
influential in the fame of this hill. As magistrate he had access to the
criminals of the area and used them to build a staircase from the bottom of the
mountain to the top of the mountain where today you see a pyramid built in his
honour in 1881. Apparently he loved the karoo landscape and used to spend a lot
of time on Trappieskop just admiring the view. I must admit that I agree with
him. Firstly you can see the whole cite, then you can see the new highways of
the N9 and N10 (which he didn’t get to see) and there is a sand road that was
constructed for the repair work that they have done and are still going to do on
the other highways. These roads give you the impression that they are going
nowhere, maybe even leading off the face of the earth.

Next to Trappieskop is another hill and on top of the hill is a reservoir of
water for the town and there is an old British bunker or foxhole that they used
during the Anglo Boer War. During the Anglo Boer War the town was in British
possession. The British knew that “The Oog” was the only source of water for
miles around the area so they built a wall around the natural spring, a military
camp around it the new construction and then kept a lookout in the foxhole on
top of the hill.

From the top of Trappieskop you have a magnificent view of the church and the
whole town. You can see the original layout of the town. Originally each block
belonged to an individual owner who had one house and loads of land. Some of the
properties are still like that but the majority of the landowners have divided
the land and either sold it or built on the land. At the top of the hill you can
see a pyramid that has been dedicated to Magistrate Beere. It is quite a
magnificent spectacle but has not been well kept. If someone does not look after
it the structure will collapse. There is also a huge cross that has been there
for quite a while. Eddie got permission and put lights on the cross so now tired
travellers can see it from miles away as they approach Hanover at night. The
last things to look at are the hundreds of cactuses. These cactuses grow huge
stems with a flower on top of it. The cactus flowers only once before it
dies.

We were soon lead from the top of the hill back into town and straight to the
original homestead of Pietervalei. The house has become a museum but there is no
curator or historian to run the place. Beryl has been given the keys and she
looks after it but she does not have time give to look after the place properly.
Another problem is that most of the town do not really care about it. They use
it as a place to dump there old rubbish. It is something convenient to have but
it is someone else’s problem. Due to this fact the one wall has collapsed on the
inside and there has only been a hasty repair job done to close the gap. Even
though it is not looked after there are still some interesting artefacts. There
are clothes used during the Boer wars, interesting radios, clocks, books and a
really funny looking hairdryer. I enjoyed the museum but due to its state I
didn’t want to stay there for too long.

Next to the museum is another house that was built at about the same time. It
is in a far better condition due to the fact that someone lives in it but also
due to that reason we could not just go stomping through their house.



From there we walked to the outskirts of town. This land is communal land
where the original inhabitants could take their farm animals to pasture, the
land it still communal and is still used by some of the inhabitants for the same
reason but most people in the town do not have farm animals and if they do the
animals are on their farms and not in the town.
Right on the outskirts of town there are two very interesting buildings. They
are interesting due to the inhabitants of the buildings. The one is a tall
double story house. The bottom floor used to be closed in and used to be used
for cattle. During the Boer war the Boer commandos would sneak into the house
and eat and drink at the expense of the owner, at the same time the owner used
to give the British commanders tea on the top floor of the house. We were lead
to believe that neither side knew what was going on. The other house is very run
down and not inhabited but it used to be a sort of jail for Olive Schreiner who
used to live there and the British soldiers put her in house arrest due to the
fact that she was a pacifist and also stood up for the Boers rights. She was an
interesting character in her own right and deserved a blog written just about
her.



From there we were taken on a tour of the sports club. Apparently the locals
meet there on Wednesdays and Sundays to play bowls. There is a Leivoortjies that
leads the Leiwater into the sports grounds to irrigate the greens. Sometimes to
the detriment of the greens since it occasionally gets forgotten and floods the
greens. This usually happens on a Tuesday and the next day the local bowlers
cannot play and just spend their time complaining and drinking whilst they look
at the mess.
Unfortunately all things come to an end. We were soon back at the hotel and
we joined up with the rest of the group. From here on we only did things that
the whole group wanted to do. So what did they want to do? Play games and party.
There are a lot more things to do in Hanover and I will be back to visit Eddie
and Beryl, and see the rest of the town.

Nieu Bethesda

S31 51.956 E24 33.282

We went to Nieu Bethesda for three things. The Owl House, Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre and the brewery. My personal favourite is the brewery but then I am not as cultured as what I like to think that I am. The most famous part of Nieu Bethesda is the Owl House, people come from all over the world to see it.

There are two ways to get to Nieu Bethesda from Hanover, the normal way on the highway and the sand road route. The highway route is about 180km long and there is a stretch of 28km on sand roads. The sand road route is 120km long but it is not nessesarily quicker than the highway. We took both. On the way there we took the highway and did one of the geocaches mentioned below. The Lootsberg Pass is the highest point on the N9 highway in the Northern Cape, or at least that is what the geocache says. On the way back there was another cache but on the sand road, unfortunately there were 11 other people in our bus that just wanted to get home so the two geocachers were out voted. Democracy is not that great for minorities.

                            

The first place we went to was Helen Martin’s Owl House and Camel Gardens which is what actually brings people to the town. Her glass and cement statues are something quite unbelievable. It is not everyone’s cup of tea but really worthwhile going to see. I found the house a little macabre and I would not put anything that she did in my house but you cannot say that she doesn’t have imagination and that she doesn’t think out of the box when it comes to her art and the décor in her house. I would go back just to see her house again. For more information about her go to http://www.owlhouse.co.za and read all about her life. Entrance is R25.

I have attached pictures of her Camel garden which has a religious connotation to it with most of the characters facing east. The characters take on different forms and shapes, at first glance they seem like normal statues of people but then you see that some of them have contorted parts of their bodies.

Her house is macabre for today's day. If I had to live there I would have nightmares. Even though she looked for colour and joy from the colours that she used in the house, the house is very dark. The crushed different colour bottles and stuck the glass pieces to her walls in amazing patterns and added her art to all of the rooms. She was also fascinated with female forms and some of the pictures could have been considered pornography in those days. Her life was very lonely and I believe that you can see that in her house.

                  

Next we went to Kitching’s Fossil Exploration Centre is
interesting but I would not go out of my
way to see the place. The entrance is R15 but if you also go to the owl house you pay R35 for both. There is a small museum where you can see copies of some of the fossils that they found. The best part of the museum is the display where they explain 7 steps on how to become a fossil. According to my friends I am at step 3. Nice friends … ;-) Once you have finished in the museum a guide takes you on a 5 min walk into a riverbed where he shows you a couple of fossils.

There are a couple of places to eat and drink but I would give them all a
skip and go to Sneeuberg Microbrewery, Cheese Farm and Coffee Roastery. This
guy, according to me, is bridging legendary status. As a guy I have to say that
there are certain things in life that makes me happy, a brewery, home made
bread, home made cheeses, home made cold meats, … sigh. There are three beers
that they make, the Karoo Ale (my favourite), the Honey Ale (pure honey taste)
and the Roasted Ale (not my favourite but still good). Try them all, they are
worth it. Don’t bother ordering anything else but the cheese platter. There are
cheeses, preserves and cold meats that will suit most people. They serve it with
their home made breads. Good food for a social and relaxed lunch.

                      
                      
There are a couple of other things that you can do there that we didn’t have
time to do so we will have to pop past sometime in the future.

Geocache in town

Nieu Bethesda: GCRYPG

Earth Cache

Uncle Jimmy's Bones: GC243AQ

Geocache on route

N9 to Middelburg: GC6674

Loodsberg Pass (1781m): GC22MVN

Michaelshoogte: GC1AT0T