There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
‘UDF unites, apartheid divides’: around this ringing slogan the United Democratic Front was launched on 20 August 1983. The South African security state was at its most active, and turning to increasingly violent and illegal […]
HARD though it is to believe, twenty years have passed since the Rand Daily Mail folded and the Weekly Mail started publication. Its founders pooled redundancy payments and donations to launch the paper and some […]
FAMILIAR faces vanished – people went on the run, kept their heads down, or disappeared into detention under the Public Safety Act. The winter of 1986 in Pietermaritzburg was grey and menacing, courtesy of weather […]
ON the night of 5 December 1986, three trade unionists from Mpophomeni were killed on a quiet stretch of road near Lion’s River in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Their burnt bodies were discovered in the early hours of […]
ONE of the main characteristics of the State of Emergency is its attempt to enforce a regime of censorship on society. It is therefore not surprising that most people in Pietermaritzburg are unaware that between […]
PRISON hunger strikes summon images of Suffragettes or the Northern Ireland troubles, but 25 years ago, in a largely forgotten episode, Pietermaritzburg experienced its own. The strikers were State of Emergency detainees held without charge, trial or […]
PIETERMARITZBURG in 1986: a city simmering with anti-apartheid protest action, under a State of Emergency and about to face a low-intensity civil war that would culminate in the tragedy of the political cleansing of March 1990. […]
‘A future in which all people in South Africa live in a participatory democracy with sustainable living environments and livelihood security’: such is the vision of the Built Environment Support Group (BESG), which celebrated its […]
IT was an indication of sheer desperation that the apartheid state assassinated university teachers. Rick Turner was murdered in January 1978. And on 1 May 1989, David Webster was shot dead at the age of […]
ON Friday 2 December 1988, Trust Feed, a community of 5 000 people near New Hanover, was declared an operational area under the State of Emergency and 40 police officers photographed residents and detained members of […]