Author: Grocott's Mail Contributors

According to the 2017 health calendar, October was Mental Health Awareness Month in South Africa. The objective of Mental Health Awareness Month is to educate the general public about mental health and to reduce the stigma and discrimination that people with mental illness are often subjected to. The Department of Health (DOH) focused a lot on mental health in the workplace in their awareness programmes. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse and job stress are examples of mental health problems that people experience in the workplace. These problems can lead to the use of harmful substances and alcohol, absenteeism and reduced productivity.…

Adv Jock McConnachie raised this matter some months ago. I explained to him that at that time, all the wards, except Wards 12 and 4 had Ward Committees. Since then the Ward 12 Committee has been elected and the Ward 4 elections are, I believe, happening tonight; so by tomorrow morning all the wards in Makana should have Ward Committees. I also explained to Adv McConnachie that the Ward 8 Committee meets at least once a month and the issues discussed run the gamut of the problems facing Makana, including feral children, the financial crisis, crime, infrastructural collapse, illegal dumping, stray animals and the…

This poem is written by Sinovuyo Mgontshongo, Lizo Ndobe and Kuhlenkosi Gotyana kaDizamahlebo. It is about the late Oliver Thambo. Poets are praising him and finishing by saying if he was alive the country would not have been captured and there would not be Marikana massacre. Khawukhe uthi uThambo liqhawe Eline nkolo yenyaniso intetho Nangoku akafanga ukwe lemimoya Kaloku inyange alifi liya nyamalala Yinkosi eya fungelwa ngabamhlophe Bathi soze iyingcamle inkululeko Ufaf’olud’emthi mde Yavuuuuuuka! Yavu-u-u-uka! Yavuka le nto kum kwathi mandi nabe Ndithethe ngofaf’olude lwase Mthimde Phantsi kwentaba zaseZalo Kukhon’inkunz’engcolis’isileti sosiba Ilubamb’usiba lungcache Singe singa zifihl’izileti zingcola Sizob’amanxebanxeba Eyase Mthimd’iphehluzeliswa…

Game of Thorns One A.C. MacDonald of the Agriculture Department was engaged in attempts to exterminate the prickly-pear overgrowth near Cookhouse reported Grocott’s Mail on 16 December 1891. MacDonald, who was based in Grahamstown, had hooked up a 900-litre tank of arsenic solution to a wagon, and sprayed a two-acre thicket of prickly pears with it. His goal was to figure out what strength of solution was needed – 1:4, 1:7 or 1:10 – to kill off as many prickly pear plants as possible as cheaply as possible. Arsenic would cause the plant’s leaves to drop off after ten days, but did…

Events: 1822: Pedro I is crowned the Emperor of Brazil. 1834: Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony. 1913: Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line. 1918: Iceland becomes a sovereign state. 1973: Papua New Guinea gains self-governance from Australia. Births: 1933: Lou Rawls, American singer-songwriter and actor. 1945: Bette Midler, American singer-songwriter and actress. 1985: Janelle Monáe, American singer-songwriter. 1987: Vance Joy, Australian singer-songwriter. Deaths: 1987: James Baldwin, American novelist, poet and critic. 01 December is First President’s Day in Kazakhstan, Military Abolition Day in Costa Rica, and World AIDS Day.

Events: 1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 1963: Jack Ruby shoots and kills Lee Harvey Oswald, the first murder shown live on TV. 1965: Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Births: 1806: William Webb Ellis, British inventor of rugby. 1867: Scott Joplin, American composer. 1955: Ian Botham, British cricketer and footballer. Deaths: 1572: John Knox, Scottish theologian. 1957: Diego Riviera, Mexican painter and sculptor. 1991: Freddie Mercury, Tanzanian-English singer-songwriter. 24 November is Teachers’ Day in Turkey, Lachit Divas in Assam, and Evolution Day worldwide.

The long, dark voyage of the Fram In today’s era of satellite imagery, it’s hard to imagine how vast and unknown the world was just a century ago. In November 1893, Grocott’s published a long article on the fate of Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram expedition, which was attempting to establish whether there were any large land masses in the Arctic Ocean. Nobody had ever successfully sailed across the Arctic Ocean in winter, and even in summer the risks were extreme. In the 1890s, nobody knew for sure what lay in the Arctic Ocean. There were certainly islands; but were there any continents?…

Events: 1558: Elizabeth II becomes Queen of England. 1800: The US Congress sits for the first time in Washington DC. 1869: The Suez Canal is inaugurated. 1933: The USA recognises the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR). 1983: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded in Mexico. Births: 1746: Nicolas Appert, French chef and inventor of canning. 1923: Aristide Pereira, first President of Cape Verde. 1942: Martin Scorsese, American film director. 1952: Cyril Ramaphosa, South African politician and businessman. 1960: RuPaul, American drag queen, actor and singer. 1977: Ryk Neethling, South African Olympic swimmer. Deaths: 1796: Catherine…

Terror and rage in the Russian Empire “The awful barbarities,” wrote the editor of Grocott’s on 17 November 1905, “perpetrated on the Jews in European Russia have evoked profound sympathy throughout the British Empire…The sin and disgrace of the robbery, incendiarism and massacre, of which the Jewish community have been the victims, must be shared by the Tsar, his ministers, his troops, his police, and his Slavonic people generally.” Late 1905 had been a time of horror for Jewish citizens of the Russian Empire. For hundreds of years, they had been allowed to live only in an area called the…

Events: 1775: The United States Marine Corps is founded. 1942: Germany invades Vichy France. 1964: The first episode of Sesame Street is broadcast in the United States. 1983: Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0. 1995: Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental activist from the oil-rich Ogoni region is hanged by the Nigerian regime of Sani Abacha. 2009: Ships of the South Korean and North Korean navies skirmish off Daecheong Island. Births: 1868: Gichin Funakoshi, Japanese founder of Shotokan karate. 1887: Arnold Zweig, German author and activist. 1925: Richard Burton, Welsh actor and singer. 1960: Neil Gaiman, English author, screenwriter, and illustrator. 1968:…