Author: Grocott's Mail Contributors

The School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University hosts the 12th RUTV Documentary Film Festival next Thursday. The festival will take place in the comfortable auditorium of NELM (National English Literary Museum). The event premieres three 20-minute documentaries titled Money from the Sea, The Eden and Ezakithi namasiko produced by fourth-year television students as the culmination of their course. Under the title “Quests and Question Marks” the films showcase stories of young South Africans breaking norms and stereotypes to find their place in the world. A common theme among the documentaries is that each of them takes the…

By Loyiso Dyongman An unbearable sewage stench coming from inside an Extension 9 family home forced its six occupants to go and sleep in the caretaker’s house near the hall. On Monday 28 August it was sewage all over the house and the family sat outside not knowing where to start.  The main sewage manhole pipe situated in the yard was spilling over. Inside the 25 Mthathi Street house, sewage had spewed from a nearby inspection cover and spread throughout the house. Makana Municipality officials pleaded with the family to go and sleep in the Extension 9 caretaker’s house that…

In last Friday’s edition of Grocott’s there is a prominent article reporting on the appointment of the new President of the SRC at Rhodes. It is reported that the first Female President was Kholosa Loni.  In the same article the Vice Chancellor is quoted as saying, “Rhodes students acknowledge the power in women who have been absent in leadership positions, particularly within student councils.” I think that if the SRC were to go through it’s records it would find that, in fact, the first female President was Margaret Jean Roberts who would have been so elected in the early 1950s. If my ageing…

By Katy Pepper Young and old, women and men across the villages of Joza, Hlalani, Tantyi to Fingo Village, Scottsfarm, Sun City and Ghost Town cite unemployment as their number one challenge to having a future in Grahamstown. A job, they say, not only opens the gateway to having their basic needs fulfilled – food, water and shelter – but also education and fulfillment of their aspirations and those of their children. This is the finding of the needs assessment recently conducted with 340 people accessing facilities at Assumption Development Centre (ADC), St Mary’s Development and Care Centre (SMDCC) in…

1504: Michelangelo’s David goes on public display in Florence. 1831: William IV, after whom King William’s Town is named, is crowned King of Great Britain and Ireland. 1945: US troops arrive in southern Korea to partition the country, in response to Soviet occupation of the northern parts of the region. 1978: The Black Friday massacre of civilians by the army in Tehran marks the beginning of the end for the Iranian monarchy. 1991: The Republic of Macedonia becomes independent from Yugoslavia. Born: 1157: Richard I, the Lionheart, King of England. 1841: Antonin Dvorak, Czech composer. 1932: Patsy Cline, American…

Mad Dogs and Letters to the Editor September 1893 came at the end of a bad rabies outbreak in the Albany and Port Elizabeth regions. The 1893 Rabies Act had been passed by the Cape Parliament earlier in the year: by law, all dogs now had to be on a chain and muzzled in public. If this seems like an overreaction, it wasn’t, or if it was, it was not by much. Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux, in France, had developed a rabies vaccine only in 1885, and it wasn’t yet widespread. Grocott’s of 8 September 1893 reported that one…

1873: Cetshwayo becomes King of the Zulu. 1905: The territories of Alberta and Saskatchewan become part of Canada. 1914: Martha, the last known passenger pigeon on earth, dies in Cincinatti Zoo. 1923: The Great Kantō Earthquake in Japan kills 105 000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama. 1939: Germany invades Poland, starting the European phase of World War Two. 1969: A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power. 1991: Uzbekistan declares independence from the USSR. Born: 1923: Rocky Marciano, American boxer. 1926: Abdur Rahman Biswas, tenth President of Bangladesh. 1939: Lily Tomlin, American actress, known for 9 to 5 and…

A Maritime Mystery  August 1909 fell squarely in the middle of one of the Indian Ocean’s greatest mysteries. The SS Waratah, a passenger and cargo steamer en route from Australia to London, disappeared late in July – and has never been seen again. The ship had left Adelaide, Australia, on 1 July, captained by John Illbery, and docked in Durban on 24 July. The Waratah was supposed to be a safe ship: it had lifeboats for 941 people, could carry enough food for a year at sea, and had an onboard desalination plant that could produce 25 000 litres of…

Plans to upgrade the Waainek Water Treatment Works (WTW), situated on the western side of Grahamstown, are to commence soon following a financial injection received by the Makana Municipality. The upgrades consist of various projects, and will greatly improve the plants’ capacity to provide potable water to meet Grahamstown’s growing water demands. Makana has appointed Bosch Projects as the consulting engineers, and Terratest to secure the necessary Environmental Authorisation under the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) where necessary. Two of the steps involved in the upgrades will run through Critical Biodiversity Areas within Grahamstown and thus require NEMA authorisation. These…

11 AUGUST IN HISTORY 1786: Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia. 1917: Grocott’s Mail reports the outcome of the British Board of Trade enquiry into the sinking of the troopship SS Mendi: that the captain of the cargo ship Darro was at fault, “having travelled at a dangerously high speed in thick fog, and of having failed to ensure that his ship emitted the necessary fog sound signals”. His licence is suspended for a year. 617 Southern Africans and 30 members of the ship’s crew are killed when the Mendi sinks. 1921: Alex Haley, the…