A beautiful Peace Pool was constructed a few years ago by Grahamstown’s local Rotary Club in the Makana
Botanical Gardens.
It rests amid tall trees that rustle with nestling and chirping birds. The gently rumbling sound of
the water that flows under the wooden deck creates an incredibly calming effect.
A beautiful Peace Pool was constructed a few years ago by Grahamstown’s local Rotary Club in the Makana
Botanical Gardens.
It rests amid tall trees that rustle with nestling and chirping birds. The gently rumbling sound of
the water that flows under the wooden deck creates an incredibly calming effect.
It’s the ideal place in Grahamstown to escape for a short while and to be able to reflect on just how peacefully political transformation took place in South Africa
in 1994.
This week, South Africans recalled the memories of that momentous occasion on 11 February 1990 when the
world’s focus was on Victor Verster Prison as Nelson Mandela walked out of its gates ending 27 years of his imprisonment.
This day was the start to the closing of one long horrible chapter in South Africa’s political past but it was also the beginning of writing a new chapter about a new nation.
It is not unusual for two very different and significant political events to take place on the same date. Eight years earlier on 11 February 1982, a young political activist Neil Aggett was buried after being killed
by apartheid agents during his 70 days of detention without trial.
Aggett was the first white person to die in detention since 1963 but his passing marked the 51st death in detention. For a number of years now, Neil Aggett’s name has resonated in Grahamstown’s Kingswood College where he was a pupil.
The school has successfully kept his spirit alive by presenting an annual lecture in his memory. Students at
Kingswood College are indeed fortunate to enjoy the visionary leadership of its school administration
who recognise the benefits of offering inspiration to their school community by allowing them to be able to reflect on Aggett’s fight for justice.
Unfortunately, social anthropologist David Webster who also spent his student life in Grahamstown and who was shot dead by a hit squad of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a covert government agency, on 1 May 1989, somehow seems to be forgotten by the Grahamstown community.
It was at Rhodes University that Webster’s activism was ignited through his involvement in student politics. After graduation, Webster was active in the anti-apartheid movement; especially in the 80s for the
Detainees’ Parent’s Support Committee that tried to support the many thousands of people who were detained without trial by the government.
As South Africa’s history gets documented, many cities and small towns around the country are searching
through their memories to stake ownership of the heroes who paid the ultimate price to deliver a changed political landscape for all South Africans.
Grahamstown is a city with many memorials. Many of these speak of its distant past. Each of these memorials has every right to exist in the city so that future generations of this city’s citizens will be able to reflect on its past.
However, this city’s leadership should not be allowed to abscond from their responsibility of ensuring that
this city’s history also gets told in its totality; and that all of our city’s heroes and its champions are memorialised for future generations.
There are many South African heroes and champions whose roots, lives and successes are tied to Grahamstown.
The recently deceased Dideka Mhlaba – or Ma Dixie as she was affectionately known – was the former Eastern Cape first lady and was born in Grahamstown.
She was widely respected for her active promotion of reconciliation and non-racialism in the province and beyond.
Nan Cross is another remarkable ex-Rhodian. As a founder member of the End Conscription Campaign, Cross worked towards encouraging South African young white males to question their mandatory military service and to see their conscription as an immoral war that was meant to defend apartheid. She is most
remembered for once climbing on an army tank at a South African weapons exhibition and to which she attached stickers which read, “Arms are for hugging, not killing.”
While the list of South African political heroes who have their roots in Grahamstown could cover a few pages, there are also a number of achievers who have attained acclaim in other diverse fields such as sport, art, science and mountainclimbing.
Cathy O’Dowd is famous for being the firs twoman to reach the summit of Mount Everest has her roots
tied to Grahamstown.
So too, Kabelo “Sello” Duiker who won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and Alan Paton Award winning writer Pumla Gobodo Madikizela both have their roots tied to this city.
Grahamtown’s doyenne of the arts, Lynette Marais, is the only South African to be awarded with three lifetime achiever awards for her contribution to the advancement of South African art.
It was under her firm and acute curatorship, that one hundred leading South African artists were awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award.
Several of these championing artists have subsequently written their names in international arenas. Not even Hollywood has stayed away from snapping up some of Grahamstown’s champions.
South African actress Alice Maud Krige whose first feature film role was as the Gilbert and Sullivan singer, Sybil, in the 1981 Academy Award winning film Chariots of Fire cut her teeth by taking an acting class at Rhodes University.
Embeth Davidtz is another Hollywood star who earned her degree in Drama at Rhodes University. The walk from one end of Somerset Street that begins with Rhodes University’s Canterbury House residence to St Andrew’s Preparatory School at the other end is a fascinating walk past music halls, museums, theatres, research centres and posh schools.
This long pavement from Canterbury House to St Andrew’s Prep could very easily become Grahamstown’s own long walk of fame.
It could be an awesome way in which to memorialise the city’s heroes and champions by placing plaques in this pavement similar to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
The spirit of Grahamstown’s heroes, stars and champions will not only inspire those who walk on that pavement but it will also be a testament for visitors to this city that Grahamstown is more than just a dead old colonial town with an uninspiring past.
And as for the locals who would walk on Grahamstown’s long pavement of fame, the Peace Pool at the Makana Botanical Gardens would be the perfect place to relax and to contemplate on just how significantly
this city has played its part in moulding the kind of citizenship that defines us as a vibrant and championing nation.
