Guests and club members joined Winter Rose Rugby club as celebrated its 130th anniversary during a gala dinner at City Hall last Saturday evening. Former legends included the Programme Director, Ramie Xonxa and speakers included Mayor Nomhle Gaga .
The Guest Speaker was Biyani Limbs Mbona who said that the celebration was a way of socialising the young generation about the rich history of Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape, and of South Africa, “that would otherwise be be denied to our children.”
Winter Rose was established when the entire country was ravaged by the wars of dispossession (or Frontier Wars), to uplift the lives of black people .
When black people were forcefully removed from their land, their conquerors also took away their pride, Mbona said. “The existence of the 1820 Settlers Monument a stone’s throw away from where we are is not an accident of history,” he said, but a reminder of what black people had lost and the fact that they have few of their own monuments. Mbona thanked the founders of Winter Rose for restoring some of the pride of local black people.
