By PHETOLO PHATSIBI Eager teams of volunteer creatives converged on the Amazwi South African Museum of Literature last week to create a rich collection of new Eastern Cape picture books. The Rhodes University Centre for Social Development (CSD) and Amazwi organised the Makhanda Book Dash event to celebrate Amazwi’s 20th and CSD’s 40th anniversary. Each team had a writer, an illustrator, and a designer and all teams worked in solidarity, filling Amazwi with creative energy and inspiration. CSD director Nicci Hayes said the project encouraged children to read more books by creating books they can relate to. The books, written in isiXhosa, Afrikaans…
Author: Rod Amner
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The Cathedral Choir of St Michael and St George and Makana Choir School invites all parents of young singers to the Makana Choir School AGM taking place on Sunday 5 September 2021. The Makana Choir School is a choral programme that aims to educate and enrich young talented individuals into becoming competent singers and choristers. Choristers sing in the context of the Cathedral Choir of St Michael and St George, under the group, Cathedral Iimvumi. Choristers receive tuition in theory, sight-reading and choral technique to a high standard and attend rehearsals every Wednesday during term time. New choristers begin at…
By MATTHEW PETERSEN The rebooted Grahamstown Cricket Board Umpires’ Association (GCBUA), part of the Grahamstown Cricket Board (GCB), is recruiting new umpires after acquiring four new sponsors. Each new umpire will receive a shirt with the new GCB logo and will be taken through an umpiring course. The hope is to find more sponsors and umpires as well as electing an office structure for the board. The GCB met one of the sponsors, Murray Hobson of Hobson & Co. at an official handover at St Andrew’s College on Monday. The GCB was started in 2010 by Eric Jonklaas and Barry…
Hi-Tec Security has partnered with a mobile safety app called Buzzer, which has achieved remarkable success in and around Cape Town for the last two years. Buzzer gives users a personal SOS button and has a community report function for crimes, fires, and suspicious activity. All alerts made through the app go directly to Hi-Tec Security – and the neighbourhood. The app was designed by a team of Hout Bay residents and rolled out in 2018. It responds to the need for a solution that could efficiently connect neighbours to neighbours and the local security service providers. Upon sending an…
As the local football season heads towards its climax, another round of exciting matches in the Makana LFA Premier League and First Division kicked off on Saturday and Sunday at Extension 7, Fiddlers Green and the JD Dlepu Stadium. MATTHEW PETERSEN filed this report from the Jacaranda Aces vs New Seekers game. In a match played in very windy conditions, Jacaranda Aces and New Seekers kicked off in the 3 pm game at JD Dlepu Stadium. Aces started the match brightly and took the lead in the first 10 minutes through Sixolile Koliti, who used his pace to get in behind…
By CHRIS TOTOBELA Makhanda’s football fraternity suffered another great loss with the passing of the legendary Joza Callies goalkeeper, Misile Krismesi Ntlanjeni. At the time of his passing last week after a short illness, he was part of Callies’ technical team. Ntlanjeni came from a great footballing family known for producing great goalkeepers – and he was undoubtedly on top of the list. He was one of the great shot-stoppers not only in Makhanda but in the entire region. On Saturday, 28 August, people came in numbers to bid farewell to this icon who dedicated his life to football development in…
By CHRIS TOTOBELA Sophia Young Stars finished in the top four in the Eastern Cape at the Engen U18 knockout football tournament in Gqeberha last weekend. They had to dig deep in the first game to bounce back from a goal down to level matters and eventually won 5-4 on penalties. Glenville were their next opponents in the quarter-finals. Sophia scored the game’s only goal in the second half to book their place in the last four. On Sunday, they came unstuck against a powerful Real Buffaloes side in the semi-final. They produced an outstanding performance, but unfortunately, it was…
By NYX MCLEAN, Grocott’s Mail engagement editor During our online sessions with students, we go over the week’s stories, discuss stories they are working on, explore new story ideas, and go over our social media posts. My favourite part of those sessions has been showing the students how the community responds to their stories. As we have been doing this for almost a month, something else is taking over as my favourite thing: seeing how our students respond to the community’s feedback and engagement with their stories. There is something immensely satisfying in finding your work out there, the story…
To revive and preserve indigenous African languages, Rhodes University has joined a consortium of universities to collaborate in a project funded by the European Union called BAQONDE. The name stands for Boosting the use of African languages in education: A Qualified Organized National DEvelopment strategy for South Africa. Other universities involved in the project are: North-West University, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of the Western Cape from South Africa and three European institutions of higher learning: Salamanca University, Trinity College Dublin & University of Groningen. The word “baqonde” means “(let them) understand” in the Nguni languages. Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) Chief Director of University…
A client recently contacted our office to thank us for the “pensioner card” he received in the mail. He had just retired from a retirement annuity and taken out a living annuity. While this client had not formally retired from his place of work, he was nevertheless still entitled to receive a pensioner card from the service provider. The first thing he wanted to know was which businesses or institutions in town provide pensioners with discounts. It emerged that a wide variety of businesses offer incentives in various formats to pensioners. For example, certain retail chains provide pensioners with cashback…