tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1341092914047174212024-02-19T16:25:14.848-08:00Kin Bentley In LineKin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.comBlogger289125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-53648560780167434302021-12-20T03:08:00.005-08:002021-12-20T04:05:17.996-08:00Not so much a theory as a reality<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwRD7oiYA31NLq8QMOFjXZ5RdO85W6Z8rfwGQq11tw59eqVzRTDCqvIeGXJhkyjjJhZp7Cj3HiK-UnStsmgXVROHJ9td-6rnfhID5j__-wPEOPzwyZFbWB2EnOSPJYL0zLSgU87a6KgEZugwneAtNeGdgktmutnAeIyCxR5kpaVWnJLeeYbZCx3uPi=s960" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="960" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwRD7oiYA31NLq8QMOFjXZ5RdO85W6Z8rfwGQq11tw59eqVzRTDCqvIeGXJhkyjjJhZp7Cj3HiK-UnStsmgXVROHJ9td-6rnfhID5j__-wPEOPzwyZFbWB2EnOSPJYL0zLSgU87a6KgEZugwneAtNeGdgktmutnAeIyCxR5kpaVWnJLeeYbZCx3uPi=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq3E88FW1Rl8JXaPaBtt7rwCmppAvv6HgHvGQ_HKGUcZpj7XM3MMmNNX75DijQSPhz-wZABCX6fni19lq55_txn5Y1hvRuQZfN-tcS_TD4lkSdnDgtCEQ_RV8QMde3mEfOteoIKfLF-N15gf6fYJ_cnYmEU_3hekBD19g7J84xlz61KycK52c3_jgc=s1280" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq3E88FW1Rl8JXaPaBtt7rwCmppAvv6HgHvGQ_HKGUcZpj7XM3MMmNNX75DijQSPhz-wZABCX6fni19lq55_txn5Y1hvRuQZfN-tcS_TD4lkSdnDgtCEQ_RV8QMde3mEfOteoIKfLF-N15gf6fYJ_cnYmEU_3hekBD19g7J84xlz61KycK52c3_jgc=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdXrxzRde1R5IG1e_-OtzVzBICGKNjnp3MFt2ol6nCjGov0oQIXTIiEy3Bvuk_CapNlL--g6j1goAZzI9CHrWMI2wt2ubL8oEtln8kr2GSC_DN6q3KodtysS-TxYF1l6JZt4ZcOd0zGrhPAAIrYcK86J2xDk22C3BR6UtHcbDKXpDaEiwXZF9DrdOX=s810" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="632" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdXrxzRde1R5IG1e_-OtzVzBICGKNjnp3MFt2ol6nCjGov0oQIXTIiEy3Bvuk_CapNlL--g6j1goAZzI9CHrWMI2wt2ubL8oEtln8kr2GSC_DN6q3KodtysS-TxYF1l6JZt4ZcOd0zGrhPAAIrYcK86J2xDk22C3BR6UtHcbDKXpDaEiwXZF9DrdOX=s320" width="250" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The world has been duped.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">For the past almost
two years a carefully orchestrated scam has been built around a respiratory
illness.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Let's look at it
from a layman's perspective.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Before SARS-CoV-2
and coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), very few of us on the planet knew
about coronaviruses or cared two hoots about them.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">We did not live in
perpetual fear of getting a respiratory-tract infection that could lead to
death.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Nothing changed in
early 2020, except that a criminal conspiracy - for that is what this is -
either opportunistically or with malice aforethought turned the almost certain
lab leak of a genetically modified bat virus into a vehicle for unprecedented power
and profit.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">As a recently
retired hard-news journalist with well over 30 years' experience, I was drawn ineluctably
into questioning every aspect of this story as it unfolded.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">I have read
thousands of news reports and watched countless interviews in an attempt to determine
what sort of risk I faced personally, but more importantly to try to establish
what journalists used to strive for beyond all other considerations: the truth.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">I’ll not be citing
the numerous sources for my conclusion that this is a criminal conspiracy; they
are too plentiful and overlapping in the information they impart.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">I remember early
last year as WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus (who as Ethiopian health minister formed close ties with the
Clinton and Gates foundations) hummed and hawed about this unusual respiratory
infection emerging from Wuhan, China, supposedly from a “wet” market selling
everything from fish to wild animals. The story we were led to believe was that
a coronavirus, to which bats have in-built immunity, had miraculously defied
accepted science and infected people.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">(The web linking
Tedros to the global elite lies at the heart of the conspiracy to impose “health
through vaccination”. As Ethiopian health minister he was a member of
the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) board, where
the Gates Foundation set the agenda.)</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The first alarm
bells sounded for me when I read about how this new disease went viral on
Chinese social media, only for the ruling Communist Party to then shut down all
discussion. Then I picked up that a Chinese eye doctor, Li
Wenliang, who had alerted the world to the dangers of the Wuhan virus, was
censured by the CCP. He would die soon afterwards from the disease.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">We took Tedros at
his word and when, within a few weeks, the virus had been elevated from being a
mild threat to one warranting the declaration of a global pandemic, we accepted
his bona fides. We would later discover that the WHO had conveniently changed
the criteria for such a declaration. Previously the disease had to be
widespread and causing abnormally high numbers of death for a global pandemic
to be declared.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">While there were a
few centres of high mortality - namely in northern Italy, the UK and New York
City - these were the exceptions. And we would later discover that the high
mortality was due to a criminal failure to treat elderly patients with
respiratory infections who were often removed from hospitals and sent back to
care homes, where they infected other vulnerable people. Remember that the
average age of those dying was over 80. The communities being hit were old and
sickly. In Italy most were heavy smokers.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Fear was ramped up
by a media which had in 2019 already decided, through the formation of the
Trusted News Initiative (TNI), that the major news agencies and networks, along with
the increasingly powerful Big Tech social media, would conspire to censor and
suppress all views and information that didn't fit the official narrative.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">They would also, it
became clear, not baulk at disseminating fake news to bolster a troika of
agendas: ensuring Trump wasn’t re-elected in November 2020 and keeping the
global population cowed and in fear of this “novel coronavirus” and preparing
the world for a decade of pandemics to be fought with new-technology mRNA gene
therapies, which they would fraudulently market as vaccines. The third leg is
climate alarmism, another hypothesis where it is easy to falsely evoke fear and
human self-loathing without presenting any watertight evidence that
anthropogenic carbon-dioxide emissions are affecting the natural global weather
and temperature cycle.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">I have never had a
flu vaccine. In fact, the idea of taking a vaccine for an infection my body has
combated effectively throughout my life made no sense. Indeed, like billions of
others, I never seriously considered taking the flu jab.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">And this, on a
global scale, was what upset Dr Anthony Fauci and his jab-obsessed collaborators. There
should be plenty of money being made from vaccines, they believed, but they
weren't satisfied with the takings. People just weren’t fearful enough of the
flu, so, as we saw at a seminar Fauci attended in 2019, the vaccine industry
was looking at ways to “disrupt” the regulatory system and to create “an event”
which would make the imposition of a mandatory vaccine possible. This was just
one of several pandemic planning meetings and expositions, including detailed
scenario planning by the World Economic Forum, that occurred in the years
preceding 2020. It was a conspiracy conducted in plain view – if only we had
had a free and independent media to join up the dots and see what this “master
race” of globalists were, and are, planning for the human race.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Dr Fauci and friends at the NIH, CDC and FDA had done the
groundwork well, ensuring that vaccines, not medicines, were accepted as “preemptive
treatment” in the US, despite their not having to undergo nearly as rigorous
safety testing as actual medicines.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">As a result, I discovered that children in the US are being subjected to
over 70 injections from shortly after birth till the age of 21. I discovered
that Robert Kennedy Jnr has been waging a sustained campaign against this
reliance on a vaccine for every conceivable "threat". As an impartial
outsider this strikes me as insane, given that my generation survived quite
happily on two or three jabs, with polio perhaps the most memorable from my
childhood .</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The imposition of
vaccination as opposed to promoting healthy lifestyles seems to be largely due
to the powerful influence of Dr Fauci, for the past four decades head if the
National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, the NIAID, one of
several members of the National Institutes of Health.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Fauci, the US
government adviser on Covid-19, it later emerged, had bungled badly with AIDS.
His record of pushing relentlessly to turn America and the world into a
population of sick people dependent on vaccines is captured in an exhaustively
researched book by Robert Kennedy Jnr, nephew of assassinated US President JF
Kennedy. Fauci's denial of the proven fact that his organization, through Dr
Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, funded gain-of-function experiments on bat
coronaviruses in Wuhan was the first major lie of the Covid Con.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">But, as noted, we
had already, in 2019 and before, seen several dry runs for the dystopia that
awaited us in 2020. Bill Gates had gone from despised software billionaire to
beloved mega philanthropist, as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seemed
to be doing good things around the developing world.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The numerous
disasters their vaccines and genetically modified grains caused were glossed
over by a supine media, which itself was in the pocket of Gates and other major
philanthropic capitalists like George Soros, not to mention the Chinese
Communist Party with its billions of dollars in spare cash to buy off whoever
it needed on its side. Gates had secured a major stake in the vaccine market
through GAVI, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations)</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt;"> and a couple of other organisations bent on imposing
vaccines on the world.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The smirk on
Gates's face when he proudly proclaimed that the “whole world” would need to be
vaccinated to end the pandemic will become a symbol of the fiendish delight he
appeared to take in asserting control over the world and in making a 20-fold
profit on his investments. The same sinister half-mocking smirk was later seen
regularly on Fauci's face as he made up policy and “the science” on the hoof. One
day masks were useless, the next they were essential. Politicians followed
suit, with Johnson, Biden, Macron, Ardern, Morrison and our own Ramaphosa and
numerous others singing from the same World Economic Forum “Build Back Better”
for a “New World Order” hymn sheet.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">And that hymn sheet
was the brainchild of WEF founder and executive director Klaus Schwab. His
vision of a Fourth Industrial Revolution where you will “own nothing and be
happy” and the climate alarmists’ attack on carbon-dioxide as a poison
destroying the earth underpin the population control agenda the global elite
are seeking. Instead of acknowledging that an advanced humanity has mitigated
much of the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, the global elite
aim to make the suppression of CO2 the bedrock of their nefarious low-growth,
job-destroying agenda – apart, that is, from in places like China, which are
somehow exempt from the constraints of COP26 and its predecessors.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Red meat is another
of their targets as war is declared on a way of life that has characterised
human existence for millennia. Indeed, all the attributes of modern western
civilization have been denigrated by these oligarchs and global bureaucrats –
although you can be sure that in true Orwellian tradition, the rules that apply
to the masses will not apply to them. Even gender has become a politically
sensitive issue. Gender fluidity is being touted as the “new normal”. The nuclear
family is disparaged as a quaint and somehow dangerous anachronism.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">It’s as if, within the
space of a few years, the global elite centred around the WEF believes it can
transform human cultural evolution to fit its blueprint for the future.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Which brings us
back to the pandemic and their most egregious plan of all: making the injection
of gene-manipulating drugs, which in the case of Covid have demonstrably done
more harm than good, a prerequisite for participation in the “New Normal”
surveillance society they are seeking to impose.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">And here we get to
the biggest con of all, which gave birth to the plandemic in the first place.
As noted earlier, the old people, most with comorbidities, who were the first
casualties of Covid-19, died not so much due to the respiratory infection as
due to an utterly irrational decision by the WHO, global oligarchs, political
leaders and public health officials to prevent early treatment of symptoms.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">It’s as if centuries
of development in medical science were ignored as the mass psychosis
manufactured around this “deadly pathogen” took hold. This suppression of early
treatment was deliberate and genocidal.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">So, instead of
simply using tried and tested pharmacological methods to reduce viral load, the
sick were told to isolate at home till they required oxygen as the pulmonary
phase of Covid-19 clogged up their lungs and hypoxia set in. Then they were
hospitalised and given an antiviral, remdesivir, which was administered too
late to be of any use and which damaged the patients' kidneys. The ensuing
water retention in turn exacerbated the lung problems. Tens of thousands of
patients were placed under heavy sedation and intubated. About 80% “treated” in
this way died.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">It wasn’t the virus
that killed them but the hospitals, doctors and nurses who followed the WHO and
CDC’s directives of denying them early treatment and then, upon being admitted
to hospital, failing to treat them appropriately even as they went around
self-importantly in their ridiculous personal protection equipment. The
psychological harm done to elderly patients isolated in ICU wards and separated
from robot-like medics and their families no doubt contributed to their demise.
Essentially, they were murdered.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">And with every “Covid”
death and every use of ventilators hospitals were rewarded with payments which,
in the US, amounted to tens of thousands of dollars. Death had become a lucrative
industry. As had face masks, billions of which now pollute the planet, and hand
sanitiser.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">But the original
pretext for the pandemic was an even more lucrative scam. The inventor of the
PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis, ruled
out the use of this device as a way of diagnosing disease or infection as far
back as during the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. But the likes of Fauci saw it as
the perfect vehicle to manufacture a crisis out of nothing.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Having ramped up
the fear with faked ICU footage of people supposedly dying horrendous deaths
from Covid, and asserting there was no available treatment, they used PCR to
create the impression that the virus was causing “cases” by the million based
on the presence of mere fragments of viral DNA or mRNA, even if dead or
dormant. Using cycles of amplification double what might legitimately identify
a virus, the number of false positives was estimated by censored scientists as
in the region of 95%.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">It is indeed
impossible to accept that any positive “cases” were identified through PCR because
the existence of viral infection is only verified when clinical symptoms are
present. There has also been a plethora of experts, censored by the TNI, who
claim convincingly that SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated in real time. It has
only ever been shown to exist in silico, a fancy way of saying as a DNA
sequence coded on a computer.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">So we have reached
a point where a machine diagnoses a disease based on a genetic sequence that
only exists as a computer code.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Under the false
pretext that this was a highly transmissible and highly pathogenic virus, the
world was cast under a pall of successive lockdowns of varying severity based
on supposed waves of “cases”, as people were denied early treatment. All
information from hospitals was carefully manipulated and choreographed to fit
whatever level of lockdown was required as people were controlled using fear
for their health. No statistics apart from total deaths were independently
verifiable, and analyses done by censored experts show no average excess
mortality anywhere in 2020 or 2021. The spike in deaths in places like New York
early on in the pandemic was, for instance, followed by months of below-average
mortality.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">But the world had
been hypnotised through group psychosis into accepting the official narrative
under the naive belief that doctors and pharmaceutical companies are fully
trustworthy. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that Big Pharma only
has profits in mind, while most physicians refused to buck the system even as
they were denied the right to treat patients with respiratory infections as
they would normally do so. A small minority of mainly independent or very
senior or retired medical professionals have spoken out and been threatened
with deregistratration for advocating the use of early treatment. They have
been summarily censored and deplatformed by YouTube and other social media. The
corporate media has ignored or ridiculed them for refusing to toe the line.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">With all this
afoot, the path was open for the masterstroke of profiteering and cementing control:
a novel gene-therapy drug falsely marketed as a vaccine.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">First though, they
had to get rid of, or neutralise, the opposition. And that opposition came in
the shape of a wealth of repurposed medicines available to physicians following
generations of treating the gamut of diseases and infections. So even early on,
when hydroxychloroquine plus zinc was shown to inhibit viral replication, the
global elite went so far as to publish a false paper in The Lancet claiming it
was useless and harmful. The paper was later withdrawn but the media had
already spread the lie and with then President Donald Trump having endorsed and
used it, the treatment was lumped together with him as beyond the pale.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Next up was the
antiparasitic Nobel-prize-winning generic ivermectin. Every effort has been
made to spread disinformation about a drug that has virtually eliminated
elephantiasis, river blindness, scabies and malaria, and has proven highly
effective as an antiviral and anti-inflammatory against all phases and variants
of Covid.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The global elite,
via Merck, early in 2021 published a statement in which the former sole
manufacturer of this 40-year-old drug claimed it was ineffective and
potentially dangerous. Merck had, meanwhile, secretly been commissioned by the
US government to develop an antiviral to combat Covid. In other words, a total
conflict of interests existed.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Despite 3.5 billion
doses having safely been administered to people over the past four decades, the
medical fraternity and TNI called ivermectin a veterinary drug. Jokes were made
about it being a horse dewormer. Yet for decades it has been on the WHO list of
essential medicines for humans. Like aspirin and penicillin, avermectin, the
original microbe discovered by Nobel prize winner Satoshi Ōmura of Tokyo’s
prestigious Kitasato Institute, is an organic, not a synthetic medication.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The suppression of
these treatments paved the way for the novel gene-therapy mRNA injections to be
granted emergency use authorisation. </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Even though
traditional vaccines take many years to develop and even longer to be granted
regulatory approval regarding safety and efficacy, the “pandemic” was used to
justify rolling out these experimental drugs to billions of people at “warp
speed”. Revelations from whistle-blowers have been made about major flaws in
Pfizer’s trials.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">A year on and these
“vaccines” have proved totally ineffective at preventing infection or
transmission while causing mutations of the virus and potentially hundreds of
thousands of deaths and millions of injuries.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Yet the more the
jabs have failed in the most vaccinated countries, the more governments have
doubled down on mandating them and the booster shots, which censored experts
warn are only adding to the build-up of coronavirus spike protein which the
mRNA jabs cause the cells to manufacture.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Politicians,
particularly in Australia, Austria and New Zealand, have used this opportunity
to usher in totalitarian medical apartheid and lockdowns that are little
different to those that are standard practice in Communist China.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">The ultimate aim
seems to be to introduce a global “social credit” digital passport to place
every individual under surveillance, as occurs already in parts of China.
Refuse to accept the latest jab “for your health” or use too much fuel and you
can be ostracised from society.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Is this what you
want for a virus with a 99.7% survival rate even without treatment with
ivermectin and associated medicines?</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;"><br />
<br />
</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA;">Every step the
authorities take must be contested and treated with the contempt it
deserves. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13pt;"><b>But as I write this there is a glimmer of hope that the
entire edifice is crumbling. It is reported in today’s Herald in Port Elizabeth
that the co-chairs of the Covid advisory committee in South Africa have
recommended that contact tracing and quarantining of so-called contacts be
abandoned. This process of incarcerating healthy people on the basis of “tests”
that have even given “Covid positive” results to watermelons and Coca Cola will
now, hopefully, be abandoned.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><b>Then they need to be honest and accept that the PCR and
other testing mechanisms were frauds. The entire basis for closing down the
global economy was based on a lie, just as their threatened closure of the
global economy based on fake climate alarmism is a lie. In the US and Europe,
as winter bites, the leftist woke ideology imposed by the Biden administration
and the Eurocrats is backfiring spectacularly. With soaring energy costs, it
hasn’t taken long to expose the anti-CO2 campaign as being as corrupt and
unscientific as the anti-ivermectin campaign.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Who knows, by this time next year we may have a world
returning to a better normal, where the woke agenda has been thoroughly
discredited and philanthro-capitalists like Gates, Soros and Clinton no longer
dictate global policy on anything. </b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-62363651708775593932017-07-03T06:27:00.003-07:002017-07-03T06:27:35.238-07:00Biko's legacy betrayed?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ1_Iu40xVlBNm-06qH5V8FPLH0r25wUWJ_rCRWSCZmH6BOcSMJAFHekCgoblo3kmb89N4YW57sJKtVUH5mY1wdK3PnEmaCAlnDjitWLIGiYrM18Uo0R5Pf5TK5k53cDwt6BWm0g_1wlQ/s1600/biko-woods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="299" data-original-width="666" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ1_Iu40xVlBNm-06qH5V8FPLH0r25wUWJ_rCRWSCZmH6BOcSMJAFHekCgoblo3kmb89N4YW57sJKtVUH5mY1wdK3PnEmaCAlnDjitWLIGiYrM18Uo0R5Pf5TK5k53cDwt6BWm0g_1wlQ/s320/biko-woods.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Black consciousness leader Steve Biko and Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods, who was banned by the apartheid government after Biko's death in detention in 1977.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
BOOK REVIEW</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Was the implementation of race-based affirmative action and
black economic empowerment necessary after the advent of black majority rule in
1994, when the ANC won the first non-racial elections?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or did this new form of racial engineering, in a bid to
redress the effects of apartheid, have precisely the opposite effect to what
was intended, boosting white entrepreneurship and making black people
increasingly dependent both on white business and on the state?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Kane-Berman, for decades chief executive of the SA
Institute of Race Relations, in his recently published memoir “Between Two
Fires – Holding the Liberal Centre in South African Politics”, makes a
persuasive case to show that it did the latter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He does so just as the debate intensifies around so-called
white monopoly capital and the supposed need for “radical economic
transformation”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seen from the viewpoint of black youth, where unemployment
is at record levels, the growing clamour for radical action on the economy is
understandable. Any objective observer will note that clearly, in the private
sector anyway, white people continue to rule the roost. They are the main
owners of businesses that generate jobs, create wealth, contribute tax revenues
and drive what little growth there still is in the economy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it need not have been like this. Kane-Berman explains
what went wrong and why. In a chapter titled “Race and redress”, he writes: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Apartheid was so pervasive and so destructive, as I myself
had described in countless articles and speeches over so many years, that there
was powerful appeal in the argument that only interventions by the state on a
similar scale in the name of ‘transformation’ could reverse its effects. But
even before the change of government and constitution in 1994 I questioned
this. The real alternative to apartheid, we said, was not another form of
social and racial engineering, but a society which prized economic as well as
political freedom and which was founded on equality before the law. This ruled
out racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action. Given the
Institute’s history and who we were, the decision to oppose affirmative action
and other racial legislation was the most important taken while I was running
the organisation. Nothing has altered my conviction that this was the right
decision.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That conviction has been strengthened as it has become
clear that the racial policies being pursued by the ANC go far beyond the
affirmative action contemplated in the Constitution. The National Democratic
Revolution described in the previous chapter of this memoir seeks not merely
redress for the past, but to impose an entirely new doctrine of demographic
proportionality on the country. Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president of both the
country and the ANC, has thus said that ‘race will remain an issue until all
echelons of our society are demographically representative”. I commented:
‘Given the country’s human needs and its skills profile, this can only have
dire consequences.’ “</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kane-Berman said the Institute “opposed affirmative action
legislation in its entirely, including the two most important statutes, the
Employment Equity Act of 1998 and the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment
Act of 2003”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The main objective of the first was to require employers to
use ‘preferential treatment’ for blacks (as well as women and disabled people)
to bring about ‘equitable representation’ at all levels and in all occupations
in companies with more than 50 employees or annual turnovers above certain thresholds
[…] within successive five-year periods. The main purposes of the second were
to get companies to hand over 26 per cent of their equity to blacks and procure
70 per cent of their goods and services from firms which had done the same.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kane-Berman says the first of these was gazetted as a bill
in 1997. “When we denounced it the labour minister, Tito Mboweni, accused us of
orchestrating public confusion.” Kane-Berman’s colleague Anthea Jeffery was
labelled a racist when she spoke out against it at a labour law conference in
Durban. Veteran anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman, however, said it would
“deter foreign investment”. Press reaction was mixed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Our opposition to the Employment Equity Act meant that from
very early on we were fundamentally at odds with the ANC on a key component of
its package of policies. We were also at odds with Cosatu and the SACP, as well
as with most business chambers, the media, and civil society. We still are.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then he cuts to the chase.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Right from the start we took the view that racial
discrimination, even if now supposedly designed to promote equality rather than
maintain white supremacy, was still wrong in principle. It violated the maxim
of equality before the law.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Earlier in his book, Kane-Berman talks about how, in the
1970s and 1980s, “the industrial colour bar had broken down during the ‘silent
revolution’ when shortages of white skills forced employers to train and
promote blacks despite the apartheid laws designed to prevent this. The way to
speed up this process of erosion in the post-apartheid era was to speed up the
rate of economic growth. If there were not more blacks in skilled and
managerial jobs, this was the result not of a shortage of demand for them but a
shortage of supply. This in turn would have to be remedied by repairing the
country’s education and training system.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remember talk about “black diamonds”? These were, and still
are, any black people with a decent tertiary education who are in such demand
they can command ludicrously high salaries. Kane-Berman explains how that came
about:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A survey had shown that nearly two thirds of companies
experienced ‘poaching’ of black professionals, while salary premiums paid to
such professionals were further evidence of both their scarcity and the demand
for them. Even before the employment equity legislation was enacted, a firm of
human resources consultants had said a third of companies were already paying
up to 50 per cent premiums on white salaries to get top black personnel. We
said it was absurd to require that Africans should comprise 50 per cent or more
of top management when only 3 per cent of Africans had tertiary qualifications
and only 25 per cent fell within the 35 to 64 age cohort from which managers
were usually drawn.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He explains how the imposition of these racial quotas aimed
at achieving “full demographic representation across all levels” was enforced
on pain of fines which started at R500 000 for a first offence, but under
amended legislation has risen to fines of up to R2.7-million or 10 per cent of
turnover.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This first negative impact had been on service delivery.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Though we criticised the legislation right from the start,
we actually underestimated the harm affirmative action would do to the public
as opposed to the private sector. The latter operated under the constraint that
poor appointments risked damaging businesses. No such constraints applied to
the public sector, where affirmative action has been applied without regard to
cost or consequences. Large numbers of skilled whites, including teachers, have
been retrenched, posts left vacant rather than filled with whites, and plenty
of people promoted or appointed for reasons of race alone. The police, the
defence force, provincial education departments, public hospitals, local
authorities, sewerage systems, and Eskom are among dozens upon dozens of public
entities that fail to work properly. The ANC has eviscerated large parts of the
civil service on which it relies to implement its policies. This has done as
much damage to the state and to the ANC’s own supporters as to the whites who
have lost or been denied jobs.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what of the impact on economic growth and black
self-esteem and self-reliance?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Our critique of BEE was essentially twofold. In the first
place the funding of BEE deals would come at the cost of funding new investment
in plant and equipment, and so be detrimental to growth. The second problem
involved a paradox. Instead of promoting black entrepreneurship, BEE required
white companies to do things for blacks. What was being measured was not black
success but white success. This was a strange form of liberation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“As long as this approach continued, BEE would fail to
capture the critical component of entrepreneurial success. Twelve years later,
the ANC itself bewails the absence of black industrialists – but fails to
acknowledge that BEE created the wrong incentives.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kane-Berman spelt out these likely effects of BEE in a
speech to the Johannesburg Rotary Club in 2009, entitled “Empowerment that
disempowers”. It is worth quoting at length from this speech, which really
captures the lunacy of BEE. He said:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“About 10 years ago the Institute hosted a panel discussion
about affirmative action. One of the speakers was Temba Nolutshungu of the Free
Market Foundation. He predicted that the main beneficiaries would be whites.
Formerly protected white youth who found that the Employment Equity Act limited
their job prospects would be forced to turn to the technical trades or become
entrepreneurs. Young blacks, on the other hand, would be channelled into
‘low-risk soft-option’ positions. This would reinforce white dominance and
blunt the entrepreneurial spirit among young blacks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another factor undermining black entrepreneurship relative
to white is that so many blacks have been absorbed into the public service.
Whites displaced to make way for them have been forced to set up their own
businesses. Professor Lawrence Schlemmer […] observed in April 2007 that the
number of small businesses owned by whites had increased very rapidly because of
the exodus from the public service.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kane-Berman continued, tellingly, in that 2009 speech, which
he reproduces in his book: “BEE is more about white than black achievement.
White-owned companies are given ratings for doing things for blacks. BEE empowers
white firms to get contracts from the black government. Black individuals
benefit, but do they have to perform in a competitive marketplace? What are the
government’s priorities: making backs independent or whites compliant?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Brian Molefe, CEO of the Public Investment Corporation,
complained in August 2007 that whites were not doing enough to develop black
talent. But how much are blacks doing to develop it? Given its record in
education, the government is certainly not doing very much. Nor is ‘transformation’
doing much. This is because the focus is on making white companies harness
blacks, rather than on creating new black or non-racial institutions.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then the crux of the argument, which brings in a struggle
hero from the 1970s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I wonder what Steve Biko would have thought. Professor
Sipho Seepe, at the time president of the Institute, wrote in September 2007:
‘Given Biko’s emphasis on self-reliance, it is reasonable to assume that he
would have great discomfort with affirmative action and the current form of
BEE. These forms of intervention discourage self-reliance and
self-actualisation. They perpetuate the victim mentality and discourage an
enterprising spirit. They also encourage a debilitating sense of entitlement.’
“</div>
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Note that here Kane-Berman was quoting a prominent black
academic. He then addresses another key factor:</div>
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“It is sometimes suggested that BEE requirements are not
very different from the policies used by Afrikaners to build up their economic
power. But there is a difference: in the 1930s the savings of tens of thousands
of individual Afrikaners were mobilised to start financial institutions. Why
have the savings of the burgeoning black middle class not been similarly
mobilised to create black financial institutions?</div>
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“Joel Netshitenzhe, until recently a top man in the
president’s office, said that apartheid had crushed the entrepreneurial spirit
among blacks. But the present government’s policies are doing little to
liberate that spirit. Quite the reverse. Vincent Maphai, chairman of BHP
Billiton, commented in July 2009: ‘Under apartheid people were most creative
and the community flourished. People did not sit back and think what will the
state do for me? They were empowered by apartheid but ironically disempowered
by liberation.’ ”</div>
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Then Kane-Berman tackles the impact on foreign investment:</div>
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“BEE requirements have almost certainly deterred foreign
direct investment (FDI), in the mining industry in particular. Lower FDI has
meant lower rates of economic growth, so BEE has retarded the generation of
jobs. So we can reconfigure President Thabo Mbeki’s old ‘two-nations’ divide.
Instead of rich-and-white versus poor-and-black, we have a growing divide
between whites who have to look after themselves and blacks who are becoming
increasingly dependent on the state. This is profoundly disempowering. As
Professor Achielle Mbembe of Wits wrote in April 2007, ‘It risks codifying
within the law and in the minds of its beneficiaries the very powerlessness it
aims to redress.’</div>
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“What will all this mean for race relations?” asks
Kane-Berman. “In May 2002, Tim Modise wrote: ‘One problem with seeing ourselves
as permanent victims is that it makes those who believe they are racially
superior feel vindicated.’ In August 2008 Professor Jonathan Jansen, now rector
and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State and also president of
the Institute, said that affirmative action ‘perpetuates the myth among white
people that black people are inferior’.”</div>
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So the next time the likes of Black First Land First, and
other racially obsessed groups vent their anger against white journalists currently
exposing Gupta-Zuma corruption or “white monopoly capital”, they might want to
reflect on the view that it was the ANC’s own policies, implemented over the
past two decades, which have, according to the above evidence, disempowered the
very people they were meant to empower.</div>
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Clearly a major policy shift towards a more liberal,
non-racial democracy is long overdue if we are to prevent the already badly
holed ship of state from sinking completely. </div>
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* “Between Two Fires” by John Kane-Berman is published by
Jonathan Ball</div>
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<![endif]--><br />Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-2675384726204318292016-03-14T00:45:00.002-07:002016-03-14T00:51:48.262-07:00Changing colonial-era names<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It may have escaped most people’s notice, but the ANC
government is back to its name-changing obsession in the Eastern Cape.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The latest example, reported in the Weekend Post (March 5,
2016), is the changing of Queenstown to Komani. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa has given the
go-ahead for this change to “its original African name”, as the report puts it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
According to the February government gazette, Mount Frere
will also be renamed KwaBhaca, Elliot will become Khowa and Mount Ayliff will
be eMaXesibeni. Lady Frere will be renamed Cacadu.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As a fifth generation white South African whose
great-great-great grandparents came out with the 1820 British settlers I take
serious offence at this decision.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
And I do so as an individual who opposed apartheid
throughout his adult life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Queenstown, like all the others mentioned, is a product of
the hard work of the early settlers, in conjunction with the labour of black
people in the area. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The town was founded in early 1853 under the direction of
Sir George Cathcart, who named the settlement, and then fort, after Queen
Victoria. Work on its railway connection to the port city of East London was
begun by the Cape government of John Molteno in 1876, and the line was
officially opened on 19 May 1880</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The genesis of Queenstown, famous for its school, Queen’s
College, was replicated along similar lines for every other town and city in
this country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Bizarrely, when I was growing up in East London, the psychiatric
hospital in Queenstown was called Komani. It still is. So immediately you also
have a rather sad connotation attached to the name.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Why does this renaming fetish offend me, when I was part of
the anti-apartheid struggle from my teenage years when I first started writing
letters to the editor of the Daily Dispatch attacking apartheid? When I worked
as a volunteer for the Progressive Federal Party of Helen Susman, and later as
a poorly paid organiser for the party in the politically unfertile terrain of
the Border district? When I became a reporter on the anti-apartheid Evening
Post at the start of the 1984 United Democratic Front-led uprising, working
closely with veteran township reporter Jimmy Matyu? When I reported daily for
the Post, and later the Eastern Province Herald, on the morally indefensible
policy of apartheid, as UDF leaders were rounded up by security police?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I oppose these name changes simply because I abhor the idea
of trying to erase history. What happened in the past, in the long process
which led to the formation of South Africa as a single, unitary state, was a
complex, multifaceted process.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I am all too aware that this land we call South Africa was
occupied by the San, Khoi and various black African tribes when the Europeans
first arrived. It is a long, often sorry history of exploitation which really
began when ship’s surgeon Jan van Riebeeck led the first settlement at the Cape
of Good Hope in 1652. Initially all the Dutch East India Company wanted to do
was to establish a small refreshment station (Company gardens were developed)
to supply their ships heading to India and the Far East.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But over the next two centuries, the Dutch and French
Huguenots who later joined them, gradually spread eastward, taking land as
farms and establishing towns along the way, including as far east as
Graaff-Reinet and Uitenhage, both of which feature wonderful Cape Dutch
architecture. But they also subjugated the Khoisan, either taking them on as
indentured labourers, or pushing them to the periphery of habitable territory.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The British settlers and the 1857 German settlers in East
London and the Border area extended this process, occupying the land and going
about the business of what they were sent out to do in the first place:
establish a buffer between the Xhosa territories to the east and the Cape
Colony and open up the country to trade and industry through the establishment
of infrastructure like ports, railway lines, roads, electricity, dams, and so
on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Meanwhile, mainly Scottish missionaries established the
first western schools and colleges for black people, with Nelson Mandela being
a prime example of the sort of education such people received.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Which is an appropriate point to draw attention to one of
the great hypocrisies of this name-changing obsession.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
If colonial names are so hurtful and abhorrent to black
South Africans, why on earth is there not a clamour from the ANC to change the
name of Fort Hare University? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As Wikipedia notes: “Originally, Fort Hare was a British
fort in the wars between British settlers and the Xhosa of the 19th century.
Some of the ruins of the fort are still visible today, as well as graves of
some of the British soldiers who died while on duty there.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Wikipedia tells us further: “Missionary activity under James
Stewart led to the creation of a school for missionaries from which at the
beginning of the 20th century the university resulted.” Fort Hare University
was established exactly 100 years ago this year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The only demand for Fort Hare’s name to be changed has come,
I believe, from the PAC, which wants it named after its founder, former student
Robert Sobukwe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Surely the sort of scenario we have in Port Elizabeth is the
best solution. By calling the metro Nelson Mandela Bay, you pay tribute to a
great conciliatory leader from the Eastern Cape (who, paradoxically had few
links with PE), while retaining the names of the original settler towns of Port
Elizabeth and Uitenhage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But why did they change the name of the Market Square to the
Vuyisile Mini Square? Mini was a struggle hero, killed brutally by the apartheid
regime in 1964, as were the Pebco Three and Cradock Four in 1985, at a time
when I was identifying closely with their struggle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
But why not instead erect a monument to Mini on the Market
Square?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The Market Square in Port Elizabeth literally grew out of
the dust and dung of the town’s origins as a small port from which products,
most notably merino wool and ostrich feathers farmed in the Karoo in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century, were exported abroad. In so doing, the port integrated this part of
the nascent South African state into the global economy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Similarly, Main Street grew organically as the town
developed. It is as old as Port Elizabeth, that is 194 years, and there was no
need to rename it after the late Govan “Oom Gov” Mbeki, the gentleman communist
party and ANC leader who release from Robben Island I reported on for the
Evening Post when he was freed in Port Elizabeth on November 5, 1987.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Each and every town and village with a European name (and
many in the former Transkei with Xhosa names) is not a product of a deliberate
policy called colonialism so much as the creation of the hard work and
ingenuity of the settlers who developed them – obviously with the help of cheap
black labour. But at least that labour was gradually becoming integrated into
the first-world economy, a process which, however, was set back decades by the
apartheid policies of the National Party when it came to power in 1948,
particularly as far as social and residential integration is concerned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Our history is too interesting, too nauseating, too
wonderful and too terrible for place names like Queenstown simply to be wiped
off the map in the name of political correctness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The ANC, to its credit, decried the recent attacks on
colonial-era monuments like the Queen Victoria and Horse Memorial statues in
Port Elizabeth. But the hatred inherent in removing names like Queenstown and
Mount Ayliff is little different to that which motivates people to attack
monuments that have been around for more than 100 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
What it says to white people in this country is that their familes’
centuries of contributing to the westernisation and development of this land as
a first-world economy is totally of no value and to be condemned. We’ll just
pretend, they seem to imply, that all the advances we see on the southern tip
of Africa occurred as if by a miracle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The reality, as we all know, is totally different. I’ve said
it before, but it seems it needs repeating. Without the European settlers we
would not have modern infrastructure, including a road and rail network, dams
and irrigation schemes, harbours and airports, towns and cities, schools and
universities, electricity and treated water. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
We wouldn’t have engineers, doctors, dentists,
psychiatrists, physiotherapists and so on. We wouldn’t have cars and tractors, radios,
computers, television and cellphones, nor the internet and all that goes with
it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I, as an individual, can take no credit for any of that. But
I do know that all these things are the product of Europeans settling across
the length and breadth of this land, as well as further north in what are now Zambia,
Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as, to a lesser extent, in Angola and Mozambique.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
In fact, renaming these towns is, in my view, tantamount to
hate speech and should be investigated by the Human Rights Commission on that
basis. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
It bears all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing, in that it
seeks to eliminate from the collective memory the contribution of hardy,
enterprising settlers who, in the case of the 1820 settlers, were literally
dumped, like today’s squatters, in the inhospitable Albany district, there to
eke out an existence with the minimum of support from Britain and under the
constant threat of attack by Xhosa and Khoikhoi.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I urge the HRC to investigate this Orwellian attempt to
expunge hundreds of years of our history from the country’s collective memory. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
There can be no quibble with combining isiXhosa names, like
Makana, with that of Grahamstown, as currently is the case with most overarching
district municipalities and metros. Surely that is adequate recognition, along
with some appropriate statuary, as suggested for Port Elizabeth’s market square?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Like Rhodes University, Grahamstown has become a brand name,
as have all the others. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Eliminate those widely recognised brand names and the Xhosa
names will simply be lost and forgotten in a global economy which will be none
too keen to try to get its head around the Xhosa clicks, as beautiful and
intriguing as they may sound to those of us who grew up with them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Remember that Fort Hare is just such a brand name, as is the
historic Port Elizabeth township of New Brighton. Are they going to be eliminated
too? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Where will it end? Already university art works and historic
collections are under threat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Will they start burning books with western links? If so, the
entire scientific output of the Western world since the Renaissance, arguably
mankind’s greatest achievement, will have to be eradicated. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
They may as well get rid of their computers and smartphones,
too, since they are also a product of western intellectual endeavour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Surely from these examples the lunacy and hypocrisy of such
selective iconoclasm becomes more than self-evident?</div>
Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-29481952045797894902015-06-23T01:58:00.001-07:002015-06-23T02:18:04.420-07:00Art, journalism and astronomy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This is a random selection of images for preservation in the cloud. But each has a story, which I tell in the captions.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFBVI3Kw-TqxNQvEWpfYqjLC6QWNpc2aGDQ74x_ukKArVpSrEoj4yo_v1_8EyL0tMOo4ZaVgBKWEZqiMrGwqwhNHyy5tRxr_bPppeZ5vMC3YX3Zzmqk2vCBtuBTiR81Zuw7rZJPjLWYM/s1600/1977comp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFBVI3Kw-TqxNQvEWpfYqjLC6QWNpc2aGDQ74x_ukKArVpSrEoj4yo_v1_8EyL0tMOo4ZaVgBKWEZqiMrGwqwhNHyy5tRxr_bPppeZ5vMC3YX3Zzmqk2vCBtuBTiR81Zuw7rZJPjLWYM/s320/1977comp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the only photo I have of my final year work in the composition painting exam which I did for my National Diploma in Art and Design at the East London Technical College Art School under Jack Lugg. I had myself worried as I did this work in 1977. I was such a political animal, working regularly for the liberal Progressive Federal Party, I felt compelled to paint something reflecting the June 1976 student uprising, which began in Soweto but swept across the country. My composition needed some spark, which on the final day or two of the week-long exam I provided as I took a palette knife to the thing and injected some ethereal elements which, in a way, I believe, reflect the young souls lost in this conflict between the oppressed black SA youth and the might of the military and police. I also had two years of conscription hanging over my head, so my distaste for the men, in firing squad formation on the right, is perhaps understandable. I've included shacks and mine dumps and falling red figures on the left. Looking at it today, it seems more reflective of the turbulent 1980s, or even the Marikana massacre under ANC rule in 2013. The more things in SA change, the more they stay the same.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwIe6yPGoOcpH7VgjYpSd95NS5575ktZW7F95d_dkuU6cBuEOcjnRDV1PQKUH8MXMaU4c4Zhd9XaWkT4zsr4ks8mdjgCD4l9yyM0Amlv6qEOLMM_yGJtWHpBW2hk1k8CdUyoKrQM1vuM/s1600/1977figure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWwIe6yPGoOcpH7VgjYpSd95NS5575ktZW7F95d_dkuU6cBuEOcjnRDV1PQKUH8MXMaU4c4Zhd9XaWkT4zsr4ks8mdjgCD4l9yyM0Amlv6qEOLMM_yGJtWHpBW2hk1k8CdUyoKrQM1vuM/s320/1977figure.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
For figure painting I did probably my most complete realistic painting. This too took a week. What I most enjoy about it is the background. I think I captured the pose quite well, but the easels, door and walls of the painting studio bring back happy times as a student at the art school.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbMiqOyJVOlC24aMzd_h0Wnp4b5D3oDwduJCjnX_pidpzMmlYpBmLym6MUugovjY5wwIvSA-sBTlnD1udbzZek378xB08SQH9y38_jQm_UtNHdCWvMpy-wOxa0exjBUZg9fW50mMMkzVA/s1600/DSCN1832.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbMiqOyJVOlC24aMzd_h0Wnp4b5D3oDwduJCjnX_pidpzMmlYpBmLym6MUugovjY5wwIvSA-sBTlnD1udbzZek378xB08SQH9y38_jQm_UtNHdCWvMpy-wOxa0exjBUZg9fW50mMMkzVA/s320/DSCN1832.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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This cartoon hung in the Herald subs' room for decades. It disappeared during a refurbishment in the early 2000s. Luckily I had made photocopies of it, which I have combined here. On the back was a caption, stating that these were "Sub-editors of the Eastern Province Herald, 1949-50". They are, from left, "Les Jones, retired Herald racing editor; Hendrik Wannenburg, retired chief sub-editor of the Evening Post in the 1970s; Bill Chadwick, chief sub-editor of the Herald (died in office in the mid-1950s); Dick Clarke, who drew the cartoon and later is believed to have occupied a senior post on the BBC. On the floor: Ed Williams, retired chief sub-editor of the Herald in the 1960s." The message is clear and remains true today. A newspaper, unlike the internet, is a finite product. You have to choose carefully what stories to use and how to use them. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Pnp9eZZEyXvTPL1zwxrH3vXD1Arr3FHYRJDQ1gIBup6UW9cMrjzy62y-OOUPdWVx5Y01ZBuYjBaos0ygbe5ekHfdNl-jUUKI65USIL9T-ZpFCGDVuxMVrI6yCb7GcTw_cvUQ52lOK4g/s1600/jc+-+Copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Pnp9eZZEyXvTPL1zwxrH3vXD1Arr3FHYRJDQ1gIBup6UW9cMrjzy62y-OOUPdWVx5Y01ZBuYjBaos0ygbe5ekHfdNl-jUUKI65USIL9T-ZpFCGDVuxMVrI6yCb7GcTw_cvUQ52lOK4g/s320/jc+-+Copy.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
<br />
My grandfather, Joseph Clifford Bentley, with the telescope he brought to Port Elizabeth as chairman of the PE People's Astronomical Society. He was company secretary at PE Tramways in the mid-20th century.Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-83154033847637546052014-08-12T02:09:00.003-07:002014-08-12T02:46:09.942-07:00GROOTHOND, A Dog's Life<br />
This is the tale (tail?) of the hippest hound of the psychedelic seventies. It is an almost entirely true story, told by a remarkable dog that lived in Bonza Bay, near East London, with his owners/mates as they grew up and went through a series of surreal experiences in the 1970s.<br />
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<br />
<br />
CHAPTER I<br />
<br />
Where to start? With my name, I suppose.<br />
<br />
I was originally known as “Brak”, an insensitive Afrikaans term for a mixed-breed dog which, I can’t deny, I was.<br />
<br />
My life began inauspiciously. One of half a dozen little mutts born to an Alsatian mother following an “oops” pregnancy after a close encounter with a roving Rhodesian ridgeback, I was the runt, a bit like old Jock of the Bushveld. You know, that wonderful story about the tiniest, ugliest Staffie in the litter, who accompanied Percy FitzPatrick on his adventures in the eastern Transvaal in the 1880s.<br />
<br />
What a life that must have been – so different to what I had to put up with in my formative years on this earth.<br />
<br />
Dogs need just a few things to make them happy. We need a steady supply of nutritious food (and water). And we need plenty of exercise. Throw in some adventure and we’re in our element. We have a very sharp sense of smell, so the more varied and interesting the smells of nature, the better. For some reason, we just love smelling any and everything. It gives us a bit of a rush. I won’t go into that rather unedifying habit we have of getting up close and personal behind the odd – for want of a better word – bitch. That is a side of our nature we won’t be discussing here. It’s personal, man.<br />
<br />
No, it is a good, wholesome life that we dogs most aspire to. And key to that, as noted earlier, is plenty of exercise. Curiously, most domesticated mammalian life on this planet seems – like their owners – to have lost the plot in this regard. I mean, we have bodies defined essentially by being comprised of a series of muscles over a bony skeleton. In the case of humans, their skin is covered with a paltry bit of almost invisible hair. But those of us of the canine brigade, like our feline and bovine compatriots, have not skin, but hide – which is rather thick and covered with a coat of, in my case, beautifully shining brown hair.<br />
<br />
Ja, despite everything, I grew up as something of a hunk. Just like old Jock and that ugly duckling I’ve heard about, my initial diminutive size and unprepossessing appearance were a clever deceit aimed at ensuring whoever reared me to adulthood fed my better and more plentifully than would normally have been the case. I was, in a sense, mollycoddled as a puppy. And boy did I shoot up.<br />
<br />
Very soon the scrap of yard behind our tiny house on the Quigney, a poor, fairly rundown beachfront suburb in East London, got way too small for me.<br />
<br />
Look, my first owners had been good to me. A working class Afrikaans couple, with two small kids, they didn’t stint when it came to feeding me. So initially I was a happy chappy. I had two small boys to knock around with as a pup and life was hunky-dory. But as a reached my teens – in dog years that is – I became rebellious. Of course this was the early 1970s and, South Africa being a few years behind the rest of the world, I must have tapped into the turbulent spirit that was permeating parts of a society which even I was aware was being rigidly controlled by a nasty, almost totalitarian, racist regime. How did I know? Because I had witnessed my K9 comrades, co-opted by the SA Police, carrying out some rather nasty arrests of black people who happened to be passing our home. I saw them, teeth bared, snarling and barking like maniacs, tear into this group of seemingly innocent passersby. And I saw the cops chuck the people into the back of a van. So yes, I had a sense of what sort of a place I was living in.<br />
<br />
But the worst was, I was stuck on a postage-stamp-sized (that’s a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean) piece of property. And as I grew, I developed a desperate urge to get out of there. My owners – even the kids – seemed to lose interest in me as I went through dog puberty and became an adult. The much-talked-about walks along the beachfront failed to materialise. I became like so many dogs the world over: trapped within the confines of four fences or walls, and neglected for most of the day and night, apart from when they remembered to feed me. Like all those other dogs around the world I resorted to what all caged animals do: I let off steam. I barked and I barked. I yelped and I howled. Oh how I howled, especially on quiet, still nights when the moon was riding full across a cloud-free sky. It must have been the residual wolf genes in me. I can’t explain how it happened. But as life grew increasingly lonely and desperate, so I took revenge in the only way I knew: I made a noise which was often taken up by my unseen fellow inmates trapped in similar conditions around the neighbourhood. We would kick up a cacophony that often saw the police being called out and our owners chastised and ordered to keep us under control.<br />
<br />
Ja, as I looked towards the future, I – Brakkie, as the kids called me, enjoying the diminutive form, despite my ever-increasing size – was faced with a rather depressing scenario. Was this all there was to it, I asked myself. A life confined to a few dozen square metres of the Quigney?<br />
<br />
No. I was a grown man (er, dog) and those fences, which once seemed so high when I was a puppy, were now easily scalable. The question was: did I have the guts to take that life-changing leap of faith; to escape this god-forsaken existence and see what waited on the other side?<br />
<br />
Was I ready to experience the wind-blown gusts of freedom? You bet I was. And I didn’t care what waited beyond those fences. It had to be better than this.<br />
<br />
I resolved to make good my escape.<br />
<br />
I leaped to freedom.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER II<br />
<br />
And it almost instantaneously cost me my life.<br />
<br />
Look, as noted earlier, I was quite aware of what roads were all about. I knew about cars and trucks. But it is one thing being taken for the (very) odd walk on a leash. When you are free it is all too easy to take your safety for granted, to act fast and loose with your very life. So, as I landed outside the yard after that startlingly great jump – in which I had to use my paws to latch onto the top of the fence and my powerful shoulder muscles to pull myself over the top – I made a near-fatal mistake. I ran straight across the tarred road – and a car had to scream to a halt, swerve and nearly crash into a lamppost to avoid me. At least that is what its driver made the car do. I heard loud cursing coming from the figure inside the car’s open window as I fled across an open park, with my tail firmly between my legs. But I was otherwise unscathed. Somewhat psychologically scarred yes, but I still had all my limbs in the right place.<br />
<br />
And weren’t they just in the right place. Like Nelson Mandela did in jail (I heard about him much later, which is another story), I had ensured I spent my time in captivity keeping myself fit. So, small though my prison had become, I had used every inch of that space to keep myself in tip-top condition. Yeah, I was now the dog equivalent of Cassius Clay (or Muhammad Ali, as he later called himself). If I had been a human heavyweight boxer, I would not have been a big, cumbersome slugger who used brute strength to pummel his opponents to a pulp. No, like Clay-Ali, I was a finely honed, beautifully muscled specimen of canine manhood, even if I say so myself. My muscles rippled, the sheen as the sun shone on my coat defining their powerful elegance. So, as I ventured further and further from my erstwhile home, I gained in confidence, all the time making sure I stayed as far as possible from the roads. When I did have to cross one – as I smelt each and every lamppost, gate and fence – I looked carefully to ensure no car would knock me over. I was a dog, okay, but I wasn’t thick. In fact, I was pretty damn bright, in a doggy sort of way. But clever is no match for a pack of rottweilers, which I just happened to encounter on that first day of freedom.<br />
<br />
Call it cowardice. Call it plain old fear. But when I spotted the three terrors leaping over a garden wall a few houses away, I knew I had only one option, and that was to hightail it for all I was worth. My breeding, thank heavens, had equipped me for just this eventuality. Alsatian-ridgeback versus rottie? There was no contest, man. Sure they would have torn me to shreds in a fight. Even one of them would have been problematic. But when it came to a straight chase I was never going to be caught.<br />
<br />
They gave up after two blocks. They may have been strong as oxen, but I think they were a trifle out of condition. Perhaps too many years spent bullying little poodles and fox terriers, spaniels and chihuahuas, had led to the onset of complacency. They had let themselves go, as humans would say. And they had run somewhat to fat. All that working out as youngsters had given them admirably muscular torsos. But a shortage of exercise in recent months and years had seen their girths widen – almost unnoticeably at first. Inexorably, though, they lost what speed and dexterity they originally possessed. End result: they didn’t see me for dust.<br />
<br />
After that narrow escape, I found myself in a different-looking part of the Quigney. The buildings were taller. Blocks of flats instead of small houses. Interesting. Shops too. I went into a butchery looking for something to eat (not to mention some water) and was sent flying out the front door by a broom-wielding proprietor. Fortunately, however, as I returned a few minutes later – drawn again by the smell of raw meat – I managed to locate a gap in the fence on the side of the property. I squeezed my frame through it and found a treasure trove of meat waste. Fatty offcuts and gristly bones just chucked into a steel bath, of all things. Well I grabbed as much as I could in my jaws, squeezed back through that hole in the fence, and fled. Having devoured those chunks, and gnawed on the bones for a while, I found I was incredibly thirsty.<br />
It was then, as I languished, somewhat forlornly, outside a tall building, that DJ found me.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER III<br />
<br />
Naturally I didn’t know his name at that point. I had lain down, panting, my tongue hanging out as far as it was possible to go. We sweat mainly through our paws, but partially through our tongues, by the way. And it was a scorching summer’s day. I was tired, hot and thirsty. And it was probably this that stirred a compassionate corner of DJ’s heart. I looked up and saw a young man of about 18. He had long, curly black hair, was as thin as a rake, wore a nondescript tie-dyed green T-shirt and long, baggy, blackish-blue bell-bottom jeans. He was barefoot, with the unravelled strands of his jeans where the hem should have been, hanging over long, slender, artist’s toes. If you know what I mean. He started talking to me, patting me. He was clearly eccentric, because he went into a nearby shop and asked the owner – no demanded – that he give him a bowl of water. He put the bowl down for me and I drank like I had never drunk before. He went back into the shop – a Chinese corner shop – and ordered another round of water for me. I had found my first truly good human friend. Dogs need human friends. We don’t do feral existences very well. Cats are better at fending for themselves. They can catch birds, mice, rats, lizards, even cockroaches, and somehow survive on what they get. But dogs? Man, too many generations of domestication have left us pretty well at the mercy of humans. The key is to find a good owner. Just like that Toy Story movie (about which I’d learn much later, in my dotage, but that’s another story), you needed someone who valued you for your intrinsic self. Not someone who would like you as a puppy but then ditch you when you grew up and became your own person – I mean dog. Or, in the case of toys, played with you when you were clean and new, but then abandoned you as the novelty wore off.<br />
<br />
Oh, did I mention that this guy, my first human friend, was playing a “skolatol” when he first came upon me? At least that’s how I later heard the word pronounced. Properly known as a Jew’s harp, he was twanging away much better, while at the same time humming a bluesy song, “Hey Joe”, which I was later to discover was by Jimi Hendrix. As our friendship developed, I would go for walks with him along the Esplanade, and he – with massive dark glasses obscuring his face – would yowl away on a kazoo, playing the lead guitar solos of many a Hendrix and Cream song, his fingers playing the notes air-guitar style like Joe Cocker at Woodstock, much to the amazement of the people he passed. But that was some way in the future.<br />
<br />
I think DJ realised quite soon that he would have to keep me. I had no collar, thank heavens, or he might have been able to trace my owners and felt obliged to return me to them. Or he could have opted to call the SPCA and have them take me to the pound for an even worse form of captivity – in cages, waiting desperately for someone to adopt you. (I heard about this later – but that, too, is another story). DJ sat in the gutter with me alongside him. He was twanging his skolatol, happy, it seemed, just to have me for company as he let rip with another piece of musical magic, this time Strange Days by The Doors. It was about then that a young Afrikaans boy walked past with his mother, and remarked: “Ma, kyk daardie groot hond!”<br />
<br />
And I was big. At that very moment I had got up to stretch and nuzzle DJ’s woolly head with my nose. He didn’t seem to mind. But the moment he heard those words, he seemed to become transformed and a broad smile crossed his face. “Groot hond.” That was Afrikaans for “big dog”. “Ma, look at that big dog!” the boy had said in Afrikaans. But DJ wasn’t Afrikaans-speaking. In fact, he delighted in being English-speaking, and when he heard those words, he repeated them to himself as a pukka Englishman or woman might say them. Like if you were living in England now and knew nothing of Afrikaans and you saw those words written down – “groot hond” – how would you pronounce them? You wouldn’t say them the Afrikaans way, with a guttural “g” and the double-o rhyming with that in the word “boor”. You also wouldn’t pronounce the Afrikaans word for dog – hond – to rhyme with, well I can’t even think of an English word to rhyme with it, it’s THAT Afrikaans. Anyway, to cut a longish story short, DJ instantly saw the humour in saying those words in an English way. And he combined them. So I became Groothond, the “groot” rhyming with boot, and the “hond” with fond. In later years my name would often be shortened to “Groots” or even “Hond”. But when, as often occurred, someone was angry with me, then the full, farcical name would be employed. I mean how can you seriously shout “Groothond!”, in that plummy English way, and not feel embarrassed? Especially given the size of me. But this is what DJ and my other friends, who I’ll introduce shortly, did. And I loved them for it.<br />
<br />
So DJ named me Groothond. And, breaking all the rules of the private hotel he stayed in, he smuggled me up to his bedroom, while he plotted how he could hang onto me.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER IV<br />
<br />
DJ lived with his mom in two adjacent rooms in the Sea Vista Hotel on the Quigney. It was quite a nice place, really, because every meal was provided by the management, so it was pretty much like a hotel, except the people who stayed there were permanent residents. Of course they came and went, but those like DJ and his mom had been there for several years when I arrived on the scene.<br />
<br />
But my situation was untenable. It couldn’t last. No animals were allowed in the hotel. So although DJ was able to sneak me in and out via the fire escape, it wasn’t long before the management twigged that he had an “illegal” living with him in his room and they ordered his mom to ensure the dog was gotten rid of as soon as possible.<br />
<br />
DJ’s mom understood his love for the dog. She too did not want to see Groothond taken off to the SPCA. But where else could he go?<br />
<br />
Well DJ knew one place, one place like none other on the planet, where a dog like Groothond (and there were no other dogs quite like me; that’s just a turn of phrase) would be happy. He told me about Bonza Bay and I knew that if I was to lose DJ as an owner, then the place he proposed taking me to would almost certainly compensate for that loss. It all depended on what humans I got.<br />
<br />
DJ had been studying fine art for the past year or two at a high school in Belgravia Crescent, under a famed artist and teacher called Gary Biggs. He had started at the same time as his friend, IB, who just happened to live in Bonza Bay. And, he told me in a way that wasn’t actually in words but more through the sense of delight he exuded, that IB had four siblings. They too only had a mother, no dad, their father having recently passed away. So they would need a surrogate dad around the place and I was to be that presence in this home.<br />
<br />
DJ had been visiting IB and his siblings on and off for several months (I learnt all this later). They had met after starting a three-year art course, having opted out of traditional school with all its rules and regs, which, being nascent hippies, they were rebelling against. I would also hear much talk about them rebelling against the National Party, apartheid, old toppies (except their moms), military conscription, the Vietnam War, and plenty more besides. They were human youths in the early 1970s and it was what you did if you had a conscience and a few brain cells, they seemed to suggest. So they sought a sort of freedom similar to that to which I aspired, I thought. But would DJ be able to inveigle me into the hearts, and home, of IB and his sibs?<br />
<br />
He had a cunning plan.<br />
<br />
DJ visited IB and the rest of the Cooper clan at their home in Bonza Bay, taking a bus from the Quigney after insisting to the rather reluctant driver that his dog would come with him even if (as happened) he had to pay a second fare. Barefoot as usual, DJ arrived with me in tow at the Cooper home with its wall of plate glass and panoramic view, between tall coastal dunes, of a swathe of sea: the Indian Ocean. This was heaven on earth, man. Like DJ, when he sometimes in winter would tie up his takkies with tiny pieces of cotton, so he kept me not on a leash that was one of those strong leather ones. No, it was just a slender piece of string, loosely attached to my powerful neck. I was sensible enough not to succumb to my baser urges and escape this non-leash and attack the handful of dogs we spotted as we walked from the bus stop to the Cooper house, with its lovely large yard out the front.<br />
<br />
DJ spent a couple of days with the Coopers, as it was the summer holidays, sleeping on the couch, with me happily snoozing beside him on the floor (or on the couch when I could sneak onto it while no-one was looking – it was far more comfortable!). IB’s mom was smitten with me, and, as DJ had expected, it wasn’t long before she agreed to let me stay there permanently. This then was to be my base for a life that revolved around some rather peculiar goings on, remembering of course that it was the early 1970s, and this family was like no other. Indeed, they had to be odd for the likes of DJ and a dog called Groothond to have fitted in so well.<br />
<br />
What we got up to I’ll tell you about in the coming chapters. I hope you don’t get too shocked. But remember this was the early 1970s.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER V<br />
<br />
The Cooper kids seemed to be torn between two forces. On the one hand, they had grown up rather healthily in terms of all the time they spent on the beach, which was a few minutes’ walk from their home in Bonza Bay. But as the eldest, IB, fell under the influence of his classmates at the art school, so the inevitable happened. I was plunged, via DJ and my new home, into the strange world of illicit dagga smoking and a devotion, bordering on an obsession, to rock music in all its guises.<br />
<br />
But first a bit about my new surroundings. The yard on the Coopers’ corner plot was not fenced in in the conventional sense. There was no front gate for a start, and the front door was in fact the back door. Yes, visitors entered off Lotus Avenue down a short flight of brick steps. There was a nice little entrance hall, even though this was effectively the back of the house. The front, as noted earlier, was a wall of glass, which meant as you entered the lounge you got a superb view of sand dunes and a large segment of Indian Ocean. As a dog, though, this was not the feature that first struck me. No, what I most enjoyed was that there were only a few hedges and token wire fencing around the property, all easily penetrated. So I was free to roam where and when I pleased. And there was no canine competition in my new home. The Coopers had been “between dogs” when DJ foisted me upon them, so the only pets – though I’d hardly call myself that – I had to contend with were two cats, Katinka, a soft, fluffy grey creature, and another older, wiser black-and-white cat called Granny (a tom, he had always looked like an old lady, hence the name). Come supper time, when we received our one meal of the day – a large bowl of dog pellets mixed with some fishy concoction out of a tin – it was usually supplied by one of the younger siblings. Naturally, given my size and strength, I would wolf mine down in a trice and then go raiding the cats’ bowls. Consequently, at supper time, the two of them would have to be on their toes – or paws – to ensure they got to eat an adequate amount before I finished off their portions. It was not unusual to see me pushing a bowl of pet food around the kitchen floor as I tried to lick every last morsel out of it.<br />
<br />
But I wasn’t underfed. This was a family which ate to live and not vice versa. Consequently they were all pretty slim. Also, there wasn’t much money around to waste on food treats. But they all believed they lived in a bit of paradise. And that was due to their proximity to the beach. The only problem was that during the high summer season, dogs were banned. But there was no way I was going to let any of them head to the beach without me – hard as they may try to sneak off. Not only was my sense of hearing so acute that I could have heard them slip out from anywhere in the house, I also had that famous doggish sixth sense. I could pick up the vibe of an imminent walk long, long before it took place. Dogs aren’t thick. When I saw the youngest, Presh, assembling his surfboard, towel and wetsuit, I knew full well he was about to hit the strand. Even when CK, the third eldest son, set off on a run, with the aim of taking a dip and quick body surf afterwards, clad only in his baggies, I knew instantly what was on the cards and was at his heel the moment he set off.<br />
<br />
But it was usually just a case of passing through the bathing area, rather than spending actual time there – although there were occasions when I did just that. In fact it was on such days, when a whole mob of the Cooper kids and their friends were on the beach, that I developed my famous hip hole.<br />
<br />
I would often upset insensitive folk by monopolising the shade under their beach umbrellas. It was the ideal place for me to embark on the construction of a hip hole. What this entailed was ascertaining which direction I wanted to be facing – usually out to sea – and then digging a hip-shaped hole, with the displaced sand forming a slightly raised area on which my forelegs would rest, providing a pillow for my head. The part DJ, in particular, enjoyed, was when, after completing the construction phase, I would circle the hollow earnestly before nestling my fine physiognomy into the perfectly designed and executed hip hole. Then would follow some sensible sleep – though with one eye half open and ear half-cocked, of course, should there be other dogs nearby, which would cause the Cooper kids considerable anxiety. Because I wasn’t shy at showing any visitors to the beach just who was boss. Most of them fled in terror just at the sight of my musclebound form, that Rhodesian ridge raised threateningly, as I moved slowly but purposefully towards them. The problem was the couple of chancers who thought they could take me on. Dog fights are not pleasant for humans. Many was the time the owners of dogs of various breed and size, who attempted to challenge my hegemony, were left ranting and raving as they retrieved their bloodied and beaten losers, large or small. Served them right. It was, after all, my beach. Had I not earned the right to it by covering thousands of metres chasing gulls and plovers whenever they attempted to settle along the shoreline? Had I not ventured through many a hectare of indigenous dune forest, chasing duikers and whatever else I might come across?<br />
<br />
Indeed, on one such detour into the dune forest, while walking back home from the beach with a few of my humans, I got into shall we say a spot of bother. There is a breed of person quite willing to torture wild animals to death. That may sound harsh, but that is what a snare does. And it was in a rather dense thicket that I had my first experience of what that felt like. The wire loop attached to a tree trunk, latched itself around my left foreleg as I went sniffing about. Look, dogs are clever, but we don’t have analytical, engineering sort of minds. Neither do we have fingers. So when I felt the wire tighten around my leg, all I thought about was that I should flee. Escape. Get away from whatever it was that was grabbing my leg. I was naturally oblivious of the effect this would have, because the more I tried to pull away, of course, the more the noose tightened around my leg, biting through my hide and into my flesh, sinew, even bone. By now I was howling and yelping like a stuck pig. Which had the desired effect, as three of my humans, AB (the second eldest son), Presh (the youngest) and CK, came to my rescue. First they had to fight their way through that thicket before they finally got to me. I was a mess, in agony and exhausted from my vain and desperate attempts to escape. The first thing they did was grab hold of me – no mean feat since I was still flailing around, despite my state of near collapse – before moving me closer to where the snare was attached to the tree. This enabled one of them to loosen the wire loop and gently extricate my battered leg.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, they got to me before any permanent damage was done. Mrs C, happily, was a nursing sister, and she applied some or other ointment which, while it hurt like hell, eventually brought about the healing process. Though it was amazing how foolish I was in this regard, continually licking the injured spot, as if that was going to help.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER VI<br />
<br />
Those were my tearaway years, when I took full advantage of growing up alongside teenagers who seemed to enjoy the great outdoors as much as I did. There was nothing quite like a walk along the beach towards Gonubie in the east or Nahoon in the west. But we never crossed the Nahoon River. It seemed that, with me in tow, the Cooper kids did not want to risk venturing into alien territory. This was the surfing Mecca of East London. The Nahoon kids were big on one-upmanship when it came to who had the best waves. While the shorebreak at Nahoon (I learnt from Presh’s body language) was probably on a par with that at Bonzies – where I would venture as far out as possible, chesting the waves, while they body-surfed – the Nahoon grommets had a trump card which they were not reluctant to play: Reef. Nahoon Reef hosted such prestige events as the Gunston 500 during this time – and I, as a mere dog, missed it completely. Somehow, I learnt later, they had managed to sneak out (probably driven in someone’s mom’s car) and soaked up a day or two of watching the likes of Shaun Tomson, South Africa’s top surfer at the time. Of course Nahoon boasted one or two who were also right up there as well – thanks to living so near to that huge wedge-like swell that rises off Nahoon’s rocky point.<br />
<br />
Ja, I may well have missed out on that event, but I did not miss the 500 when it came to Eastern Beach a few years earlier. This was possibly, as I now recall, before or soon after DJ had found me my new home in Bonza Bay. I had joined him and several of the Coopers, along with another art school student nicknamed Jakkals, watching the event from the top of the few remaining sand dunes near Marina Glen. This was the sort of jol I was going to find myself increasingly embroiled in. I remember this motley mob of would-be hippies in their unwashed jeans and long hair (it was school holidays) later heading back to DJ’s room where they smoked a joint and DJ lit the end of one of his artist’s paintbrushes. With the light off and curtains drawn, he turned this flaming object into a space ship and let it traverse a magical world he had created in one of his more surreal artworks. Remember, although I didn’t smoke dagga, I did get what they called “klank gerook”, which I never really understood. Because I had grown up in an Afrikaans home, I had picked up a smattering of “die taal”, but in my scanty vocabulary “klank” always meant sound. Here, however, the term implied you got “gerook”, or high, by being in a room filled with dagga smoke. So there I was, poor thing, getting stoned along with the rest of them. But that was a once-off.<br />
<br />
Once in Bonzies, the lads and their sister, Jess, along with DJ, Jaks, Mads, and several other crazy hippie types, would head off to the milkwood forest abutting the sand dunes and smoke it up, having secured their bail of grass from a friendly black-man pusher who frequented the area.<br />
<br />
On one memorable occasion, Jakkals arrived on the bus from his home in Vincent. With him was his friend George, who was about 14 to Jaks’s 18. George was riding one of those old kids’ push scooters, while Jaks, who even looked a bit like Neil Young, had his acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. In his pocket was a harmonica. I greeted them with wagging tail and much wriggling around and yelping, because Jaks also loved me. I was surprised to see that his friend, George, was a young black lad. While I had been spared the sort of racial prejudice so prevalent among white-owned dogs at the time, it was still a new experience for me to relate to a black person so intimately. But very soon I forgot George was black. He just sort of tagged along. In the Cooper boys’ bedroom (shared by the three eldest lads and their hi-fi set, the amplifier for which a friend had made from valves) Jakkals set the tone by strumming the guitar and then singing a song that really got my tail thumping in time to the beat against the wooden floor: it was Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart. He also let rip a wonderful bit of blues on that harmonica. Then, just for laughs, Jaks would put on what he called a “white coloured” accent and belt out Jim Reeves’s Distant Drums.<br />
It was a Friday, and that evening this whole group of young hippies, with me as usually trailing along behind, packed a few items (including blankets) and headed down to the beach. We climbed one of the tall sand dunes and penetrated the thick forest behind – a place I had scoured many a time before in search of small antelope. In a clearing they built a fire (“Blow fire, George,” instructed Jakkals) and settled down for an evening’s “cabaret”. Things seemed to get funnier and funnier for them the more weed they smoked and cheap white wine they consumed. Supper was a bread and cheese fondue. Jakkals entertained us on his guitar and many a bizarre tale was told. “Laggerook” was the term they used. It meant they found even the most trivial thing hilariously funny. I didn’t get it, but if they were happy, so was I. Every so often I would slink off into the bush to smell my way around the ports of call of the various small game which frequented the place. Once, looking down on this crazy jumble of humanity seated or lying around the fire, I felt suddenly like a dog from a book. Was this how Jock felt, in the wild, following Percy Fitzpatrick around? Or even those wolves in the Jungle Books of Rudyard Kipling. It was just so great to be out in the bush, sleeping under the stars (albeit with a canopy of leaves directly above us).<br />
<br />
I was even awake and heard when Jakkals uttered his immortal line (in Cooper folk lore) to George. On our arrival, Jakkals had put his scooter down for the night, wrapped in George’s blanket, away from where the rest of the people were assembled around the fire. At one point, I heard Jakkals, dead serious, whisper to George in an African-sounding accent: “George, go see if scooter him sleeping.” Which George duly did, answering that it wasn’t moving so it must be asleep. In dog years, these were still young kids who, at the time thought they were being incredibly rebellious. But from what I witnessed, apart from the dagga, they got up to very little actual mischief. In fact, my experience had shown me (having ventured often into the Bonza Bay pub to see what was going on there) that the older white men who drank in that segregated bar often became quite aggressive under the affluence of incohol. (Sorry, that is just a little spoonerism that one of the Cooper sibs used to use. They were a literary sort of family. They loved playing word games, especially AB.)<br />
<br />
CHAPTER VII<br />
<br />
For a very good reason, which I can barely remember now, one of the incidents involving me from this period led to much subsequent discussion. It became the stuff of legend, of urban mythology.<br />
Smoking dagga was illegal. The Coopers and their friends ran tremendous risks each time they bought their zol from black guys in Bonzies and, of course, when they went into the dunes to smoke it. This led to paranoia, a word immortalised at the time by a Neil Young song (while still with Buffalo Springfield) called For What It’s Worth: “Paranoia strikes deed / Into your lives it’s going to seep …” Anyway, the Cooper clan were convinced a man with short-cropped hair and even shorter shorts, who often walked his little dog around the beach, was in fact either a security policeman or a member of the drug squad. As a result they were increasingly afraid of being bust and facing charges of possessing dagga. So on one occasion, rather than bring a rather large plastic bag full of dagga back home with them after another smoking session in the dune forest area not far from the stairs which led past what were then the changing rooms, they decided to bury it in the soft, leafy, compost-like soil. Look, I was clever, but I was still only a dog. And I was curious. What was all the fuss about this greenish-grey tobacco that they kept on smoking, either in broken bottle necks, short ceramic pipes or long hand-rolled zols? I decided to find out. As they set off back up to the house in Lotus Avenue, I dug up that bag and ripped it open. And then I started eating. One of them, I think it was AB, must have wondered why I wasn’t following them. Because when he returned he found that I had made a substantial dent in their stash. (I know this sounds a bit like that Cheech ’n Chong sketch, but it’s the honest truth, I promise.)<br />
<br />
It was to be a long day. My senses were completely altered. I felt both ill and invigorated at the same time. Mentally, that is. Physically, all I wanted to do was lie down and chase, well, whatever I liked, in my frenetic dreams. When we finally made it home, like the rest of them I basically passed out on the floor and fell into a long, hectically busy slumber. I think it was to the strains of Bob Dylan’s Visions of Johanna that I entered that other, almost fiendish, world, where everything that I took for granted seemed somewhat distorted. I found sleep too terrifying, but being awake even more alarming. The hours passed and gradually, finally, the effect of the drug started wearing off. The more I began to feel myself again, the better I felt. No longer did minor things take on incredible importance, and vice versa. I was on a high not due to the dagga, but due to having recovered from its effects. But I required fresh air and open spaces. Just as on most nights when I needed to get out of the house to go for a leak and would jump up and try to pull down the handle to open the front door (usually getting CK up to unlock it and let me go sniffing around the night-time neighbourhood), so I now attempted to open the bedroom door. But I was still a trifle groggy. Fortunately, CK it was who again opened up for me (he too was still looking somewhat the worse for wear thanks to the zol). Happily the front door itself was open and I headed off down Forward Lane just as the summer sun was setting.<br />
<br />
Legend has it that that night I danced on a table at a wedding in Neptune’s Cove, a function room at the Bonza Bay Hotel decorated with an incredibly evocative undersea mural by Penny Abdinor (yes, I’d also picked up a bit of art knowledge). I need to set the record straight. I didn’t “dance” per se, but I did get on a table and devour some snacks. Heck man, I was hungry. I had the munchies in a big way, and the rest of them back home were too slack/stoned to feed me, while their mom was working an evening shift and not around to do so. But I bided my time. Having drunk water from the toilet bowl (luckily recently flushed) I had been able to slake my thirst. And, hungry though I was, I was full of beans, having come down from my “high”. As I’ve said before: I may be a dog, but I’m not thick. I could see that there was a big party going on, what humans call a wedding reception. It was something to do with a man and a woman getting together to share their lives, like till they died. But the place was crowded, man. Big bass guitarist Padda Wilson was playing music there with his band. So I waited and watched through one of the windows, alongside a few of the black hotel staff. We saw white South Africa at play. And we saw them getting increasingly drunk and jovial. I bided more time. I scratched and licked my coat. There were one or two large ticks around my neck and rump which I couldn’t dislodge, but generally I was still looking pretty damn good. As the guests finally started to head home, I snuck into the venue, as I had done so often before when my humans attended various New Year’s Eve parties there, much to their embarrassment. But this time I was alone. And hungry as all hell. Humans are wasteful creatures. When I leapt up on a table (it was where the bride and groom had sat, and had eaten very little, taken up as they were with dancing and speechifying) I found a platter of delightful, if rather stale, cold meats. I ploughed through those in a jiffy, and then started licking and munching at anything and everything else that caught my fancy. Of course it was all over in a matter of minutes. The venue management soon caught on that the dreaded Groothond had once again invaded their premises. Ever alert to their movements, I knew I had to act fast. I leapt off that table and, scurrying between chairs and people’s legs, I managed to again make good my escape.<br />
<br />
So there. That’s all there was to that story about me “dancing on the table” at a wedding. Okay, I may have swayed my hips a bit to the rhythm of the music, but that was just me. I had become accustomed to enjoying music and old Padda’s bass provided an infectious beat. But really, I was only there for the food.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER VIII<br />
<br />
My sun- and fun-filled sojourn at the Cooper home could not last. Already I had noticed how every so often one or two of the lads would suddenly be whisked away by something called military conscription. They would be forced to dress in horrendous brown uniforms, cut their hair short and, in a very depressed mood, head off to some unknown destination. Sometimes I wouldn’t see them for months on end. But there were always enough of them left to make life enjoyable, if not as much fun as when they were in school or, later, studying at art school, in their first jobs or embarking on their volunteer work for the Progressive Federal Party.<br />
<br />
Indeed, it was on one such occasion, when the eldest, IB, was alone at home having just returned from a three-month stint in some remote military place (“The Border” kept being mentioned, though I had no idea what it meant), that I experienced my first taste of real fear, though I overcame it instantly as my adrenalin-induced bravado kicked in.<br />
<br />
Have I mentioned how, unlike most other dogs, I loved Guy Fawkes? You know how dogs, and even cats, get all jittery and start shaking like leaves when crackers explode? How some of my kind, I’m ashamed to say, start running around mindlessly after finally, in utter desperation, breaking out of their homes or yards? Well I was raised on the sound of fireworks. When my young humans walked around setting off anything from lady crackers to big bangs, with a few jumping jacks thrown in for good measure, I was always with them, enjoying the experience. Of course they were never cruel and would not ever allow any of their mates to chuck a cracker anywhere near me or any other animal. But I watched them even hold the odd small cracker in their hands and let it explode, without causing undue harm. I enjoyed the pretty “golden showers” that poured glorious columns of colour into the sky and rockets which burst into umbrellas of bright delight above our heads. I loved the Catherine wheels they set a-whirling and the sparklers they held in their hands while making Picassoesque patterns in the dark. Yep, despite my incredibly strong sense of hearing, I grew accustomed to these things, because I trusted those who were making the noise implicitly. Dogs are intensely sensitive to the emotions and motives of people. We can – or at least I can – detect the mood, can anticipate the intentions, of people who mean no good long before they act.<br />
<br />
IB was in the lounge, listening to a Little Feat album on the new music centre he had just bought with his danger pay, having returned from those three months on “The Border” just a few days earlier. It was around noon. It was noisy, and I was quite happy to also enjoy soaking up those sounds, since music was as much a part of my soul as any human living on the planet at that time. But my dog instincts never deserted me. And when I heard a car slow down outside the house, I sensed instantly that something was amiss. My suspicions were confirmed seconds later when a blast resounded. Most dogs would have been terrified, but my Guy Fawkes training – and utmost devotion to my humans – only brought out the best in me. The last thing the man holding the smoking shotgun in his hands as he aimed it out the passenger’s window of the idling car would have expected was to have a large brown dog (me) jumping up at him, aiming to grab that gun and tear it from his hands. His first shot had struck the wall just above the kitchen window on the street side of the house and he was about to unleash the second barrel, no doubt hoping to blow out a window, when I struck, forcing the driver to speed off down the road. By this time, IB had come outside and was inspecting the damage. A 20cm diameter circle of plaster above the window had been blasted away, with some of the buck shot (I think they call it) having also penetrated the glass, but not broken the window fully.<br />
<br />
It was at this point I realised that politics was a dirty game played by unscrupulous people. From what I could gather, my humans were campaigning to get black people like our friend George, and Tshawe the barman at the Bonza Bay pub, and Warwick, the young waiter at the hotel, equal rights in the land of their birth. At the moment, as I said earlier, black people were persecuted by the police and the security police, who were acting on behalf of the white National Party apartheid government. At least that’s how I read it, not, as a dog, being fully versed in such matters. But you can pick up a lot from the body language and emotions of your humans. My humans wanted all this to change. They wanted Nelson Mandela, to whom I referred earlier, released from Robben Island, where he and other activists for human rights were being held by the government, much as I was kept in captivity before my escape to freedom in Bonza Bay. And the men who fired the shot were clearly, my humans said in their subsequent conversations, from the security police, who that same day had attacked the homes of other outspoken opponents of apartheid.<br />
<br />
So things were starting to unravel as the 1970s wore on. My human mates were being sucked, against their will, into the seemingly unending drag of the army. Often when, for instance, CK returned on a weekend pass from the army, having hitch-hiked from Kimberley 800km away, I was the only one to witness his homecoming. And you know what? He wasn’t always all that keen to see me. The days of the big Cooper jols were coming to an end by then. It was a rare weekend when all four brothers and their sister were still around together. At any given time at least two of them would be away in the military, or have moved out of the house completely. But when they were all in town together it was cause for a major celebration.<br />
And the place that happened was the Hobnob, a “ladies bar” at the Bonza Bay Hotel.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER IX<br />
<br />
The management of the hotel were almost as peeved with me as they were with AB, the second eldest of my humans (their mom excluded). They really did not enjoy it when I snuck into the Hobnob and found a dark corner near my humans as, for instance on a Sunday at noon, when they held what they called a “debriefing” session, where their drunken exploits of Friday and Saturday night were discussed over a few more beers. Speaking politically, they would sometimes refer to this as proof that they believed in a three-party system. All I knew is that they risked getting into some inevitable clashes with conservative whites who disliked their outspoken commitment to non-racialism. So I hung around in case they needed back-up. (The odd bit of rather foul-smelling wind I sometimes passed also didn’t always go unnoticed.)<br />
<br />
But if management was forever chasing me out of the Hobnob, they also weren’t too happy with AB’s sense of humour. He did tend to be rather forthright, and thought nothing of plunging his face into an ice bucket overflowing with creamy foam after having concocted a “black velvet” comprising several Castle stouts and a bottle of sparkling wine. Oh and he loved setting fire to his face. Well he did so once. I cringed as I watched, from among the wooden legs of the bar stools, as he lit a shot of Drambuie and threw it down his throat, only for some of the liquid, still burning, to dribble down the side of his mouth, leaving him with a rather nasty burn. Management also did not really like it when he pulled the mickey out of the more commercial musicians they got to play live music at the venue. Songs by Neil Diamond he particularly frowned upon, for some reason. However, he was more tolerant of the likes of John Denver, who, like John Lennon, he thought looked a bit like him with his glasses and all. Having a somewhat one-track sense of humour, however, he would often sing along rather raucously to the chorus of Country Roads, subverting the first word of the title rather vulgarly. He would similarly turn a song like the Rolling Stones’ Sweet Virginia into something considerably more suggestive. It was all part of the jol – whatever it was my humans, being mainly young white males, had to do with themselves while faced with all this time tied up in playing soldiers, a pastime to which they were vehemently opposed on both moral and political grounds.<br />
<br />
But all this jolling, this freedom, couldn’t last. Not for them and not for me. Theirs was a fettered freedom. As noted, they were constrained by the dictates of military conscription and had to try to shape their lives around that. But eventually, increasingly, as the 1980s drew near, there came a time when none of my humans, only their mom, was at the house. But there was still a jol going on down at the Hobnob, and some of their mates would still congregate there. So, being a gregarious sort of chap, I was not averse to joining in their fun on the odd occasion.<br />
<br />
One Saturday afternoon, Mitch, a young friend of theirs over the past few years who was renting a granny flat near our home, decided to head off in his bakkie with a few mates (remember there were none of my humans about) to the East London beachfront for the annual waiters’ race. This entailed waiters from the various hotels having to run 100m carrying a tray of drinks and the first one home would receive a prize. Thinking back, it was a de facto bit of racial integration, proving that without the cold hand of apartheid, people were likely to get on just fine no matter their hue. But that is just a retrospective reflection. At the time, tail wagging madly, I was just happy to join in the fun as I hopped on the back of the bakkie in Bonza Bay and set off with a group of about half a dozen young people for the Quigney.<br />
<br />
The problem was I was no-one’s dog when I got there. None of my humans was around to look out for me. The other young guys and girls had broken out the beers and were having a jol, along with hundreds of other people, and I was left to wander around, sniffing about in some territory which seemed vaguely familiar.<br />
It was while the first heat of the waiters’ race was under way that a teenage boy, walking with his brother and parents, pointed animatedly in my direction and called: “Brakkie! Brakkie! Kom hier Brakkie!” (“Comer here, Brakkie!”)<br />
<br />
And like a fool I pricked up my ears, wagged my tail and headed over to him for a pat.<br />
<br />
THE END<br />
<br />
Author's note:<br />
Certain names have been altered to protect innocent parties. The cover drawing I did at Bonza Bay around 1980. It is of a Great Dane, which was seen trespassing on Groothond's turf (if sand can be deemed turf). There are apparently no extant photographs, or even drawings, of Groothond, although we cannot vouch for what may be on his police file.<br />
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-82919063590120451912014-04-01T02:21:00.002-07:002014-04-01T02:23:15.365-07:00Barney Mthombothi on Jacob Zuma and his flunkies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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It is heartening that in the post-apartheid South Africa a growing number of independent-minded black journalists are showing the guts and insight to tackle the state on its numerous failings.</div>
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Below is an article, scanned in two parts, from the most recent Sunday Times, South Africa's widest-selling weekly newspaper.</div>
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Subsequent to this appearing the ANC national executive committee, instead of censuring Zuma, said the Nkandla debacle had nothing to do with the ANC itself, and so washed its hands of the whole affair. </div>
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Whether parliament is able or willing to impeach him is highly doubtful, for reasons made abundantly clear in Mthombothi's article.</div>
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To read the article, left click on the text and it will come up in a readable format. </div>
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By the way, I have submitted a short letter praising Mthombothi's article for publication in the Times. Let's see if they use it.</div>
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-91117389484164339052013-12-12T02:57:00.003-08:002014-01-28T23:52:46.243-08:00Tribute to Nelson Mandela<br />
To understand Nelson Mandela’s impact I think it is important to realise just how much he helped white South Africans – for most of their lives fed a diet of racism and “swart gevaar” – to discover that black people were just like them, with the same claims to human dignity and respect.<br />
<br />
I experienced a small but powerfully symbolic example of that impact while on a runway waiting to take off on a flight between Dublin and London a few months after Madiba’s release from jail on February 11 1990. Nelson Mandela was on that plane, too.<br />
<br />
A child of apartheid, I had been raised to oppose it through the only non-violent means at the disposal of a teenager at the time: the opposition Progressive Party. Its sole MP in parliament for 13 years, Helen Suzman, one of this country’s most underrated anti-apartheid campaigners, had courageously tackled prime ministers Verwoerd, Vorster and then the all-powerful PW Botha, exposing as much as possible through probing questions in parliament the moral, political and economic crime of apartheid.<br />
<br />
It was Suzman, a small woman with a powerful voice, who would – under the surveillance of the security police – visit Winnie Mandela in exile in Brandfort, helping expose her plight to the world at a time when the National Party government hoped she’d be forgotten. It was also Suzman who took up the plight of Nelson Mandela and his comrades on Robben Island, demanding that she be given access to them in order to establish that they were alright. She knew instinctively, as so many of us young whites who revered her did, that it was Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and so many other wise, courageous men trapped on Robben Island, who held the key to our future.<br />
<br />
But as the seventies came and went, we saw Steve Biko martyred in 1977 after the massacres that occurred during the June 1976 Soweto uprising. Biko was but one of many black and a few white anti-apartheid activists who paid the supreme price for their convictions and courage.<br />
<br />
Revolt and repression. That was the pattern for the next decade, the 1980s, as the banned ANC took on a new guise as the United Democratic Front, whose policy was simple: UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides. Alongside the trade union movement Cosatu and various civic organisations and churches, not to mention the global anti-apartheid movement and a growing disinvestment and sanctions campaign, as the 1980s wore on the apartheid state was on the retreat.<br />
<br />
In late 1989, with FW de Klerk having replaced the ailing PW Botha as leader of the National Party and president of SA, there was a gradual relaxation of restrictions on protest marches and other acts of anti-apartheid activism imposed during successive states of emergency. Thousands had been detained under those regulations, but at the same time the likes of the aged Govan Mbeki had been released in Port Elizabeth 1987, signalling, along with the tentative talks initiated as a result of growing consumer boycotts of white-owned businesses, that the logjam was starting to break. Liberal whites like Van Zyl Slabbert had also initiated contact abroad with the ANC in exile.<br />
<br />
I had reported on this incredible story for the Evening Post alongside veteran journalist Jimmy Matyu. The Post was arguably the most anti-government “mainstream” newspaper in the country, particularly after the sad demise of the Rand Daily Mail. It sold most of its copies in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, for generations the very heart of the anti-apartheid movement in this country. But I was also still at the beck and call of the SA Defence Force. Having refused to carry a rifle in the mid-1980s when the SADF was deployed in the townships, I lived a life on tenterhooks, expecting at every turn to be jailed for my stand. Instead, miraculously, the Citizen Force commandant at the unit where I was based for my “camps” took no action against me, instead placing me in headquarters company where I did sign-writing and other innocuous stuff.<br />
<br />
So when I was selected to represent the SA Morning Group of newspapers as their London correspondent, starting in early January 1990, I was delighted to escape the army’s clutches and to get the opportunity to report on the anti-apartheid struggle abroad, as the country remained on a knife-edge and the focus of the world’s attention.<br />
<br />
Of course I wasn’t to know that on February 2 of 1990, De Klerk would unban the ANC and a week or so later free Mandela, although in late 1989 he had already freed other Rivonia triallists, including Walter Sisulu, all of whom had vowed to continue the armed struggle until the downfall of apartheid.<br />
<br />
Soon after Mandela’s release, he embarked on a global tour of those countries which had offered strong support to the ANC during his many decades in jail and while it was banned in South Africa. Part of that journey took him to the Republic of Ireland, where Professor Kader Asmal, then in exile and lecturing at Dublin’s Trinity College, was a leading campaigner in the anti-apartheid movement.<br />
<br />
I flew over to Dublin for Madiba’s address to the Dail, the Irish parliament, in early July 1990. Madiba thanked the people of Ireland for their unwavering support, quoting some of their great poets in identifying their affinity for the oppressed people of South Africa with their own long struggle for freedom from British subjugation.<br />
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Unfortunately, such was the security around Madiba at the time – there had been several attacks on exiled ANC leaders in Europe in the 1980s – there was no way I or any other of the horde of hacks covering the event were going to get anywhere near him. But it was an honour to have seen the man live and witnessed the reverence in which he was held by people who, like me, were finally seeing the myth of decades become a man. And what a man: grace, dignity, generosity of spirit. In fact, all the attributes diametrically in contrast with the picture the National Party had painted of him in their propaganda down the decades: a heartless, ruthless terrorist bent on driving whites into the sea and imposing a communist state. Instead, the world galvanised its support for a man who saw not race, but humanity, as the most important factor, and who celebrated it in all its manifestations.<br />
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So what about that moment on the plane?<br />
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Well first you must remember that Mandela was acutely aware of British politics. Indeed, after his Ireland visit he was scheduled to visit the UK, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had long held out against recognising the legitimacy of the ANC. To most right-wing Conservatives, it remained a terrorist organisation. So on his arrival in Ireland, Mandela had already set the cat among the pigeons when he told journalists that in order to end the troubles and violence in Northern Ireland, the British government should do what FW de Klerk had committed himself to doing: speak to the “terrorists”. I recall the outcry in sections of the British media at his suggestion that Thatcher’s government sit around a table with the leaders of Sinn Fein, political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and thrash out a negotiated settlement. Ever the stirrer was Madiba. But he did it with such charm and lack of malice that he soon had people eating out of his hand. It is no coincidence, I believe, that the example Mandela and De Klerk set in South Africa made it possible, a few years later, for the British government to indeed engage in its own negotiations with Sinn Fein for a settlement of the Northern Ireland crisis, which, while not perfect, at least started to heal the deep wounds brought about by centuries of oppression of the Catholic minority and ongoing internecine sectarian violence.<br />
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So, with the enormous problems of reconciling centuries-old antagonisms at home in South Africa no doubt weighing heavily on his mind, Madiba remained concerned for other countries’ challenges as well.<br />
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What would be the response of the ordinary people of the UK and Ireland to this radical pacifist, by this stage already 72 years old and no doubt suffering the physical effects of those many decades of incarceration? Would they want him poking his nose in their affairs?<br />
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I think the extent to which ordinary people reacted to Madiba’s innate belief in the universal humanity of us all, no matter our colour, religion or station in life, was reflected in that small, symbolic moment on a jet aircraft as it taxied along the runway at Dublin Airport.<br />
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As we prepared for takeoff, the pilot made an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We’d like to welcome on board Mr Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie.”<br />
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I was among those in the economy-class seats near the back, while Madiba had obviously been placed up front in business class. So we had not seen him enter the plane. However, the response of the passengers was immediate and spontaneous.<br />
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There was a sustained period of applause.<br />
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<br />Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-79789801774611353342013-11-12T01:37:00.002-08:002013-11-12T02:47:28.548-08:00Weaning the Yanks off their crazy sports<br />
(<u>And why South Africa's cricket and soccer sides should be called Springboks</u>)<br />
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You really have to pity the Americans.<br />
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Yes I know everyone is desperate to obtain a Green Card to enable them to live and work there. It is, no doubt, still the land of opportunity.<br />
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But why I pity them is because of the types of sport they mainly tend to get excited about.<br />
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Okay, they are the world’s great golfing superpower although, despite their wealth of talent, they have failed, by and large, in the post-Tiger-at-his-best period, to win many majors.<br />
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But golf isn’t one of those sports that reflects a nation’s soul. It is too exclusive.<br />
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The same applies to tennis. The US has bred its fair share of world-beaters - like the Williams sisters, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. But tennis, too, is essentially a sport on the periphery of a nation’s soul. Apart from the odd event like the Ryder Cup in golf and Davis Cup in tennis, these sports are essentially about the individual, who just happens to also have a nationality. So of course when Tiger Woods was pre-eminent, Americans proved their non-racial credentials and followed him Pied Piper-like as he notched up victory upon victory.<br />
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But golf and tennis are not what gets middle America excited.<br />
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No, for some reason the sports that pack massive stadiums are all tedious, mundane affairs, considerably inferior to what the bulk of the rest of the planet enjoys.<br />
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The number one sport in the world is soccer (or football, as it is more correctly called). But, while the US does passably well (considering its size) in qualifying for the odd World Cup, this sport is very much an imported thing in the States, especially for men. Women and children tend to play soccer (or “saarker”, as they call it), but it is not a game for real, red-blooded American men.<br />
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In recent years, thanks to satellite TV, I have tried to discover what makes US men tick sports-wise. You always come across them on sitcoms making any excuse to take in “the game”, and that game is either American Football (or gridiron) in winter, or baseball in summer. Basketball is in there somewhere as well – a chance for the giant African Americans to assert some ascendancy over their pale compatriots. Oh, and of course there is also ice hockey (or “haarkie”, as they call it). You know the game where they fly around on skates chasing a tiny black puck which, for the most part, is barely visible to the naked eye of the most perceptive spectator. (It’s almost as spectator-unfriendly as our field hockey.)<br />
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Clearly ice hockey takes immense skill and guts, but it is hardly great viewing, except if you happen to enjoy seeing high-speed collisions between men dressed in so much protective gear, including helmets, that apart from their numbers, it is almost impossible to tell them apart.<br />
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Yeah, Yanks get churned up about haarkie, but it is football that really seems to do it for them. How odd that they usurped the name, football, from its English origins, and gave it to a sport that has greater affinities with rugby union than with soccer.<br />
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But the NFL, National Football League, has bred a monster. It is an abomination of a sport, a bit like Aussie Rules down under. As with ice hockey, in the US game you have supposedly macho men dressed up in masses of protective clothing and crash helmets!<br />
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Look the scrum in rugby union has also become a bit of a farce. Gone are the days when two packs simply engaged, the ball had to be fed in straight, both sides shoved and the hooker hooked it back. Now, after various changes to the rules, at least 80% of scrums have to be reset, wasting valuable playing time. Eventually the IRB will, we hope, return to the simplicity of the scrum as it used to be.<br />
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The lineout, however, has become a spectacular affair as giant men are lifted even higher. In my schoolboy rugby days in the 1970s, lifting was banned. Then they decided players would always try to cheat so the rules were changed to make lifting the catcher a key component of this set piece.<br />
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In North American Football, however, there is just too little diversity of action. Based on watching a few games and really trying to understand it, it seems to boil down to two lines of forwards facing off, with the middle man (rugby’s equivalent of a hooker, or perhaps even a scrumhalf) of the team on the offensive flicking the ball back between his legs to the only oke most people might have heard of: the quarterback. This is the glamour boy of gridiron – and from what I’ve seen he is almost always a honky, a tall white man. There are similarities to our rugby in that the fastest guys are among the four or five backs who then make a run for it towards the opposition’s tryline (for want of the official name). The job of those bulky forwards, with all that padding, is to hold off their opposite numbers while our quarterback checks out the action and then unleashes a spiral pass towards him in the hope that he will catch it cleanly in the field of play. Wherever he is tackled or goes out into touch, play resumes with a similar move. In this way the team on attack can move, yard by yard (each yard is marked, hence the gridiron term), towards the touchdown zone (where, paradoxically, they don’t actually have to touch the ball down). Bizarrely, the quarterback may only make one pass and the receiver cannot pass the ball on to another player. So it is an incredibly stop-start affair. Sometimes the ball is not caught (knocked on in rugby parlance) and you have a turnover. But not just a handing over of possession to the other team – there is a complete replacement of each side, because a team on the offensive has to bring its attacking players out and the team on the defensive has to bring on its best defenders. At least that seems to be how it works. So at any given time you’ve got about 50 giant men in space suits milling around, either on or off the pitch.<br />
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But let’s not forget the officials in their black-and-white striped shirts, who stop every so often to have a discussion, before the main referee will announce to the crowd over the public address system, while standing virtually to attention, what the decision is. To those of us ignorant of the niceties of the game, that announcement is usually pretty unintelligible, but it usually amounts to a turn-over or perhaps a penalty kick. And this kick is always taken from in front of the posts, with a special kicker coming on to do the honours. (Our own Naas Botha played a season or two in this “position”, where of course he wouldn’t have to tackle a soul, which would have suited him just fine.) So here the ball is flung back from that line of forwards and, as the opposition comes bearing down on him, a receiver places the ball for the kicker to kick it over the poles. They rarely miss.<br />
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Compare this to rugby union where the kick is taken either in line with where the try was scored (a conversion) or where the penalisable offence occurred. So you could have someone (like Frans Steyn) trying to kick the ball over from the touchline and on the halfway line – a huge kick. Or if the penalty is near touch but on the 22m line, Morne Steyn or Pat Lambie will try to thread it through the uprights which, due to the angle, are now a considerably narrower target. Or the captain can opt to kick for the corner flag and set up a lineout 5m from the goal line – almost the ultimate attacking position.<br />
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But in gridiron there is none of this versatility. Everything occurs within a very rigid set of rules, with the only real variation coming from the sort of attacking movement devised, of which there are, like chess, an almost infinite number of options. Either there is a little sleight of hand behind the line of forwards and someone tries to plough up the middle, or else there is a flurry of activity as attackers try to evade defenders while all the time the quarterback is under siege, with his “guards” doing their best to hold off the attackers before he hurls that spiral pass. If he is caught in possession, there seems to be a turnover.<br />
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Look, superficially, it is a spectacle. There is lots of razzmatazz, with the commentators getting quite worked up. I even heard one guy ask his colleague how to pronounce the word “buoyed”. I think the Yanks have a hang-up about the fact that the thing that floats in the sea, a buoy, which we pronounce “boy”, they call something like a “boowie”. However, that’s by the by. What is not trivial is the essence of the game, and it is here that I believe American football falls flat on its face. There is no real sense of drama. It is not edge-of-the-seat stuff. Any rugby union lover will tell you that when the Boks are playing and, as so often happens, they are under siege metres from their line, you, as a spectator, literally lean your body away from our tryline in an effort to will the attackers back. The feeling of relief when the enemy is repulsed is immense, especially if the match is tight, as all good Test matches are. I use the capital T deliberately, because there has been a tendency of late to call them “test” matches, which is an insult to one of the oldest international sporting confrontations in the world. The Springboks versus the All Blacks, or the Wallabies, or England, Wales, Ireland, or the British and Irish Lions, even Argentina, Scotland and Italy: these are occasions which your American population can only ever dream of experiencing.<br />
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I mean, they don’t even have international gridiron games, that I’m aware of. And even if they could find another country which plays this absurd game, the inherent flaws in its design would render the match at best interesting, at worst the normal boring “style trumps substance” scenario. Because there can be no comparison between the sort of courage required to play union and gridiron. In the latter, you are covered in padding and wear a crash helmet. In union you go out in shorts, jersey, socks and boots, with a gumguard to protect your teeth (not available in my school days) and perhaps a scrumcap, which backline players also sometimes wear. But most guys don’t bother, such as Captain Courageous Jean de Villiers. He is the epitome of rugby bravery. His knees strapped against no doubt numerous ongoing knee niggles, he is still, at the age of 32, able to power his way through a host of tackles, having taken the final pass (in the recent Test against Wales) from that other tower of strength, the aptly named Bismarck du Plessis virtually behind his back, to score. Each time a defender in rugby union makes a tackle, he puts his life on the line. Of course today the guys are so well-muscled, so well conditioned, that it becomes possible for the likes of a small oke like Pat Lambie to bring down a hulking brute like All Black captain Ritchie McCaw with relative ease. And that’s another thing about union: while generally sides are getting bigger (a scrum of eight men usually comes close to weighing a tonne, 1000kg, given that each forward is usually well over 100kg), there is still space for short, nuggety, super-quick players like Lambie or the much under-rated Brent Russell of a few years back. Think too of the Stormers’ Gio Aplon and Cheslin Kolbe.<br />
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And because each guy isn’t wearing a crash helmet, their personalities are there for all to see. As the camera focuses on a rampaging Eben Etsebeth or Duane Vermeulen, it is an instantly recognisable individual putting his life on the line, often stopped in his tracks by an equally robust individual from the opposition – or a pair of them! You identify with each player. If he’s under pressure, it shows on his face. The mistakes creep in. The attacking side capitalises and so the game ebbs and flows, with each side probing for chinks in the flesh, blood and cerebral armour of their opponents.<br />
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Because the game is also highly tactical: whether to let the scrumhalf dictate matters from behind the scrum (like Fourie du Preez did so effectively against Wales on Saturday with his pinpoint box kicks), or to unleash a full backline move, with perhaps a switch in direction from a centre to the fullback coming in at an angle. So long as the basic laws of the game – no forward passing or obstruction – are abided by, the variations are endless. There is the legendary up-and-under (or garyowen) where a flyhalf or other backline player puts the ball high behind the opposition’s backline, timing it to be caught by the opposition fullback just as his teammates, having set off from behind the kicker, arrive to plough him into the dirt, with a view to effecting a turnover. Consider the courage it takes for a small guy like Lambie, playing at fullback, to take a high ball like that as a hoard of huge, menacing men bear down on him. Yet he does it with aplomb, as do so many other great backline players. People sometimes ridicule Naas Botha, but many was the time he took it upon himself to field those high kicks. Then he’d jink to left or right to avoid a few tackles before either finding a pinpoint touch, or perhaps feed a Bok backline which boasted the likes of one Danie Gerber, arguably the most penetrative and elusive centre ever to grace a rugby field.<br />
<br />
So for rugby union the bywords for success are character and skill. While SA may breed players of immense character, which enables them to score some breathtaking tries, it is the All Blacks who have honed the game to a fine art, with their tactical nous and handling skills admired by friend and foe alike. The game is a religion in New Zealand. It seems to flow through their blood. But because they’re so good, a Test match between them and the Boks is a thing to be savoured. The final match of the recent Rugby Championship at Ellis Park on October 5 is a case in point. It was arguably the greatest Test match of all time, and I say that even though the Boks lost 38-27.<br />
<br />
Again, the Americans don’t know what such international competition is all about. I mean what do they call the pinnacle of their baseball competition? The World Series. But it involves the leaders of two North American Major League Baseball leagues, the National League and the American League. So it has nothing to do with the rest of the world. Politically, American has always enjoyed what one president called its “splendid isolation”. They were reluctant (but very welcome) entrants in both world wars, coming as they did to the rescue of the western democracies of Europe, especially Britain. But in sport this isolationist stance counts against them.<br />
<br />
I have tried to watch American baseball, and frankly, despite seeing it lionised in numerous American movies, it leaves me stone cold. As an outside observer, what I see is a batter coming in, taking his stance and then a pitcher throwing the ball at him. If he misses three times and the balls were pitched in the right area, he’s out. Sometimes he hits it, but if it goes outside the ninety degree angle field in front of him it doesn’t count. So all he can do is hit it somewhere in front of him and hope it doesn’t get caught. He then runs to the first base, unless he’s made good contact and hit it out of the ground, then apparently it is an instant home run, which he still has to perform. And for some reason, US films and sitcoms tell me, if you happen to catch the ball when it is hit out the park, you get to hang onto it. But really, again, like gridiron, the basic premise of the sport – while it may have myriad minor technical niceties of strategy and plenty of historical hype – is flawed. Again there is little scope for the sort of drama attendant on a game of cricket, for instance.<br />
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Here, as with rugby, it is all about skill, courage and character. And before the advent of helmets, which occurred in about the 1980s, it was even more about courage, as batsmen faced six-and-a-half-foot-tall West Indies bowlers sending the ball down at them from about 20 yards away at speeds in excess of 150km/h. I’m no mathematician, but do know that in a smidgen of a second, the batsman not only has to ascertain where the ball will pitch and what it will do off the surface (if, for instance it hits the seam) or in the air, but what sort of stroke or evasive action he has to take. Because the difference between a perfect-length yorker (which bounces just there, next to your feet) and a half-volley which can, with a well-timed drive, be sent racing to the boundary for four), is pretty slender.<br />
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Back in the 1960s SA boasted arguably the greatest team in the world, with the likes of the Pollock brothers Peter and Graeme, Eddie Barlow, Trevor Goddard, Dennis Lindsay, Tiger Lance, Mike Proctor, Barry Richards and several others. Sadly, due to apartheid, the talented “coloured” player, Basil D’Oliveira, was forced to ply his trade in the UK, eventually becoming a key member of the MCC side. He would not have been out of place in the SA side. The major sadness is that our isolation truncated the international careers of two of the world’s greatest batsmen in Graeme Pollock and Barry Richards. And it did not allow SA to play against the West Indies, the Indians and the Pakistanis. What a tragedy. It was only in the late 1980s, when PW Botha’s regime was feeling the pinch, that they finally allowed “rebel” sides from the West Indies to tour. Finally we got a taste of Caribbean flair and pace, but it was artificial stuff. Only after 1992, as we were firmly on the path to democracy, did we get to experience the real thing. It was like heaven. We were back in international cricket, and we were playing “black” sides as well. But we had missed out on seeing that other brilliant Richards, Viv, of the West Indies, as well as the likes of Gary Sobers and fast bowlers Michael Holding and Joel Garner. We also did not see our side pit its skills against the great Australian pace attack combination nicknamed “Lilian Thomson”: Dennis Lillee and Jeff “Thommo” Thomson. Like the Windies pacemen, these two were terrors, capable of inflicting mental and physical pain on the most courageous of opening batsmen. Or, if you happened to be a fast bowler yourself and you come in after the 80th over, you could well get a dose of aggro with the new ball from the most feared opening pair at the time in world cricket.<br />
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Courage and talent. Because, fast as these men were, as full of guile as the best spin bowlers are, there is always a batsman around who is just so damned good he can pull the most brilliant attacking force to pieces. The likes of India’s Sachin Tendulkar, for instance. Or, in his prime, our own Jacques Kallis. Or the Windies’ Brian Lara. The key is that in cricket it is about talent and character. It is about BMT. Imagine the pressure an opening batsman feels going in to bat against the best bowlers around and he has perhaps failed to score in his previous two Tests. Suddenly he is super vulnerable. But he has to first see off the shine on the new ball. Play himself in, before hopefully gaining the ascendancy and upping the scoring rate. SA have proved themselves to be the best in the world at doing this. We are the Test champions. But in the shorter versions of the game we seem to lack the sort of attacking flair among our batsmen which teams like India and Australia have; men like Shane Watson and Rohit Sharma, who recently hammered a double century against Australia.<br />
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One change I think SA could make to bring the steel back to all formats of our game is to change our name back from the Proteas to the Springboks. Calling them after a flower, pretty as it is, was never going to work in this country. The Springbok may have had negative connotations under apartheid, but it is not as though the players had anything to do with imposing segregation. Remember the Springbok cricketers’ walk-off protest in 1971 at Newlands, led by Barry Richards, if my memory serves me well? Why, Richards and Proctor even went to the UK as young men just out of school – to learn from and carry the bags of their West Indies heroes.<br />
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No, racism was not the invention or intention of those talented young men who just wanted to play against the best in the world. It was the National Party government which screwed up our race relations. But I believe the time is ripe for our national cricket side to take back the legendary Springbok moniker. It is synonymous with the best that SA sport has to offer. Indeed, it might even help our soccer side move from mediocrity if they dropped the rather insulting Bafana Bafana title. This means “the boys”, and under apartheid adult black men were insultingly called “boys” by some racist whites. Yet we perpetuate that insult with the word Bafana. Perhaps they too would enjoy becoming Springboks. This is an emblem our rugby players literally put their lives on the line for week after week, to the point where we are deemed one of the greatest rugby-playing nations in the world.<br />
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I’d like the see our Springbok cricket and soccer teams up there with them.<br />
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And imagine if the US could ditch the silliness of gridiron and baseball and introduce rugby union and cricket in their place? Imagine if they upgraded soccer to a national sport, so they could really take on the best in the world in the world’s best sports?<br />
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Imagine if they downgraded the ridiculous motor racing events, where they drive high-powered, high-speed saloon or even Formula 1-equivalent cars around a sloped oval track – one long, boring procession where the only real interest is in whether a car will hit the side wall and flip, ploughing into a bunch of others. As with the above-mentioned sports, US motor racing lost its way. Formula 1 is all about finesse, about driving a super-fast, super-light car on tracks that simulate normal roads. Why, some races are even held on normal roads, such as at Monaco. But for me those don’t work as well as races on dedicated circuits, where the tarmac is wider, enabling more overtaking. The sport has become a bit too technical, but retains the sort of drama which first got me addicted to it as a young boy when I watched some of the first Formula 1 races to be held in SA – at the famous West Bank Grand Prix circuit in East London in the early 1960s.<br />
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The US needs to break out of its isolation. If it joined the rest of the world – and I know they are soccer World Cup regulars, but it’s not their passion – perhaps their people would be less arrogant. Imagine a rugby Test between the US and China, were they to also take up the game seriously? Imagine if the Indians started playing some other sports apart from cricket? With such huge populations, the Springboks would really have to up their game to stay on top. But as long as the US believes its excuses for sport are the real thing, they’ll remain in the rut of self-imposed sporting isolation, blissfully unaware of what they are missing out on.<br />
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I challenge Barack Obama, when his term of office ends, to explore ways of breaking his nation out of its isolation. He’s a guy who grew up bodysurfing in Hawaii. He must be less narrow-minded than those poor sports fans locked into the mainland, who can pretend that a game played with a small, ugly brown rugby ball, which probably looks much the same as it did 50 years ago, and can hardly even be seen when the game is under way, is something worth watching. Or who think a sport where a batsman walks in, hits a ball once, runs around four bases, and then sits down in the dugout again, is worth watching.<br />
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America, your brave armed forces twice saved the word from tyranny, especially in World War 2. While often misguided due to poor political leadership, they also bravely held back and eventually crushed the threat of communism.<br />
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Now, in the words of the late Jim Morrison of the Doors, it is time to “break on through to the other side”. It is time to take your place among the great sporting nations of the world, by embracing the sports which really count, which really have one sitting on the edge of one’s seat.<br />
<br />Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-38405197758488961062013-10-04T02:32:00.002-07:002014-05-05T03:06:56.745-07:00Remembering Molly Blackburn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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The death of Molly Blackburn in a car crash on December 28, 1985, was a major blow to the anti-apartheid struggle, particularly in the Eastern Cape, where she was most active. This is an obituary I wrote for her, which was published in the Evening Post, Port Elizabeth, on January 2, 1986.</div>
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I have had to scan it in two parts. The first three legs of the copy continue in the second section, so I'm afraid a bit of jumping around is needed. In order to see the text in full size, please press control and left click on the mouse. If you're using Google Chrome, new tabs will open. For those with poor eyesight, this is ideal as the print is good and large. For those with good eyesight, simply left click on the scanned texts.</div>
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-77708634109756748352013-06-05T02:07:00.001-07:002013-06-20T00:55:40.950-07:00Where are these paintings?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I completed my third-year examination for my National Diploma in Art and Design at the East London Technical College in 1977, these are the two paintings I did - one a semi-abstract "composition painting" and the other a realistic "figure painting". These were sent off somewhere - no doubt Pretoria - to be marked. Well I passed painting, but now, some 36 years later, I am curious about what became of them. The rumour at the time was that the works were destroyed. Surely they could have sent them back to us after being marked? The canvases were taken off the frames and rolled up. Anyway, as things stand, these pretty poor photographs are the only record I have of works done when I was 21. And there is a story behind the first one.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKSfnWIbZ8K850wYBfEyRIuY4-xwdyHSqWJ5vZSrmJXrDtOtW-O59SZC2XQaSAEd5Zd2Ales3o12NiHbe016X0CTSmB_rgGUDl6sF4rx-XTojxwISJUcX2y25_O5H3GLgizLNTjeIjfI/s1600/1977comp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKSfnWIbZ8K850wYBfEyRIuY4-xwdyHSqWJ5vZSrmJXrDtOtW-O59SZC2XQaSAEd5Zd2Ales3o12NiHbe016X0CTSmB_rgGUDl6sF4rx-XTojxwISJUcX2y25_O5H3GLgizLNTjeIjfI/s320/1977comp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I think we had about a week to do both our composition and figure paintings. This was about a year after the June 16, 1976, Soweto uprising against apartheid. The country was still simmering with unrest a year later as the ruthless apartheid state was met by growing resistance from the oppressed black majority.<br />
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Anyway, up till I wrote - well, painted - my exam, I had stuck to fairly non-representational works. Most were abstracts. It was a hard time to be an artist. People talk about post-Modernism, but to me that is meaningless. Because Modern art really encompassed everything including Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Braque, Picasso, Mattise, Marc, Dali, Chagall, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Munch, Pollock, Warhol ... And that's just scratching the surface, although encompassed in those names are some of the greatest art works ever produced. So what does one do in the wake of such innovative brilliance? The art world has been floundering through a crisis of identity since about the 1970s, after Warhol questioned the very purpose of art, turning advertising and celebrity culture into art. Since then, I have personally found very little to enthuse about among the smattering of supposed great artists of the latter 20th century and the start of this century. A return to the age-old art of drawing seems to be what we all should do. There seems to be nowhere else to go. Digital images are two a penny, but computers can't draw, or paint. The traces on paper or canvass, in wood, clay or bronze, of the art-educated human hand remains of paramount importance. And let there be a return to sincerity. There has been far too much gimmickry in the art world of late, with so-called installations - which are all about style, but not too concerned with substance - being totally overrated.<br />
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But that's by the by. In the above work, as a political activist in my own small way, I must have been heavily influenced by the white-on-black violence the nation had just been witnessing (TV had only just been introduced). So initially I painted a rather stylised, almost childlike, picture of a row of green policemen, with dog-handlers behind, shooting red people. I had deracialised the image, making it a universal sort of massacre, but placing it in SA by virtue of the clenched-fist salutes, the shanty town on the left, mine dumps at the top and Joburg-type skyline to the right. Then, as the week wore on, I took the palette knife to the thing and must say, looking at it now, I am rather pleased with the end product. The toy-like figures are still discernible, but there is also some nice paint texture and a fairly dynamic composition. And what of those spirit-like figures rising into heaven on the left?<br />
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When it came to life drawing and painting, our art school head, Jack Lugg, would usually get a black man or woman to pose - but rarely naked. However, on this occasion, the model was indeed naked. That, in a sense, was also a political statement.<br />
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-83388119705155462572013-05-31T05:23:00.000-07:002013-05-31T05:27:28.384-07:00DA's predecessor urged talks with ANC back in 1960<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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I have been wading through some Press clippings of articles I wrote in 1985, about a year after I started working as a reporter on the Evening Post/ Weekend Post in Port Elizabeth. In light of the Democratic Alliance campaign for people to get to know the history of the party's role in the anti-apartheid struggle, I thought I'd reproduce one article which has a bearing on this. The second article shows just how fraught the situation was under the state of emergency. (Press control/left click on the images to read them in a larger format. Click again on it to see them larger still.)</div>
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I had this published in July, 1985, in the Weekend Post. Notice how, in the second last paragraph, it is recorded that the Progressive Party (forerunner of the DA and then led by Dr Jan Steytler) advocated negotiations with the ANC. Helen Suzman was the party's sole MP at the time.</div>
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In this piece I report on a funeral which took place under the state of emergency. The United Democratic Front's response to the emergency and mass detention of activists was to impose a consumer boycott of white-owned shops. I'll post some of the articles I wrote about this shortly.<br />
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<br />Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-84260681480745572332013-02-04T01:33:00.001-08:002013-02-04T01:56:51.297-08:00Letter in the Sunday Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I had a letter published in the Sunday Times last weekend, February 3 2013, but as usual it took a major cut. It was the third of three responding to an article by Johnny Steinberg. But notice how much space was accorded to the first rather philosophical piece, which does tend to repeat itself. My piece, on the other hand, really had the guts cut out of it. So, for the record, I pubish online my original letter below.<br />
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JOHNNY Steinberg says what we need to do to create jobs is triple the number of university graduates in the next 20 years (“Let’s build the ladders we are groping for”, January 27).<br />
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But he ignores what used to be called “the trades” – the technical skills which keep any modern country going.<br />
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The vast majority of those who actually matriculate are not “academic” and do not qualify for university.<br />
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But many could have trained to become electricians, plumbers, mechanics and so on.<br />
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What happened to the technical colleges of old, where pupils could start learning various trades from about the age of 16? And how many black kids are at our many agricultural colleges, learning how to farm scientifically?<br />
As Associated Motor Holdings CEO Manny de Canha noted in an interview in Business Times a few weeks ago, rigid labour laws are preventing firms from taking on young people as apprentice mechanics – at a time when there is a growing shortage of people skilled in this key part of the economy.<br />
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I suggest if Steinberg is serious about helping to steer the government on a job-creation course, he target what is clearly, according to De Canha, a major impediment to the apprenticeship process.<br />
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Imagine, once qualified and able to service and repair today’s high-tech cars, how valued such skilled people become. And after gaining experience, a mechanic could go on to establishing his own business and employing new apprentices.<br />
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Thus are economies grown.<br />
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-88249637642924480332012-11-23T00:02:00.000-08:002012-11-23T00:02:50.349-08:00First in The Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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This short letter was the first I have had published in The Times newspaper, which is based in Joburg and distributed nationally. It was published on Thursday, November 22. </div>
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However, while keeping the gist of what I had to say, my argument for a non-racial, forward-thinking voting bloc such as the one Barack Obama inspired in the US, was lost as my original letter was cut by about four fifths. Below is the full text of the letter I submitted.</div>
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My original letter:<br />
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Is it possible that at the 2014 general election an anti-ANC party could “pull an Obama” and save South Africa from a rudderless and increasingly corrupt ANC?<br />
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While about 72% of the US population are white, Democrat Barack Obama managed to achieve a victory for non-racism by securing the bulk of “non-white” votes and a sufficient number of progressive white votes to narrowly defeat Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the recent election.<br />
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Imagine if SA were a two-party country like the US, and the choice was between the ANC and a party combining all the main opposition parties. Let’s call it the Liberal Democratic Party, for argument’s sake.<br />
With an inspirational leader like Obama, is it possible such a party could muster enough votes from the non-black African communities (who comprise about 20% of the population) and from disillusioned black Africans (the other 80%) to oust the ANC?<br />
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Crucially, is there a South African version of Obama out there, and can a new party be forged from the mishmash of opposition parties?<br />
<br />
Could Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko perhaps be that person? She certainly seems to represent a completely non-racial, modern and progressive vision for this country, free from the bitterness which sadly still flows strongly through the veins of the ANC.<br />
<br />
I believe with the right leader, someone with a firm commitment to honest government and non-racism, the ANC’s majority could be slashed or it could even be ousted at the next election.<br />
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Where are the movers and shakers to make this happen?<br />
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Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-1119346530641876332012-07-14T02:53:00.000-07:002012-08-20T01:15:14.716-07:00A very important book<br />
<i><b>My review of EYE ON THE DIAMONDS by Terry Crawford-Browne (Penguin Books) was published in the Weekend Post of Port Elizabeth on </b></i><i><b>July 14, 2012</b></i><i><b>. However, due to space constraints, it took a substantial cut. Below is my full review of a book that is set to cause major waves.</b></i><br />
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<br />
MOST of us would probably wish that the revelations and allegations contained in this book are merely the stuff of a highly imaginative and convoluted conspiracy theory.<br />
<br />
However, the author presents such an abundance of evidence that you have to believe there is indeed a very dark side to global finance and politics. And much of it involves blood diamonds, arms and drug trafficking, money laundering and plain, unadulterated bribery and corruption.<br />
<br />
Sadly for us, South Africa has, since the discovery of diamonds in 1867, been at the heart of this sorry saga. And alongside us stands Israel, a country for which the author has little sympathy.<br />
<br />
The interesting thing about Crawford-Browne is that he was a key player in the campaign launched in the mid-1980s to impose financial sanctions against the apartheid regime. As a former Cape Town-based international banker, he saw how vulnerable the pariah state was to banking sanctions, and so when the SA Council of Churches asked him to lead its sanctions lobby in the US in 1986, he jumped at the chance of finding a peaceful way of forcing the National Party government to the negotiating table.<br />
<br />
Indeed, this section of the book makes for fascinating reading, since it offers a first-hand account of the financial crunch that finally forced President F W de Klerk to unban the ANC in February 1990.<br />
<br />
And Crawford-Browne believes similar tactics should be used to force Israel to accept a single state with a Palestinian majority, noting they would be even more effective in today’s high-tech banking environment.<br />
<br />
So this is an activist decidedly of the pacifist left, not some right-wing white angry at the fall of apartheid. Yet he is also the man who has relentlessly probed the ANC’s controversial arms deal of the late 1990s – and it is his revelations in this regard which provide the guts of this riveting read. Indeed, this book would provide a good starting point for the commission of inquiry into the arms deal set up by President Jacob Zuma last September. They might also be inclined to peruse the 4,7 million computer pages of evidence seized from BAE by the Scorpions in 2008, shortly before they were summarily disbanded.<br />
<br />
Essentially, the “offsets” proffered by armaments companies in exchange for a slice of the multibillion-rand arms contract ended up, Crawford-Browne avers, as bribes. What, for instance, became of Ferrostaal’s stainless steel plant at Coega with its 16 000 jobs?<br />
<br />
The shocking claims fly thick and fast, in chapter after chapter, and I’ve yet to hear of any lawsuits arising from them. They present an image of a very sick world, run by ruthless, greedy men.<br />
<br />
Crawford-Browne writes that he began getting to grips with the problem of blood diamonds during the 1994-1995 Cameron Commission of Inquiry into Armscor, when Unita was selling diamonds to De Beers “to fund the civil war in Angola”. South Africa, he adds, “was supplying the weapons”. Then, as a representative of the Anglican Church during the parliamentary Defence Review, it became clear “there was no conceivable foreign military threat to South Africa. Eradication of poverty was the national priority, and would require every cent we could muster”.<br />
<br />
He recalls how the government at the time spoke blithely of how the R30-billion spent on armaments would generate offsets worth R110-billion, and that the arms deal was “a generous ‘Marshall Plan’ to stimulate South Africa’s economic development and create jobs”.<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, criticism of the arms deal, he says, was “denounced as racist”, especially after allegations emerged that BAE was bribing Tony Yengeni and other MPs with a £1-million “first success fee”.<br />
<br />
“As a former banker, I could smell the stench of corruption, but could not yet prove it. The evidence soon followed.<br />
<br />
“I learned that the bribes were being laundered, with the connivance of the British government, via a BAE front company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. The company was styled Red Diamond Trading Company . . .”<br />
<br />
And so Crawford-Browne leads one into the guts of a tale which is incredibly complex, the detail and scope of his research probing each and every murky corner and exposing it to the light. Yet each allegation would require an army of investigators, with lashings of political backing, in order to pin down the culprits. But, with billions of dollars – and indeed the very balance of global military and political power hinging on the outcome – it is unlikely this nut will be cracked any time soon. (Why, even Barack Obama, hailed as such a hero when he became the first black US president, is shown to be no better than his predecessors, having doubled US arms exports since coming to power.)<br />
<br />
The book actually starts with extracts from an obituary by Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes for Bheki Jacobs, who died of cancer in 2008, aged 46. He was, said Dawes, the man who first blew the whistle on the arms deal. “He was one of the first to grasp how the headlong plunge into business would corrupt the ANC, how its internal politics would become a savage contest for resources, and just how early in its victory the party would lose its way.”<br />
<br />
Crawford-Browne says Jacobs had approached him in June 1999 “with information as to how some members of the ANC intended to turn South Africa into a major centre for organised crime”. He quotes Jacobs: “We’ll tell you where the real corruption is – around Joe Modise and the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe, who see themselves as the new financial elite in post-apartheid South Africa. We saw the consequences in Russia with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when communists suddenly became super-capitalists. Such a gangster society is not why we went into exile to fight for liberation from apartheid.”<br />
<br />
Crawford-Browne in turn introduced Jacobs to Patricia de Lille, then with the PAC, who was an early parliamentary campaigner against the arms deal.<br />
But who stood to gain? He says Modise had profited from “the easy and quick money opportunities offered by the illegal trade in diamonds” and that “a dysfunctional police force combined with world-class banking services made South Africa an ideal base for money laundering operations”.<br />
<br />
But from Britain’s perspective, “unleashing a culture of corruption would enable British financial interests to retain control of the South African economy. Nothing so discredits democratic governance as corruption.” He says Englishmen “used men such as Modise to do their ‘dirty work’. The hard-won battle for freedom would be short-lived and the struggle against apartheid would be betrayed by greedy and unscrupulous ANC politicians.”<br />
<br />
But the corruption did not only affect the arms deal. Crawford-Browne says it extended to “oil deals, toll roads, driver’s licences, the proposed Cell C cellphone system, the Coega harbour development, drugs and weapons trafficking, diamond smuggling and money laundering.<br />
<br />
“The common denominator was a ten per cent kickback to the ANC in return for political protection.”<br />
<br />
Crawford-Browne says Thabo Mbeki’s “disastrous presidency” from 1999 to 2008 was defined by Zimbabwe, Aids and the arms deal scandal. “The arms deal eventually became the cause of Mbeki’s ignominious dismissal from office.”<br />
<br />
He is scathing of the new ANC elite, saying: “Like the Afrikaners before them, the political elite were quickly corrupted by sudden acquisition of unearned wealth. The banks competed to fund them with recklessly leveraged and unsustainable loans. Other than purchases of luxury cars, houses and ostentatious consumption, the new elite have contributed virtually nothing to post-apartheid South Africa’s economic or social development. On the contrary, misallocation of resources is reflected in non-delivery riots all over the country.”<br />
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Even supposed “good guys”, like Thabo Mbeki’s brother Moeletsi, can’t escape. While praising some of his views on the co-option of the black elite by big business, Crawford-Browne notes that his “commentaries would however hold greater validity were it not for his association with his former business partner Ivor Ichikowitz, an arms trader, a wheeler dealer who makes no apologies for bribing his way into business deals with dubious governments.”<br />
<br />
And what of MK? Crawford-Browne says they were “infiltrated by the British MI6 as early as the 1980s, perhaps even earlier”, in a bid to “ensure that British interests received preferential treatment” and that South Africa remained “a cheap supplier of natural resources”.<br />
<br />
So who killed Chris Hani in April 1993, and why? Crawford-Browne says Hani’s death was “a major objective towards achieving Mbeki’s ambition to succeed Mandela. Modise and the MK leadership have many times been accused of involvement with [Janus] Walus in that killing. Amongst still unanswered questions is whether Walus was ultimately employed by John Bredenkamp and BAE.”<br />
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And what of former defence minister Modise? “Modise, who in his youth was a township thug, allegedly became an operative for the United States CIA plus the British MI6, as well as the SA Police.” He says Modise was “loathed by many MK soldiers because of his brutality”. Winnie Mandela refused to attend his funeral, instead attending that of FW de Klerk’s former wife, Marike.<br />
<br />
But then Winnie was also no angel, says Crawford-Browne, who notes here “dabbling in diamond smuggling with Hazel Crane and her husband, the Israeli gangster Shai Avissar”. Crane was gunned down in 2003.<br />
<br />
As I said, the web of intrigue is incredibly thick and complicated. It addresses the bizarre scenario of the just-released Mandela paying a visit to Indonesian military dictator Mohamed Suharto in 1990 to pick up a check of $10-million for ANC campaign funds. “Other payments flowed from Malaysia, Morocco, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Before long South Africa’s foreign policies in the post-apartheid era were being determined by bribes to the ANC.”<br />
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Another fall-out among ANC comrades involves Mbeki and Allan Boesak. Crawford-Browne, who had campaigned for banking sanctions against the apartheid government in October 1989, said he had earlier met Mbeki in Lusaka, “when the ANC national executive committee approved a proposal by the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his good offices to mediate between the international banking committee and the ANC, and thus to speed the pending collapse of the apartheid system”.<br />
<br />
But, he says, “Boesak reveals in his book Running With Horses [that] Mbeki was double-dealing and was actively colluding with [British prime minister Margaret]<br />
Thatcher just two weeks later to derail the banking sanctions initiative”.<br />
Crawford-Browne goes on to claim Boesak’s “subsequent legal troubles and imprisonment were driven by collusion between Mbeki and right-wing Danish politicians. In other words, Boesak was framed by Mbeki to neutralise him politically, and the court that convicted him was a travesty”.<br />
<br />
Nelson Mandela is revealed again and again as a bit of a dupe. “He kept company with dubious characters and thugs from Muammar Gaddafi to Charles Taylor. He was blinkered about the motives of flattering donors, and oblivious to probable consequences.”<br />
<br />
He notes that Mandela wrote a foreword to Saudi Prince Bandar’s biography. Bandar was “the only foreigner invited to witness his secret marriage to Graca Machel”. In his foreword Mandela called Bandar an “outstanding man”, a “man of principle, a diplomat of astonishing calibre, and one of the great peacemakers of our time”. Yet, says Crawford-Browne, soon after the biography was published, “Bandar was ‘outed’ as a ‘bagman’ for both the CIA and BAE”. Elsewhere, the full extent of Bandar’s wheeler-dealing is dealt with in detail.<br />
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And what of Toyko Sexwale? Crawford-Browne says his fortune “is repeatedly linked to diamonds from the DRC. Indeed, the still unresolved murder in 2005 of [Brett] Kebble, Sexwale’s mentor, is suspected to be connected to a blood diamond deal gone wrong. In reports by the UN and the Donen Commission, Sexwale was named as one of the prime beneficiaries of the Iraqi oil-for-food scam”.<br />
<br />
Kebble, he says, had “embezzled an estimated R2-billion”, but at his funeral “government representatives competed in their lavish praise for the crook”. And, as the plot thickens, we learn that “Kebble’s murder was linked to … Jackie Selebi”. The former police chief had been protected from prosecution by three presidents over a 10-year period. “The original charges against Selebi included diamond trafficking.” When he was finally charged in 2009, the government said testimony against him by a former head of National Intelligence would “jeopardise national security”.<br />
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Crawford-Browne says Mbeki “encouraged corruption amongst the ANC hierarchy because his Machiavellian traits appreciated that involvement in organised crime afforded him a measure of protection from political rivalries. He could always threaten to expose corruption, and thus keep his rivals in line. Jacob Zuma may have had sticky fingers in connection with the arms deal, but they were not nearly as sticky as Mbeki’s.”<br />
<br />
Mbeki also resented the fact that “South Africa’s revolution and its transition from apartheid were driven by civil society and the UDF, not by the ANC in exile or MK ...” <br />
<br />
He also praises the media which “in the 1980s, despite huge difficulties got the apartheid struggle story out to the international community. It was the media that in the years since the arms deal scandal first broke continued to investigate the corruption that permeated the hierarchy of ANC exiles.”<br />
<br />
He further explains how the recent exploitation of the biggest and richest diamond field in the world, at Marange in eastern Zimbabwe, has salvaged the beleaguered Robert Mugabe, and who the white men are behind its success, keeping the dictator afloat. Then there is the question of the Bush-Bin Laden family connections, and the dubious activities of Mark Thatcher.<br />
<br />
The book includes a superb history of the diamond and gold rush in South Africa, and the pivotal roles played by Cecil John Rhodes, De Beers, Anglo American, the Oppenheimers, Britain and many others, in shaping the future of South Africa. And all the time, the sale of armaments lurks.<br />
<br />
“Margaret Thatcher in 1981 reorganised and privatised the British armaments industry as British Aerospace, now known as BAE. In the subsequent three decades BAE, in conjunction with America’s own covert operations, has become central to joint British and US destabilisation efforts in Asia and Africa, and including post-apartheid South Africa. BAE is organised crime on a scale that, frankly, makes the Italian mafia seem like saints.”<br />
<br />
Elsewhere he explores the formation of the state of Israel, and the key role apartheid South Africa paid in helping it establish its armaments industry. There is also an analysis of the importance of Africa as a source of much of the world’s platinum, diamonds, manganese, cobalt, gold and uranium. And, of course, increasingly, of oil, with the US set to get a quarter of its oil from Angola by 2015. <br />
<br />
Even the assassination of JF Kennedy comes under scrutiny. Was it perhaps linked to JFK’s opposition to extra taxation for armaments? And what of the 1961 assassination of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba? Was the CIA behind it? And did the CIA and MI5 have a role in bringing down UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold’s plane, also in 1961, to further destabilise the area? Since 1996, we learn, between 6- and 10 million people have died in the Congo holocaust.<br />
<br />
Also unpacked is the US’s role in backing apartheid South Africa’s war against Angola’s Marxist MPLA, with China ironically arming SA ally Unita. You’ll learn about arms dealer Viktor Bout’s role in the whole sorry saga, and Kader Asmal’s flaccid response.<br />
<br />
The nefarious facts behind the 1994 Rwanda genocide are also dealt with, along with Zimbabwe’s disastrous military escapades in the DRC. Again, diamond and arms deals proliferate. And, after DRC President Laurent Kabila’s assassination in 2001, who should provide security for his son, Joseph, but Israel, whose need for industrial diamonds and other rare minerals knew no bounds.<br />
<br />
You’ll find out how Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos became stinking rich through “squirreling away” the country’s oil and diamond wealth. Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev’s name crops up again and again as an alleged launderer of blood diamonds.<br />
<br />
Fascinating, too, is how apartheid South Africa and Israel had a symbiotic relationship for decades based on diamonds, uranium, money and armaments, including nuclear weapons, especially in the wake of the 1977 UN arms embargo. Even Nazi sympathiser B J Vorster, the SA premier, was happy to be feted in Israel in 1973. A secret defence agreement was signed in 1975. The countries even conducted a joint nuclear test over the Atlantic in 1979, says Crawford-Browne.<br />
<br />
And that is where the present arms deal saga again emerges, because in 1997, Crawford-Browne writes, Israel refurbished and upgraded 38 Kfir fighter aircraft, which the SA Air Force renamed as Cheetahs. They were derivatives of French Mirages. Provision was made for a further 16 and had an operational lifespan of 15 years. The Cheetahs programme, first negotiated in 1988, cost R2-billion in the mid-1990s, though he says “perhaps as much as R20-billion at 2011 values was actually squandered”.<br />
<br />
The bottom line, though, was that SA had “perfectly adequate, virtually new fighter aircraft in 1997 when the late Joe Modise and then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki embarked on the arms deal”. They argued, he says, that “potentially embarrassing diplomatic repercussions” for the ANC government could arise should they be dependent on Israeli military technology.<br />
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Is all this the stuff of conspiracy theory? Or is it the shocking truth? Read this book and you be the judge.Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-76059343725759707742012-06-11T01:46:00.006-07:002012-06-15T00:36:31.883-07:00The Bentleys, Futters and Bonza Bay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We were the Bonza Bay Bentleys. I have written an autobiography called "Apartheid's Child, Freedom's Son", which I hope at some point to post on the internet, hopefully in a format where I can actually make some bucks. But for now, I thought I'd present some interesting photographs, from my father's side of the family mainly. (Press shift and left click to see pictures larger.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq13kY3NRO1NfMEZR6iZUqr8PuH-txPGId0PLtHhV5lllsNl7UqtRPVWF6jk9lk14JW0SpvUU3z9FtDx9yDdkTI_qidhfxiZ5gLLkL9UPueau-LtjPbWG0qiaP651iTVXlMfmlpJiSEiE/s1600/billy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq13kY3NRO1NfMEZR6iZUqr8PuH-txPGId0PLtHhV5lllsNl7UqtRPVWF6jk9lk14JW0SpvUU3z9FtDx9yDdkTI_qidhfxiZ5gLLkL9UPueau-LtjPbWG0qiaP651iTVXlMfmlpJiSEiE/s320/billy.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
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This was the young Clifford William Henry Bentley. He was born in 1920 and was known as Billy as a boy and Bill as an adult. His parents were Joseph Clifford and Florence (nee Futter) Bentley, of Port Elizabeth. Tragically, both Bill's mother and twin sister died at his birth or soon afterwards. So he was later raised by his aunt, Flo's sister Amy, who was married to Sydney Carter. They lived in Cambridge, East London. So my dad grew up with the double-barrel surname Bentley-Carter.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwQXuv1t0Byj9mSR_EIrgSPyb3FHv6fCJYtqrCVNNqUhR7WzhQxCX2MIwVVLdk8XJNES2UwjrczHEzJA97kYtecRer6kmbsq6i_H7v9hwc8VbqROcYIQcT7RRCtjBVr7ARhiTac7QXNg/s1600/brenbil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwQXuv1t0Byj9mSR_EIrgSPyb3FHv6fCJYtqrCVNNqUhR7WzhQxCX2MIwVVLdk8XJNES2UwjrczHEzJA97kYtecRer6kmbsq6i_H7v9hwc8VbqROcYIQcT7RRCtjBVr7ARhiTac7QXNg/s320/brenbil.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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My folks were married in a joint ceremony with the couple on the right in the early 1950s. I think this is in front of the large church in upper Oxford Street, East London, judging by the fluted columns. Brenda Joan Ross was born in the Natal midlands near Nottingham Road in 1926, a month after Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen). She's on the left, with the bespectacled Bill beside her. I should remember the other couple, but don't. I wonder what the other bride is looking at on the pavement?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBcsfwM0aDUQOZPQNtPqIaAgmbiARYzDFyuPTGOlVYI95yV2WnegqQ67Vd5Dj1CHD2zKk4Tvg2TusH67_y6LBHtdG7HOh6L_hqnM4n5ERvV2Urs2SJCZqCFzuAAsS76gwwDN6GooShQUg/s1600/Slide2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBcsfwM0aDUQOZPQNtPqIaAgmbiARYzDFyuPTGOlVYI95yV2WnegqQ67Vd5Dj1CHD2zKk4Tvg2TusH67_y6LBHtdG7HOh6L_hqnM4n5ERvV2Urs2SJCZqCFzuAAsS76gwwDN6GooShQUg/s320/Slide2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am indebted to my second cousin (I think it would be) Heather Gane, of Johannesburg, who has put together a family tree of the Futter family. This is her picture of the massive Futter clan of which my grandmother, Flo, front right, and her grandfather, the only son, next to her, were a part. My great aunt, who as my dad's de facto mother we knew as "Auntie", but considered our grandmother, is in the middle at the back.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-W6dDCLcKm3DKhPX1GOc3Y6QVTh8J7pu2Q8RobIdXvCrr0jshr-Ks9AFTjoic9AGjyYnGBAIMZp3PGOdCbvZDu4Om4nZiopEFfdrWCyk2veJpUF0QbbuO8cbzdbS42uzFDOxgv97xh4/s1600/Slide3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-W6dDCLcKm3DKhPX1GOc3Y6QVTh8J7pu2Q8RobIdXvCrr0jshr-Ks9AFTjoic9AGjyYnGBAIMZp3PGOdCbvZDu4Om4nZiopEFfdrWCyk2veJpUF0QbbuO8cbzdbS42uzFDOxgv97xh4/s320/Slide3.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
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Aren't these delightful shots from a bygone era? My grandfather, Joseph Clifford, with his young wife, Flo. Thanks again to Heather Gane.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgggiKZWoRfhb7mFrKr4O2RJyYv5iD-SmA30UxEwqb9cVJnu0z75Pjvo3gaqaCqG84OMmwxNUnMy5_jZWZ3s5GJQeLFBQirR2qQRT__7I2Vv_fPhGZ57q1pE6K8yEMV1T16tsCVSFnkQ3I/s1600/Slide4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgggiKZWoRfhb7mFrKr4O2RJyYv5iD-SmA30UxEwqb9cVJnu0z75Pjvo3gaqaCqG84OMmwxNUnMy5_jZWZ3s5GJQeLFBQirR2qQRT__7I2Vv_fPhGZ57q1pE6K8yEMV1T16tsCVSFnkQ3I/s320/Slide4.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
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So my dad ended up with Sydney and Amy Carter. How interesting that the picture on the right was taken, since it shows my actualy grandmother and, upon her death, my dad's de facto new mom, Amy, with Amy's husband, who I think died before I was born in 1956, since I have no memory of him. Apart from the rather squashed shot of Bill, these are also from Heather Gane.<br />
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Amy Carter (nee Futter) outside her home (I think) at 1 Courtenay Street, Cambridge. She died, aged 89, probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s, not long before my dad's premature death in 1974 at the age of just 54.</div>
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Joseph Clifford (JC) Bentley was our grandfather. He had remarried someone we knew as Autie Millie, by the time we got to meet him on the few occasions we came through to PE from East London. He was, I think, company secretary of PE Tramways, which later became the Algoa Bus Company. More importantly, to us, was his role as an amateur astronomer. I found this page of press clippings in the library of EP Newspapers (now Avusa Eastern Cape, or suchlike). They were mainly, I think, from the Evening Post or Weekend Post, but possibly also from the Eastern Province Herald. I am quite proud of my grandfather, who clearly was a clever man. </div>
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The miracle of the internet. I did a google search and came up with this, from the minutes of a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1948, when approval of the sale of the telescope my grandfather is posing with, was granted.</div>
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And so we grew up in Bonza Bay. My mom having been raised on a farm in the then Rhodesia, ensured we had a fowl run on the property (which wouldn't be allowed today). This kept us in eggs and the odd roast chicken. Top left I am being held by my dad, Bill, with older brothers Alistair and Ian beside us as we peruse the chickens. On the right, my younger sister Jennifer and I get up close to the fowls, with Alistair behind. Below, my mom has her brood among trees at one of the places (possibly in the Hogsback) we visited as kids.<br />
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Bentleys in da house. Top left are (clockwise from left) eldest brother Ian, Alistair, Jen and me, Kin, in the lounge of our home at what was then 27 Poplar Avenue. The house, right, was designed by my draughtsman father Bill and its modern lines set it apart from those nearby, although the flat roof was rather leaky at times.</div>
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My youngest boet, Donald, who was born in 1960, does not feature in the above pictures, but he is much in evidence in this one, since he had the foresight to take it. It shows Bonza Bay from the top of the massive sand dunes which separate it from the beach. Most importantly, it shows the old Bonza Bay Hotel (bottom right), which was the heart of the village until it was destroyed I think in the early 1990s. In its place has been erected yet another tedious townhouse complex. On the far right can be seen a corner of the Bonza Bay Bowling Club (the BBBC), which I trust is still there. The road leading inland to the left of centre is Forward Lane. You can just glimpse the flat roof of our childhood home about midway up it. This was taken probably in the mid to late 1980s. When we were growing up in the 1960s, Beaconhurst was arguably the fastest growing residential area in the country. It later joined up with Bonza Bay to become known as Beacon Bay. The hotel was at the heart of many of our jols. From left is the old bottle store (under apartheid, black people used a separate entrance on the far left). Then comes the famous Bull and Bush pub, to which my dad would often repair to escape the massive family. Next is the lounge, with the Church family, owners of the hotel, living upstairs. The entrance desk was off the lounge. To the right of this is the oldest section, bedrooms in a Cape Dutch design. Then, far right is the Hobnob ladies' bar and Family Tree restaurant. This complex was built about the mid-1970s. To read more about the ambience in this place, please visit another posting on this blog, titled "Little Kin and the Big World", at <a href="http://kininline.blogspot.com/2011/12/little-k-and-big-world.html">http://kininline.blogspot.com/2011/12/little-k-and-big-world.html</a></div>
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</div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-72124913598004726602012-06-08T04:55:00.000-07:002012-06-10T02:11:18.682-07:00My clash with Kader Asmal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I got into a brief spat with the late Kader Asmal, a former minister of water affairs and also of education, in the columns of the Herald. I thought I hadn't kept the clippings from 1998, but stumbled across an envelope with the articles along with others from the period. It was just over four years after the advent of ANC rule and the honeymoon was most definitely over. In the following articles from the time (which precede others posted earlier) I also looked at non-political issues like the national lottery, the ban on smoking in public places and did a few travelogues after a holiday in the UK. (To read the articles, press shift and left click.)</div>
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This, from April 19, 1998, warned of the dangers of a too powerful ANC.</div>
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The first part of my article, which appeared in the Herald on August 8, 1998, on Britain's national lottery. It concludes below.</div>
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The lotto conclusion.</div>
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I had this piece published in the Herald's motoring supplement on August 27, 1998. It concludes below.</div>
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End of the road.</div>
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On September 5, 1998, I dominated the leader page of the Saturday edition of the Herald. The article was run around a cartoon by Napier Dunn. This is the headline and blurb, with the rest in three parts below.</div>
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The first column of my piece on military conscription.</div>
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The second part.<br />
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The concluding part.<br />
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I did not write down the date for this, which appeared soon after the above article. But imagine my surprise when I saw none other than Kader Asmal had taken offence at my offering. I was lucky at the time that the person laying out the leader page invited me to write a reply to Asmal's attack, which is run in bold print.<br />
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There has been much hypocrisy in the new SA, not least when affirmative action, black economic empowerment and so on are involved. Why should the child of a wealthy black politician, businessman, etc, be favoured over that of a middle class white person who earns far less?<br />
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In 1998 we visited the UK. This article about Lindisfarne appeared in the Weekend Post's Leisure suppmenent on September 26, 1998. It concludes in two parts below.<br />
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The middle part.</div>
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The conclusion.</div>
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Little did we realise, when this was published on October 23, 1998, that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would for several long years as foreign minister actively condone Robert Mugabe's destructive, racist policies in Zimbabwe.</div>
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My wife Robyn got in on the act with this superb book review, which was run on November 4, 1998.</div>
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This, from January 16, 1999, appeared in the Leisure supplement. It concludes in two sections below.<br />
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More on the Surrey visit.<br />
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The last of Surrey.</div>
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I also did a piece on our visit to Hadrian's Wall, but couldn't locate either the clipping or my original digital copy. Luckily I printed it out at the time. The pictures that went with it are non-digital and stashed away somewhere. The article concludes in two sections below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQCQwdvc2vRai_Tjyt4tTt-98CdUmfQdtoSxCu_Ykh2_nl47mSVrNdKTzLxxIDAwj3n3CEwuooT4NyFk6U3hzxU9b8QY22gnjNA8A_h0HhfzoSHFdETkO79anuE_a2zV-o_vhvLrh6LN0/s1600/rian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQCQwdvc2vRai_Tjyt4tTt-98CdUmfQdtoSxCu_Ykh2_nl47mSVrNdKTzLxxIDAwj3n3CEwuooT4NyFk6U3hzxU9b8QY22gnjNA8A_h0HhfzoSHFdETkO79anuE_a2zV-o_vhvLrh6LN0/s320/rian.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>
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Hardian's Wall Part 2.<br />
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Hardian's Wall Part 3.
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In this, from February 13, 1999, I continue to take on the ANC. It concludes below.</div>
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The economy concludes.</div>
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I have no date for this, but it was done in about 1998 or 1999. This is a photocopy and it concludes below.</div>
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Baden Powell concludes.<br />
<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-11914474963522883052012-06-01T00:14:00.002-07:002012-06-06T00:13:28.149-07:00Some scintillating solo shows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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This continues my documenting of the art reviews I had published in the Herald, Port Elizabeth. These are from late 2009, and include a work inspired by the imminent 2010 Fifa World Cup. (To read the reviews, press shift and left click.)</div>
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Each year, the NMM Art Museum hosts an exhibition by the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year. This is my review of Nicholas Hlobo's exhibition, from September 1, 2009.</div>
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Duncan Stewart made quite an impact with his exhibition ahead of the World Cup. My review, which concludes below, was published on September 7, 2009.<br />
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Concluding the Stewart review.</div>
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Next up, on September 14, 2009, was this review of a group show, Wild Ideas, with ideas for the installation of art works on the Donkin Reserve. The rest of the review is below.<br />
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The rest of the review. The Donkin has indeed been transformed over the past few years.</div>
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My review of an Amos Langdown retrospective appeared on September 28, 2009. It ends below.</div>
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The end of the Langdown review.</div>
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The NMM Art Museum regularly stages shows from its permanent collection. This review is from October 14, 2009.</div>
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Another show from the NMMAM collection. This review appeared on October 15, 2009.<br />
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This is a review of a group show at the Epsac gallery from October 22, 2009. The picture below was run alongside it.</div>
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A work by Enock Ndlovu.<br />
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The NMM Art Museum introduced a Biennial Award and in 2008, Linga Diko a joint winner. This is my review of his subsequent solo show which appeared on October 29. It concludes below.<br />
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The conclusion.</div>
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This is the first leg of a review of an exhibition by Neil Hart, which appeared on November 2, 2009. It concludes below.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnUdX38z8o-yp_tFW7XyssRU8iNc9MvDrznoc2hhf9nKse5OZ5XeliDIlnZQ5UcoOSN1PXx_MW8irTtmBRnkNqucG-WQ29lolSQWm2zEkMcrIuJ0XZDF4ERX45oXRutOdzQ31oIThosh8/s1600/phic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnUdX38z8o-yp_tFW7XyssRU8iNc9MvDrznoc2hhf9nKse5OZ5XeliDIlnZQ5UcoOSN1PXx_MW8irTtmBRnkNqucG-WQ29lolSQWm2zEkMcrIuJ0XZDF4ERX45oXRutOdzQ31oIThosh8/s320/phic.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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The end of the Neil Hart show.</div>
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The other joint winner of the 2008 Biennial Award was Christine Maree. This is my review of her exhibition, which appeared on November 3, 2009. I'm sure this was just called 'Family Portraits'. I don't know how the 'WO' crept in ahead of that at the start of this review, which concludes below.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKR_UgCQ_-uREIPc7c6vhxXv1ckG-cOflUeO_cH6T_xy5yUeDDvZ4aQKtU-S3HbWBfyIVw5B8vmOOyymZhGaXZj-W6QLQZugJY8b11xPkMEuDLIVoI_ojikm_6XWE3xYCOWtC-dQnFUPk/s1600/maree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKR_UgCQ_-uREIPc7c6vhxXv1ckG-cOflUeO_cH6T_xy5yUeDDvZ4aQKtU-S3HbWBfyIVw5B8vmOOyymZhGaXZj-W6QLQZugJY8b11xPkMEuDLIVoI_ojikm_6XWE3xYCOWtC-dQnFUPk/s320/maree.jpg" width="179" /></a></div>
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The last of the Maree review.</div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-48914264252774278062012-05-31T00:35:00.002-07:002012-06-06T00:14:14.382-07:00Meeting Jack Lugg and Van Gogh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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After a brief break to update the world on my artistic response to the ANC in the last posting, I return here to documenting my art reviews from the Herald, Port Elizabeth. (To view the articles, hold in shift and left click.)</div>
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It was quite a thing meeting my former art school head, Jack Lugg, some 30 years after we'd last met. He was a singular inspiration as painter, sculptor and draughtsman at the East London Technical College art department. This appeared on May 18, 2009. It continues below.</div>
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A picture of one of Jack Lugg's works from the exhibition.</div>
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This exhibition of works by Chinese artists appeared on June 3, 2009, and continues below.</div>
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The Chinese show concludes.</div>
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This appeared on June 8, 2009. It concludes below.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjblADCJDgUkQMMlBjKOhm8uPJHixsFKnPgN9xwWNA9Zvq99mM2fhwQ_kb_041TrV4Gg3pw5Te78ICQS06v8xp13uyJUWvhUN_CcOeO6a80hZDje9NFa5BobV7_xcXCFBLr6G0AfC8R8Bc/s1600/chin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjblADCJDgUkQMMlBjKOhm8uPJHixsFKnPgN9xwWNA9Zvq99mM2fhwQ_kb_041TrV4Gg3pw5Te78ICQS06v8xp13uyJUWvhUN_CcOeO6a80hZDje9NFa5BobV7_xcXCFBLr6G0AfC8R8Bc/s320/chin.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>
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Concluding ...</div>
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This was from June 17, 2009. Again, it concludes below.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbtvKVZdRnOy86yLaC3LQvcKqf0XIX0Xya6yLlfrwiZW3kQAKWXl-FyDo4MTDJqnfe73JIgSo3LKvCHfTYaEUypPPk9Z6-ab7ACvFC-Dl9lkVszd3zrfauDaE-uycHRpVfioBAOmIEFE/s1600/lam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbtvKVZdRnOy86yLaC3LQvcKqf0XIX0Xya6yLlfrwiZW3kQAKWXl-FyDo4MTDJqnfe73JIgSo3LKvCHfTYaEUypPPk9Z6-ab7ACvFC-Dl9lkVszd3zrfauDaE-uycHRpVfioBAOmIEFE/s320/lam.jpg" width="187" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">The last of it.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmbiNQpzLl-NVpxzPwYqkVAHMpmF8ln1Se7cT79Z6veqy6cFf4OmO8cc_9NGf2SISoOHK9CRs6WE_FT1S2UlAYtMKwEx_Sr5B-G2DQOaEX1Qc442G4goVIt1a_4GCk0g7puaspm6pZS1U/s1600/anth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmbiNQpzLl-NVpxzPwYqkVAHMpmF8ln1Se7cT79Z6veqy6cFf4OmO8cc_9NGf2SISoOHK9CRs6WE_FT1S2UlAYtMKwEx_Sr5B-G2DQOaEX1Qc442G4goVIt1a_4GCk0g7puaspm6pZS1U/s320/anth.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Anthony Harris's exhibition was reviewed on June 29, 2009.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPK3V5R-M-73rGtbI2Y8Garkrf8_z4gIC-lNRZJ8JziRm62E1626RYhbAOhHDHx_YL4AWC-iluSMGc1Kwjh73UX0zACuJ5JYwheTjMVdzzr0v93AZLLjx5fB82vBpiehT16NRFxywF5P8/s1600/sett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPK3V5R-M-73rGtbI2Y8Garkrf8_z4gIC-lNRZJ8JziRm62E1626RYhbAOhHDHx_YL4AWC-iluSMGc1Kwjh73UX0zACuJ5JYwheTjMVdzzr0v93AZLLjx5fB82vBpiehT16NRFxywF5P8/s320/sett.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The 1820 Settlers Art Group's show was reviewed on July 13, 2009.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGFCAeZICpMgqSsypgjKuTQO0yujBs5A-rPdssi8D5n5BvUuCXd1-JjWAzQWpNwyL0tc8COZAcjhum5_6QnQXgf3xWKxPTqag90yLzZi4b7i6xySrZ3c2Z05YiuLWudhQ0EThXQlGlz18/s1600/gogh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGFCAeZICpMgqSsypgjKuTQO0yujBs5A-rPdssi8D5n5BvUuCXd1-JjWAzQWpNwyL0tc8COZAcjhum5_6QnQXgf3xWKxPTqag90yLzZi4b7i6xySrZ3c2Z05YiuLWudhQ0EThXQlGlz18/s320/gogh.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yes indeed, a Van Gogh exhibition. Read on ...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkugiJ14Dw4kbqtATrtP5FvDAiHJn1JR1p0ayi2m-l1_QakRV1UrncL3SZHcib46snfWVqF_E7feb7dIdoP8Ys-DJ2KJPyqbdld_JgNLiA6aKCsut5GltsyY-BhCsSGVHdqcCZN5qfOo0/s1600/vog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkugiJ14Dw4kbqtATrtP5FvDAiHJn1JR1p0ayi2m-l1_QakRV1UrncL3SZHcib46snfWVqF_E7feb7dIdoP8Ys-DJ2KJPyqbdld_JgNLiA6aKCsut5GltsyY-BhCsSGVHdqcCZN5qfOo0/s320/vog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This was a historic exhibition, the EP Society of Arts and Crafts' 90th annual exhibition. This appeared on August 13, 2009.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0KCOp4bPlIj07gKoyJvSVOgh1KsM8BQj5YfUreQItYbYkm2QMrWqC9-CXdSEXcpFEEwrVQK8leae931rSMgkrnj5Bb1-FYEHhgNijthQNNsLyvhZHyUr6qP5_fbgalRjnA1lEViBJ38k/s1600/yung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0KCOp4bPlIj07gKoyJvSVOgh1KsM8BQj5YfUreQItYbYkm2QMrWqC9-CXdSEXcpFEEwrVQK8leae931rSMgkrnj5Bb1-FYEHhgNijthQNNsLyvhZHyUr6qP5_fbgalRjnA1lEViBJ38k/s320/yung.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This New Signatures exhibition was reviewed on August 31.</div>
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For those at Rhodes, NMMU and the NMM Art Museum who ensured I was eventually prevented from continuing with this sort of work, I guess you'e now happy. The Herald runs perhaps one art review every month, if that. A few years back I ensured art was given continuing prominence.</div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-20060625296340866842012-05-30T00:55:00.001-07:002012-06-06T00:15:14.702-07:00Saying it more subtly than Brett Murray<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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In the wake of the controversy that has erupted surrounding South African artist Brett Murray's painting, 'The Spear', I thought I'd post some pieces I did around 2005, at the height of the Thabo Mbeki era. The works continue a theme I have been propounding since not long after Mbeki took the reins in 1999. (To view them bigger, press shift and left click. Left click again to see them larger still.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpKY1BUSukTbLcuKum-lAQJTc3GC7B6G8xW626t_xYy2dLhxV9zWIA6ngpmYdd25GYrxOoZrp8ulNWIJsELV_4DecVEbjhhkyMBgptltNhD77y84X_r3KwAop_0CylrqqhmiffXAfATFA/s1600/102.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpKY1BUSukTbLcuKum-lAQJTc3GC7B6G8xW626t_xYy2dLhxV9zWIA6ngpmYdd25GYrxOoZrp8ulNWIJsELV_4DecVEbjhhkyMBgptltNhD77y84X_r3KwAop_0CylrqqhmiffXAfATFA/s320/102.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I came across some 1950s and 1960s South African postage stamps - the sort I grew up with as a child - and decided that they represented, in a way, something of the progress our country had made since the arrival of the European colonists. So the new flag is comprised of stamps from the old South Africa, while the whole is surrounded by the colours of the old flag, the Oranje Blanje Blou.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGrZQPzjTmPXorxgJa9q1J47c9AbFPAohX8j_FEa0eUInD-A7U7niPsNdYk77OJSFbTbCTqIfhBUH3hOKpoWKQwGeOfLwUxhEKxiqhnVt1lR5CT417hcz-LOM8Acj44hU72fkySbGPp8/s1600/104.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGrZQPzjTmPXorxgJa9q1J47c9AbFPAohX8j_FEa0eUInD-A7U7niPsNdYk77OJSFbTbCTqIfhBUH3hOKpoWKQwGeOfLwUxhEKxiqhnVt1lR5CT417hcz-LOM8Acj44hU72fkySbGPp8/s320/104.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Interestingly, I submitted this work for the 2005 Kebble art exhibition. I was notified on my cellphone that it had been accepted, but later, when I went to pick up the other works I had submitted for an exhibition at the EP Society of Arts and Crafts Gallery in Port Elizabeth, I was told it had in fact not been selected. Should I be surprised at this change of mind, given that this work, which I called 'Between the Lines', does not really square with the sort of politically correct philosophy that Kebble, who was shot dead in mysterious circumstances in September 2005, espoused, given his close ties to the ANC Youth League.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg51O_Lv0KQ2tY6HnoAyPIk1nkLiPvqiOI6U3M3_DwEUtMiGk9NOdBxU67074ZvtkwY74atTUyp5H_1nGPZHwZxyNAenPWy1bJRlEcKl360s35Y730ld-jWnbCcjiF4e_sRpeGeM5gkpA4/s1600/106.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg51O_Lv0KQ2tY6HnoAyPIk1nkLiPvqiOI6U3M3_DwEUtMiGk9NOdBxU67074ZvtkwY74atTUyp5H_1nGPZHwZxyNAenPWy1bJRlEcKl360s35Y730ld-jWnbCcjiF4e_sRpeGeM5gkpA4/s320/106.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Those who've been following this blog will have read some of the articles I wrote in the Herald, Port Elizabeth, attacking Mbeki's shocking policy of appeasement towards Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. Anyway, in this work, called 'A Helping Hand', I used a press photograph of the two of them at the height of Mugabe's reign of terror - when white farmers were driven off their farms, newspapers were shut down, political opponents were attacked - to again make the point, using stamps from the former Rhodesia, that without the successful country built up by those early colonists, he would not have any of the riches he enjoyed/enjoys as a dictator. The bits of coloured paper used to fashion the shape of Zimbabwe are actually the torn-off pieces of envelope from which I removed the stamps. In one you can make out part of the franking of the name, Bulawayo.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8hWlhzNMIzPrVQWTpCVcVW_cijs_IcrW95cbUgwojHqJfkjPxNQdXU6sj1Q8Ea_RrgQfRpnfDsVa-lwgjQ2vOlUpDeJKfHG3iguhcuQW1ifJe_DkbMmvkzUtaUsw_z20Uszw8wMRs48M/s1600/107.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8hWlhzNMIzPrVQWTpCVcVW_cijs_IcrW95cbUgwojHqJfkjPxNQdXU6sj1Q8Ea_RrgQfRpnfDsVa-lwgjQ2vOlUpDeJKfHG3iguhcuQW1ifJe_DkbMmvkzUtaUsw_z20Uszw8wMRs48M/s320/107.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Pardon the reflective glass, but I thought I'd give another view of this work. Note the colours of the ANC surrounding this image. My point is that our destinies are all interlinked.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGnUizQRuA9VVwAcTMpmjUWta7UvTmKym9tIIxXkHISjo5LHJmCislCWxNkCaQ0Y7WaAxKHMGZcMCc_buwhQ8hUtw8KEb18i0e6iiE49-d8hzGMY3L6s6SRnfQ1qHy6qWdyFDqx3wRiYk/s1600/113.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGnUizQRuA9VVwAcTMpmjUWta7UvTmKym9tIIxXkHISjo5LHJmCislCWxNkCaQ0Y7WaAxKHMGZcMCc_buwhQ8hUtw8KEb18i0e6iiE49-d8hzGMY3L6s6SRnfQ1qHy6qWdyFDqx3wRiYk/s320/113.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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The camera I'm using is what one would call fairly inexpensive, hence it does not give the sort of perfectly rectangular shapes necessary for photographing works of art. Here I have tried to show Mbeki and Mugabe's role in turning Zimbabwe inside out and upside down, destroying its economy and trampling on human rights. Just recently, on the PE beachfront, the African people selling arts and crafts from around the continent, were also selling the ridiculous banknotes that Mugabe was having printed as inflation surged into the millions. I wish I'd bought a 100 trillion dollar note - but I wasn't prepared to fork out the R30 or so it was going for.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzaogukbBDw9uzAa9L3A0B61pnpYtfOBBmTXr6n3NrpboxSeDTM2wGUnoEbppSMEUUDDUpfV6uVjeeuURW_nE8M3yG_VqQ3V2vL6lp0PtbBaYGsZtRX2t2P90XbhbwF4BXYvIS_uo9PM/s1600/114.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzaogukbBDw9uzAa9L3A0B61pnpYtfOBBmTXr6n3NrpboxSeDTM2wGUnoEbppSMEUUDDUpfV6uVjeeuURW_nE8M3yG_VqQ3V2vL6lp0PtbBaYGsZtRX2t2P90XbhbwF4BXYvIS_uo9PM/s320/114.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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I called this 'Occupational Hazard', based on the two bottom stamps. Note how the cityscape stamps have also been inverted, to underscore the country's upheaval.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq5fuB9sGY_TIf-uaNV-kpS3XhfFXSE9ahlyVmfeNvtNZyf7Jnc3rgoIsS5o6iL786kntD8JHSiyMn_TPDZyG6ijcYt_d4oMOJlFjBdxbFDNncHFZ17kLASd4EemKsBTxSvwLme_jPNrk/s1600/118.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq5fuB9sGY_TIf-uaNV-kpS3XhfFXSE9ahlyVmfeNvtNZyf7Jnc3rgoIsS5o6iL786kntD8JHSiyMn_TPDZyG6ijcYt_d4oMOJlFjBdxbFDNncHFZ17kLASd4EemKsBTxSvwLme_jPNrk/s320/118.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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The ANC is 100 years old this year. But for most of those years it existed in a country, yes which was beset by racism, but also one that achieved much and produced stamps celebrating things like commercial agriculture.<br />
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Interesting, isn't it, that the hand holding the spear in the ANC logo is white. Perhaps a tribute to Joe Slovo.</div>
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This, called 'Quo Vadis', I did in 2006, with Zim's descent into oblivion continuing apace. Some of the stamps are from an earlier colonial era, but all make the point of the origins of those states.<br />
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Another view of 'Quo Vadis' showing how I incorporated the colours of the Zim flag into the work.<br />
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As noted on an earlier blog, I picked up a couple of black bags full of old stamps and envelopes. I like the thought that stamps were carefully, or not so carefully, stuck on envelopes or parcels, handed in at a post office, franked, and then the parcel or envelope was sent to its destination. So each stamp, or group of stamps, contains a story. This one I called 'Secretary Bird' after the stamp.<br />
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This is exactly as the paper was cut by whoever, back in the 1960s, decided to keep these stamps. I've called it 'Barclays' because, though not visible here, the bank's name was embossed in the red wax seal.<br />
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In earlier postings, I have shown a plethora of envelopes with old SA stamps and names of companies on them. These were done in 2005, before I even started this blog. This one I called 'City Treasurer' for the destination of these envelopes.<br />
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Another layer of government in the 1960s gave rise to the destination of these. I call the work 'Divisional Council'.<br />
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In this one, called 'Buffalo', I incorporated a particularly pleasing envelope and large array of stamps. I like the way the buffalo logo on the left faces off against the wildebeest stamp on the right. Those stamps I recall as being from the 1950s, before we became a republic. Indeed, though I can't make out the date on the franking mark, I see the stamp is for one penny.</div>
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And then there is this. As yet untitled, I have been working on this abstract for the past few months.</div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-37749378163415956812012-05-28T02:40:00.000-07:002012-06-06T00:15:48.246-07:00Fine art and Port Elizabeth's 2010 stadium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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After a brief Grahamstown visit in my previous posting, I've returned to the recording of my art reviews published in the Herald, PE, in the latter part of the first decade of this century. This section covers from mid-September, 2008, till mid-May, 2009. (To read them, hold down control and left click. Click again to see them larger still.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPed9RD4DDclJRyLH2mlCi67Ti0HECGlcJ41kg3EpDXEmQ_RRwf63KRDtMB08s0ZHVFpJbC1TiS2dFJrHpihMbLdBXH6XVnqmU7OzZ8zQeF3EOhNsVQDOf2Rch7g6GwQHOlELPqcpCYuM/s1600/five.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPed9RD4DDclJRyLH2mlCi67Ti0HECGlcJ41kg3EpDXEmQ_RRwf63KRDtMB08s0ZHVFpJbC1TiS2dFJrHpihMbLdBXH6XVnqmU7OzZ8zQeF3EOhNsVQDOf2Rch7g6GwQHOlELPqcpCYuM/s320/five.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Montage Gallery in Walmer really made an art of staging art exhibitions. This was published on September 17, 2008</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFk9fVFpP0ueROlGHMdpOFQlt_EDgta0batsuAalDP1dAbse8BF5bjoNm1Byl2RPZoBnxCKr9at5AJoV4nTvloQF_mWnFZOxrQVclbUFyprK9J94lAQicGB5impNXPrVDyCtYmJf3ymw/s1600/coeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFk9fVFpP0ueROlGHMdpOFQlt_EDgta0batsuAalDP1dAbse8BF5bjoNm1Byl2RPZoBnxCKr9at5AJoV4nTvloQF_mWnFZOxrQVclbUFyprK9J94lAQicGB5impNXPrVDyCtYmJf3ymw/s320/coeg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Due to scanning constraints, my review of photographerTim Hopwood's show is done in two takes. It was published on September 29, 2008</div>
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My sons and I made regular forays to the North End Lake to monitor progress on the construction of the stadium being built for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. This led to our starting our first blog, 2010 Stadium Watch. These are two of my pictures taken at the time and published in the Herald on October 6, 2008. We actually met an engineer working on the project while taking pictures and he told us he visited used our blog to follow the project while out of the countrry. I plan, at some stage, to use some of those pictures to present a pictorial record of the project</div>
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This review was published on October 13, 2008</div>
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At one point the powers that be made life more difficult for me, making me take my own pictures at the various art shows I attended. Hence the picture byline. Again, I had to scan it in two parts. This was run on October 14</div>
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This was run on October 15, 2008, and concludes below.<br />
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Another fine show at the Cuyler Street Gallery. This is from October 27, 2008, and concludes below</div>
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Tossie Theron kept me on my toes. This, marking the closure of her gallery, also appeared on October 27, 2008</div>
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Port Alfred artists featured in this show, reviewed on November 17, 2008, and concluding below</div>
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I even had a kind word on November 17, 2008, for Melanie Hillebrand, director of the Nelson Mandela Metro Art Museum</div>
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Another bit of Montage magic. This is from November 24, 2008</div>
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The EP Society of Arts and Crafts (Epsac) gallery often delivered fine fare. This is from February 2, 2009, and concludes below<br />
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I still kept submitting the odd piece to Lifestyle, the Sunday Times magazine. This is from March, 22, 2009</div>
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Another interesting Epsac show, from March 23, 2009, it concludes below</div>
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I recall this review led to a call from Ken Denton, the Irish magnate who has bought up large swathes of historic Central and, sadly, left many historic gems to fall into almost irreparable states of direpair. His attempt at finally restoring the 1860s Donkin Terrace homes has been halted by officials because he is changing their character. They are arguably the most distinctive architectural feature in the city. How tragic.</div>
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This show certainly made me keen to visit India at some time. This is from May 11, 2009, and concludes below</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJmoq1vxOeuJUGptH0wyVBdQXdn7pl7uA5aWv-fedvxAfZWQ6y7Of7N0k1kA_LFpOybmPLji_KpFhvpElqIFiiKB10KRaXzHd6U2I5ak7KoOaWxLuzlG5aNokOP8u9YoCj5uUlsrljvoY/s1600/ind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJmoq1vxOeuJUGptH0wyVBdQXdn7pl7uA5aWv-fedvxAfZWQ6y7Of7N0k1kA_LFpOybmPLji_KpFhvpElqIFiiKB10KRaXzHd6U2I5ak7KoOaWxLuzlG5aNokOP8u9YoCj5uUlsrljvoY/s320/ind.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
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Indian sunset</div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-50505510478405914772012-05-24T01:30:00.001-07:002012-06-06T00:16:25.531-07:00Grahamstown turns 200<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have a son at Rhodes University and have been making the journey from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown and back on a regular basis over the past two-and-a-half years. Last Saturday, for the first time, I took a few hours to explore just a fraction of this historic Settler town or, since it has a cathedral, city. I thought I’d share a few pictures taken on a cold morning in late May, in the chilly aftermath of the first cold front of the winter. (To see the pictures larger, hold down shift and left click. Click on them again and they’re even bigger. To fill the screen with the picture, press F11. Press F11 again to escape.)</div>
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<i>Grahamstown is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year, so it was fitting that I start my journey by looking at this monument, on the middle island in High Street. But what is it all about? Well I have found a great website, http://www.grahamstown.co.za , which seems to be a Makana Tourism site. It has some very useful information not only about Grahamstown, but also the history of the whole of Frontier Country, scene of eight wars between the Xhosas and the Trek Boers and, after 1820, the British Settlers. While many admire the Zulus for their courage in combating the European colonists, how much guts mustn’t it have taken for the Xhosas to resist them for over 100 years, from 1779 till 1881? Spears versus guns</i></div>
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<i>This is a monument, says the website, to mark the establishment of Grahamstown. It says: “The British were determined to end the conflicts in the unwanted eastern areas, and at the behest of the Landrosdt of the area, Colonel Glen Cuyler, launched an offensive in the Zuurveld under the command of a Scottish officer of noble birth, Colonel John Graham and the deputy landrosdt of the area, Andries Stockenstroom. The object was to ‘clear the Zuurveld’ of the AmaXhosa. In 1812, the Colonial Office in Whitehall received a dispatch informing them that Graham had succeeded in his task by using ‘a proper degree of terror’.” A time, clearly, not for the faint of heart</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Ut2mi0vDLbYwrvkNntVGF_h0qJJgDmgLhX92Vqdb4sxzuqrI4VO0HmP36shrnzQZ9_LNGJxCdiqDIy2BcA0mi_ToUpe_InL8tkGoGRxcRLwdV1unZ5k3Z77CdGKh9PIlgi7ZQJ84I0w/s1600/DSCN0820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Ut2mi0vDLbYwrvkNntVGF_h0qJJgDmgLhX92Vqdb4sxzuqrI4VO0HmP36shrnzQZ9_LNGJxCdiqDIy2BcA0mi_ToUpe_InL8tkGoGRxcRLwdV1unZ5k3Z77CdGKh9PIlgi7ZQJ84I0w/s320/DSCN0820.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>The bronze plaque on this memorial is remarkable. Rarely does one see relief sculpture where the figures are shown almost completely in three dimensions, like those of the Xhosa warriors on the left. The plinth, as the inscription explains, marks the point where Graham and Stockenstroom decided to establish a town where they British could establish a military base</i></div>
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<i>The image is not entirely accurate, however. The website tells us: “The bronze relief-plaque on it honouring the Pioneer women depicts the legendary heroism of Elizabeth Salt, who reputedly carried a keg of gunpowder to the troops during the Battle of Grahamstown on 22 April 1819. She benefited from a noteworthy Xhosa tradition not to harm women in warfare.” Elsewhere, however, I read that she carried the keg under her bodice to make it appear that she was pregnant. So it would not have been exposed to the Xhosa warriors as it is here. While I did not get up to Fort Selwyn, next to the 1820 Settlers National Monument, this time, the website notes that the Eastern Cape frontier “has a turbulent past, with more forts than the rest of the country combined”. Indeed, a section on “The Forts of Frontier Country” gives a comprehensive history of when, why and where they were established, starting with Fort Frederick, in Port Elizabeth, in 1799</i></div>
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<i>This plinth was unveiled 100 years later, in 1912, as this decaying inscription at its base reveals, by General Jan Smuts, the former Boer commander who would later become prime minister of the Union of South Africa and take the country into war on the side of Britain against Hitler’s Germany. Smuts was a prime mover in the establishment of the League of Nations, forerunner to the United Nations. By coincidence, working not far from this memorial in the High Court is a great nephew of his who I got to know during our days with the Progressive Federal Party Youth, Advocate Izak Smuts. Since this is the 200th anniversary of the town, you’d think they’d spend a few bob on restoring this monument</i></div>
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<i>The view from the sidewalk next to the cathedral, with the City Hall behind</i></div>
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<i>The Cathedral of St Michael and St George was, says the website, “built in Early English Gothic, the 13th Century architectural style revived during Queen Victoria's reign. The building was started in 1824 and finally completed 128 years later in 1952.” We did not get inside this time, but admired its lovely lines from without, as it soaked up the rays of the early winter sun. The website says the cathedral contains “many memorial tablets which tell of the history of Grahamstown as a frontier post. The belfry houses the heaviest and first full ring of 8 bells on the African continent. They were cast in London in 1878 and include the metal from the three bells that hung in the original tower”</i></div>
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<i>The venerable façade of Grocott’s Mail which, according the Rhodes website, was established in 1870, but incorporated the Grahamstown Journal, founded in 1831. Elsewhere I read that Grahamstown was in fact the second largest town (after Cape Town) in the Cape colony for many years when, after 1823, many British settlers who had been dumped on small farms in the Zuurveld, were finally allowed to leave their farms and ply their various trades in the town</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhda0TULMShnkCpczGmw5Xve1iG1DSBTH_mcA4KE1BPeJ3cULCnwRwck0a5_cThiurJoYxWSZ28v76ZOBA9zz0L9m_RZ4fAlqz6BleNGDun6-6Kaez6SFHk89Iw2vyVXCfi3qT54MJn734/s1600/DSCN0829.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhda0TULMShnkCpczGmw5Xve1iG1DSBTH_mcA4KE1BPeJ3cULCnwRwck0a5_cThiurJoYxWSZ28v76ZOBA9zz0L9m_RZ4fAlqz6BleNGDun6-6Kaez6SFHk89Iw2vyVXCfi3qT54MJn734/s320/DSCN0829.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The view up the High Street</i></div>
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<i>Despite the Albany Museum website telling us that the Observatory Museum is open on Saturday mornings, we found it closed. I had wanted to see its famous camera obscura. The site tells of the role of Dr William Atherstone in identifying, in this 19th century house, the first diamond discovered in South Africa, at Kimberley in 1967. The house’s owner, watchmaker and jeweller Henry Galpin, was also keen on astronomy, optics and much else besides. And it was he who set up the only camera obscura built in South Africa. It evidently displays panoramic views of the town, and is “ingenously” combined with his observatory. There is also a miniature of the clock constructed for the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as well as a painting of Father Time by Frontier artist Frederick Timpson I’Ons</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWGDbYYgyUOtv3SZDCTt9G97NidgwycUS0eQpi_EcDLKk9ILagp4PNOsXjF7gRfytY8LTysoB1pFY17aOyCPupPtNFxA7L3OqGCl6jtJ0gcNUE9eNBxdLkIvQAX0AvSjDpU8bmiNFOJu4/s1600/DSCN0834.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWGDbYYgyUOtv3SZDCTt9G97NidgwycUS0eQpi_EcDLKk9ILagp4PNOsXjF7gRfytY8LTysoB1pFY17aOyCPupPtNFxA7L3OqGCl6jtJ0gcNUE9eNBxdLkIvQAX0AvSjDpU8bmiNFOJu4/s320/DSCN0834.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>A close-up view of the Observatory Building</i></div>
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<i>A notice, republished from Grocott’s Mail, about the popularity of the camera obscura</i></div>
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<i>A lovely old signpost outside the museum</i></div>
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<i>The view back up the High Street. This area was evidently used as a market at one point, with the wide open space ideal for moving around wagons pulled by large spans of oxen</i></div>
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<i>The Commemoration Methodist Church, which was completed in 1850. We did not get up close to her or go inside, but this is evidently one of the oldest churches in SA. That Makana website tells us work started on the Commemoration Chapel in 1845, when a group of Settlers decided they needed to mark the 25th anniversary of their arrival in the Cape. Indeed, the foundation stone was laid on April 10, 1845, the anniversary of the day the first party arrived in Algoa Bay. Interestingly, I read that beneath the stone was placed a lead casket containing a full set of coins from the era as well as “Specimens of the languages: English, Dutch, Kaffir and Sichuana, used by the Wesleyan Missionaries in South East Africa”</i></div>
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<i>Outside the Commemoration Church is this monument to the men of the Albany district who died in the Anglo-Boer War of 1889-1902</i></div>
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<i>Here again, there are interesting, well-executed bronze relief plaques. Note the ostriches in the background of the second one</i></div>
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<i>As we headed back up the High Street, lo and behold, a procession. Yes, only in a student town would this occur. We had caught the end of an International Day parade by Rhodes students, which stopped outside the City Hall. It was a fun and colourful event </i></div>
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<i>The Memorial Tower of the city hall dates to 1870 and was built to mark the 50th anniversary of the settlers’ arrival. It was later incorporated into a design for a city hall, which opened in 1882</i>
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<i>My family against a backdrop of interesting Grahamstown facades</i></div>
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<i>A memorial at the back of the cathedral to the fallen of World War 1 (1914-1918)</i></div>
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<i>What looks like a baptismal font, also behind the cathedral. But why is it outdoors?</i></div>
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<i>A last view of the cathedral</i><br />
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<i>Rhodes University's clock tower from the High Street, with the Drostdy Arch in front</i><br />
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<i>Views of the arch, with another of a plaque affixed to it. That Makana website tells us: “The Drostdy Gate was designed by Major C J Selwyn in 1835 and built by the Royal Engineers in 1841 or 1842. The purpose of his gateway was to provide an entrance to the military establishment which was to be on the site of the unoccupied and unused Drostdy House grounds. At a later date sentry boxes and walls on both sides of the gateway were added.”</i></div>
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<i>The gateway plaque</i><br />
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Well that is a very short overview of some of Grahamstown’s main architectural features. There is certainly much else to explore here, particularly as you get into the many museums. One little feature I saw but did not photograph is South Africa's oldest official letter box, which stands near St Andrew's College, on the corner of Worcester Street and Somerset Street. A fluted red pillar box, it has apparently been there since about 1860.</div>
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</div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-80544862035004200342012-05-17T03:41:00.000-07:002012-05-17T04:40:21.730-07:00Art reviews flow thick and fast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the space of about three weeks in late 2008 I had about six major art reviews published in the Herald, Port Elizabeth, close on the heels of one of NMMU's senior lecturers having dismissed my views as worthless (see previous posting). As noted earlier, I did this work over and above my full-time job as a night sub on the Herald. (To read these articles, hold down shift and left click and they come up larger. Click again on the image and it gets larger still.)</div>
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<i>Due to scanning constraints, I have had to divide the larger reviews. This, of the EP Society of Arts and Crafts' 90th annual exhibition, appeared on August 21, 2008. It concludes below</i></div>
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<i>It concludes</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ElVzn-8Zhe01IoC2znAFNMzokVJ0Ts6r0zdGL02c1xYj5uWbypNRRcavEIjZMVlgHzEX_KlHyKI-o1DrbYm1097qXuynhi7feF9D1W2xtQOt7I9YvhZx5ZTBWsAS48ZFdIu-dufgSks/s1600/re.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ElVzn-8Zhe01IoC2znAFNMzokVJ0Ts6r0zdGL02c1xYj5uWbypNRRcavEIjZMVlgHzEX_KlHyKI-o1DrbYm1097qXuynhi7feF9D1W2xtQOt7I9YvhZx5ZTBWsAS48ZFdIu-dufgSks/s320/re.jpg" width="182" /></a></div>
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<i>Another group exhibition, this review appeared on August 25, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhurkbTFVh20h93xePf_26xUgJ2zCKVRicyc-kLZdA6nuaTVCMT2rPwNlPPaFjU0lIyp-kqSSdYw6zifb2tq6xAL0npybcO-HtChKMLchP9ym2ELRC8K2MnARh5ZD9h_nVxDThjMYcxmvE/s1600/flex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhurkbTFVh20h93xePf_26xUgJ2zCKVRicyc-kLZdA6nuaTVCMT2rPwNlPPaFjU0lIyp-kqSSdYw6zifb2tq6xAL0npybcO-HtChKMLchP9ym2ELRC8K2MnARh5ZD9h_nVxDThjMYcxmvE/s320/flex.jpg" width="121" /></a></div>
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<i>The rest</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkog1ChFrUWEaHrID2nai649cV7lw4W6qpR-KYLB3yIG4WzS19xDtBtlXQryILRPFoxniabNjZb9irlg67Qkf-wYNEQx4ZLXwTCKOx3aJB0OakznqNbLPAXiu9uG6iLthZRsJPWNJ9Epk/s1600/won.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkog1ChFrUWEaHrID2nai649cV7lw4W6qpR-KYLB3yIG4WzS19xDtBtlXQryILRPFoxniabNjZb9irlg67Qkf-wYNEQx4ZLXwTCKOx3aJB0OakznqNbLPAXiu9uG6iLthZRsJPWNJ9Epk/s320/won.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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<i>My review of Standard Bank Young Artist 2008 Nontsikelelo Veleko's exhibition appeared on August 26. It concludes below</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6odwS0ewHWYvBnGumVCmgkO4DcCzli1H5HXjAvpqUZSQg6fpkzZ8QfctTJGWJx5PXeYkTDmjseDigxEKgO2rypL95CeyRIy-dWCcNXlT8nIpMsEz1hcsmyk0O6tceA2oAbqooMMCOIuA/s1600/der.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6odwS0ewHWYvBnGumVCmgkO4DcCzli1H5HXjAvpqUZSQg6fpkzZ8QfctTJGWJx5PXeYkTDmjseDigxEKgO2rypL95CeyRIy-dWCcNXlT8nIpMsEz1hcsmyk0O6tceA2oAbqooMMCOIuA/s320/der.jpg" width="67" /></a></div>
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<i>The Veleko conclusion</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOFAEotSzyesRzeEclWct4wwgB-d5EIVpKGHPC6OarpyO-aooACXpcfK-HMvUUm_ayUrpsL62KYKLorB18gamIBnEwr4Z_Ut87qedYBhT-5iFVvlkvaM_3xOvMvpNjBPwWZIp_Oo87hFY/s1600/bret.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOFAEotSzyesRzeEclWct4wwgB-d5EIVpKGHPC6OarpyO-aooACXpcfK-HMvUUm_ayUrpsL62KYKLorB18gamIBnEwr4Z_Ut87qedYBhT-5iFVvlkvaM_3xOvMvpNjBPwWZIp_Oo87hFY/s320/bret.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Bretten-Anne Moolman came of age and I was around to spread the good news on September 2, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFbG-JZlFYlScKjJjHlH9YvB0_CaFHloXC-vcfFgwzXJ-_LFlU0mjmzMUVK30D30p01Z6ugxrdgAMeWPj1iItq_-2TfMyeVd6X_DOFNLTBjnsLCEeDOGBunJdYoTtLNGMw9IE7q95res/s1600/ant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFbG-JZlFYlScKjJjHlH9YvB0_CaFHloXC-vcfFgwzXJ-_LFlU0mjmzMUVK30D30p01Z6ugxrdgAMeWPj1iItq_-2TfMyeVd6X_DOFNLTBjnsLCEeDOGBunJdYoTtLNGMw9IE7q95res/s320/ant.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
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<i>Anthony Harris and Donve Vlok held a joint exhibition. This is my review from September 3, 2008. It concludes below</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0msYsEuL2a_MUui-PlOF6xoxp99SGTiMHmtCNE_hTNKhqnYao_8MQtFwCajSfR4avLGe1QvD1sgfVVIkDEvciSfooY1PA3zFnDlnwJe61lCl4u6ACutP0a0tDa-184wBsfsn0-h9GHh0/s1600/vlok.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0msYsEuL2a_MUui-PlOF6xoxp99SGTiMHmtCNE_hTNKhqnYao_8MQtFwCajSfR4avLGe1QvD1sgfVVIkDEvciSfooY1PA3zFnDlnwJe61lCl4u6ACutP0a0tDa-184wBsfsn0-h9GHh0/s320/vlok.jpg" width="72" /></a></div>
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<i>It ends here</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrZrB-VBW4o3n3NMfQVygLCVi1loIYTN4vkYHgGWsBgpWS-jFxaGO7LeunMbubV37RjwFA9tsR-zBaBr52G-v5I1OVzaJgNZQXMRoe9pDVhRkbGYOjuQC2SsNzRbRJOUOA9asahRZPHCA/s1600/lou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrZrB-VBW4o3n3NMfQVygLCVi1loIYTN4vkYHgGWsBgpWS-jFxaGO7LeunMbubV37RjwFA9tsR-zBaBr52G-v5I1OVzaJgNZQXMRoe9pDVhRkbGYOjuQC2SsNzRbRJOUOA9asahRZPHCA/s320/lou.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>One of my favourite local artists is Louise Almon. This review appeared on September 15. The picture run with it is below</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeB7DzaGAMb3IKnQouqwp6331Q03cOzgg1aDLJ-oDPq5U7AN0xjxbYhUhOMmja2WPU7hSIfzTVLQcDj1ehTZ4n1JpiKRKFWvOGfXeXwgT5DHtG3u-7z8YVo4eoDstTshLj0dNg9ESkLk4/s1600/alm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeB7DzaGAMb3IKnQouqwp6331Q03cOzgg1aDLJ-oDPq5U7AN0xjxbYhUhOMmja2WPU7hSIfzTVLQcDj1ehTZ4n1JpiKRKFWvOGfXeXwgT5DHtG3u-7z8YVo4eoDstTshLj0dNg9ESkLk4/s320/alm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The Lou Almon picture</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW3I2_77L9YkSw_U7iB8oTvjHnUEQteX48zZyaUBKi-FZGK8K2Kv9Ex7Fox2e8J5TZKzzXeqM7zisYqkcZne9kLe1s61p3zjo0VMp0tzyIf2QucG0ZXXb47ePontK3-IXLuPMq3mFNbrg/s1600/turn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW3I2_77L9YkSw_U7iB8oTvjHnUEQteX48zZyaUBKi-FZGK8K2Kv9Ex7Fox2e8J5TZKzzXeqM7zisYqkcZne9kLe1s61p3zjo0VMp0tzyIf2QucG0ZXXb47ePontK3-IXLuPMq3mFNbrg/s320/turn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Having done woodwork at school, I even considered myself reasonably qualified to write about wood-turning. This is from September 16, 2008</i></div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-61169893070068190362012-05-16T02:36:00.006-07:002012-05-17T04:40:00.347-07:00Fine art and a nasty barb<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is a continuation of my postings of art reviews - and the odd political cry - which I had published. The crits appeared in the Herald between May and August 2008. I conclude in mid-August with a vitriolic little letter from one of Port Elizabeth's esteemed art academics. (To read these articles, hold down shift and left click and they come up larger. Click again on the image and it gets larger still.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6ZkyGvPme8fIvSS2RvesjVnA2DGX79Aq6j187RzBo-3pO63h-PN8rXhIC1gZRUDTec8rDYbVNJ8FD4x4efI8NE_ybVk11AUfQGUz8Yr1k6cJVO8ryJkByZ519_y71DATd_P0QoAyYO4/s1600/brotch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6ZkyGvPme8fIvSS2RvesjVnA2DGX79Aq6j187RzBo-3pO63h-PN8rXhIC1gZRUDTec8rDYbVNJ8FD4x4efI8NE_ybVk11AUfQGUz8Yr1k6cJVO8ryJkByZ519_y71DATd_P0QoAyYO4/s320/brotch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This review of a show by William Brotchie and Audrey van Eeden appeared in the Herald on May 19, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_qdLQjA5UWCWcFRzolerBZ02qYgoxhadx_ZkOVHN9vrJG_qczDkj7_jx80X0lHbkHiD3RyZmhK0te_lJKzjPfoiltzg5uD80KHxH374woqhJnznTBvqOYXrqPC1xIApC5isZ2gqN5fU/s1600/visi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_qdLQjA5UWCWcFRzolerBZ02qYgoxhadx_ZkOVHN9vrJG_qczDkj7_jx80X0lHbkHiD3RyZmhK0te_lJKzjPfoiltzg5uD80KHxH374woqhJnznTBvqOYXrqPC1xIApC5isZ2gqN5fU/s320/visi.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i>At this point the Herald underwent yet another redesign and for some reason they started running my reviews regularly as page leads,with huge pictures, banner headlines, pull quotes and so on. So I have had to scan some in two parts. This appeared on May 28, 2008, and concludes below</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfTsgSod7CMeuqoSjCPqOYTJV87Q80uQSaII53vfA8sW7vZ5sa-TaEFBzNgUd9LCkPcsobXIWXq6LMyU6RnVPKUBwqeErcN1vpApswkmLv_Bg42f7WinlwMku5vLW9ZT3haQI_Wu53LIM/s1600/ions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfTsgSod7CMeuqoSjCPqOYTJV87Q80uQSaII53vfA8sW7vZ5sa-TaEFBzNgUd9LCkPcsobXIWXq6LMyU6RnVPKUBwqeErcN1vpApswkmLv_Bg42f7WinlwMku5vLW9ZT3haQI_Wu53LIM/s320/ions.jpg" width="62" /></a></div>
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<i>The last part of the May 28 review</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaI4RX8ssWpwYSdDtNLKL2-OO-WhJBzSPvk01bpoOv4emNV4cUTF2zAJDeXc995HECUr09VnNbN5hTdt3HtOSqI1URY0nC266Xn21r4E9esytgbNGhROp9J1_coC7NAe__Us1RnAcHJJY/s1600/africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaI4RX8ssWpwYSdDtNLKL2-OO-WhJBzSPvk01bpoOv4emNV4cUTF2zAJDeXc995HECUr09VnNbN5hTdt3HtOSqI1URY0nC266Xn21r4E9esytgbNGhROp9J1_coC7NAe__Us1RnAcHJJY/s320/africa.jpg" width="297" /></a></div>
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<i>This review of another group show appeared on May 29, 2008. Sadly, the picture took a cut</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPATAU1gmt07Y2c8K0CnbwR53FdRDqiIvhQUk1fi-WoxkHB_vFa4Ld2kIAUYsFrV4RQe2RAighEl7xPMhBvLNzT_AzyJ4Dp6srWmoQFcOtjoPDsN8nrZA-yztSWDbsROvpUmVuv50tSGM/s1600/nosi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPATAU1gmt07Y2c8K0CnbwR53FdRDqiIvhQUk1fi-WoxkHB_vFa4Ld2kIAUYsFrV4RQe2RAighEl7xPMhBvLNzT_AzyJ4Dp6srWmoQFcOtjoPDsN8nrZA-yztSWDbsROvpUmVuv50tSGM/s320/nosi.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
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<i>Another No Signatures exhibition. This review appeared on June 2, 2008, and concludes below</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80qYW1eegl_Vp4ehbXGYfRlly8k0fk8c0yjAmnkNjJdVjN82jW9W9I5wnhSoniMZcA24SGYYAITDf01cX-UmCuF2sjQfTS6iT1b8irnNjrWUxMzvjxyTslJTG-w8rcDqW7BksQmzIk38/s1600/sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80qYW1eegl_Vp4ehbXGYfRlly8k0fk8c0yjAmnkNjJdVjN82jW9W9I5wnhSoniMZcA24SGYYAITDf01cX-UmCuF2sjQfTS6iT1b8irnNjrWUxMzvjxyTslJTG-w8rcDqW7BksQmzIk38/s320/sign.jpg" width="71" /></a></div>
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<i>The conclusion</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9XjWCt5ZYFQcTPWsBnGtHjw4CEp17mYoQNAgu1ybohMPOddHxIY2m4QhJsGhEi4vp8wDCq2tDy694hMpIywspphZ_bjb0uNsOhBp0IFiFb4U4uOxPBb6rG8rkJPGClB_fD_xVhvoSHs/s1600/botan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9XjWCt5ZYFQcTPWsBnGtHjw4CEp17mYoQNAgu1ybohMPOddHxIY2m4QhJsGhEi4vp8wDCq2tDy694hMpIywspphZ_bjb0uNsOhBp0IFiFb4U4uOxPBb6rG8rkJPGClB_fD_xVhvoSHs/s320/botan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Having done three years of ceramics for my art and design diploma, I took an avid interest in this form of expression. This appeared on June 16, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Rina Badenhorst is a great painter. I reviewed her students' work on June 17, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhUSDNHdjiykFRhtkdr0YhZh_5hpBzZfM6WorZltYbJr4jCsIzglLjwA-cFGwkF1qpLCys-JzxQ0BCE6cSs3UixppYYStTa1YFR1CIyb-FVM27uJTPpq6HJr4nJXJ8rDrCnaPgvEuUMZQ/s1600/chalm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhUSDNHdjiykFRhtkdr0YhZh_5hpBzZfM6WorZltYbJr4jCsIzglLjwA-cFGwkF1qpLCys-JzxQ0BCE6cSs3UixppYYStTa1YFR1CIyb-FVM27uJTPpq6HJr4nJXJ8rDrCnaPgvEuUMZQ/s320/chalm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The Weekend Post ran a piece on or by anti-apartheid activist and later ANC MP Judy Chalmers. As I was at this time barred from writing anything political in the papers, I 'assisted' my son to submit this little SMS setting the record straight. It appeared in the Post on June 28. I often wondered what Judy's sister, Molly Blackburn, who died in a car crash in 1985 at the height of her anti-apartheid campaigning, would have thought of the mess the ANC that Judy was happy to serve in, was making of the country</i></div>
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<i>Still on a political bent, this appeared in the Sunday Times on July 7, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Margaret Harradine again starred in an exhibition. This was from July 14, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8lkpwMNK7qymShCOoTE-dlfYQ9zuaL5qTrCUy-hCa0fwlZ650ZDrsTahyphenhyphen8vfV6YviI_C-JRTJ1ypTkBIiDjAeL9AdEQ5gNLbovR4iL7PzYuTc2ZclH3dI_IN1m_rQUQmsp4GKX65hDHA/s1600/quil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8lkpwMNK7qymShCOoTE-dlfYQ9zuaL5qTrCUy-hCa0fwlZ650ZDrsTahyphenhyphen8vfV6YviI_C-JRTJ1ypTkBIiDjAeL9AdEQ5gNLbovR4iL7PzYuTc2ZclH3dI_IN1m_rQUQmsp4GKX65hDHA/s320/quil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Even quilting exhibitions had to be reviewed. This was from July 24, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Sadly, I've had to cut the picture here. This was from August 5, 2008</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3fUJJlhd_kF3NNK6hNVpz5z2CVR5SM1Vbnv_jxT7CGATb0KSo0mWIIYz2v5Or45teJhbyPUhSNFo4COhZ6ahSkOSNYpk_pApc470XmrFfwIPQaouiSDKxo8XZp1hnPeSbP8Cq9yR5jc/s1600/womda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3fUJJlhd_kF3NNK6hNVpz5z2CVR5SM1Vbnv_jxT7CGATb0KSo0mWIIYz2v5Or45teJhbyPUhSNFo4COhZ6ahSkOSNYpk_pApc470XmrFfwIPQaouiSDKxo8XZp1hnPeSbP8Cq9yR5jc/s320/womda.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This review appeared on August 6, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Lucy Skinner's show was reviewed on August 16, 2008</i></div>
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<i>The Sapere mother and daughter show was reviewed on August 18, 2008. It concludes below</i></div>
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<i>The end bit</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjKYiWhCv-qAaYZU7-MugekC8GknNsJBS4Gr8igeQkU_uGMekbI8g2PUt6ygBtLZDe3CNIi6kHrjhde0ML14Mvc1iAMatQr_oVLrT_6Urv3UhnO4Pki-OSVcv4SKWVyC7-mOW4pncFsew/s1600/eth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjKYiWhCv-qAaYZU7-MugekC8GknNsJBS4Gr8igeQkU_uGMekbI8g2PUt6ygBtLZDe3CNIi6kHrjhde0ML14Mvc1iAMatQr_oVLrT_6Urv3UhnO4Pki-OSVcv4SKWVyC7-mOW4pncFsew/s320/eth.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Ethna Frankenfeld, an academic in the art department of NMMU, saw fit to rubbish all my efforts in a few short paragraphs, published in the Herald on August 19, 2008. I can just imagine all these art 'experts' getting together and destroying my character. Sadly for art, since I have been ousted, it has virtually fallen off the radar as far as the Herald is concerned. I kept it in the public eye for nearly 16 years.</i></div>
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I never claimed to be an absolute fundi on art. I studied it for four years under Jack Lugg, was student of the year in my third year and did pretty well in art history. I have practised art in some form or other ever since, despite having to earn a living not as an art writer, but as a hard-news journalist. I reported for 10 years, including covering the 1980s uprising against apartheid. Before that I was an activist working for the liberal PFP, attracting the often violent attentions of the security police. I have been a sub-editor on the Herald since 1994, doing my art writing in the mornings before my shift. I review art as a journalist with some art training, not an art academic with no journalism experience. I try to make my pieces readable and to pinpoint what I think is of interest to the general public. But if a thing has little merit, I will say so. As to the merits of photography, well I admire good photography and the expertise needed to take a good picture. But you can hardly compare this with painting or scultpture. Just ask the art market.</div>
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-21155804324384635782012-05-15T02:08:00.002-07:002012-05-16T03:04:02.661-07:00The strength of Port Elizabeth's art scene<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Continuing my postings of art reviews I had published in the Herald, Port Elizabeth, during the latter part of the first decade of the millennium, these from October 2007 till April, 2008, present a cross-section of artistic endeavour in the area. (To read these articles, hold down shift and left click and they come up larger. Click again on the image and it gets larger still.)</div>
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<i>This review of Brent Meistre's exhibition appeared on October 15, 2007. It was badly cut back so below I include the original.</i></div>
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IS photography fine art? On the strength of this exhibition, I’d say it is. Digital cameras have transformed the process, making it possible to shoot thousands of images at no real cost. And that sort of technology has enabled the likes of Meistre, a photography lecturer at Rhodes, to create what I consider the highlight of this exhibition, a “stop-frame animation” lasting over six minutes.<br />
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But I’ll get back to that later. The bulk of this show comprises black and white fibre-based prints primarily of the rural South African landscape, but with the key added factor that it usually bears the imprint of mankind’s presence. Others have done this before, but Meistre does his documentation in a skilful, tasteful way. Thus we have a selection of photographs of rocks, “Untitled (Engravings)”, into which messages have been scratched, some dating back to the early 19th century. “Columns” conisists of four photographs of beautifully textured columns, apparently the remains of a ruined house, which take on the likeness of a Greek temple. Elsewhere he focuses on rolls of fencing wire, close-ups of succulent plants, four views of boer-maak-‘n-plan “pad toe” signs, paraffin lamps, drain holes in the bushveld, and animal bones either tied to fences or lying in the sun. There is an evocative series of three photographs looking down the tracks of railway lines. Another series focuses on the stairs and stoeps of farmhouses that have been demolished.<br />
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Then, more interestingly, he proffers some old railway tickets, lying on the ground. SAS-SARS Fort Jackson, reads one. There is also a “ticket” for a “Lacy Panty, Flesh Colour, R9,99”. And, as one with a love for old stamps, I particularly enjoyed “Untitled (First Day Covers)”. One, dated June 17, 1984, is a black and white photograph of a Ciskei Republic cover for Migratory Birds, which all, according to the stamps, miraculously land in the tiny tinpot apartheid state. The other cover features Die Groot Krokodil, PW Botha, from November 2, 1984. It features two stamps with the snarling leader’s face, and the apartheid coat-of-arms.<br />
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But all this forms the backdrop to a series of three black and white films run on a loop. The first, with the exhibition title, “Sans: A stranger who came with a book in the crook of his arm”, succeeds with its evocation of the SA landscape, though it includes irritating images of the artist slithering through the veld, which I found so nauseating when I first saw Mestre’s work. But even here there are lovely passages, particularly a scene when you travel down a water-filled sloot, surrounded by trees. The opening cloud sequences are also beautiful, as are images of aloes, which look so interesting in monochrome.<br />
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The second film comprises a field of about 30 rectangular images, which continually change while in the borders between them, the words of a poem are shown. But the finale really is most impressive. “When they came, we said we had left”, is the paradoxical title. But allow yourself to take this journey, of arriving and leaving, and you’ll be astonished at what is possible, visually, in the field of digital photography. It starts with you travelling along a parched plain following a black track left by something ahead of you. You encounter waves along the seashore, proteas swirling in the wind, a tranquil lake seen through razor wire, a railway line through steep cuttings, roads and tracks, feathers in foliage, a forest. Each scene blends seamlessly into the next. It is a dynamic, ever-changing world reminiscent in a way of William Kentridge’s animations. And for me the key point is where the focus is on a male figure – presumably the artist – in a tunnel. As the camera homes in on his face, it disintegrates impressively, transforming into the next scene.<br />
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Many were sceptical when Meistre won this first biennial award, but this exhibition more than vindicates that decision. Try to see it.<br />
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<i>Also published on October 15, 2007, was this review of a show by Louis van der Walt</i></div>
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<i>This review of a show by Mien Greyling appeared on October 29, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Veteran PE artists Derrick Erasmus, Christine Ross-Watt and Estelle Marais's show was reviewed on November 26, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Esme Goosen was again to the fore in an exhibition reviewed on the same day, November 26</i></div>
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<i>This review, probably badly hacked, appeared on October 12, 2007</i></div>
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<i>This is from December 12, 2007</i></div>
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<i>I got this letter into the Sunday Times Lifestyle supplement on January 13, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Sue Hoppe was among the artists on this show, reviewed on February 28, 2008</i></div>
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<i>The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum has some fine historical works. This review appeared on February 19, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Zukile Yalisa's exhibition was reviewed on March 17, 2008</i></div>
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<i>The Egazini Outreach Project exhibition was reviewed on March 26, 2008</i></div>
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<i>Leigh Voigt's exhibition was also reviewed on March 26</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieNQ6_b2WPzQhhaxrSim-0gvIA3lLKxb2-LUuz3_2lmbgxqHhmpXfPSvMEU1lN3Scw6uNyja764oBXrJJa0735nEx0w3SuftZyijWG0W6Pd5KbmSTNIDdvYOZEMOAQx2gMj0wTrpyvlK0/s1600/poart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieNQ6_b2WPzQhhaxrSim-0gvIA3lLKxb2-LUuz3_2lmbgxqHhmpXfPSvMEU1lN3Scw6uNyja764oBXrJJa0735nEx0w3SuftZyijWG0W6Pd5KbmSTNIDdvYOZEMOAQx2gMj0wTrpyvlK0/s320/poart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>The poetry into art show came around again. This is from April 14, 2008</i></div>
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<br />Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134109291404717421.post-6846379859669903492012-05-14T02:11:00.003-07:002012-05-15T02:28:48.856-07:00Writing for the love of art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Between April and October 2007 I was a busy lad, on the Herald newspaper. Today there is no dedicated fine art writer, with the cabal of academics, who effectively had me ousted because they wanted to do the job, contributing reviews only very rarely. The following crits were published over and above the many previews I also contributed, which in turn was over and above my "day job" as a night sub-editor on the same newspaper. As someone who has laid out more news pages on this paper than I'd like to even think about - sometimes as many as10 a night through the first decade of this century - I realise that most stories have to take a cut. And so it was with my reviews, which were very rarely run to length. So if they read strangely, I suspect the editing may not always have been that sensitive our judicious. (To read these articles, hold down shift and left click and they come up larger. Click again on the image and it gets larger still.)</div>
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<i>This review of a show by Greg Schultz appeared on April 23, 2007</i></div>
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<i>David Moss's show was reviewed on May 9, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Considered the doyenne of art in Port Elizabeth, this review of Mary Rose Dold's show appeared on May 10, 2007</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-cMv0-hBzTdmdYBKEY-O-LUFHV-3dSEI4eU2n3gnXH5UVfjSgmpvuTAjlLR3APyq85VKtHu34ef8SKL7MmRIS8rSVR52jN4ktrp76JMlvy9umMP1UBxfVpdaQKRmHnfbB47CypgK9Tp4/s1600/ker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-cMv0-hBzTdmdYBKEY-O-LUFHV-3dSEI4eU2n3gnXH5UVfjSgmpvuTAjlLR3APyq85VKtHu34ef8SKL7MmRIS8rSVR52jN4ktrp76JMlvy9umMP1UBxfVpdaQKRmHnfbB47CypgK9Tp4/s320/ker.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Tossie Theron started the No Signatures idea. This review is from May 21, 2007</i></div>
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<i>This show, including works by Andre Brink's son Anton, was reviewed on May 22, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Margaret Harradine starred in this show. The review is from May 31, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Alison Williams burst on the scene for a few months. This is from June 19, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Another Annual Exhibition reviewed. This is from July 18, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Port Elizabeth lends itself to art. This appeared on July 19, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Guy Rogers is a colleague on the Herald. His Elephant's Ear column is often superb. I put together a book about my birding experiences (self published) and he worked a few paragraphs about it into the end of this article, which appeared on July 19, 2007. The piece concludes below</i></div>
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<i>I only self-published 30 copies of my birding book, referred to at the end of this article. However, I am busy slowly putting the chapters on a blog, called Birding About the Bush, which is at www.birdingaboutthebush.blogspot.com</i></div>
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<i>This review of an Alida Stewart show appeared on July 26, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Esme Goosen again stole the show on a group exhibition. This was from August 6, 2007</i></div>
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<i>This review appeared on August 13, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Standard Bank Young Artist for 2007 Peter Hugo's show was reviewed on August 13, as well</i></div>
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<i>Leora Farber's zany show was reviewed on August 14, 2007</i></div>
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<i>The MTN Collection was reviewed on August 30, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Marius Lourens's show was reviewed on August 30, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Villia Offrman's exhibition was critted on September 24, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Then this group show was reviewed on September 27, 2007</i></div>
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<i>Greg Kerr, emeritus professor of fine art at Stellenbosch, made PE his home, and showed some of his superb works. This, severely hacked back, appeared on September 27, 2007. Below is my original review</i></div>
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A GOOD painter has the ability to present everyday things in an altered way – and the better the painter, the more interesting the form of presentation.<br />
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A small part of one of this vastly experienced artist’s latest works, “Sarah”, illustrates that point perfectly, if you consider how the face of the aged man in the distance on the left-hand side of the work has been painted. The shaded area is simply green underpainting, with the canvass showing through. For the tinted parts catching the light, he has used a couple of strokes of pink and cream. Suddenly, through the alchemy of painting, a face miraculously appears. It is something you cannot achieve through any other medium.<br />
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This exhibition spans five decades, with the first work done in 1960, when the artist was 10. It is a watercolour, “The Battle of the Bismarck”, and was kept framed by his father and only discovered upon his death. Even this shows promise. But this is not a retrospective. All the other works are by the artist as a fully trained professional, and date mainly from the 1980s till the present.<br />
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Having settled at Schoenmakerskop a few years ago after retiring as head of art at Stellenbosch University, Kerr’s works are largely figurative, though in recent years he has discovered the beauty of Nguni cattle, which have become a favourite subject.<br />
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There are, as a result, several Nguni paintings, such as the impressive “Vusalela”, a large oil where the starry universe seems to pervade the hide of the animal, covering it with a haze of yellow and pink dots.<br />
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His adroit brushwork is much in evidence in Hustler (2004), a “portrait” of an Nguni, it’s white head with pink and cream shadows seen against a green background.<br />
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Before the Ngunis, his forte seemed to have been a variety of weird and wonderful interiors featuring figures in various forms of, if not debauchery, then rather interesting behaviour. How he comes up with the ideas one can only guess, but it is in their execution that he is tested and found to excel. Take “Terrace, Bothasfontein”, from 1988. Here a gust of wind blows a curtain towards a woman, almost topless, seated on a red chair. Behind is a beautifully painted patchwork landscape, which is being viewed by another female figure, on the right.<br />
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The 19th century “national suicide” of the amaXhosa is given a foreign twist in “Nonqawuse and the Russian”. Here he mixes up his styles, with the young woman shown in bright, almost flat colours, while the male figure is a subtle range of realistic textures. The effect is stunning.<br />
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Equally stunning is “The Integral Calculus” (1999), which, as I told him when I visited the show, reminded me of the Blue Meanies in that classic Beatles animation, “Yellow Submarine”. Here, again beautifully painted, a male figure on the left takes on bird-like qualities – including a beak and feathers – as the female figure on the right recoils from his jabbing finger.<br />
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Among his most recent works, Aphrodite Rising (2007) is the closest he seems to have got to being inspired by the sea at his doorstep. In a lovely paradox, the top half of the headless female nude’s torso is shown above the water, with waves lapping against her. While waves only break in shallow water, the rest of her body is shown green within the dark depths of the ocean. A yellow strip divides the two worlds.<br />
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I could go on and rave about any number of other works on show. Do yourself a favour and see it for yourself.<br />
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<i>Some superb artists have worked at the art school at NMMU, formerly UPE, over the years. This appeared on October 1, 2007. It was also cut back. Below is my original</i></div>
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WITH art works spanning over 100 years, this exhibition reveals how Port Elizabeth’s art school, in its various forms, has played a key role in shaping the city’s cultural identity.<br />
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The school’s first principal, Frank Pickford Marriott, served from 1903 to 1925. His “Diadem” (1904) is a beautiful portrait of a woman in the Art Nouveau style, using an inlay of mother-of-pearl.<br />
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There are other iconic works form some of the “old masters”, including “The Searchers” (1966) by former lecturer Joan Wright. This is painting at its finest, as a group under umbrellas brave the elements in their search.<br />
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Another “great” from the old days, Betsy Fordyce, who lectured from 1950 to 1969, is also represented – via a poignant watercolour, “The last little house” (1975), which shows part of South End after the apartheid bulldozers razed the area.<br />
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This art school, which later fell under PE Technikon before unification as the NMMU, produced some incredible characters, not least of them Fred Page, who probably better than anyone else, used Central’s unique 19th century architecture to its full potential. A black-and-white linocut, Chapel Street (1960) shows that even then this part of the city was decaying.<br />
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Hunter Nesbit, who was director and head of department at the school from 1969 till 1994, is well known for his stained glass, but here he is represented by a large contemplative painting, “Reflection” (1976), which shows a figure within the reflective facade of the art department.<br />
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And then there was Hilary Graham, a senior lecturer at the school from 1972 till 1983, who later left for Fort Hare. “The artist turns his back on the bay” (1990) seems to record the moment he did so. It is a lovely painting, done with virtuoso brushstrokes. While a group of apparently “poor whites” huddle on the Donkin Reserve, with a windswept harbour behind, the artist, canvases and brushes in hand, assumes superman status as he prepares to head inland.<br />
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Hylton Nel, Anton Momberg, Robert Brooks, Norman Kaplan, Charmaine Haines, Thys Cilliers, Alexander Podlushuc, Meshack Masuku. . . the list of names is extensive and reads like a veritable who’s who of Port Elizabeth’s best artists over the past 50 years. But there are also works by younger artists on show, such as 2007 student Peter Campbell’s “Boot”, an incredibly realistic gelutong carving of a boot, right down to the loose laces, and Andrietta Wentzel’s “Aspects of the dark other” (1996), a group of about a dozen totem pole-like tree trunks, each of which incorporates elements like antelope horns, hides and bones.<br />
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This is a stunning record of an art school’s impact on a city and is not to be missed.<br />
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<br /></div>Kin Bentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07034457859538921691noreply@blogger.com0