Last Sunday an official funeral was held for the late Eric ‘Stalin’ Mtshali, who passed away at the age of 87 at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital in Durban. Nicknamed ‘Stalin’ for his admiration of the Soviet Union leader, Joseph Stalin, Mtshali was a committed member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which he joined in 1957. […]
Some 47 years ago a meeting was held in Durban to discuss a national day of mourning for South Africa’s political detainees. The meeting was sparked by the death of Ahmed Timol, who had died in police custody on the 27th October 1971. Timol was the 22nd political detainee to die since 1963. By 1990, a further […]
The 16th of December has long been a day disputed in the history of South Africa. For much of the Afrikaans-speaking population the date was a celebration of the Voortrekkers’ victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 1838 whereas black South Africans found the celebrations offensive, as the day represented the […]
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Chris Hani, an event that nearly saw the undoing of the very fragile peace negotiations in South Africa. It’s difficult to imagine so many years on, but Chris Hani was a hugely popular figure in South Africa, with some even believing that with him at the […]
Last week the country lost another of its great stalwarts of democracy with the passing of Kesval Moonsamy. Popularly known as ‘Kay’, Moonsamy was a member of a number of political organisations, becoming a trade union member at a very young age. Having started work at Rhodesian Timbers Limited when he was just 14 years […]
The years between the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 were a time of great political tension in South Africa. An estimated 14 000 people are said to have died in politically related incidents in those few years, double the amount of political deaths recorded from 1948 […]