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Ben Martins
Dikobe Ben Martins (born 2 September 1956, Alexandra township, Gauteng), is a former Minister of Energy and has held other posts in the Cabinet of South Africa. He has served in Parliament since 1994 and has been a Central Committee Member of the South African Communist Party. Education Ben Martins was born in Alexandra Township in Johannesburg and attended school at St Joseph's School in Aliwal North, Bechet College in Durban and Coronationville High School in Johannesburg. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Africa, a Bachelor of Law (LLB) degree from the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal) and a Master of Law Degree (LLM) as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Management Practice from the University of Cape Town. Early activist career Martins was a member of the Black Consciousness Movement beginning in the 1970s. He was utilized for his artistic background after having studied at Bill Ainslie's studio and at the Federated ...
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Minister Of Energy (South Africa)
The Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy is a minister in the cabinet of the South African national government. The portfolio was called the Ministry of Minerals and Energy until May 2009, when President Jacob Zuma split it into two separate portfolios under the Ministry of Mining (later the Ministry of Mineral Resources) and the Ministry of Energy. Ten years later, in May 2019, his successor President Cyril Ramaphosa reunited the portfolios as the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy. The current minister is Gwede Mantashe, who was appointed to the position when the portfolios were reunified and who had been Minister of Mineral Resources before then. He is the political head of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, which was formed in a merger in June 2019. History The Ministry of Minerals and Energy existed as a position in the apartheid government and was retained in the Government of National Unity (GNU) after the first democratic elections in 1994. Wh ...
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Thamsanqa Mnyele
Thamsanqa (Thami) Mnyele (10 December 1948 – 14 June 1985) was a South African artist associated with the anti-apartheid politics of the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement. His artistic career took off in the 1970s when he produced works dealing with the emotional and human consequences of oppression. By the 1980s, his work followed the trajectory of the movement resisting apartheid, celebrating African strength and unity against the oppressors. Mnyele was born in Alexandra, in Johannesburg. His father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his mother was a domestic worker. He was sent away from the crime-ridden township to a boarding school in a village northwest of Pretoria when he was eight. When he was eight years old, his mother took him to stay with his father who then remarried Lemakatso Dorothy Mnyele. A skill which he maintained throughout his schooling and led to his hiring as a graphic artist by the J. Walter Thom ...
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National Executive Committee (African National Congress)
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) is the party's chief executive organ. It is elected every five years at the party national conference; the executive committee, in turn, elects a National Working Committee for day-to-day decision-making responsibilities. At the NEC's head is the president of the ANC, and it also contains the other so-called "Top Seven" leaders (formerly "Top Six"): the deputy president, chairperson, secretary-general, two deputy secretary-generals and treasurer-general. Composition Members of the NEC must have been paid-up members of the ANC for at least five years prior to nomination, and at least half must be women. The NEC consists of: * The "Top Seven" (president, deputy president, national chairperson, secretary-general, two deputy secretary-generals, and treasurer-general); * Eighty further members; * Ex officio members, comprising two leaders from each of the ANC Women's League, ANC Youth League, ANC Veteran ...
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1994 South African General Election
General elections were held in South Africa between 26 and 29 April 1994. The elections were the first in which citizens of all races were allowed to take part, and were therefore also the first held with universal suffrage. The election was conducted under the direction of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and marked the culmination of the four-year process that ended apartheid. Millions queued in lines over a four-day voting period. Altogether, 19,726,579 votes were counted, and 193,081 were rejected as invalid. As widely expected, the African National Congress (ANC), whose slate incorporated the labour confederation COSATU and the South African Communist Party, won a sweeping victory, taking 62 percent of the vote, just short of the two-thirds majority required to unilaterally amend the Interim Constitution. As required by that document, the ANC formed a Government of National Unity with the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, the two other parties th ...
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Robben Island
Robben Island ( af, Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrikaans name ''Robbeneiland'', which translates to ''Seal(s) Island''. Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, long north–south, and wide, with an area of . It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event. It was fortified and used as a prison from the late-seventeenth century until 1996, after the end of apartheid. Political activist and lawyer Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on the island for 18 of the 27 years of his imprisonment before the fall of apartheid and introduction of full, multi-racial democracy. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and was elected in 1994 as President of South Africa, becoming the country's first black president and serving one term from 1994–1999. In additio ...
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Terrorism Act, 1967
The Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 was a law of the South African Apartheid regime until all except section 7 was repealed under the Internal Security and Intimidation Amendment Act 138 of 1991. Detention without trial Section 6 of the Act allowed someone suspected of involvement in terrorism—which was very broadly defined as anything that might "endanger the maintenance of law and order"—to be detained for a 60-day period (which could be renewed) without trial on the authority of a senior police officer. Since there was no requirement to release information on who was being held, people subject to the Act tended to disappear. The death of Steve Biko in police custody in 1977, while being detained under the Act, was a particular ''cause célèbre A cause célèbre (,''Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'', 12th Edition, 2014. S.v. "cause célèbre". Retrieved November 30, 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cause+c%c3%a9l%c3%a8bre ,''Random House K ...
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Staffrider
''Staffrider'' was a South African literary magazine that was published between 1978 and 1996. History and profile ''Staffrider'' was first published in March 1978. Its founder was Mike Kirkwood. The magazine took its name from slang for people hanging outside or on the roof of overcrowded, racially segregated trains. It was one of the most important literary presences of the 1970s and 1980s, aiming to be popular rather than elite was consciously non-racial in the segregated apartheid era. Borrowing its name and image from township slang for black youth who rode the over-crowded African sections of the racially segregated commuter trains by hanging onto the outside or sitting on the roofs, ''Staffrider'' had two main objectives: to provide publishing opportunities for community-based organizations and young writers, graphic artists and photographers; and to oppose officially sanctioned state and establishment culture. Produced by The Durban Moment that saw Steve Biko begin the S ...
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United Democratic Front (South Africa)
The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a South African popular front that existed from 1983 to 1991. The UDF comprised more than 400 public organizations including trade unions, students' unions, women's and parachurch organizations. The UDF's goal was to establish a "non-racial, united South Africa in which segregation is abolished and in which society is freed from institutional and systematic racism." Its slogan was "UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides." The Front was established in 1983 to oppose the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament by the white-dominated National Party government, and dissolved in 1991 during the early stages of the transition to democracy. Background Involvement in trade unions, beginning in Durban in 1973, helped create a strong, democratic political culture for black people in South Africa. Mass urban protest could also be traced to the student upsurge in Soweto in 1976. 1982 brought the effects of a world economic crisis to South Africa, and th ...
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Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg (; Zulu: umGungundlovu) is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its Zulu name umGungundlovu is the name used for the district municipality. Pietermaritzburg is popularly called Maritzburg in Afrikaans, English and Zulu alike, and often informally abbreviated to PMB. It is a regionally important industrial hub, producing aluminium, timber and dairy products, as well as the main economic hub of Umgungundlovu District Municipality. The public sector is a major employer in the city due to local, district and provincial governments located here. The city has many schools and tertiary education institutions, including a campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It had a population of 228,549 in 1991; the current population is estimated at over 600,000 residents (including neighbouring townships) and has one of the largest populatio ...
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Gaborone
Gaborone ( , , ) is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 246,325 based on the 2022 census, about 10% of the total population of Botswana. Its agglomeration is home to 421,907 inhabitants at the 2011 census. Gaborone is situated between Kgale Hill and Oodi Hill, near the confluence of the Notwane River and Segoditshane River in the south-eastern corner of Botswana, from the South African border. The city is served by the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport. It is an administrative district in its own right, but is the capital of the surrounding South-East District. Locals often refer to the city as ''GC or Motse-Mshate''. The city of Gaborone is named after Chief Gaborone of the Tlokwa tribe, who once controlled land nearby. Because it had no tribal affiliation and was close to fresh water, the city was planned to be the capital in the mid-1960s when the Bechuanaland Protectorate became an independent nation. The centre of the city is a lon ...
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Wally Serote
Mongane Wally Serote (born 8 May 1944) is a South African poet and writer. He became involved in political resistance to the apartheid government by joining the African National Congress (ANC) and in 1969 was arrested and detained for several months without trial. He subsequently spent years in exile, working in Botswana, and later London, England, for the ANC in their Arts and Culture Department, before eventually returning to South Africa in 1990. He was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2018. Biography Serote was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, South Africa, and went to school in Alexandra, Lesotho, and Soweto. He first became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement when he was finishing high school in Soweto. His presence in that town linked him to a group known as the "township" or "Soweto" poets, and his poems often expressed themes of political activism, the development of black identity, and violent images of revolt and resistance. He was a ...
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