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Pollsmoor Prison
Pollsmoor Prison, officially known as Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, is located in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai in South Africa. Pollsmoor is a maximum security penal facility that continues to hold some of South Africa's most dangerous criminals. Although the prison was designed with a maximum capacity of 4,336 offenders attended by a staff of 1,278, the current inmate population is over 7,000 (a figure which fluctuates daily). Structure of the prison Since it was established in 1964, the prison has been systematically expanded, so that Pollsmoor today comprises five prisons: * The Admission Centre serves a number of the courts in the Cape Peninsula (Cape Town, Mitchell's Plain, Somerset West and Wynberg). * Medium A Prison houses both awaiting trial and sentenced juveniles between the ages of 14 and 17. * Medium B Prison houses sentenced adult males. * Medium C Prison houses sentenced adult males with sentences of up to a year, sentenced adult males on day-parole or soo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tokai, Cape Town
Tokai, a large residential suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, is situated on the foothills of the Constantiaberg, (a large whaleback shaped mountain in the Table Mountain range) and is bordered by Steenberg and Kirstenhof to the south, Bergvliet to the east, Constantia to the north and the SAFCOL pine tree plantations against the mountain to the west. History In 1791 or 1792, governor Johan Isaac Rhenius bestowed the area of Tokai to Johannes Rauk, a colonist originally born in Narva, Estonia, who became one of the first farmers in the Dutch Cape Colony. Tokai, named after Tokaj, a range of hills in Hungary, was originally an open area with various wine farms and smallholdings. Today, though most of the wine farms are no longer there, there are still a few old Cape Dutch houses like those found in Constantia. The suburb was built in the late 1940s, and was built quickly because of the urgent need for housing for predominantly white, English-speaking South African soldiers ret ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long Walk To Freedom (book)
''Long Walk to Freedom'' is an autobiography credited to South African President Nelson Mandela. It was ghostwritten by Richard Stengel and first published in 1994 by Little Brown & Co. The book profiles his early life, coming of age, education and 27 years spent in prison. Under the apartheid government, Mandela was regarded as a terrorist and jailed on the infamous Robben Island for his role as a leader of the then-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing the Umkhonto We Sizwe. He later achieved international recognition for his leadership as president in rebuilding the country's once segregationist society. The last chapters of the book describe his political ascension and his belief that the struggle still continued against apartheid in South Africa. Mandela dedicated his book to "''my six children, Madiba and Makaziwe (my first daughter) who are now deceased, and to Makgatho, Makaziwe, Zenani and Zindzi, whose support and love I treasure; to my tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allan Boesak
Allan Aubrey Boesak (born 23 February 1946) is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric and politician and anti-apartheid activist. He was sentenced to prison for fraud in 1999 but was subsequently granted an official pardon and reinstated as a cleric in late 2004. Along with Beyers Naudé and Winnie Mandela, Boesak won the 1985 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award given annually by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights to an individual or group whose courageous activism is at the heart of the human rights movement and in the spirit of Robert F. Kennedy's vision and legacy. Theologian, cleric and activist Originally from Kakamas, Boesak became active in the separate Coloured branch of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk and began to work as a pastor in Paarl. He became known then as a liberation theologian, starting with the publication of his doctoral work (''Farewell to Innocence'', 1976). For the next decade or so, he continued to write well-receive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Mpetha
Oscar Mafakafaka Mpetha was born in Mount Fletcher 5 August 1909 and died on 15 November 1994. He was a South African trade unionist and political activist. Personal life Mpetha was educated at local schools and at Adams College. In the 1930s, he married Rose Constance Nombunga Mpetha, they had two children. He died on 15 November 1994 at his Gugulethu home. Political career In 1934 he went to Cape Town as a migrant worker. He started his union activities when he was a road labourer in 1940 and began working as an assistant foreman. He had also previously been employed as a dock worker, waiter, hospital orderly, and later as a factory worker. He joined the Food and Canning Workers' Union when he worked at a fish canning factory in Laaiplek, he was involved as a trade unionist and political leader in the AFCWU in the late 1940s and early 1950s and in 1951 he became the General Secretary. In 1954, he joined the Communist Party, he also attended the conference of the South African ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilton Mkwayi
Wilton Zimasile Mkwayi (17 December 1923 – 24 July 2004) was an African National Congress veteran and one of the first six members of Umkonto weSizwe to be sent for military training. Early life Wilton “Bri-Bri” Zimasile Mkwayi was born in Chwarhu area near Middledrift in 1923. His parents were uneducated farmers. He was one of seven children. Mkwayi started school at age ten in a Presbyterian church building in Keiskammahoek. He had a rural childhood herding sheep and goats, and passing through circumcision school. Mkwayi became a member of the ANC at age 17, after his father, also a member of the ANC, gave him a membership card. He left school in 1943, while World War 2 was ongoing, to work at a dynamite factory in Somerset West. Mkwayi left Somerset West for Port Elizabeth in 1945 to work offloading large trucks and trains; he also worked at the docks. Political career On 1 May 1950, he participated in the ANC Youth League’s one-day general strike and stay away acr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elias Motsoaledi
Elias Mathope Motsoaledi (26 July 1924 – 9 May 1994) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and one of the eight men sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in July 1963 and paternal uncle to South African politician and minister Aaron Motsoaledi. The Elias Motsoaledi Local Municipality in Limpopo province was named after him. Early life Elias Motsoaledi was born on 26 July 1924, the third of eight children, in Phokoane in the Nebo District in Sekhukuneland, now Limpopo. He moved to Johannesburg at the age of 17 in search of work. His first brush with the law in Johannesburg was his arrest for failure to produce his pass book – he was sentenced to work on the construction of a road in Pretoria. Upon his release he got a job in a furniture factory. He married Caroline Motsoaledi and they had seven children. Role in Trade Union movement Motsoaledi joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1945 and then the African National Congress (ANC) in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pan Africanist Congress
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (known as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)) is a South African national liberation Pan-Africanist movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert Sobukwe, that broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) in 1959, as the PAC objected to the ANC's "the land belongs to all who live in it both white and black" and also rejected a multiracialist worldview, instead advocating a South Africa based on African nationalism. History The PAC was formally launched on 6 April 1959 at Orlando Communal Hall in Soweto. A number of African National Congress (ANC) members broke away because they objected to the substitution of the 1949 ''Programme of Action'' with the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955, which used multiracialist language as opposed to Africanist affirmations. The PAC at the time considered South Africa to be an African state by right an "inalienable right of the indigenous African people" a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jafta Masemola
Jafta Kgalabi Masemola (December 12, 1931 – April 17, 1990), also known as The Tiger of Azania and Bra Jeff, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, teacher, and founder of the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). He spent 27 years in South African prison during the apartheid era in South Africa, and was released in October 1989, shortly before the legalization of the PAC and the African National Congress by F. W. de Klerk. He served the longest sentence of any political prisoner in Robben Island prison in South Africa. Masemola was a teacher in Atteridgeville township in Pretoria in the 1950s. Together with Robert Sobukwe, Masemola co-founded PAC in 1959 in Soweto. Subsequently, he worked for PAC's youth organization in Atteridgeville and then headed PAC's military wing, Poqo. In 1962 Masemola was arrested and convicted on the charge of smuggling individuals out of the country for military training and blowing up power lines. He was imprisoned at Robben Is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Mlangeni
Andrew Mokete Mlangeni (6 June 192521 July 2020), also known as Percy Mokoena, Mokete Mokoena, and Rev. Mokete Mokoena, was a South African political activist and anti-apartheid campaigner who, along with Nelson Mandela and others, was imprisoned after the Rivonia Trial. Early life Mlangeni was born in Bethlehem, Orange Free State. After having to give up his studies owing to poverty, after 1946 he experienced worker exploitation as a factory worker. When working as a bus driver, he was active in a strike for better working conditions and a living wage, and in 1951, joined the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). In 1954, he joined the African National Congress (ANC). In 1961, he was sent for military training outside the country, but on his return in 1963 was arrested, after being accused of recruiting and training an armed force. He was found guilty in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, where he was Prisoner 467/64. Later life M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Mhlaba
Raymond Mphakamisi Mhlaba (12 February 1920 – 20 February 2005) was an anti-apartheid activist, Communist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC) also as well the first premier of the Eastern Cape. Mhlaba spent 25 years of his life in prison. Well known for being sentenced, along with Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and others in the Rivonia Trial, he was an active member of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) all his adult life. His kindly manner brought him the nickname "Oom Ray". Personal life Mhlaba was born in Mazoka village in the Fort Beaufort district, Eastern Cape and was educated at Healdtown secondary school but had to drop out because of financial problems Mhlaba started working at a laundry in Port Elizabeth after leaving school in 1942. He met and married his first wife, Joyce Meke, who was also from the Fort Beaufort area in 1943. In their 17 years together, before her death in a car accident in 1960, they had three child ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahmed Kathrada
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (21 August 1929 – 28 March 2017), sometimes known by the nickname "Kathy", was a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist. Kathrada's involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the African National Congress (ANC) led him to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, in which he was held at Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison. Following his release in 1990, he was elected to serve as a member of parliament, representing the ANC. He authored a book, ''No Bread for Mandela – Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64''. Early life Ahmed Kathrada was born on 21 August 1929 in the small country town of Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal, Kathrada 2004, p. 373 the fourth of six children in a Gujarati Bohra family of South African Indian immigrant parents from Surat, Gujarat. Once in Johannesburg, he was influenced by leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress such as Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, IC Meer, Moulvi and Yusuf Cachali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on ''baasskap'' (boss-hood or boss-ship), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day. Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into ''petty apartheid'', which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and ''grand apartheid'', which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
