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Stephen Melville
General Stephen Alexander Melville (31 December 190417 June 1977) was a South African Air Force officer. He commanded air force formations in East Africa, North Africa, Madagascar, and Italy during the Second World War, and rose to Air Chief of Staff (1954–56) and Commandant General of the South African Defence Force (1958–60). Early life Melville was born in Matatiele, Natal, on 31 December 1904, and was educated at Grey College, Bloemfontein. He then worked in a bank, and later joined the Merchant Navy as a stoker. He joined the South African Mounted Rifles in 1924 as a trooper before transferring to the Artillery. In 1929, after a short boxing career in South Africa and the United States, Melville was trained as a pilot and transferred to the South African Air Force. Air Force career Melville commanded air force formations in the East African Campaign, Battle of Madagascar and Italian Campaign during the Second World War. For his service, Melville was appointed an O ...
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Colony Of Natal
The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa, as one of its provinces. It is now the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. It was originally only about half the size of the present province, with the north-eastern boundaries being formed by the Tugela and Buffalo rivers beyond which lay the independent Kingdom of Zululand (''kwaZulu'' in the Zulu language). Fierce conflict with the Zulu population led to the evacuation of Durban, and eventually, the Boers accepted British annexation in 1844 under military pressure. A British governor was appointed to the region and many settlers emigrated from Europe and the Cape Colony. The British established a sugar cane industry in the 1860s. Farm owners had a difficult time attracting Zulu labourers to wor ...
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Union Defence Force (South Africa)
) , headquarters = Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa , commander-in-chief = , commander-in-chief_title = Sovereign of South Africa , minister = , minister_title = , commander = , commander_title = Chief of the UDF , age = , conscription = , active = , ranked = , reserve = , deployed = , amount = , percent_GDP = , domestic_suppliers = , foreign_suppliers = , imports = , exports = , history = World War IRand RebellionWorld War IIBerlin BlockadeKorean War , ranks = South African military ranks The Union Defence Force (UDF) ( af, Unie-Verdedigingsmag) comprised the armed forces of South Africa from 1 July 1912, when the Defence Act (No 13 of 1912) took effect, two years after the creation of the Union of South Africa, until 1957 when it was reorganised and renamed the South African Defence Force ...
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White South African People
White South Africans generally refers to South Africans of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, they are generally divided into the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch East India Company's original settlers, known as Afrikaners, and the Anglophone descendants of predominantly British colonists of South Africa. In 2016, 57.9% were native Afrikaans speakers, 40.2% were native English speakers, and 1.9% spoke another language as their mother tongue, such as Portuguese, Greek, or German. White South Africans are by far the largest population of White Africans. ''White'' was a legally defined racial classification during apartheid. Most Afrikaners trace their ancestry back to the mid-17th century and have developed a separate cultural identity, including a distinct language. The majority of English-speaking White South Africans trace their ancestry to the 1820 British, Irish and Dutch Settlers. The remainder of the White South African population c ...
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South African People Of British Descent
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz'' ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word ''sun'' derived from. Some languages describe south in the same way, from the fact that it is the direction of the sun at noon (in the Northern Hemisphere), like Latin meridies 'noon, south' (from medius 'middle' + dies 'day', cf English meridional), while others describe south as the right-hand side of the rising sun, like Biblical Hebrew תֵּימָן teiman 'south' from יָמִין yamin 'right', Aramaic תַּימנַא taymna from יָמִין yamin 'right' and Syriac ܬܰܝܡܢܳܐ taymna from ܝܰܡܝܺܢܳܐ yamina (hence the name of Yemen, the land to the south/right of the Levant). Navigation By convention, the ''bottom or down-facing side'' of a ...
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People From Pretoria
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ...
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1977 Deaths
Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). * January 17 ** 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain. * January 18 ** Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. ** Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead. ** SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board. * January 20 – Jimmy Carter is sworn in as the 39th Preside ...
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1904 Births
Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20 * one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film Music * 19 (band), a Japanese pop music duo Albums * ''19'' (Adele album), 2008 * ''19'', a 2003 album by Alsou * ''19'', a 2006 album by Evan Yo * ''19'', a 2018 album by MHD * ''19'', one half of the double album ''63/19'' by Kool A.D. * ''Number Nineteen'', a 1971 album by American jazz pianist Mal Waldron * ''XIX'' (EP), a 2019 EP by 1the9 Songs * "19" (song), a 1985 song by British musician Paul Hardcastle. * "Nineteen", a song by Bad4Good from the 1992 album '' Refugee'' * "Nineteen", a song by Karma to Burn from the 2001 album ''Almost Heathen''. * "Nineteen" (song), a 2007 song by American singer Billy Ray Cyrus. * "Nineteen", a song by Tegan and Sara from the 2007 album '' The Con''. * "XIX" (song), a 2014 song by Slipk ...
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Barend Viljoen
Major-General Benjamin Gottlieb "Barend" Viljoen (13 April 19081995) was a South African military commander. Military career He joined the South African Air Force in 1927, and served in World War II. He also served as to the and to the . He was from 23 September 1956 to 30 April 1965. Honours and awards He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1944. * * See also * List of South African military chiefs * South African Air Force "Through hardships to the stars" , colours = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = , equipment ... References , - 1908 births 1995 deaths Afrikaner people South African people of Dutch descent South African Air Force generals Officers of the Order of the British Empire Chiefs of the South African Air Force South African Air Force personnel of World War II ...
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Harold Willmott
Brigadier Harold Willmott (18991993) was a South African military commander. Military career He served in the Royal Air Force in World War I, and joined the South African Air Force in 1924. During World War II, he served as Deputy Director-General of Air Services from 1939 to 1940, as commander of 3 Wing in North Africa from 1941 to 1942, as Director of the Coastal Air Force from 1942 to 1944, and as Deputy Director-General of the Air Force from 1944 to 1945, when he was promoted to Director-General. After the war, he served as Officer Commanding Natal Command, and finally as Air Chief of Staff, from 17 October 1945 to 10 September 1946. Honours and awards He was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the January 1943 New Year Honours list. * See also *List of South African military chiefs *South African Air Force "Through hardships to the stars" , colours = , colours_label = , march ...
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South African National Defence Force
The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) comprises the Military, armed forces of South Africa. The commander of the SANDF is appointed by the President of South Africa from one of the Military branch, armed services. They are in turn accountable to the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans of the Department of Defence (South Africa), Defence Department. The military as it exists today was created in 1994, following South Africa's first nonracial election in April of that year and the adoption of a new constitution. It replaced the South African Defence Force and also integrated uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) guerilla forces. History Integration process In 1994, the SANDF took over the personnel and equipment from the South African Defence Force, SADF and integrated forces from the former Bantustan homelands forces, as well as personnel from the former guerrilla forces of some of the political parties involved in South Africa ...
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Pieter Grobbelaar
General Pieter Grobbelaar, (16 September 1908 – 22 June 1988) was a South African military commander. He served as Army Chief of Staff from 1953 to 1958, and Commandant General of the South African Defence Force from 1961 to 1965. Military career Grobbelaar joined the South African Army as a part-time Citizen Force soldier in 1929 and became a full-time Permanent Force member in 1933. During the Second World War, Grobbelaar commanded the 7th Reconnaissance Battalion as a lieutenant colonel, and was second-in-command of the 12th Motorised Brigade, 6th Armoured Division during the Italy. After the war, Grobbelaar served as Officer Commanding Orange Free State Command, Northern Transvaal Command and the South African Military College South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*su ...
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Hendrik Klopper
General Hendrik Balzazar Klopper (also ''Balthazar''), was a South African military commander. He commanded the 3rd Infantry Brigade and was later promoted to command the 2nd Infantry Division during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. He is best known for surrendering the Division to Rommel after the failed defence of the Tobruk harbour in June 1942. After the war, he became Army Chief of Staff from 1950 to 1953, and Commandant General of the Union Defence Force from 1956 until his retirement in 1958. Military career Klopper joined the South African Army in 1924. World War II During the Second World War, he commanded the 3rd Infantry Brigade in the North African Campaign, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He then briefly commanded 2nd Infantry Division. As fortress commander, Klopper was forced to surrender Tobruk Tobruk or Tobruck (; grc, Ἀντίπυργος, ''Antipyrgos''; la, Antipyrgus; it, Tobruch; ar, طبرق, ...
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