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Pollsmoor Maximum Security 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 soon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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, and Constantia to the north. Tokai is further divided into the main area of the suburb (Tokai) to the south, and the smaller and more affluent Dennendal area to the north, which backs into the river and forest. It is also home to numerous gated communities, including the Steenberg Golf Estate, Tokai's property prices are high within the context of the Cape Town real estate market, with the average detached house price in the suburb sitting at R7.21 million as at May 2025. The area is one of the more desirable among residents of Cape Town, and is known for its laidback, peaceful lifestyle and easy access to major transit routes, amenities, beaches, and nature trails. History In 1791 or 1792, governor Johan Isaac Rheniu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Ahmed Kathrada
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada OMSG (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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Cullinan, Gauteng
Cullinan is a small town in the Gauteng province of South Africa. It is located east of the city of Pretoria along the diamond route and is heavily reliant on tourism and the mine that dominates the skyline. The town is named after diamond magnate Sir Thomas Cullinan. History In 1898 Sir Thomas Cullinan was handed a three carat diamond found along a farm fence. He studied the area and came to the conclusion that the diamond was washed down from a nearby hill. Sir Cullinan made an attempt to buy the land from the owner, Joachim Prinsloo, but did not succeed. After Prinsloo's death, he was able to purchase the land for £52,000 from Prinsloo's daughter. The Cullinan kimberlite was discovered in 1902 and in 1903 open pit mining commenced. The mine was named the Premier mine. On 25 June 1905, the famed Cullinan Diamond, the largest in the world at , was discovered by Frederick George Stanley Wells, surface manager of the Premier Diamond Mining Company. It was bought by the Tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Herman Charles Bosman
Herman Charles Bosman (3 February 1905 – 14 October 1951) was widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short-story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain and developed a style emphasizing the use of satire. His English-language works utilize primarily Afrikaner characters and highlight the many contradictions in Afrikaner society during the first half of the twentieth century. Early life Bosman was born at Kuils River, near Cape Town, in the Cape Colony, to an Afrikaner family. He was raised with English as well as Afrikaans. While Bosman was still young, his family travelled frequently, he spent a short time at Potchefstroom College which would later become Potchefstroom High School for Boys, he later moved to Johannesburg where he went to school at Jeppe High School for Boys in Kensington. While there he contributed to the school magazine. When Bosman was sixteen, he started writing short stories for the national Sunday newspaper (the ''Sunday Times'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mikhael Subotzky
Mikhael Subotzky (born Cape Town, South Africa, 1981) is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. His installation, film, video and photographic work have been exhibited widely in museums and galleries, and received awards including the KLM Paul Huf Award, W. Eugene Smith Grant, Oskar Barnack Award and the Discovery Award at Rencontres d'Arles. He has published the books ''Beaufort West'' (2008), ''Retinal Shift'' (2012) and, with Patrick Waterhouse, ''Ponte City'' (2014). Subotzky is a member of Magnum Photos and his work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Life and work Subotzky graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2004. For his book ''Beaufort West'', Subotzky photographed in and around a prison built within a traffic circle in the town of Beaufort West. For six years he and Patrick Waterhouse collaborated in photographing in Ponte City, a 54-storey cylindri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Freedom Day (South Africa)
Freedom Day is a public holiday in South Africa celebrated on 27 April. It commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on that day in 1994 and the day on which the new constitution was introduced. The elections were the first national elections where everyone of voting age of over 18 from any race group, was allowed to vote. It is one of the seventeen public holidays determined by the Public Holidays Act (No. 36 of 1994). On the first commemoration of the holiday, President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela addressed Parliament: ''As a new dawn ushered in this day, the 27th of April 1994, few of us could suppress the welling of emotion, as we were reminded of the terrible past from which we come as a nation; the great possibilities that we now have; and the bright future that beckons us. And so we assemble here today, and in other parts of the country, to mark a historic day in the life of our nation. Wherever South Africans are across the globe, our hearts beat as one, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Allan Boesak
Allan Aubrey Boesak (born 23 February 1946) is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric, 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-received ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Oscar Mpetha
Oscar Mafakafaka Mpetha OMSS 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. he is the great grandfather of Kayelin Nhlanhla Mpetha. 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 Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Wilton Mkwayi
Wilton Zimasile Mkwayi OMSG (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 a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Elias Motsoaledi
Elias Mathope Motsoaledi OMSG (26 July 1924 – 9 May 1994) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. He was Accused No.9 in the Rivonia Trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1963 with a group of anti-Apartheid revolutionaries which included Nelson Mandela who was Accused No.1. 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, and he was sentenced to work on the construction of a road in Pretoria. Upon his release he got a job in a furniture factory. Activism Trade union movement Motsoaledi joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1945 and then the African National Congress (ANC) in 1948. He soon became involved with trade unions. He joined the Leather Workers' Union in 1949, served as c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Pan Africanist Congress
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, often shortened to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), is a South African pan-Africanist national liberation 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 theory that "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 an "inalienable right of the indigenou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
