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ACTIVITIES ««
Presentation to Stellenbosch
History Department
After the disastrous fire
in December 2010 which destroyed the Stellenbosch University's
History Department almost completely, they have now moved into their
new premises. The VRS has donated 36 of our back volumes to form the
nucleus of the destroyed library there. Howard Phillips presented
the volumes at the opening on 18th September.
Professors Howard
Phillips, Albert Grundlingh (head of the Stellenbosch History Dept)
and Nigel Worden (co-editor of our Trials of slavery volume)
Albert Grundlingh
receives a volume from Howard Phillips
AGM and Launches of our 2012 volume
This year the
Western Cape AGM and launch were preceded by the Gauteng launch.
Here is Nick Southey's report of that occasion.
Between 60 and 65 people packed into the lounge of Dr AB Xuma’s
former home in Sophiatown, Johannesburg (which is now the Sophiatown
Heritage and Cultural Centre), on the evening of 12 June 2012, for
the Gauteng launch of Peter Limb’s volume. Guests of honour included
Ms Baleka Mbete, National Chairperson of the African National
Congress, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, the Deputy Minister of Health, and
Professor Mac Lukhele, President of the South African Medical
Association. The guests were addressed by Dr Sifiso Ndlovu,
Executive Director of the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET),
Prof Howard Phillips, Chair of the VRS, and Professor Limb, after
which guests enjoyed excellent refreshments and were able to look
around Dr Xuma’s home. VRS members present were very grateful that a
launch had been held in Gauteng, as well as for the opportunity to
meet Howard Phillips. The VRS is grateful to the Department of
Historical Studies at the University of Johannesburg for their joint
hosting of this event, and for their logistical and financial
support, as well as to the Sophiatown Heritage and Cultural Centre
for its generous and warm support in hosting this event at their
Centre.
The outside of the
Sophiatown Heritage and Cultural Centre, formerly Dr
A B Xuma's house
The Cape Town AGM and launch were
held at the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa in Milner Road ̶ very suitable, since
A B Xuma is being honoured by the South African Medical Association. Howard Phillips,
the chairman, welcomed all present and gave his annual report which you will find under
AGM Minutes.
Howard Phillips
giving his annual report and then presenting Dr Bevan Goqwana with a
copy of Xuma's Autobiography.
After a short interval to stretch our legs,
several guests, among them
Dr B M Goqwana, ANC MP and Prof Mark
Sonderup, SAMA President joined us. Howard Phillips welcomed them
and then Rodney Davenport told the exciting story of how the Xuma
papers were saved from a muddy grave. Elizabeth van Heynigen then
introduced the author, Peter Limb who then proceeded to tell us
about A B Xuma, the subject of A B Xuma. Autobiography & Selected
Works. He emphasised that Xuma was not only a politician but a
successful medical man.
Here are Rodney Davenport, Elizabeth van
Heyningen and Peter Limb
After Peter Limb's talk, a short film
clip of an interview with A B Xuma in the 1950s in which he spoke of
so-called "Bantu education" was shown, to the delight of the
audience.
Mark Sonderup, Peter Limb, Elizabeth van
Heyningen, Bevan Goqwana and Howard Phillips
Partying after the launch,
with the usual terrific spread pictured above
Newsflash
Nick Southey was interviewed by Gillian Godsell on Jozi Today, 17
July 2012, Here's the Link:
http://jozi91072.podomatic.com/entry/2012-07-18T04_50_25-07_00
Book Fair
15th June to Sunday 17th June 2012
Due
to high costs, we hired the smallest of stands this year, rather
grandiloquently called a “Small Publisher’s Pavilion”! Thanks to the
kind sponsorship of Arne Schaefer, we were able to get so-called
Safety Sails to store our bookstock securely overnight. We had the
usual cadre of brave and beautiful volunteers: Jatti Bredekamp and
Tanya Barben (2 shifts each), Elizabeth van Heyningen, Chris van der
Merwe, Howard Phillips, Ian Farlam and Cora Ovens, who did the first
and last shifts. Altogether, we recruited 18 new members and sold 47
volumes.
Jatti Bredekamp selling hard!
Peter Limb, this year’s author, spoke in the “Literary Forum” on
Saturday 16th June at 12 a.m. about the annual volume A B Xuma.
Autobiography and Selected Works. This was concluded with the
showing of the 1954 film clip of an interview with Dr Xuma on the
subject of “Bantu Education”.
The
film clip of the 1950s interview with A B Xuma at the book fair
"Literary Forum"
VRS donates prize
Since 2006, the VRS has donated one of its volumes as a prize to the
best history student of the year at these universities: Unisa,
Rhodes University, University of the Free State, University of
Johannesburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of the Western
Cape, University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria. This
year our Gauteng council member, Nick Southey, presented the prize
to Daniel Pretorius in Pretoria at the graduation ceremony on 23rd
April.
Nick
Southey and Daniel Pretorius
Recorded Interviews
We have quite a few
soundbites on VRS matters! Gillian Godsell
interviewed our member Gerald Groenewald (whom some of you may have
heard lecturing on our volume 36, Trials of Slavery, which he
co-edited with Nigel Worden, in January 2009 at UCT’s Summer School)
about the VRS on Radio Today, a Johannesburg radio station, on
Tuesday 22nd September 2009. Click on
interview to listen in!
We
also have Randolph Vigne's
interview with Gorry
Bowes-Taylor on Thomas Pringle.
And the websites of two interviews with Peter Limb on A B Xuma, at
http://afripod.aodl.org/
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/SABCSAFM?feature=mhee
Happy listening!
Forthcoming attractions
In
the pipeline for publication in future years are works in a
variety of genres, from 18th century travellers’ accounts
to diaries of long-time residents of the Cape and collected letters
by prominent South Africans. In the last category, for instance, are
the letters of politicians like M. T. Steyn (president of the
Orange Free State from 1896 to 1902) and Dr A.B.
Xuma (president of the A.N.C from 1940 to 1949), of novelists
like Olive Schreiner (author of The Story of an African Farm), and of doctors
like James Barry (about whose sexual identity far more has been
written than about his important medico-political work at the Cape
between 1816 and 1828).
In
the category of travellers’ accounts two forthcoming works stand
out, Peter Kolb’s Caput Bonae Spei hodiernum (‘The Cape of
Good Hope Today’), originally published in German in 1719, and
Ensign August Frederik Beutler’s account of his pioneering
expedition to the Eastern Cape in 1752, while in the category of
diaries, those of Lady Anne Barnard’s sometime manservant, Samuel
Eusebius Hudson, and of the Eastern Cape missionary, the Reverend
James Laing (1803-1872), will add richly to our knowledge of
emerging Cape society.
Despite their diversity, what all of the above have in common are
the fresh perspectives they will offer on South African history from
an array of contemporaries, fulfilling the VRS’s goal of enabling
its members to listen to the past in its own words.
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