Among the many fascinating objects displayed in the First Raadsaal Museum in Bloemfontein is a small iron cannon that quietly invites more questions than it answers. It is not the largest or most imposing exhibit, yet a closer look reveals two intriguing clues cast into its barrel: the initials JEC and the date 1760.
Exploring N’wana
“Ku veleka vukosi…” “To bear children is wealth.”
Among the Tsonga-Shangaan people, n’wana means “child”. Although often called a fertility doll, it is better understood as a child figure – a powerful symbol of womanhood, marriage and motherhood rather than a toy.
Unlike the simple xipopana, dolls made by children from rags, clay or maize cobs, a n’wana was presented to a young woman after initiation or at marriage.
Imagine you are birding in one of South Africa’s nature reserves and you hear an unfamiliar call of a bird, which species you know it may belong to. Then with today’s modern technology, you open your Sasol or Roberts’s bird app on your phone and find the species. To confirm your identification, you play the species’ call and—there you go—you guessed it right! But have you ever thought how the bird call appeared on your app, where it was obtained or even how recordings of bird calls have been made over the years?
We often sit in our gardens, admiring the green lawns, colourful flowers, trees, birds and butterflies. Occasionally, we may spot a spider, ladybird or praying mantis. Yet beneath our feet lies a remarkable hidden world populated by tiny creatures known as mites. A small survey of oribatid mites in my own garden in a townhouse complex in Langenhovenpark, Bloemfontein, revealed eleven species of these minute arachnids.
The date, 16 June 1976 is ingrained in the South African psyche as a day of huge political significance. It marks the beginning of the Soweto student protests commonly referred to as the ‘Soweto Uprisings’. The use of the plural form is intentional, because ‘June 16’ or ‘June sixteenth’ also refers to a series of student protests that continued for the rest of 1976 and flared up again in 1977.