I work hard every day to make my beer (umqombothi),
Wake up early every morning to please my people with African beer umqombothi),
I make sure the fire burns to make my beer (umqombothi),
My special beer umqombothi (umqombothi),
Is African beer.
We MaDlamini (everybody),
Uph’umqombothi (come and drink my),
We MaDlamini (magic beer),
Uph’umqombothi”.
(Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s hit song Umqombothi)
With the recent heavy downpours in Bloemfontein and the images and videos thereof popping up all over Facebook, one cannot help but be reminded of one of the biggest disasters to ever hit Bloemfontein, the flood of 1904.
In the early years of Bloemfontein its famous Bloem Spruit regularly flooded its banks after a heavy rainstorm. One bystander described it as follows: “A magnificent sight after a good downpour, the water, brown and foaming, shooting up as it flung itself against the huge boulders in its way, or swirling and eddying around them.” This, however, was under normal circumstances.
Caleb Humalebe Motshabi was born on the 5th of November 1923 in Bethanie [a location that used to exist in Waaihoek]. The third child of the late Solomon Batshabeng and Maria Panyane Motshabi, he grew up in the Batho Township in Mangaung and attended school at St Bernard Primary School where he completed his Standard Six during the 1930s.
Constance Boniswa Tshabalala, the daughter of Sienah and Joseph Mothlale, was born on the 19thof July 1961 in Bloemfontein – 49 days after South Africa became a republic outside the British Commonwealth. At the age of one and a half years, she went to live with her grandparents, Michael and Mary Mothlale, and her brother in Elsies River, Cape Town.
Arguably the world’s most popular and comprehensive international arts event, the Venice Biennale continues to be an inspirational experience to artists and art lovers alike. Generally speaking, Biennales are important international events, since it entails crucial, public sites for the production, distribution, and generation of public discourse around contemporary art.