In South Africa the month of August is synonymous with honoring women: their courage, strength and endurance. Celebrated on the 9th of August, the day reminds us of the courageous march in 1956 by approximately 20 000 women who protested against legislation aimed at tightening the apartheid government’s control over the movement of black women in urban areas.
Charlotte Maxeke’s Bloemfontein links and their significance to women
In commemoration of the birth of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke 150 years ago, the National Department of Sport, Arts and Culture has named 2021 The Year of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke. During the official launch in April 2021, the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, reminded South Africans that Charlotte was the only female delegate who had attended the founding of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC; later renamed the African National Congress or ANC) in Bloemfontein in 1912.
Over the last year, the pandemic has cast a long shadow over our lives, but while the national lockdown saw an overall decline in crime, acts of Gender Based Violence spiked dramatically. According to Amnesty International, in just the first week of lockdown, 2 300 calls for help were made to the South African Police Service. Only three months later, a tragic tally of twenty-one women (and children) had been killed by their intimate partners. Although necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the lockdown has created a context in which many women are trapped with no way to escape the violent hands of their abusers.
People living in different areas of the world are adapted to different temperatures. Think for example, people of Iceland will have a hard time living in Mali in the Sahara desert and vice versa. Even in South Africa, if you grew up at the cold west coast it was really uncomfortable to visit Natal for the holidays in December with the high temperatures and humidity.
Image: Fossil of Eurypterus remipes, a sea scorpion that lived 420 million years ago. © Millard H. Sharp 2017
How far back can you trace your family tree? A couple of generations to maybe a couple of hundred years? How about 460 million years? Because that is when the granddaddy of arachnids swam in the earth’s oceans, making the arachnid family tree truly ancient. And with more than 100 000 identified species living today, their family tree is not only ancient, but gigantic.