This time of year there are a lot of people all over South Africa returning to their home towns to be with their families over the festive season. A lot of people living in the townships in Port Elizabeth have family in rural Eastern Cape in what used to be the former black homelands of the Ciskei and the Transkei and most of them will make use of long distance taxis and buses to go home for Christmas. The long distance…
The Old Post Office tower in the city centre reflecting in one of the Feathermarket Centre's windows
Visitors to the Addo Elephant National Park often go home with stories of magnificent elephant sightings and sometimes have an awesome story to tell of how an elephant walked so close past their car that you could reach out and touch him (just don't actually go and do it). On a good day you could also tick buffalo, lion and perhaps even black rhino off your "spotting the Big 5 list", but not often can one say that you had more than one…
One of the smallest but best known inhabitants of the Addo Elephant National Park is the Flightless Dung Beetle (Circellium bacchus). The Flightless Dung Beetle is endemic to the Addo Elephant Park and surrounds and very unique in the fact that they can't fly and hence the name. This fact also makes the beetle a vulnerable species as they only use elephant and buffalo dung to feed off and lay their eggs in and at the time when these animals…
The last in this short series on the Red Location Museum in New Brighton covers "You are my witness", a photo essay dedicated to the mothers, fathers, women, men and children of the Langa massacre, who sacrificed their lives for the liberation struggle of South Africa. The massacre took place on 21 March 1985 in Langa township in Uitenhage when mourners, peacefully marching in solidarity to a funeral of those who lost their lives while protesting against grave oppressive conditions, were violently massacred…
Today's post is the second of three posts about the Red Location Museum in New Brighton. One of the main concepts of the museum are the Memory Boxes. These boxes were inspired by the boxes that migrant workers used to accommodate their prized possessions when separated from their families. The Museum has twelve 6 meter by 6 meter and twelve meters tall, rusted boxes offering a set of different memories of struggle in South Africa. The boxes aren't identified from outside and the contents are…
Donkeys in pajamas must be one of the animals that visitors to game reserves love seeing most. The Burchell's Zebra is the most common zebra that you will find in the game reserves of the Eastern Cape. They are identifiable by the fact that the stripes go all the way underneath their stomachs and by the brownish phantom stripes visible on their wide white stripes.The endangered Cape Mountain Zebra are found only on a few game reserves in the province. …
The Red Location Museum in New Brighton was the first museum to be purpose built in a township in South Africa and remembers the struggle era, especially in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage. Although there is much room for improvement the museum has a number of very good exhibits. As you enter through the main entrance the Hall of Columns is on your right. Each of the 15 columns have a different struggle hero from the Nelson Mandela Bay area on…
For the last week some of the brightest young minds in the country have been taking part in the annual South Africa Junior Chess Championships, this year hosted at the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan University right here in Port Elizabeth. I popped down to the Indoor Sports Centre to have a peek and nearly fell on my back when I saw the amount of participants. More than 2000 kids from all over South Africa are taking part in this event…
The Blue Crane is South Africa's national bird and its always a pleasure to see them in the wild. They normally live in pairs and nest in grasslands which means that many end up occupying agricultural areas. You often see them driving along the N2 through the Overberg where they feed on seed and insects on the fields. Unfortunately due to poisons used by farmers on their fields a lot of these birds are killed and due to this the…