The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 which, if you are of the minority who have arithmetic skills, know that it makes the ANC 112 years old.  I don’t know why I bothered as you are likely to have reading skills as well otherwise you would not be reading this.  Actually, I introduced this contentious note because during the week long birthday celebrations we will be told how the ANC has created a better life for all and free access to education will be one of them, not that they moved the meter much in the 30 years they’ve been in power.

With the ANC facing its most strenuous electoral challenge this year, we will have the galling sight of the posturing politicians outdoing themselves in regaling us with their achievements.  It’s more likely to be a networking opportunity (in the corruption sense) and a chance for the ANC parasites to sell all manner of ANC themed regalia, probably including black, yellow and green rough riders.

The Young Women’s Christian Association of Southern Africa (YWCA) was originally founded in Cape Town in April 1886. Thirteen years later in March 1899, moves were afoot in Port Elizabeth to establish another facility under the YWCA banner.

In 1988 the building, Lester House, was extensively renovated as chambers for the legal firm of Pagden and Christian.

This blog is a brief resume of the YMCA, its original home, Lester House to Pagdens Court.

Main picture: Lester House

During a visit to the town in 1861 – 1862, Thomas Bowler painted the Town Hall which was in the process of being erected with scaffolding surrounding the building. An insignificant yet unplanned feature was included in that painting; a small cupola supported by pillars. As it was never included in the design and never existed, why was this appendage depicted? The reason why was it included in the painting was only uncovered by Dr. Joseph Denfeld some hundred years later. The answer lay with a non-Port Elizabeth photographer by the name of William Roe.

If Denfield is correct, what did William Roe do that compelled Bowler to inaccurately amend his painting?

Main picture: Painting by Thomas Bowler entitled Main Street Port Elizabeth

This blog is based entirely upon an article entitled Christmas at Port Elizabeth from the defunct magazine An African City in 1913. What I have done is to insert comments regarding changes or to emphasize differences between then and now. In some ways it is familiar and in other ways so dissimilar.

Main picture:  Aerial view of Humewood#03 1935

David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone had a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.

Main picture: David Livingstone

South End, its people, its mosques and churches were all sacrificed on the altar of Apartheid. The people were relocated, a settled harmonious community was cast asunder, the buildings bulldozed. All except some places of religion escaped the carnage. Now in an island of destruction they represented no congregation as they had been transported to the northern most part of the metropole.

But survive they did. The Pier Street mosque suffered further threats as it forlornly stood erect in the path of the proposed freeway. It survived its near death experience as the route was amended to skirt the mosque but St. Peter’s Church barely survived as it was vandalised to within an inch of its life.     

Main picture: A wantonly vandalised St. Peter’s Church

In unravelling the history of Port Elizabeth, very little is revealed about the history of black inhabitants of the area, with most problematic being that of the origins of the amaMfengu. For this purpose,  it is assumed that the amaMfengu were those who had broken their allegiance with the amaXhosa chiefly families and decided to enter the Cape Colony and accept the laws and governance of the colonists.

Main picture:   Beach labourers loading a surfboat with wool bales for onward transport to a ship at anchor in the roadstead