The Opinion Pieces are an eclectic bunch on current affairs & history often with a human interest aspect. The Movie/DVDs reviews are mainly on documentaries with a smattering of movie reviews.
Throughout history there have always been people who scandalize society either to make a point or, more commonly, to self-promote. Unfortunately, in this modern social mediaworld of clicks where people aspire to be celebrities or influencers rather than astronauts, doctors or engineers, the trend to get noticed has exploded.
One current trend is for women to expose their baby bumps. To be sure, there is nothing wrong or to be ashamed of being pregnant. Indeed, it is something to be celebrated, but it is becoming tawdry with every A-lister and wannabe feeling the need to do it. Not content to just walk around thus, they even have photoshoots, like Rihanna, to provide material for their fans. The baby bump is actually just the middle act of the three-act play of conception: the act itself, the bump and finally the birth. The first and last are intensely private affairs, but somehow they feel the need to perform the middle act in public. Women who would never walk around with a crop top in public suddenly feel the need to do so in specially tailored outfits.
To put a humorous slant to this phenomenon, SMAC has juxtaposed two current pictures of publicly paraded bumps, Anne Hathaway and Vogue Williams, with one featuring the actor, Jamie Foxx who recently displayed a gorgeous one at the age of 58 which shows that baby bumps are not constrained by age or sex in this transgender age. (No, Foxx is not trans, but the bump could be a phantom pregnancy as his girlfriend is expecting.)
Being a Settler in an undeveloped land with unfriendly neighbours to their east, non-existent infrastructure and a paucity of work opportunities apart from farming their land, would they not only survive but thrive? Ultimately not being unscrupulous opportunists but the opposite, hard working entrepreneurs, the Reed family would rise to the challenge and thrive.
Sailing to a new homeland Aboard the Chapman, the first ship in the 1820 Settler Armada to arrive at Port Elizabeth, was the Reed family. Previously known as the Sybilla, the 558 ton ship would faithfully serve the British Empire for many more years. But now it was transporting settlers from Cork to Algoa Bay as Port Elizabeth did not yet exist. Ultimately approximately 33 years later it would be lost in the North Atlantic during a voyage from Quebec in the early 1850s.
Shipboard romance It was the roving eye of the ship’s captain, John Milbank, that was attracted to the young slip of a female, Sara Eliza Reed, the sister to James and Samuel Reed. With the Reed boys being too young at the time, with James being only 7 as he was born in 1813, neither boy would in all likelihood have been aware of the budding romance. Over a voyage of 92 days there was plenty of time for Milbank to woo the 20 year old albeit surreptitiously. The romance must have blossomed during the voyage and so, upon arrival in Cape Town, John Milbank proclaimed that the couple would be married within several days. Sarah never disembarked from the ship. Instead she returned with her husband to England.
[LB15]
Whether dared or on their own volition, two young boys would vie to be the first person ashore. One was a 13 year old boy by the name of James Samuel Reed [SC1] and the other was William Collen [SC2]. Whether they were even aware of the others plot to be first ashore, is unknown but two boys would claim this distinction. In the case of the latter, the family claims that William absconded with the ship’s bell. Passed down from generation to generation this assertion and the bell were ultimately passed down the family until today when Mr. JAS Collen is in possession of the bell. Based upon its inconsequential size, the title of Ship’s Bell is probably too grandiose. Downgrading it to galley bell would probably appease skeptics and naysayers. [SC3] As contestants in the game Chinese Whispers can attest, by the fourth retelling of a fact, the accuracy of the detail no longer bears any resemblance to the original message. All facts are subject to distortion.
An example based upon my family history will emphasise the fact. My maternal great great grandfather was George Dix-Peek. At the apex of his career as an architect, he designed the Standard Bank building in Main Street, Port Elizabeth. The remainder of his drawings were of lessor import, originality and importance. Yet despite that fact, one of my cousins claimed that he designed buildings such as the Union Buildings!
Creating a career as hotelier Nothing is officially known of either of the brothers’ activities for many years except that James’ initial occupation was that of a blacksmith [3]. Next the trail wends its merry way to being hoteliers.
In January 1840 James Samuel Reed opened the Pier Hotel [SC4] in a house located in Jetty Street which later became the Palmerston and ultimately the Campanile Hotel. There was an hotel on this site for 150 years with the original house being considerably extended over the years and becoming known as the “Palmerston”. To cater for the influx of settlers, visitors and businessmen this hotel could no longer be extended. The solution was to demolish the existing hotel and to replace it with a far larger hotel, the “Campanile” which was built in 1934/5.
Above: The Palmerston Hotel which was the successor to the Pier Hotel
On the birth of his eldest son William James Reed, Samuel Reed was the manager of the Pier Hotel. Samuel worked at this trade for 10 years. Combined with the butchering trade, his partners were his brothers George and James William.
Above: This is the earliest extant sketch of the Pier Hotel in 1842
It was originally the home of Alexander William Tennant before James Samuel Reed converted it into a hotel. It was not Tennant who would hit the jackpot, but James Samuel. In January 1840, he placed an advertisement that he had taken over Tennant’s house near the proposed new jetty envisaged by the Port Elizabeth Jetty Company. In anticipation of this jetty’s construction literally on his doorstep, he had christened his inn and boarding house, “The Pier Hotel”. In fact, at that stage, even the foundation stone had not been laid yet. Even though the jetty was only finally completed in 1842, using the wreck of the ship Feejee as a base, the expected goldmine had barely commenced production when misfortune befell the jetty. Within five months after officially coming into operation, on Saturday night, 26th August 1843, Port Elizabeth experienced a violent gale, the worst south-easter since 1835. In a matter of hours, three ships broke their anchors smashing into the jetty and utterly destroying it.
James Reed arrived as an 1820 Settler on the Chapman aged seven. In 1846 Tennant was declared insolvent and at the same time Reed announced that he had returned to his earlier trade as a blacksmith.
Together with chartering vessels taking stock, horses and bullocks to Mauritius in exchange for their products principally being sugar, they did very well financially. Samuel’s brother, George, was the buyer of livestock and William was the bookkeeper. That meant that when the chartered boat was loaded, Samuel had to remove his apron and sail to Mauritius. As part of this job was an extremely difficult portion. This entailed catching wild oxen and loading them on board the ship using slings.
In 1849 James William was listed as cabinet makers in Queens Street.
Trying their hand at auctioneering The family dissolved the partnership, and Samuel started auctioneering. By 1861 he had sold all what were called the Hospital Lands. These properties lay between Bird and Pearson Streets and in the western portion encompassed the first substantial hospital in the town. These lands had been granted by Sir George Grey in 1858 to the town with the intention of selling them to provide funds for the erection of the hospital on Richmond Hill.
Above: Market Square in 1896
The Reed family operates a pont Prior to the opening of the Mackay Bridge on the Sunday’s River in 1895, passengers and vehicles were taken across the river by means of a pont. J.S. Reed held the lease from 1859 to 1869. James Reed then purchased The Sunday’s River Punt property from Capper for £4750 and Thornhill for £3500. [There are two Thornhills; the farm settled by Christopher near Bathurst in 1820 and the village of Thornhill just beyond the Van Staden’s Pass, named after Christhopher, son of Christopher] After occupying the Punt Property for 10 years, the Uitenhage Council sued Samuel Reed to deliver up the right of way and remove his Punt. He duly refused to relinquish what he had legally acquired from Thomas Capper (b 1811) son of Thomas Capper senior, of George Smith’s party. The case was heard in the Supreme Court. When Reed lost the case, Capper was already dead, and he had no redress which caused him to surrender the property. His son William J Reed then made an offer with the principal creditor W R Metelerkamp through Mr. J S Kirkwood. [James Somers Kirkwood (d.1888) had arrived in Port Elizabeth in 1855 and was a well-known auctioneer and was elected as Town Councillor in 1860 and M.L.A. from 1876 to 1880] had to pay an amount and Reed’s estate was released from Insolvency.
To settle the debt, their property across the Baakens River bridge was sold and realized £600 which was ample to pay the debt. ·
Property magnet Besides being extremely successful in his occupations as farmer, butcher and auctioneer, James Reed also amassed a great deal of property including farms. [SC5] By 1849, J.S. Reed had acquired half of the farm Nooitgedacht on which Frame’s Drift is located. He eventually played a role in the political management of the town by being elected as Councillor onto the first Town Council and later he was also appointed onto the board of the Divisional Council.
Over the years James Reed was involved in numerous successful and unsuccessful business ventures and amassed a great deal of property.
Fox hunting [LB 14] One of the British customs which our stubbornly traditional forefathers attempted to import into Port Elizabeth was fox hunting. They had the horses, the hounds, the “pink” which implies or signifies perfect health and happiness. The Eastern Cape offered splendid hunting country but no foxes! As an alternative they resorted to “running duikers or oribi to earth.”
The Herald [EPH 1] described “the “run” of ·the previous Saturday. The hounds were under the charge of Messrs. Ted and George Reed and they usually met at Harries Kraal at 6 a.m. twice a week. There were 5 couples of hounds and they had a particularly good run that day covering 15 to 20 miles before killing within sight of the Kragga Kamma lands.
Above: Campanile with Palmerston Hotel in the background
Sources [SC1] Social Chronicle to the end of 1945. Harradine Page 275 [SC2] Blog: https://thecasualobserver.co.za/port-elizabeth-yore-settler-ship-chapman/ [SC3] S.C. page 275. [SC4] SC page 27 [SC5] SC Page 21 [LB14] Looking Back Vol VII No. 1, March 1966 Page 14, Fox hunting] [EPH 1] E.P. Herald 24 October 1862 Fox Hunting [LB15] Looking Back Vol XVI No. 3, Sept 1976 Page 84] [LB] Looking Back Settler Memories by William & James Samuel Reed. Volume 20 No. 1 March 1980 Page 18 to 26
Name
DoB & DoD
Comment
George S. Reed
B. 1818
Youngest of W. Reed’s 5 children
William James Reed
1840-c1920
Son of James Samuel Reed, 22 Queen Street
James Samuel Reed
1811-1902
Grandson of James Samuel Reed
William Reed
1774-1827
1820 Settler, John Baillie’s party. Arrived with wife & 5 children aboard Chapman.
Over my life of 72 years, I have witnessed this building slowly crumble and fade away. Now little more than a pile of bricks, my memory was pricked after 40 years after relocation to Joburg when a Mrs. Charlotte Brunette surprised me with a photo of an oil painting of this building. Now yet another piece of the giant PE puzzle has found its niche in the mosaic.
To paraphrase the Bard, “Cry hoax and let slip the dogs of Infowars (and Fox, all the Cabinet toadies and more).” Normally Trump uses the word hoax as an offensive weapon to put the Democrats on the back foot. In the Epstein files case, he’s using it as a deflection, in other words, as an offensive defence. But let’s go back a bit to put a bit of meat into the muddled stew that constitutes Trump’s life.
Having stroked his ego with the successful realIty TV series, The Apprentice, Trump decided to create the biggliest ever reality TV show based on the US Presidency. Having flirted with a variety of political parties, he eventually settled on the Republican Party to contest the 2016 election. He saw there was a bunch of disgruntled conservatives who had a variety of gripes and completely distrusted the Federal government. They hated the rich financiers who they reckoned controlled everything, they hated the weak, commie leftist liberals who embraced LGBTQIA, Black and women’s rights and were soft on crime. At the same time, they bought into every conspiracy theory, no matter how wacky. With his fact free and loose freewheeling style, this was something he could work with. He created the MAGA slogan which actually became a movement itself. What was to become the (MAGA) Base, comprised rabid right-wing podcasters, conspiracy nut jobs, Qanon, The Proud Boys, the alt-right, The Oath Keepers, in fact, anyone who had a grudge. He also got the unquestioning backing of Fox News who daily sacrificed their journalistic integrity to support him and he somehow managed to get the evangelicals onside even though he is the antithesis of everything they stand for.
Like a good farmer, he assiduously nurtured his Base, mulching and watering them daily. Using lies, misdirections, misrepresentations, exaggerations, deflections and hoaxes faster than a school shooter spits bullets from his AR 15 assault rifle, he won the 2016 elections against the polling expectations and probably even his own. When he assumed office, it was obvious that he hadn’t thought things through. Like the dog that actually catches the car it’s chasing – what does he do with it? Using medieval English royalty monikers, he would have been called, King Trump, The Unready. After four chaotic years the Orange Jesus was ignominiously booted out of office by a sentient Zimmer frame.
Emboldened by the Base, Trump denied losing and still uses it as a rallying cry for them along with all his victimhood falsehoods. Rallying for his re-election in 2024, he turbocharged his trusty playbook. He added talking points of inflation, that all illegal immigrants are probably MS 13 or Trens de Aragua gang members, of shredding the Federal behemoth and how he was going to use tariffs to screw the whole world to usher in America’s new Golden Era. In between all this he appealed to the heart of the Base by repeatedly promising to release all the files of their favourite conspiracies – Area 51 and UFOs, the JFK and MLK assassinations and finally the Epstein paedophile files.
He kept his promise but the releases were been decidedly tepid. Over a month ago when Pam Bondi was asked about the Epstein client list which the alt-right were salivating about, she said it was sitting on her desk. It is undeniable common knowledge that Epstein and Trump were bff’s for over a decade before they had a falling out over a real estate deal so it is obvious that Trump’s name would feature prominently given their shared proclivities as regards women. Even if they were not lolitas, the optics would be disastrous and that is one thing that Trump is attuned to. When the list was not published, the Base started erupting. Bondi then revised her statement to remove the specific reference to the client list. The frustrated Base went wild and rebelled when they realised they had been played.
In a classic Trumpian manoeuvre, he reframed his promised drive to get to the bottom of the Epstein case as a hoax perpetrated by the Biden administration as he stated, “I can say this. Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the autopen.”
This is classic political gaslighting – making people believe the opposite to reality. The ultimate shell game – now you see it, now you don’t.
27/28th April 1994 were miracle days for South Africa when it witnessed the first truly democratic elections in the country. Sure, there was some pre-election violence particularly between the IFP and the ANC jockeying for power, but compared to other countries in history who had gone through such a radical and virtually overnight upheaval of their existing order, this was remarkably benign.
One positive takeaway that became legend from those days was the voting line – the snaking queues of people patiently waiting under the African sun to make their mark for the promise of a better future. That voting line became a symbol of our transition. Port Elizabeth has celebrated it with the Voting Line sculpture on the Donkin Reserve overlooking the town. It comprises 67 life size people from all walks of life cut from stainless steel plate and strung out in a meandering queue ending up with Madiba at the base of Port Elizabeth’s gargantuan flagpole pole. Heady stuff.
For a while we dared to dream even through Mbeki’s pipedreams and misguided pontifications, and Zuma’s selfish corruption. But, 31 years on, we have reached the point of no return. At best, we are a perpetual mediocrity, a continually failing state that is one misstep away from the vortex of a Zimbabwean descent into economic hell.
What has brought on SMAC’s dystopian view of the future? It was the report last week that applications for the 5,500 Police positions had closed after – wait for it – 1,000,000 had been received! Really! Is being a policeman such a nice job that everyone just wants to be one? Obviously not! The uplifting concept of the voting line has been replaced by the unemployment line, the SASSA queues and the job application line (and crime of course).
The bald truth is that the ANC has failed the country – dismally. While it has been laser focussed on ideology and transformation, and while underwriting corruption, it has forgotten or does not know how to grow the economy at a rate faster than the population and illegal immigrant growth rate. Pro rata, the economic pie has got smaller exacerbated by the increasingly skewed wealth distribution among Blacks leading to desperation as witnessed by the police job applications.
It might be argued that from such a wide selection, those lucky 5,500 successful candidates will represent the best choice after race, gender and disability ratios have been met but do they really want to be cops? No! They have no deep-down internal desire to be the good guy and to catch the bad guy. All they want is a government job – a sinecure for life. They will never have pride in their work and strive to make a difference. Of those 5,500 successful desperados, some will do well but many will relax once appointed and consign the police service to mediocrity for the rest of their lives and that is the ultimate crime – the price of 31 years of ANC failure stretching on to a future of continual failure.
There is no ceiling to Trump’s character flaws. Is his desire to have the glitziest or biggliest or largest just part of his crass and puerile showmanship because he’s not very bright and it’s the only game he knows: or does he suffer from inadequacy issues?
We saw recently how in awe he was of the Emir of Qatar’s cast-off luxury jet which was a younger model than his and was more tastefully decorated in gold than his clunkier old jet. It seems to parallel his trading in of wives for younger models until he ended up with the most transactional and iciest of them all. Judging by the body language, he’s not getting any nooky at home and since he can’t grab them by the kitty cat or spend his down time with porn stars anymore, he’s taken to groping the US flag and even kissing it. So being the self-crowned Midas king of bad taste and MAGA, it is natural that he desired a public display of the erection of the mightiest symbol, the US flag on the largest flagpole he could afford. In a cringeworthy televised vaudeville act he supervised the exxxxxxx of his gift to America. He thought he was very clever referring to the e-word multiple times and saying that he couldn’t say it, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. What a raconteur this man thinks he is. Apart from its height of 88ft (26,8m) or 100ft (30,5m), depending on the report, he waxed lyrical and spewed unsubstantiated superlatives about the attributes of his erection to the fawning reporters so perhaps we should put it into perspective.-
What many SMAC consumers don’t know is that SMAC moonlights (or is it the other way around) as a hack historian on Port Elizabeth. The heights commanding the Port Elizabeth CBD and harbour are known as the Donkin Reserve and can arguably be considered the founding point of the town. It was here that the Acting Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Rufane Donkin, designated the surrounding area to be known as Port Elizabeth, named after his beloved late wife Elizabeth, and erected a pyramid as a memorial to her. Astute readers will note that I do not refer to Gqeberha as that was just a general name given to the area by the Khoi en route from one pastoral gig to another and they weren’t hanging around to erect pyramids and do civic stuff. (Miaow) He also declared that the area was to remain unencumbered. Apart from the lighthouse, it remained so until the 2010 Soccer World Cup and, also suffering from inadequacy issues, the Council decided to erect the largest flagpole in South Africa. It is 60m (later increased to 68m) and carries a huge flag of 12m x 5m.
That trumps your flagging ego, Donald!
PS. The world’s tallest flagpole at 201m is in Cairo, just another shithole African country. Port Elizabeth’s doesn’t even make the top 50, so where does that leave Trump’s much talked about erection?
It was Sunday, the 1st of September 2019 when Trump discovered his superpower. But perhaps we must backtrack a few days to give context.
On Wednesday 29 August 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) gave Trump a briefing on hurricane Dorian, potentially a category 5, which was heading on a trajectory to smack into Florida 4 days hence. Since Donald responds well to pretty pictures, they had their Advisory 21 from 5am that morning, pictorially showing the predicted track, blown up and displayed on an easel in the Oval Orifice. He probably saw this as an opportunity to show up previous presidents’ responses to natural disasters and so cancelled his visit to Poland. He must have cogitated a bit more on it as the weekend approached since his reptilian brain probably only remembered the chart’s prediction showing it hitting just to the north of Mar-a-Lago and a bulge extending to the Gulf of Mexico on the other side of the dangly Florida appendix.
Without consulting FEMA again, after all he was the resident ‘stable genius’, he tweeted on Sunday, 1 September: “In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest Hurricanes ever. Already category 5.” The panic that ensued in Alabama where Dorian was not expected caused the Alabama office of the National Weather Service to issue an advisory 20 minutes later that Alabama “will NOT see any impacts from Dorian”.
If he had just consulted Advisory 32 from 5am that morning, he would have seen that the prediction was for the hurricane to hook north and follow the eastern seaboard. He took so much flak that on Wednesday 4 September, he held a televised press meeting showing the original Advisory 21 only now mysteriously marked up with a Sharpie to extend the vague 4-5 day prediction to include a nibble of Alabama as justification and presented it as the original! Note that it is a Federal offence to alter an official weather map but that was meaningless to Trump. He was now God and he wielded his Sharpie heroically.
Fast forward to 2025 and his second presidency. In some ways he had it tougher than Moses. After all, while waiting for Slo Joe to pop his clogs, he had to wander around his golf courses for four whole years buttonholing everyone about the election fraud committed against himself. He got his way when Slo Joe showed that beathing and stumbling around were a highly overrated path to success and Trump was elected president for the second time. He and Project 2025 had used the interregnum wisely: They had completed their 1000+ page revolutionary MAGAfesto while he sharpened his Sharpie and practiced his erratic signature which looks like the movements of a demented squirrel on tik.
When he returned to his rightful place, he was mightily upset. His people had been worshipping false gods in Biden, Harris et al and had embraced heretical concepts like DEI, gender affirmation, climate change and immigrant cat eaters. He signed edict after edict to eradicate these concepts and lead his people back onto the path of MAGA righteousness. Moses issued 10 commandments. With Sharpie in hand, Trump issued 143 edicts in the first 100 days on the throne with 26 coming on the first day – suck on that Moses! It was a dirty job but someone had to do it.
Trump’s second term will go down in history as one of the most chaotic governments the world has ever seen short of a bloody revolution. He has declared (economic) war on every country in the world and aims to destroy or bend to his will all federal institutions, universities, law firms and journalists, in fact, anyone or any organisation who has the temerity to call him out. But while this is going on he is busy with the steal.
Trump is not particularly talented, but he has no shame and his biggest strength has always been his ability to monetise his name. Winning the presidency for the first time was a match made in heaven. It fed his ego while it fed his wallet in a variety of indirect ways such as people or delegations who wished to meet with him stayed at his hotel. Directly, he started pushing all manner of merch such as a Bible, hypocritically endorsed by himself. If Trump could think that war heroes like John McCain were losers for being captured, he must privately think that Jesus was the biggest loser in history for allowing himself to be crucified.
But his first term was just his Apprenticeship until he was fired by the Electorate. Luckily for him, the second time around he was not facing a sentient Zimmer frame, but a wonky and not particularly sentient Zimmer frame. This time he found himself much better prepared. Project 2025 had compiled a 920-page document on how he could wield virtually dictatorial power via executive orders. Apart from continuing his trivial pursuit of merch, the world presented some unique opportunities, namely the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. While cognizant of the potential of a much-wanted Nobel Peace Prize, he sided with Putin as he eyed real estate development opportunities for himself while pressurising Zelensky to allow the USA to exploit their rare earth minerals. A 3-in-1 win if he could pull it off.
Next up, the Israeli bombing of Gaza into an uninhabitable pile of rubble tweeked his inner real estate reptilian brain. He saw that the Israelis preferred the Gazans to be gone and, since it was by then an unliveable pile of rubble, he proposed that Gaza be redeveloped into a Middle Eastern Rivera obviously with him and his buddies having first dabs. Both projects have yielded nothing yet except a lightly pencilled in deal with Ukraine.
Schmoozing with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi recently, he accepted a $500 m jet for his foundation when he leaves office and all manner of real estate development deals for Trump Inc.
But he hadn’t forgotten his merch. In a 2019 tweet, Trump thought that Bitcoin and the like were Kryptonite and could “facilitate unlawful behaviour, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” But his stance changed dramatically during his re-election campaign and he started championing it. He was preparing the ground for his ultimate merch, the $TRUMP meme coin. Although crypto currencies are merely computer algorithms, meme coins are another story and have no substance or utility whatsoever which probably resonated with Him. He might have been a late convert but he literally hit gold when he launched $TRUMP on 17 January, 3 days before his inauguration. He issued 200 million coins via the Solana blockchain and held back 800 million. The price soon rose to a peak of $77 but is now languishing at around $13 so many people must have burnt their fingers. This happens quite a lot with Trump investors as six bankruptcies will testify to. Nevertheless, speculators continue to trade at the rate of 20-50 million trades per day and Trump gets a cut of the transaction fees as well. On 14 February, Fortune magazine noted that while ‘investors’ lost about $2 bn, Trump made an estimated $350 m from the initial sales and, together with his partners, made a further $100 m in fees.
During my youth, there was a zoo / animal sanctuary at Rocklands known as Wide Horizon on the road to Uitenhage. The owner / zookeeper was an iconoclast, with the pertinent sobriquet of Cowboy Mills. Being very young at the time, I recall very little of the place other that the entrance with a billboard advertising the delights inside. Whether we actually went inside, I cannot recall.
This is a blog written by my brother about an event that occurred almost 60 years ago. Despite living in the same house and in fact sharing the same bedroom, I was only informed of this event recently.
Main picture: Mills No. 36 hand grenade with its internal bits minus the detonator
