A different view on current affairs & history
It took Port Elizabeth 59 years from 1858 to 1917 to establish a ragtag fire service and then convert it into a professional body. But it was worth it. Now they would have to prove their mettle. This portion of the history has mainly been obtained from an article entitled Short Historical Notes on the Port Elizabeth Fire and Emergency Services Department by D.C. Sparks
Main picture: Firemen at the Fire Station
Continue reading
Self-absorbed and engaged with their entrepreneurial spirit with a rampant desire to progress, the residents of Port Elizabeth in the first half century of the 1800s ignored the reality that they resided in a semi-dystopian world. Due to the lack of a local authority, the town lacked any form of central body to control its development. To do so would imply the imposition of rules and regulations. But conversely, it would enforce standards. Irrational behaviour conforms with the concept known as – The Tragedy of the Commons. Examples abound. Crooked streets, different plot sizes hindering throughfares, vacant land becoming dump sites, dumping sewerage on the beaches and many more. The town was a veritable patchwork of order and disorder, utopia and dystopia.
It was only by awakening the awareness of the town’s residents via his newspaper, The EP Herald, that John Paterson sensitized the citizenry to the need for a local authority. Once they had established a Town Council, only then came the hard part, the implementation. Amongst the myriad of issues was the need to create a Fire Brigade. Budget constraints would shackle many initiatives on the path to create a professional Fire Department
Follow the town as it claws its way from makeshift equipment and volunteer firemen to a professional force in 1917. In a second blog on the Fire Brigade, I will deal with the later years post 1917
Main picture: St Mary’s Church after its destruction by a fire on 9 March 1895
Continue reading
Every community has its “nutjobs”. In Port Elizabeth’s case it was Miss Frances Livingstone Johnston who arrived by ship from Australia at the end of 1896. Her proclivity was a hatred for church altars. This malady or affliction manifested itself in the form of pyromania. At least three attempts at arson can be attributed to her actions. On the night of the 30th March and 1st April 1897, Frances successfully reduced the Holy Trinity Church in Havelock Street to ashes.
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
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
Continue reading
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
Continue reading
The ANC has a symbiotic relationship with shit. In the 30 years in charge of the country, the ANC has created a pile of doggy do and then has fed off of that individually and organisationally. Jacob Zuma is the embodiment of that. He has been both the creator in chief and the parasite in chief. He has also been the main shit stirrer. No more so than when he shocked the ANC and political commentators just before Christmas by announcing that he is going to vote for the MK Party while remaining an ANC member.
Continue reading
2023 saw Biden play hide and seek with the exit from the podium a number of times while Trump played hide and seek with the truth, the Republication debates and his innumerable court cases.
Internationally, the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine droned on, much to the horror of around 300,000 Russian mothers, not that Putin cared. His ‘chef’ Prigozhin tried to execute a coup d’etat and failed. It didn’t take long for Putin to execute a coup de grace and change him into pulled beef by placing a bomb on his plane. He got off lightly. He was dead before he knew it. Normally it takes years to die in a forgotten Siberian Gulag, or between minutes and weeks to die by Russian poisoning as you reflect on your reckless ways, or about 3 seconds of wondering what the world record is of surviving freefall onto concrete from your 10th floor apartment.
It was turning out to be a boring year until Hamas put on their one act production of egregious killing, rape of the most sexually repressed kind, beheadings, mayhem and hostage taking of innocents across the age spectrum. The Israeli response to the deaths of about 1400 was, “We raise you 20,000.”
On the home front, things meandered on and one could just platz from all the platitudes spewed out in Squirrel’s ‘Family Meetings’. He did once wistfully wish that we could be less negative like the Chinese. What planet does he live on? Negativity and criticism results in immediate cancelling by the state and strenuous re-education to teach you the error of your ways. Just ask Jack Ma, probably China’s richest man.
6 years after it began and 18 months after the last volume of the Zondo Commission into State Capture thudded onto Squirrel’s desk, 5437 pages in all, the Prison’s Department still has to put out a tender for orange jumpsuits. Ho, hum.
2023, though, will be remembered as the year the electricity died. Future parents will tell their kids about how tough it was growing up without electricity and how they went through gate and UPS batteries like Malusi Gigaba goes through teeth whitener and baby oil.
So Much for 2023. The forecast for next year is mild with a chance of meatballs, or big Macs with a side order of bone spurs if Trump wins, but the coming years don’t look good – actually, sunny, too sunny.
Continue reading
These are the highlights of the recollections of Port Elizabeth in the 1830s and early 1840s by the Rev. Canon Hewitt. The extended full-length version has been lost over a century ago. Notwithstanding that, this brief summary provides yet another insight into the life and times of our ancestors in Port Elizabeth.
Main picture: The Commissariat building in Baakens Street
Continue reading
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
Continue reading