Category: History

  • Research

    On the early Caribbean experience:

  • The Forest by Zakiya Mckenzie

    In this episode of BBC4’s Night Vision, British-Jamaican nature writer Zakiya Mckenzie goes looking for her past in the darkness of the Forest of Dean. Occupied by one night from her youth spent in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, Zakiya takes her first trip into an English Forest at night…to discover what the murky history…

  • Anti-Apartheid veteran Ahmed Kathrada visits the University of Johannesburg

    Kathrada spent 18 years as a political prisoner on Robben Island and another eight at Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in Cape Town for his anti-apartheid activism. He was a very close friend of former President Nelson Mandela and upon his release, was elected to parliament.

  • Art Deco in Johannesburg

    Rogers Cooke designed many theatres and cinemas in Gauteng and the creative crowd followed him to Auckland Park. Everyone who was anyone in the arts and entertainment industry seemed to have a connection with the spot.

  • Environmental implication of Joburg’s mining history

    The epicentre of the tremor was said to be beneath UJ’s Auckland Park campus by the Council for Geoscience but Dr van Niekerk suspects that a more accurate analysis would find the tremor started at a nearby mine shaft. “It is very difficult to come up with an epicentre because it takes a lot of…

  • A history of the environment of Fairland, Johannesburg

    The trees were planted in diagonal rows to mimic the design of the British flag. Today, the layout can be seen from Google Maps Satellite view, though some of the trees are no longer in place.

  • Claude McKay’s ‘Home to Harlem’

    Claude McKay Puts Life’s Lessons and Leaders into Perspective… Posted on July 11, 2012 by zmecca Share I had planned to include this excerpt* from Claude McKay’s Home To Harlem from the first time I read it. It gave me goosebumps instantly. This thing was terribly powerful and it was if something was planted in me that made me become highly…

  • Who is Walter Rodney?

    By the summer of 1968 Rodney’s “groundings with the working poor of Jamaica had begun to attract the attention of the government. So, when he attended a Black Writers’ Conference in Montreal, Canada, in October 1968, the Hugh Shearer-led Jamaican Labor Party Government banned him from re-entering the country. This action sparked widespread riots and…