ALKEBULAN INDIGENOUS

Check out this 1940's WW2 Bunker built by the British in Cape Town. #capetown #worldwar2 #discovery

We went in search for the wagon trail used to get over the Cpae Mountains. We found the marks of an old era in South Africa's history.

#southafrica #capetown #history

I actually found it! South Africa's oldest tunnel ever built. 1876 baby!
Thank you Ford NMI Tygervalley for the use of the new Ranger Tremor.

#southafrica #tunnel #adventure #ford #history

Preamble of The !Urikx’aikua The Inlanders, today known as the Goringhaiqua, !Uri//’ael’ona Watermen, Kaapmans, Koopmans, or Capemen called the Goringhaicona, Goringhaikona , this was deliberately called Cape Khoi to orchestrate the division and claims of false kings in the Cape, as !Urikx’aikua was the Royal Kingdom who made Ground Barons such as Korana, Hessequa, Outeniqua and Cochuqua,etc. The !Urikx’aikuna became the !Uri//’ael’ona due to colonial mixture, the Cochaqua chiefs wife had a child with Jan van Riebeeck,named Kretoa. Kretoa was no princess but born in the !Uri//’ael’ona and was a negotiator and spokesperson for the Cochaqua.The !Uri//’ael’ona adopted Kretoa and gave her Royal status in the !Uri//’ael’ona Royal Kingdom.

It is a known fact that khoena (khoi-khoin) Clan being close to Cammissa who fought the colonialists, bloodlines were wiped out- leaving the only survivors to be the Horinghaicona, except the khoe (san) Nama and bushmen that where inland. The Grikqua is no aboriginal tribe or clan, form in the late 1700s/ late early 1800s which consisted of Greek, khoe and black tribes break away- that’s why known as bastards. It is also known ships from various countries such as China, Spain, Netherlands, Great Britain, France etc docked at the Cammissa, called The Cape of storm, Cape of Good hope long before Jan van Riebeeck and his crew of prisoners colonialized Cammissa, the Horinghaicona  where already in existence as a tribe.

The Horinghaikona,Goringhaicona, also spelled Goringhaikona,  meaning haicona: those who where here , others say haicona means they were chased away from the Goringhaiqua tribe for the mixture of the blood, due to the rape caused by the soldiers of a ship that ran shipwreck, and sailors that came ashore to batter fresh water and food. Cammissa was already a vibrant business community and trading occurred via battering. The khoena (Khoi) had fresh water, livestock and fresh fruit and vegetables and this attracted the ships to dock. They then mixed with the khoena tribes and subsequently children were born to the khoena woman of mixed blood.

The children that was born, was half European a Khoena. Because they looked different the other Khoi tribes where not happy of their presence and existence, subsequently a breakaway was formed under the leadership chief Trosoa. This break away tribe was called the Horinghaiconas. Soldiers and sailors of various countries, who became ill on long voyages, were often left behind at Cammissa to receive medical treatment to recover and regain strength. The ships would then continue its journey to the east and collect them later on the return journey. Such a trip could take months. It is therefore known fact that intermingling occurred with the khoena tribes. In some instances relationships developed with the khoena woman.

However, abductions and rape has led to many pregnancies giving rise to many mixed people. Today the nation and the tribe of Trosoa commonly referred to as “colored” so this is where the colonialist term, the so called colored, comes from. The history gives recognition to many different leaders of the Goringhaicona tribe such as Demtaa called Klaas Das by the colonialist, Automuato, also called Herry by the Hollanders, Harry by the British - some history say  he was called Hairy for his long dread- locks (long hair). Very little is told in the history of chief Trosoa who was killed at a very young age by captain Kiers for his wisdom and tactics to attack the colonialist when it rains,  as they could not use gun powder in their fire sticks (guns) - so colonialist paid captain Kiers to kill Trosoa.

After his death, his wife gave birth to a son they later called Aran - which means Katz se rib, as he proved him worthy to be leader of the tribe as he killed a lion with a stone axe and killing the livestock and the tribal women, and brought back the rib of the lion as proof the lion was killed. At the time of the death of chief Trosoa, his mother left the tribe and roamed in land, then later went on board of passing ships to protect her child, as all bloodline was killed out by colonialist. Later, after she returned, she became a slave at Constancia. After Trosoas death he was succeeded by Autsumuato, who was the first political prisoner on Robben Island. He escaped from imprisonment and swim back to the main land, later he was banished back to Robben Eiland and tied their like a dog in chains.

He died there at Robben Eiland in chains, for tricking the prisoner Jan van Riebeeck and his fellow prisoners send here on three ships. Autsumuato took back the gold and diamonds dugged up by van Riebeeck and his fellow prisoners. When the Dutch/ Holland company ships arrived here to collect the spoil, no gold and diamonds were produced, but the gold and diamonds were hidden between van Riebeeck and he’s fellow prisoners goods. They were arrested and taken back to Holland in chains and was executed. Our tribe the Goringhaicona is revived by Delrique Dextry Aran imposed as Arendse son of Hermanus Franklin Aran born 16/09/1915 passed on 29/07/2000 or 2001 and Evelyn Peters/ Aran born 09/11/1926 passed on 12/11/1999, the grandmother of chief Aran was Margret Elisabeth Dawson, sister of queen Victoria of Britain, and grandfather was known to chief Aran and others as grandpa Joseph (called Joppa) Aran imposed as Arendse, bloodline of paramount chief Gogosoa, had a grandson called chief Trosoa who had a son later called Aran, meaning katse rib.

The father of D.D Aran fought in the Second World War and receive no compensation. Later, due to injuries of war, he worked for PWD, then at service products where HF Aran earned only R12 per week and had to raise eight children from the little wages. PWD are still making furniture in government buildings and parliament today. They were removed from their farm in Abortsdale, then later from Vasco. Register of slaves recorded by governors are as such; The following people where enslaved and worked at the Groot Constantia, they were divided according to the owners, as it was customary to list slaves in the ventory of owners.

Simeon van der Stel (1685- 1716) Jan van Oldenburg from Bengal (in the present Bangladesh in India) Pagelet , Paris from Malabar in India, Isaacq from Malabar in India, Pieter from Malabar, Marcus from Bengal in present Bangladesh in India, IndebetChemehairje from Madagascar, SeccaGijoa from Madagascar, Domingo from Bengal, Domingo from Bengal, Bacacan from Macassar, Thomas from Madagascar, Paulus from Malaysia, (ARAN from Malabar, Helena from Macasar, and their baby Lisa, why mention these two baby, the baby Lisa of ARAN AND HELENA, ) Anthoni from Madagascar, Titus from Malabar, Revan from Madagascar, Mange from Transcquebar, Motta from Trancquebar,  Abraham from Malabar, Simon from Malabar,

George from Magascar, Anthonij from Trancquebar, Helene from Transacquebar, Cornelis from Bengal, Schipio from Coromandel, Joseph from the Island of Bali, Ijsack of Cochin, Schipio from  Cochin, Titus from Bengal, Jan from Bengal, Anthonij from Madagascar, Titus from Macassar, Jan, November , Jafta from Madacassar, Celebes Indonesia, Tammerlaan from the Island of Bouton, Kupido from Bengal, Kupido from the coast, Abraham from Tuticorin, Anthonij from the coast,Douwe from Timor. Aron from Nagapatam, Barneveld from the coast Malabar, Januarij from the Macassar, Aron from Ternate, David from Malabar, IsseCici from Tamanewol, SamboNangombe from Tambooijt, CarraSova from Tansumo, Inpieta from Tamanewol, Ereffa from Temetard, Sambo from Temetard, Hallantava from Tevekaeijn, Mohua from Tevekaeijn, Etobe from Tanboijaijt, EkootaRaeij from Tanciaaij, Maria, Aurora, Titus from Malabar, Matthijs from Trancquebar,

Ram from Trancquebar,  Susanna from Bengal, Angus from Trancquebar, Herculas from Madagascar, Samson from Madagascar, Hector from Madagascar, Weggesonken from Cape Verde, Behouden from Cape Verde, Dikbeen from Cape Verde, Augustus from Bengal, Dirck from Coast, Claes from Cochin, Susanna Catharina from Ceyion, Matthijs, Ysak, Hendrik Constant, Lena Selix, Fabia  from Brazil, Leonora from Madagascar, Christina from the Canary Islands, Job from Madagascar, Adamsol from the cape, Adriaantje from Trancquebar, Maria from Malabar, Mouto from Malarbar, Sophia from Cape, Clara from the Cape, Dorothea of the Cape, Constantia from the Cape, Delia from the Cape, Theodora from the Cape, Phillip from the Cape, Lucas from Madagascar, Hendrik, Francina, Juliana, Ceasar,

Susan Maria and their daughters Appollonia, Sara and Maria, Catrina from Bengal, her daughter Juliana, son Philippua, Marie, Lijsbeth, Secilia, Christiana, Katel, Johannes Aaron, Gidean, Abraham, Jacob, Hendrika, Magdalena, Leander, Adriana, Delphina, Elias, Jona, Emmerencia, Clara, Alexander, Ambrosius, Hendrick, Bastiaan from Bengal, Jaseth from Ternate, Noach from Madagascar, Tobias from Bengal, Eleonara from Madagascar, Jan from Angola,Caesr from Bodaga, Manassa from Java, Jephter from Ternate, Rodolphus from Bengal,  Jacob from Madagascar, Adam from Madagascar, Matthijsfron Malabar, (1716- 1724)

Paul from Madagascar, Paris from Tambawa, Cater from Tambawa, Ticor from Amboina, Mueda from Slaayen, Samson from Bugi, Salomon from Bunar, Solomon from Malarbar, Pieter from Tambawa, Baba from Nias, Patrys from the Cape, Klaas from the Cape, Titus from Mozambique, Matthys from Mozambique wife Serrnie their son Isaac from the Cape, Esau from the Cape, Nero from the Cape, Frans from the Cape, Hoop from Mozambique, September from Bugi his wife Mariserra from Mozambique and Ontong from the cape, Mannas from the Cape, September from Malarba, Mattheus from Mozambique, Marjava from Mozambique, Antonie, Lakay.

Introduction.

Van Der Stel era (1685-1714)

Interim ear,(1714-1778)

Cloete era, (1778-1885)

Registration of slaves.

See ref: slaaf Van Wouter Mostert, slaves and free blacks at the Cape DJ Boeseken, Gentlemans walk Hymien W.J Picard, the illustrated at the fireside (true South African stories) Roger Webster.

By Comrade Mandla Mandela

From 1910 to 1961 the Union of South Africa was a self-governing country that shared a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Empire. The monarch's constitutional roles were mostly delegated to the Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.

The South Africa Act 1909 united four British colonies: Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony and Transvaal, to form the Union of South Africa with the monarch as its head of state. In 1947, King George VI became the first reigning monarch to visit South Africa. His successor, Queen Elizabeth II was granted a distinct South African style and title by the Parliament of South Africa in 1953.

South Africa became a republic and left the Commonwealth on 31 May 1961. On 1 June 1994, South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth as a republic, after the end of apartheid.

In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), Britain re-annexed the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, two hitherto independent Boer republics. These new territories, renamed the Transvaal Colony and the Orange River Colony respectively, were added to Britain's existing South African territories, the Cape Colony and Colony of Natal.[1][2] It was British government policy to encourage these four colonies to come together in closer union; after the grant of responsible government to the Transvaal Colony and Orange River Colony in 1907, this aspiration was one that was also increasingly held by the Afrikaner population.

These political forces resulted in the 1908 National Convention, which met on 12 October 1908 and completed its work on 11 May 1909. This convention settled on the terms and constitution of a governmental, legislative, and economic Union. These proposals were transmitted to the British government, which duly prepared a bill to give effect to these wishes. The bill was approved by the four colonial parliaments in June 1909, and was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 20 September 1909, and the Union of South Africa was established on 31 May 1910.[3]

The South Africa Act 1909 united four British colonies: Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony and Transvaal, to form the Union of South Africa as a British Dominion with the monarch as its head of state.[4]

The Balfour Declaration of 1926 provided the dominions the right to be considered equal to Britain, rather than subordinate; an agreement that had the result of, in theory, a shared Crown that operated independently in South Africa rather than a unitary British Crown under which all the dominions were secondary. The monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution, and henceforth became a "domesticated" establishment.[5] The Statute of Westminster 1931further increased the sovereignty of the self-governing Dominions, and also bound them all to seek each other's approval for changes to monarchical titles and the common line of succession. As the statute removed nearly all of the British parliament's authority to legislate for the Dominions, it had the effect of making the Dominions largely sovereign nations in their own right.[6]

Although the Union of South Africa was not among the Dominions that needed to adopt the Statute of Westminster for it to take effect, the Status of the Union Act, 1934 was passed to confirm South Africa's status as a fully sovereign state.[7] It declared the Union of South Africa to be a "sovereign independent state" and explicitly adopted the Statute of Westminster into South African law.

Until the early part of the 20th century, the monarch's title throughout the British Empire was determined exclusively by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The preamble to the Statute of Westminster 1931 established the convention requiring the consent of all the Dominions' parliaments, as well as that of the United Kingdom, to any alterations to the monarch's style and title. It had been decided among the realms in 1949 that each should have its own monarchical title, but with common elements. At the 1952 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Economic Conference, Commonwealth prime ministers agreed that each member of the Commonwealth "should use for its own purposes a form of the Royal Style and Titles which suits its own particular circumstances but retains a substantial element which is common to all".[8][9] It was decided that the monarch's title in all her realms have, as their common element, the description of the Sovereign as "Queen of Her Realms and Territories and Head of the Commonwealth". The parliament of each realm passed its own Royal Style and Titles Act before Elizabeth's coronation in June of the following year.[8]

The Royal Style and Titles Act 1953, passed by the Parliament of South Africa, rendered the Queen's South African style and title in three languages:

• In English: Elizabeth II, Queen of South Africa and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth[10][11]
• In Afrikaans: Elizabeth II, Koningin van Suid-Afrika en van Haar ander Koninkryke en Gebiede, Hoof van die Statebond[10][11]
• In Latin: Elizabeth II, Africae Australis regnorumque suo rum ceterorum Regina, consortionis populorum Princeps[10]

By convention, succession in South Africa was deferred to the laws of the United Kingdom; whoever was monarch of Britain was automatically the monarch of South Africa. Succession in Britain was by male-preference primogenituregoverned by common law, the Act of Settlement 1701, and the Bill of Rights 1689. These legislations limited the succession to the natural (i.e. non-adopted), legitimate descendants of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and stipulated that the monarch cannot be a Roman Catholic and must be in communion with the Church of England upon ascending the throne. However, the United Kingdom and the British Dominions agreed, via adopting the Statute of Westminster, not to change the rules of succession without the unanimous consent of the other realms, unless explicitly leaving the shared monarchy relationship. For instance, in 1937, the Parliament of South Africa had to pass the His Majesty King Edward the Eighth's Abdication Act, 1937 to ratify the abdication of King Edward VIII and the succession to the throne of King George VI, that occurred in December 1936.[12]

Upon a demise of the Crown (the death or abdication of a sovereign), it was customary for the accession of the new monarch to be publicly proclaimed by the governor-general after the accession.[13] Regardless of any proclamations, the late sovereign's heir immediately and automatically succeeded, without any need for confirmation or further ceremony. An appropriate period of mourning also followed, after which the new monarch was crowned in an ancient ritual in the United Kingdom.

Like all nations, you have hard problems to solve in the aftermath of war; but statesmanship has not failed you in the past 100 years, and I am confident it will guide you steadily towards a just and contented relationship between all dwellers in your many-people land. By achieving such a relationship you can show to the troubled world how peoples of different race and colour may live and work together for the common good.

— King George VI, 1947[14][15]

The structure of the government of the Union of South Africa was similar to the government of other dominions. The monarch was represented in the Union by the governor-general of South Africa.

All executive authority was vested in the monarch, and was exercised by the governor-general on the monarch's behalf. The governor-general appointed an Executive Council, to advise him on how to execute the executive powers in the government of the Union. All executive councillors held office during the viceroy's pleasure.[4]

Though not explicitly provided for by the South Africa Act, the office of Prime Minister of South Africa was also established as the head of government and, like other government ministers, the prime minister was required to be a member of either house of Parliament. As in other British Dominions, the governor-general appointed the leader of the largest political party in the lower house of Parliament as prime minister.

The governor-general additionally appointed members of the Executive Council as ministers to administer departments of State of the Union.[4]

The legislative power of the Union was vested in the Parliament, which consisted of the monarch, a Senate, and a House of Assembly.[16]

The monarch and the governor-general did not, however, participate in the legislative process; they only took part in the granting of royal assent. The viceroy could return any bill presented to him by the House, with certain amendments he might recommend. The viceroy could also withhold assent, or reserve the bill for the signification of the monarch's pleasure. The monarch also had the power to disallow any act within one year after it was assented by the governor-general. After the granting of royal assent, the Clerk of the House of Assembly was responsible for enrolling two copies of the act, one in English and the other in Dutch, in the records of the office of the Registrar of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa.[16]

Further, the constitution outlined that the governor-general alone was responsible for appointing senators. Every senator and every member of the House of Assembly was required to make an oath or affirmation of allegiance to the monarch before taking office.[16]

I, (name), do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His [or Her] Majesty [specify the name of the reigning Sovereign], His [or Her] heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.[16]

— Oath of Allegiance to the Sovereign of South Africa

The governor-general was also responsible for summoning, proroguing, and dissolving parliament.[16]

The South Africa Act established a Supreme Court for the Union. The Chief Justice of South Africa, the ordinary judges of appeal, and all other judges of the Supreme Court were appointed by the governor-general.[17]

In case of incapacity of any judge, the governor-general could appoint any other judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa to temporarily discharge the required duties as the case may be.[17]

The Sovereign's Birthday was commemorated on the second Monday in July with a public holiday.[18]

The monarch, as the fount of honour, conferred awards and honours in South Africa in his or her name. Most of them were awarded on the advice of South African ministers.[19][20]

Depictions of the Royal Crown, the Royal Cypher or the sovereign's likeness, appeared on various medals and decorations.

The command-in-chief of the naval and military forces of the Union of South Africa was vested in the monarch, and was exercised by the governor-general as their representative.[21]

References to the Royal Crown appeared on various regimental badges and rank insignia, which illustrated the monarchy as the locus of authority. In 1957, due to growing republicanism, the Crown was either removed from the badges of the defence force and police,[22] or replaced with the Union Lion from the crest of the country's coat of arms.[23] In 1961, the "Royal" title was dropped from the names of some South African Army regiments, such as the Natal Carbineers.[24]

Until 1952, South African Naval vessels bore the ship prefix HMSAS, i.e., His Majesty's South African Ship, and it was thereafter replaced by SAS, i.e., South African Ship.[25]

In 1860, Prince Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria, became the first member of the royal family to visit South Africa. Later, in 1901, the then Duke and Duchess of Cornwall (later King George V and Queen Mary) visited South Africa during an extensive tour of the British Empire. Their eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), toured the country in 1925.[26]

In 1947, King George VI, his wife Queen Elizabeth, and their daughters Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, visited the country, during a three-month tour of Southern Africa.[26] On 21 February 1947, King George VI, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, opened a new session of the South African Parliament, the first state opening of a Dominion parliament by a reigning monarch. In his speech, the King spoke in both English and Afrikaans, and thanked South Africa for its support during the Second World War.[27][28] It was in South Africa that Princess Elizabeth notably celebrated her 21st birthday and delivered the famous broadcast to the Empire on 21 April, in which she said, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong".[26]

However, due to the South African Government's apartheid regime soon after the 1947 visit, royal visits to South Africa came to a halt, despite Elizabeth II being Queen of South Africa until 1961. Nearly half a century later, the Queen and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh undertook a state visit to South Africa in 1995, in support of reconciliation with the new South African government, and were hosted by President Nelson Mandela. The Queen returned to South Africa for the 16th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Durban in 1999.[26][29]

In 1940, D. F. Malan, along with J. B. M. Hertzog, founded the Herenigde Nasionale Party (or "Reunited National Party") which pledged to fight for "a free independent republic, separated from the British Crown and Empire", and "to remove, step by step, all anomalies which hamper the fullest expression of our national freedom".[30] In 1942, details of a draft republican constitution were published in Afrikaans-language newspapers Die Burger and Die Transvaler, which provided for a State President, elected by white citizens known as Burgers only, who would be "only responsible to God... for his deeds in the fulfilment of his duties".[31] On the matter of continued Commonwealth membership, the view of Afrikaner Broederbond was that "departure from the Commonwealth as soon as possible remains a cardinal aspect of our republican aim".[32]

In 1948, the National Party, now led by D. F. Malan, came to power, although it did not campaign for a republic during the election, instead favouring remaining in the Commonwealth, thereby appealing to Afrikaners who otherwise might have voted for the United Party of Jan Smuts.[33] Malan's successor as Prime Minister, J. G. Strijdom, also downplayed the republic issue, stating that no steps would be taken towards that end before 1958.[34] Strijdom stated that the matter of whether South Africa would be a republic inside or outside the Commonwealth would be decided "with a view to circumstances then prevailing".[35] Like his precessor, Strijdom declared the party's belief that a republic could only be proclaimed on the basis "of the broad will of the people".[36]

On becoming Prime Minister in 1958, Hendrik Verwoerd gave a speech to Parliament in which he declared: "We stand unequivocally and clearly for the establishment of the republic in the correct manner and at the appropriate time".[37] In 1960, Verwoerd announced plans to hold a whites-only referendum on the establishment of a republic, with a bill to that effect being introduced in Parliament on 23 April of that year.[38] The Referendum Act received assent on 3 June 1960.[39] In hopes of winning the support of those opposed to a republic, not only English-speaking whites but Afrikaners still supporting the United Party, Verwoerd proposed that constitutional changes would be minimal, with the Queen simply being replaced as head of state by a State President, the office of which would be a ceremonial post rather than an executive one.[40][41]

In Natal, the only province with an English-speaking majority of whites, there was strong anti-republican sentiment; in 1955, the small Federal Party issued a pamphlet The Case Against the Republic, while the Anti-Republican League organised public demonstrations.[42] The League, founded by Arthur Selby, the Federal Party's chairman, launched the Natal Covenant in opposition to the plans for a republic, signed by 33,000 Natalians.[43] On the day of the referendum, the Natal Witness, the province's daily English-language newspaper warned its readers that: "Not to vote against the Republic is to help those who would cut us loose from our moorings, and set us adrift in a treacherous and uncharted sea, at the very time that the winds of change are blowing up to hurricane force".[44]

The National Party government subsequently organised the referendum on 5 October 1960. The vote, which was restricted to whites – the first such national election in the Union – was narrowly approved by 52.29% of the voters.[45][46]

The Republic of South Africa was declared on 31 May 1961, Queen Elizabeth IIceased to be head of state, and the last Governor General of the Union, Charles R. Swart, took office as the first State President.[47]

Originally every independent country in the Commonwealth was a Dominion – sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and the other dominions. The 1949 London Declaration prior to India becoming a republic allowed countries with a different head of state to join or remain in the Commonwealth, but only by unanimous consent of the other members. The governments of Pakistan (in 1956) and, later, Ghana (in 1960) availed themselves of this principle, and the National Party had not ruled out South Africa's continued membership of the Commonwealth were there a vote in favour of a republic.[48]

However, the Commonwealth by 1960 included new Asian and African members, whose rulers saw the apartheid state's membership as an affront to the organisation's new democratic principles. Julius Nyerere, then Chief Minister of Tanganyika, indicated that his country, which was due to gain independence in 1961, would not join the Commonwealth were apartheid South Africa to remain a member.[49] A Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was convened in March 1961, a year ahead of schedule, to address the issue.[50] In response, Verwoerd stirred up a confrontation, causing many members to threaten to withdraw if South Africa's renewal of membership application was accepted. As a result, South Africa's membership application was withdrawn, meaning that upon its becoming a republic on 31 May 1961, the country's Commonwealth membership simply lapsed.

Following the end of apartheid, South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth in 1994, thirty-three years and one day the republic was established.[51]

Freedom Day: A Visit to the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town (Part 3 of 3)

 Family-friendly Eateries, Wine Estates and Adventures, Photography, Safe Solo Adventures, Travel Blog Pieces Battle of Blaauwberg, best things to do Cape Town, Cape military history, Cape Town castle, Cape Town history, Castle of Good Hope, Freedom Day, historic attractions Cape Town, Iziko Museums, Jan van Riebeek, Simon van der Stel, things to do with kids cape town

"Coloniser Reproduced History Missinformation ALERT"

A conversation between Dr Spires and Khoebaha PC Aran about "THE INDIAN MUTINY OF 1857 AND THE CAPE COLONY Donovan Williams University of Calgary II: The Emergence of Black Consciousnesisn Caffraria" that Seeks to give a Distorted Historical Account of the Subject.

Dr Spires: ...

Khoebaha PC Aran: ...

A major effect of the Indian Mutiny on the Cape Colony was an urgent demand for troops and horses.1But there is evidence that more than thesematerial aspectswas involved. It is clear that the Mutiny made a strong impression on the Blacks, and may be considered as a formative influence on Black cohesiveness in Caffraria, and, indeed, even on the emer- gence of Black consciousness itself. By Black cohesiveness is meant the emergence of some sort of common feeling among Blacks, of whatever tribe (people),that they were the Black people of Mrica, drawn together by the universal threat of White territorial encroachment on their land and their way of life.

By Black consciousnessis meant the arti- culation by 1865 of this pervasive sense of ethnicity into a written statement by the Rever- rend Tiyo Saga (1829-1871) which reflected pride of belonging to an ideal Mrica-wide Black people, who were strong physically, tenacious culturally, and proud of their heritage andcolour. It must be stressed that "Blackness" was an essential ingredient in this increasing sensitivity.

Some years ago I did some preliminary work on the emergence of Black nationalism in South Africa during the 19th Century. This identified the Eastern Frontier and the "triangle of resistance" (East  London, Port Elizabeth and Alice) as a crucial, formative area.The connection has beenacknowledged subsequently. But the subjectneedsamplification, especially for the 1850's and early 1860's where detailed analysis is lacking, and where all the indications point to a period of considerable gestation of Black consciousness and cohesiveness between the Crimean War (1853-1856) and Tiyo Saga's significant statement in 1865 on the future of the "Kafir race." In the 'fifties there was a free-floating belief in the resurrection of the leaders of the Blacks in Caffraria who were fighting the Whites; by the 'sixties there was an articulated, sensitive exposition of Black consciousness, in the tradition of James Africanus Horton, Edward Wilmot Blyden and Bishop James Johnson in 19th Century West Mrica.

I suggest that Tiyo Saga's statement was not only a reaction to immediate difficulties on the part of the Blacks, especially the proposed removal of the Ngqika east of the Kei, but also a response which had been nurtured by a decade of restless thoughts among the Blacks on how to resist the continuous and increasing material and spiritual pressures being exerted upon them by the Whites. The Indian Mutiny played an important role in formulating and sustaining such attitudes.

These feelings were already evident as early as 1828 when Kelly (Tyali), son of Ngqika, paramount chief of the amaXhosa, met with Colonel Somersetwho admonished him for descending on Tyhumie (Chumie) mission station and killing one of its inhabitants who was a member of his tribe. Tyali replied that "The chiefs in this land had a right to do to their people, and act according to their own laws, as they pleased,as their fathers had done, so would they do ..." As I have pointed out, this was "a specifically Xhosa tribal statement of cohesion." (Less than forty years later, as we shall see below, Tiyo Saga's journal reflected an African as opposed to a tribal consciousness.!

In 1850 the "tribal" strain was still evident in Sandile's call to Pato:

Arise, clans of the Kaffir (Xhosa' nation! The white man has wearied us; let us fight for our country: they are depriving us of our rights which we inherit from our forefathers: we are 'deprived of our chieftainship, and the white man is the chief to whom we are obliged to sub- mit: Sandile will die fighting for the rights of his forefathers.

Johannes Meintjies has commented on Sandile as follows: "It was in the period 1847to1850 that Sandile began to emerge as a mature man and a great patriot.  As a' freedomfighter' he had much in common with men elsewhere in the world who laboured and fought for the unification of their people, for a national awareness and for independence from an oppressor." But "nationalism" is an elusive concept, and Meintjies' use of the word for this early period of Caffrarian history seems premature and open to criticism on the part of the purists. Nevertheless, he has identified in one section of the Caffrarian Blacks a deepening feeling and a gathering momentum in sentiment which are the precursors of nationalism, or "incipient nationalism". As I have indicated elsewhere, incipient nationalism in Caffraria is characterized by a strain of unification among the various tribes, "some consciousness of belonging to a common race, with a common heritage that included long years of defensive measures against white encroachment, both material and spiritual".

Interpreters' Flawed Contracts With Dutch

13th November 2018.

Perceptive and suspicious by nature, Doman was the first of the Khoikhoi to recognise the danger the arrival of Van Riebeeck and his group, writes Dougie Oakes.

In the 17th century, Dutch colonialists prided themselves on their ability to learn the languages of inhabitants of their conquered territories.

But there was one language they couldn’t master: that of the Khoikhoi of the Cape of Good Hope. Years after their arrival in 1652, they had made little progress in learning the local language.

The Khoikhoi, on the other hand, had no such difficulty in mastering conversational Dutch.

Three of their number in particular – Autshumao, Krotoa and Doman – would later be regarded by the Dutch as “great interpreters”.

Each of the three built a different type of relationship with the Dutch: Autshumao, a mixture of smooth talk and confidence trickery, lulled his part-time employers into a false sense of security while he built up his herds of sheep and cattle, many of which he stole from them.

Krotoa’s fascination with all things Dutch earned her employment in the Van Riebeeck household. There, she learnt to speak Dutch while enjoying the best of two worlds, flitting seamlessly in and out of her society and theirs.

And then there was Doman. Perceptive, suspicious by nature and a talented linguist, he was the first of the Khoikhoi to recognise the danger the arrival of Van Riebeeck and his group posed to the independence of the indigenous people.

And he was the first to do something about it…

Doman carved his name into the history books of southern Africa by becoming the first indigenous leader to wage a war of resistance against colonial invaders.

Centuries later, historiographers described the first contact between the Dutch, who had come to the southern tip of Africa to set up a refreshment station between the Netherlands and the lucrative trading stations of the East, and the Khoikhoi, as “the fatal contact”.

But it didn’t start that way…

When Van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape with 82 men and eight women, and started building a fort the first meetings with the Khoikhoi were peaceful, if cagey.

In addition to the need to grow vegetables to supply to Dutch ships sailing to and from the East, fresh meat was also a priority, and the Khoikhoi had sufficient numbers of cattle and fat-tailed sheep to satisfy this requirement.

As traders though they were more than a match for the Dutch.

They quickly realised that what the new arrivals really wanted was to breed their own herds.

And so, for a long time, the cattle and sheep they were prepared to exchange in return for copper were the old, thin and diseased dregs of their livestock.

The Khoikhoi, in turn, fashioned bangles and other accessories from the copper they traded with other Khoikhoi groups in the interior for young and healthy livestock.

It galled the Dutch that their copper was contributing to the Khoikhoi growing large herds, while their own attempts at livestock farming were proving to be frustratingly unsuccessful.

The Peninsula Khoikhoi had in fact set up the first monopoly at the Cape. With Doman a key figure they sealed off routes to other groups of Khoikhoi.

If the Dutch wanted to trade it had to be with them.

It couldn’t be more lucrative: the Khoikhoi got their copper cheap, while they were able to exact a high price (in non-monetary terms) for their livestock…

While commercial relationships between the Khoikhoi and Dutch ebbed and flowed relatively peacefully, Doman made impressive strides as an interpreter.

So highly did the Dutch value him that in 1657 they sent him to Batavia (present-day Jakarta in Indonesia) for further training.

But what he saw and learnt there horrified him. He discovered that the Dutch had sacked Jakarta in 1619, rebuilt it they way they wanted it, renamed it Batavia, and expelled allthe indigenous people from the area.

It was obvious to him that the Dutch posed a great danger to the Khoikhoi of his homeland.

He had to get back to the Cape. With great cunning, he approached Commissioner Joan Cunaeus, telling him he wanted to become a Christian, and that he had become so devoted to the Dutch way of life that he doubted whether he could live with his fellow Khoikhoi again. It worked.

Once he had arrived back at the Cape, he emerged as the staunchest Khoikhoi critic of Van Riebeeck, especially after some employees had been given permission to become “free burgers” (in other words, to farm for their own account).

Thus, when Van Riebeeck seized several Khoikhoi leaders as hostages in 1658, Doman was the only one who protested.

Unfortunately for him, his earlier attempts to monopolise Khoikhoi trade with the Dutch had won him few friends.

Gogosoa, one of the local chiefs, refused to have anything to do with an attack on the Dutch. But Doman was able to persuade some of the younger leaders to join him in his war of liberation.

He planned his attacks carefully. He chose a cold, wet day in May 1659 to start a series of raids on the herds of the free burgers.

He was well aware that the matchlock muskets of the Dutch (unreliable at the best of times) could not be fired in the rain with damp powder.

Doman’s band of raiders had no intention of killing any of the Dutch. His war was meant to be one of persuasion, burning their crops, stealing their cattle, and hoping this would persuade them to leave the Cape and return to Holland.

The Dutch, on the other hand, were quite prepared to kill. They were ordered to shoot to kill – on sight.

The war ended in stalemate. The Khoikhoi were unwilling to attack the fort and Dutch forays against the Khoikhoi were unsuccessful due to the wildness of the terrain and the lack of guides.

When Doman died in in 1663, the company diarist wrote: “For (his) death none of us will have cause to grieve, as he has been, in many respects, a mischievous and malicious man towards the company.”

Legend Of Isandlwana Lives On

18th November 2018.

Zulu King Cetshwayo had been pushed into a war that he never wanted with England. Yet, the first battle of that conflict had the unlikeliest of outcomes, writes Dougie Oakes.

Cape Town – The mood of the congregation was sombre as Bishop John William Colenso stepped up to the pulpit of the Anglican Church in Bishopstowe in the colony of Natal – and started speaking…

Those who expected a sermon full of fire and brimstone were wrong. There were no calls for retribution against the Zulu king, Cetshwayo. There was no finger-pointing (at the Zulu people). And there were no predictions of doom and gloom.

There were deep expressions of sorrow, of course – but what Colenso said was peppered with nuggets of good sense: “We ourselves have lost very many precious lives, and widows and orphans, parents, brothers, sisters, friends are mourning bitterly their sad bereavements,” he said. “But are there no griefs – no relatives that mourn their dead – in Zululand? And shall we kill 10 000 more to avenge the losses of that dreadful day?”

It was March 1879 – and a mixture of anguish and anger was sweeping through the white communities of Natal.

Just a few weeks earlier, Cetshwayo had been pushed into a war that he never wanted with England. Yet, the first battle of that conflict, on January 22, 1879, on a hillside near a towering rock known to local people as Isandlwana, had the unlikeliest of outcomes…

Isandlwana was aptly described as a fight in which “a proletariat army from the world’s foremost capitalist nation was defeated by a part-time force of peasant farmers in a short, bloody and eventually inconclusive battle that rocked the British Empire to its core”.

“The Zulus attacked the red-coated British because they feared for their land and their independence. The British soldiers, drawn from the very poorest level of the working classes, fought back because they had been lured, like Private Moss from Wales, to take the Queen’s shilling’.”

It was a contest between spear and the most modern weaponry of the day, but thanks to a mixture of British arrogance, stupidity and bad planning, it was those who fought with spears who were victorious.

More than 1 500 redcoats, and an even greater number of Zulu fighters, died in the battle.

Cetshwayo was no one’s fool. It had taken a bruising battle – which had later escalated into a civil war – against his brother, Mbuyazi, for him to become the main contender to succeed his father, Mpande, as monarch of the Zulu kingdom.

When he became king in 1872, following the death of Mpande, he was keen to build a good relationship with the British administration in Natal. But he refused to be told how to run his kingdom. He needed to tread a fine line, and in this he succeeded admirably.

But then diamonds were discovered – and matters changed inexorably.

British colonial secretary Lord Carnarvon decided the best way to administer a southern Africa with far greater economic possibilities, but with a growing need for cheap labour, was via “confederation”.

By this he meant a region in which Briton, Boer and every African chiefdom would operate with some independence, under the control of England.

Although it was obvious that Cetshwayo would never agree to such an arrangement, Lord Carnarvon decided that there were many ways to skin a cat.

He left it to his most enthusiastic supporter, his Natal wheeler-dealer, Theophilus Shepstone, to decide how – and when – to bring this about.

Shepstone opted for the tried-and-tested: pick a fight with Cetshwayo and defeat him, using superior weaponry.

The British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, set the ball rolling by pretending a number of minor border incidents were major threats to the security of Natal. The tipping point came when the sons of a Zulu chief seized two of their father’s adulterous wives in Natal, dragged them into Zululand, and killed them.

Cetshwayo was given an ultimatum: hand over the sons, pay 500 cattle in compensation, and disband his army and his age-group system of military organisation – within 20 days.

There was no way he could comply. All he could do was insist that “the king has, however, declared, and still declares that he will not commence war, but will wait till he is actually attacked before he enters on a defensive campaign”.

In January 1879, British forces entered Zululand – and on January 22 came the shock of Isandlwana.

As Cetshwayo feared, Zulu losses at Isandlwana and, on the same day, at nearby Rorke’s Drift were horrific. And as the weeks passed, casualties mounted at an alarming rate, with serious losses at Kambula and Gingindlovu especially.

Then, on July 4, the redcoats attacked the royal headquarters at Ulundi, razing it and forcing Cetshwayo to flee.

On August 28, he was captured in the Ngome Forest and sent to Cape Town, where he was held at The Castle, while the Zulu kingdom was”dismembered” into 13 parts, each of which was put under the control of pliant chiefs.

A striking figure, Cetshwayo handled himself with great dignity, refusing to be regarded as a curiosity and insisting that he be given European clothes to wear while in Cape Town. Many people who saw him commented that he was not the overgrown ogre painted by colonial officials.

Although he couldn’t read and write, he displayed a remarkable grasp of local, national and international politics. In this he was assisted by Bishop Colenso and his social activist daughter, Harriette.

Cetshwayo fought with dogged persistence to win back his freedom – and the kingdom of Zululand. In this regard, his key weapon was a letter-writing campaign that drew in prominent officials and even the monarch of England, Queen Victoria.

In March 1881, in a letter written from The Castle to Sir Hercules Robinson, the governor of the Cape Colony, he wrote: “I have done you no wrong, therefore you must have some other object in view to invading my land.

“How is it,” he asked, alluding to the fact that Shepstone had backed his ascension to the Zulu throne, “that they crown me in the morning and dethrone me in the afternoon.”

Cetshwayo’s persistence earned him a trip to England to state his case.

There, he impressed as many parliamentarians and ordinary people as he did in Cape Town.

He was freed in July 1883, but his return to Natal sparked a war with his main rival, Zibhebhu. Forced to flee his territory, he sought refuge with the British Resident Commissioner in Eshowe, where he died in 1884.

Anger After Hlubi King Insulted At Castle Statue Ceremony

10th December 2018.

Cape Town – South Africans needed to embrace their “collective history and heritage … the good, the bad and the ugly” as a step towards consolidating an inclusive sense of South Africanhood.

So said Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula at the Castle in Cape Town on Friday when she unveiled the statues of former kings Cetshwayo, Langalibalele and Sekhukhune and 17th century resistance leader, Doman.

The three kings had once languished in the castle’s gloomy cells, and Doman had known first-hand the penalty of contesting the power that resided within it.

The statues, Mapisa-Nqakula said, were the “tangible recognition of these, and thousands of other unsung heroes and heroines in colonials wars of resistance”.

The commemorative project, which forms part of the Castle’s 350 anniversary celebration this year, was, she said, “the beginning of an ongoing commitment to honour all those who gallantly fought against colonial conquest and in turn inspired future generations of freedom fighters”.

Mapisa-Nqakula delivered the formal address at the event on behalf of President Jacob Zuma, who was scheduled to unveil the statues, but was detained in Pretoria because of a programme change in the visit of Zambian President Edgar Lungu.

Delegations from the amaZulu, amaHlubi and BaPedi royal houses and from the Khoisan leadership in the Western Cape joined in officiating at the unveiling ceremony.

Mapisa-Nqakula noted the Castle “offers us a unique opportunity to revisit, reinterpret and re-write our complex, brutal colonial and apartheid history in a manner that is fully inclusive, restorative, respectful and educational”.

This would be advanced through the launch of a Centre for Memory, Healing and Learning at the Castle. The centre, sponsored by the Department of Military Veterans, was intended to break “the curse of oppression, persecution and ignorance”.

We found something on Google Earth and it's exactly what we thought it was.

#capetown #southafrica #worldwar

Cape Town's long forgotten to***re chambers. 😲

#capetown #southafrica #castle #history #adamspires #adventure

Introduction

At the 119th Annual Meeting in April 2025 the American Society of International Law will conduct a vote to adopt a resolution on slavery and the slave trade. The resolution as admitted by the Executive Committee and approved by the ASIL Executive Council states that:

1. Slave trade is a violation of a non-derogable human right and can constitute an international crime, including a crime against humanity and a war crime.
2. Slavery is a violation of a non-derogable human right and can constitute an international crime, including a crime against humanity and a war crime.
3. The prohibitions of slavery and slave trade are peremptory norms from which no derogation is permissible. Protection from slavery and slave trade is an obligation erga omnes.

The topic of each paragraph of the resolution enunciates a foremost peremptory norm of international law that merits contemporary acknowledgement and reiteration by the Society. This Insight situates the ASIL resolution in the broader context of current efforts to criminalize slavery and the slave trade, explains how it aligns with ASIL’s historical contributions to international law, and briefly summarizes the resolution’s procedural history to date.

The Resolution's Importance in the Broader Context of the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Treaty and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

The resolution arises at a historical juncture in international law. As ASIL conducts this vote, the United Nations stands on the cusp of negotiating the first crimes against humanity treaty.Furthermore, this year the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Assembly of State Parties (ASP) will vote to enumerate the slave trade as a crime against humanity and as a war crime into the Rome Statute. Each instrument, the Draft articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity and the Rome Statute, envisions the enumeration of provisions to strengthen the prohibitions of slavery and the slave trade. The proposed ASIL resolution, attuned to this historic moment, offers demonstrable recognition by the Society of the high value international law accords the prohibition of slavery and the slave trade.

Crimes against humanity emerged contentiously under the London and Tokyo Charters, as an express crime. Thereafter, it steadily obtained international customary law status through inclusion in the Nuremberg Principles, the 1969 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, but most assuredly as recognized in Article 5 of the Statute for the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Article 3 of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Protection from enslavement or slavery was anchored in the crimes against humanity provision of the respective Charters and Tribunal statutes, as well as Article 7 of the Rome Statute. 

In 2013, the International Law Commission (ILC) placed the topic of a draft treaty for crimes against humanity on its agenda. Ten years later, General Assembly Resolution 77/249 delivered the draft articles of the treaty to the Sixth (Legal) Committee for a two-year period of debate and discussion, in order to then proceed to  formulate a treaty. In December 2024, the General Assembly passed resolution 79/122 and voted to convene two Plenipotentiary Conferences, in 2028 and 2029, to elaborate and conclude a legally binding instrument on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

 A provision to enumerate the slave trade as a crime against humanity in the treaty has since gained wide support among UN member states across geographical regions. The inclusion of the prohibition of slave trade is seen to align the crimes against humanity treaty with the peremptory norm framework of slavery and the slave trade as contained in the 1926 Slavery Convention and underscored in the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention. The ASIL resolution enters the conversation surrounding the crimes against humanity treaty negotiations with the respectful posture of America’s most prestigious international law society.

The resolution is also a timely contribution to international efforts to strengthen accountability. The Rome Statute already recognizes enslavement as a crime against humanity. However, the absence of explicit references to the slave trade as an independent crime against humanity and slavery and the slave trade as war crimes has created an accountability gap, particularly for contemporary situations of slavery.

Amendments are now being discussed within the ASP to rectify this legal lacunae. The ASIL resolution directly addresses this deficiency by clearly stating the legal position that both slavery and the slave trade are peremptory norms from which no derogation is permissible. In passing the resolution, the Society will promote continued legal clarity on established principles of international law.

The ASIL resolution also pertinently affirms the importance of slavery and the slave trade as violations of the laws and customs of war, irrespective of the nature of the armed conflict.Contemporary slavery and the slave trade, especially as related to armed conflict, persist. Such situations include child soldiers in the Lord’s Army, captured Yazidi women and children by ISIS, Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, and migrants traversing the Sahara Desert of Libya. For those reasons, Sierra Leone, together  with other supportive ICC member states, proposed to amend Article 8 of the Rome Statute to include slavery and the slave trade as was crimes and Article 7 to enumerate the slave trade as a crime against humanity. Fortifying slavery crimes under the Rome Statute is responsive to current atrocity situations and hopefully will prevent the occurrence of future harms. Notably, the ASIL resolution also strongly resonates with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’s inaugural policy on slavery crimes, which was issued in December 2024. 

How the Resolution Aligns with ASIL's Historical Contributions to International Law

ASIL has consistently contributed to promoting international legal principles in alignment with its mission to “foster the study of international law and promote the establishment and maintenance of international relations based on law and justice.” The resolution furthers the fostering of such contributions vis a vis the international legal community as well as the upholding of a pledge to the ASIL membership. 

Recent ASIL initiatives such as The Richardson Report, symposia on Reparations under International Law for Enslavement of African Persons in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the AJIL Unbound symposiumon race, racism, and international law are some examples of the Society’s commitment to addressing the legacies of these established international crimes and the current international legal landscape. Appraisal of the legacy of de facto discrimination against persons of African descent by the Society includes acknowledgement and underscoring of the legal sources of such biases. The absence of learned articles in ASIL publications that could have addressed the 1926 Slavery Convention, the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention, or  the slavery and slave trade-related provisions of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, reveals an educational omission on the part of the Society. The Society’s affirmation of the prohibition of slavery and the slave trade now stands to stimulate learned reflection and conversation among ASIL membership and promote scholarship through its world-class leading publications. 

The Procedural History of the ASIL Resolution

ASIL is comprised of a diverse membership of over 4,000 individuals from more than a hundred nations, with approximately 40 percent residing outside the United States. In accordance with the Society’s Constitution and Regulations, the Executive Committee reviewed the proposal and accompanying report during its sessions on March 1 and March 8, 2024. The Committee found the proposal admissible and referred it to the Executive Council for substantive review of its merits. On April 3, 2024, the Executive Council deliberated on the proposed resolution and accompanying report and determined that, in principle, the resolution met the substantive requirements of the Society’s regulations. Acting under Section XI of the Society’s Regulations, the Executive Council requested that the President convene an ad hoc subcommittee to conduct some revisions of the proposal and accompanying report prior to final consideration for submission to the Society. 

This ad hoc subcommittee collaborated closely with the principal proposer to finalize the revisions, which included a concise overview highlighting the resolution's purpose and its adherence to the Society’s regulations. The revised proposal and report were subsequently presented to the Executive Council at its Midyear Meeting in Chicago on November 15, 2024. The Council unanimously approved the revised resolution and report. The resolution was circulated to the members of the Society by the Executive Director on December 10, 2024, with the indication that it will be presented before the Society at the Annual Meeting for consideration. 

ASIL’s Promotion of the Rule of International Law

The resolution is part of a longstanding tradition of international legal instruments that condemn slavery and the slave trade. Notable historical frameworks, such as the 1926 Slavery Convention, the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, and the case law of international tribunals[11] have reinforced these prohibitions. In the Barcelona Traction case the International Court of Justice unequivocally stated that the prohibition of slavery is an obligation erga omnes thereby emphasizing that all states have a legal interest in its enforcement. ASIL’s passage of the resolution will serve as an unambiguous /clear internal statement to ASIL membership and as an exemplary external statement to the global community.

Continued acknowledgment of the prohibition of slavery and slave trade is therefore more than a moral imperative; it is a legal obligation that is of fundamental importance in promoting the establishment and maintenance of international relations on the basis of law and justice. ASIL President Mélida Hodgson, recently exhorted against a retreat from international law and urged a commitment for a more just world under international law.[12] The Society’s resolution on slavery and the slave trade constitutes such a commitment.

About the Authors:

Patricia Viseur Sellers, an international lawyer, is on the law faculty of the University of Oxford. She is the former Special Advisor for Slavery Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and was awarded the Goler T. Butcher Medal in Human Rights by ASIL in 2023.

Adejoké Babington-Ashaye is an international lawyer, consultant, and Co-Chair of Blacks of the American Society of International Law (BASIL). She currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Soufan Center.

Happy Birthday Dr Uboh! May your new year be filled with innovative ideas and groundbreaking achievements, health and happiness, and a day of joy and relaxation, because your leadership and determination continue to shape the path to prosperity and achievements which set a remarkable example for us all.

The !Urill'ael'ona Goringhaicona, Goringhaiqua and Gorachouqua Cape Colony "Capemen" Indigenous People description gives account of the arrival of the Dutch at the Cape, the first tribe they encountered and their relationship with Autshumao who could speak broken English due to his previous encounters with passing ships which started arriving in the Cape since the 1400's. The story of Autshumao of the !Urill'ael'ona Goringhaicona revive the history and restores the memory of this event.

In 1652 the Cape Colony "Capemen" indigenous people of !Urill'ael'ona Goringhaicona, Goringhaiqua and Gorachouqua was one tribe under HRH Gogosoa of the Goringhaiqua when the Dutch under commander Jan Anthony Van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay.

The early Cape Hottentots, a story of Autshumao a !Urill'ael'ona Goringhaicona is in microcosm an illustration of everything that Walter Rodney the revolutionary African-in-Diaspora political-economy analyst from Guyana who was cut down in his prime by an assassin in 1980, conveyed in his book 'How Europe underdeveloped Africa' published in 1972.

The struggle on the Table Bay shoreline at the Liesbeeck River was fundamentally about the Europeans empowering themselves at the expense of African advancement. The under-development or usurping of the natural advancement of a strategic African port run by indigenous Africans was a key building block in Europe's amassing power to itself in the race for global domination.

The ruthless conquest of the !Urill'ael'ona Goringhaicona traders by appropriating their strategic resources, curtailing their access to clients, controlling the value they put on their products and services, stereotyping them as too primitive to participate in the new economy while destroying their ability to maintain control of their livestock-rearing agrarian economy, and Europeans engaging in physical annihilation of indigenes as the ultimate control, are all facets of Autshumao's story. It's the story of how Africa, actually by force, developed Europe, to invert Rodney's phrase.

The sudden resurrection of a 5 year old cold-case against Autshumao in 1658 and the manner in which it was presented and evaluated in a summary kangaroo-court, resulted in a devastating life sentence on Robben Island that took Autshumao from hero status to zero. Accompanying this act was the confiscation of all of his wealth and the subjugation of all Khoi on the Cape Peninsular to the will of the Dutch VOC.

It illustrates the centrality to Autshumao's story of what the British cockney slang calls a 'stitch-up'. The 'stitch-up' deprived Autshumao of the kind of life he should have enjoyed after the entrepreneurship, fastidiousness and hard work he had exemplified. Like any successful entrepreneur he knew what it was like to start over and over again until successful and as such he provides an amazing African role-model for our youth in the 21stcentury. The cold-case kangaroo-court brought an end to the co-dependent relationship that Jan van Riebeeck and Autshumao shared with each other.

While most stories about Autshumao project Autshumao as a nuisance factor for Jan van Riebeeck, for most of Jan van Riebeeck's time at the Cape he frequently required Autshumao's assistance as much as he feared Autshumao's pluck and influence on others. Autshumao too was a figure in history who was an African poised between West and East, poised between a pastoral economy and trading-service economy, and, by all accounts he handled this pressured pioneering role with valour and skill. The subjugation of Autshumao as an individual was also the first step in the conquest of South Africa by Europeans.

Autshumao was regarded for some time by all European shipping stopping at the Cape to be at the service of the English as the postmaster and Governor of Robben Island according to a traveller who recorded meeting him. From around 1638 Autshumao assisted by his English clients moved back to the mainland Table Bay from Robben Island with his followers and went on to become the founder of the proto-port at Table Bay that over three centuries would grow into the city of Cape Town.

In 1652 all of Autshumao's efforts were usurped when the Dutch United East India Company (VOC), authorised with powers of state by the Dutch States General, established a permanent settlement, took over the administration of port services, and the natural resources of the port. In the process of this take-over Autshumao was divested of his accomplishments, marginalised, humiliated and finally imprisoned just at the time that he had begun to recover his local stature.

At the centre of this final assault on him by Jan van Riebeeck was the manipulation of a cold-case in 1653 involving the murder of a Dutch shepherd and theft of the VOC herd of cattle. A combination of the cold-case and a hostage-taking drama initiated by Jan van Riebeeck assisted by the interpreter Doman, was used to extract a peace treaty with the Goringhaiqua and Gorachoqua that effectively surrendered to Jan van Riebeeck everything that he had sought since 1652 but was prevented from achieving by Autshumao.

The initial establishment of a fort-come-refreshment-station for ships by VOC Commander Jan van Riebeeck soon became a Dutch colony for a century and a half and then it was conquered by the British. In the passage of time the Colony grew into the country known to the world as the Republic of South Africa.

The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred from late 2007 to mid-2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

The causes of the Great Recession include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005–2012. When housing prices fell and homeowners began to abandon their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed securitiesheld by investment banks declined in 2007–2008, causing several to collapse or be bailed out in September 2008. This 2007–2008 phase was called the subprime mortgage crisis.

The combination of banks being unable to provide funds to businesses, and homeowners paying down debt rather than borrowing and spending, resulted in the Great Recession that began in the U.S. officially in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. As with most other recessions, it appears that no known formal theoretical or empirical model was able to accurately predict the advance of this recession, except for minor signals in the sudden rise of forecast probabilities, which were still well under 50%.

The recession was not felt equally around the world; whereas most of the world's developed economies, particularly in North America, South America and Europe, fell into a severe, sustained recession, many more recently developing economies suffered far less impact, particularly China, India and Indonesia, whose economies grew substantially during this period. Similarly, Oceania suffered minimal impact, in part due to its proximity to Asian markets.

Two interpretations of the word "recession" exist: one sense referring definitively to "a period of reduced economic activity" and ongoing hardship; and the more allegoric interpretation used in economics, which is defined operationally, referring specifically to the contraction phase of a business cycle, with two or more consecutive quarters of GDP contraction (negative GDP growth rate) and typically used to influence abrupt changes in monetary policy.

Under the academic definition, the recession ended in the United States in June or July 2009.

Journalist Robert Kuttner has argued that 'The Great Recession' is a misnomer. According to Kuttner, "recessions are mild dips in the business cycle that are either self-correcting or soon cured by modest fiscal or monetary stimulus. Because of the continuing deflationary trap, it would be more accurate to call this decade's stagnant economy The Lesser Depression or The Great Deflation."

The Great Recession met the IMF criteria for being a global recession only in the single calendar year 2009. That IMF definition requires a decline in annual real world GDP per‑capita. Despite the fact that quarterly data are being used as recession definition criteria by all G20 members, representing 85% of the world GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has decided – in the absence of a complete data set – not to declare/measure global recessions according to quarterly GDP data. The seasonally adjusted PPP‑weighted real GDP for the G20‑zone, however, is a good indicator for the world GDP, and it was measured to have suffered a direct quarter on quarter decline during the three quarters from Q3‑2008 until Q1‑2009, which more accurately mark when the recession took place at the global level.

According to the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of U.S. recessions) the recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, and thus extended over eighteen months.

The years leading up to the crisis were characterized by an exorbitant rise in asset prices and associated boom in economic demand. Further, the U.S. shadow banking system (i.e., non-depository financial institutions such as investment banks) had grown to rival the depository system yet was not subject to the same regulatory oversight, making it vulnerable to a bank run.

US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world, as they offered higher yields than U.S. government bonds. Many of these securities were backed by subprime mortgages, which collapsed in value when the U.S. housing bubble burst during 2006 and homeowners began to default on their mortgage payments in large numbers starting in 2007.

The emergence of subprime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. There was the equivalent of a bank run on the shadow banking system, resulting in many large and well established investment banks and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffering huge losses and even facing bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance (government bailouts).

The global recession that followed resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. Several economists predicted that recovery might not appear until 2011 and that the recession would be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economist Paul Krugman once commented on this as seemingly the beginning of "a second Great Depression".

Governments and central banks responded with fiscal policy and monetary policy initiatives to stimulate national economies and reduce financial system risks. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. Economists advise that the stimulus measures such as quantitative easing (pumping money into the system) and holding down central bank wholesale lending interest rate should be withdrawn as soon as economies recover enough to "chart a path to sustainable growth".

The distribution of household incomes in the United States became more unequal during the post-2008 economic recovery.[29] Income inequality in the United States grew from 2005 to 2012 in more than two thirds of metropolitan areas. Median household wealth fell 35% in the US, from $106,591 to $68,839 between 2005 and 2011.

The US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, composed of six Democratic and four Republican appointees, reported its majority findings in January 2011. It concluded that "the crisis was avoidable and was caused by:

• Widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve's failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages;
• Dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk;
• An explosive mix of excessive borrowing and risk by households and Wall Street that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis;
• Key policy makers ill prepared for the crisis, lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw; and systemic breaches in accountability and ethics at all levels."

There were two Republican dissenting FCIC reports. One of them, signed by three Republican appointees, concluded that there were multiple causes. In his separate dissent to the majority and minority opinions of the FCIC, Commissioner Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) primarily blamed U.S. housing policy, including the actions of Fannie and Freddie, for the crisis. He wrote: "When the bubble began to deflate in mid-2007, the low quality and high risk loans engendered by government policies failed in unprecedented numbers."

In its "Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy," dated November 15, 2008, leaders of the Group of 20 cited the following causes:

During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified in September 2010 before the FCIC regarding the causes of the crisis. He wrote that there were shocks or triggers (i.e., particular events that touched off the crisis) and vulnerabilities (i.e., structural weaknesses in the financial system, regulation and supervision) that amplified the shocks. Examples of triggers included: losses on subprime mortgage securities that began in 2007 and a run on the shadow banking system that began in the middle of 2007, which adversely affected the functioning of money markets. Examples of vulnerabilities in the private sector included: financial institution dependence on unstable sources of short-term funding such as repurchase agreements or Repos; deficiencies in corporate risk management; excessive use of leverage (borrowing to invest); and inappropriate usage of derivatives as a tool for taking excessive risks. Examples of vulnerabilities in the public sector included: statutory gaps and conflicts between regulators; ineffective use of regulatory authority; and ineffective crisis management capabilities. Bernanke also discussed "Too big to fail" institutions, monetary policy, and trade deficits.

There are several "narratives" attempting to place the causes of the recession into context, with overlapping elements. Five such narratives include:

1. There was the equivalent of a bank run on the shadow banking system, which includes investment banks and other non-depository financial entities. This system had grown to rival the depository system in scale yet was not subject to the same regulatory safeguards. Its failure disrupted the flow of credit to consumers and corporations.
2. The U.S. economy was being driven by a housing bubble. When it burst, private residential investment (i.e., housing construction) fell by over four percent of GDP. Consumption enabled by bubble-generated housing wealth also slowed. This created a gap in annual demand (GDP) of nearly $1 trillion. The U.S. government was unwilling to make up for this private sector shortfall.
3. Record levels of household debt accumulated in the decades preceding the crisis resulted in a balance sheet recession (similar to debt deflation) once housing prices began falling in 2006. Consumers began paying off debt, which reduces their consumption, slowing down the economy for an extended period while debt levels are reduced.
4. U.S. government policies encouraged home ownership even for those who could not afford it, contributing to lax lending standards, unsustainable housing price increases, and indebtedness.
5. Wealthy and middle-class house flippers with mid-to-good credit scores created a speculative bubble in house prices, and then wrecked local housing markets and financial institutions after they defaulted on their debt en masse.

Underlying narratives #1–3 is a hypothesis that growing income inequality and wage stagnation encouraged families to increase their household debt to maintain their desired living standard, fueling the bubble. Further, this greater share of income flowing to the top increased the political power of business interests, who used that power to deregulate or limit regulation of the shadow banking system.

Narrative #5 challenges the popular claim (narrative #4) that subprime borrowers with shoddy credit caused the crisis by buying homes they couldn't afford. This narrative is supported by new research showing that the biggest growth of mortgage debt during the U.S. housing boom came from those with good credit scores in the middle and top of the credit score distribution – and that these borrowers accounted for a disproportionate share of defaults.

The Economist wrote in July 2012 that the inflow of investment dollars required to fund the U.S. trade deficit was a major cause of the housing bubble and financial crisis: "The trade deficit, less than 1% of GDP in the early 1990s, hit 6% in 2006. That deficit was financed by inflows of foreign savings, in particular from East Asia and the Middle East. Much of that money went into dodgy mortgages to buy overvalued houses, and the financial crisis was the result."

In May 2008, NPR explained in their Peabody Award winning program "The Giant Pool of Money" that a vast inflow of savings from developing nations flowed into the mortgage market, driving the U.S. housing bubble. This pool of fixed income savings increased from around $35 trillion in 2000 to about $70 trillion by 2008. NPR explained this money came from various sources, "[b]ut the main headline is that all sorts of poor countries became kind of rich, making things like TVs and selling us oil. China, India, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia made a lot of money and banked it."

Describing the crisis in Europe, Paul Krugman wrote in February 2012 that: "What we're basically looking at, then, is a balance of payments problem, in which capital flooded south after the creation of the euro, leading to overvaluation in southern Europe."

Another narrative about the origin has been focused on the respective parts played by public monetary policy (notably in the US) and by the practices of private financial institutions. In the U.S., mortgage funding was unusually decentralised, opaque, and competitive, and it is believed that competition between lenders for revenue and market share contributed to declining underwriting standards and risky lending.

While Alan Greenspan's role as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has been widely discussed, the main point of controversy remains the lowering of the Federal funds rate to 1% for more than a year, which, according to Austrian theorists, injected huge amounts of "easy" credit-based money into the financial system and created an unsustainable economic boom. There is an argument that Greenspan's actions in the years 2002–2004 were actually motivated by the need to take the U.S. economy out of the early 2000s recession caused by the bursting of the dot-com bubble: although by doing so he did not avert the crisis, but only postponed it.

Another narrative focuses on high levels of private debt in the US economy. USA household debt as a percentage of annual disposable personal incomewas 127% at the end of 2007, versus 77% in 1990. Faced with increasing mortgage payments as their adjustable rate mortgage payments increased, households began to default in record numbers, rendering mortgage-backed securities worthless. High private debt levels also impact growth by making recessions deeper and the following recovery weaker.[Robert Reich claims the amount of debt in the US economy can be traced to economic inequality, assuming that middle-class wages remained stagnant while wealth concentrated at the top, and households "pull equity from their homes and overload on debt to maintain living standards".

The IMF reported in April 2012: "Household debt soared in the years leading up to the downturn. In advanced economies, during the five years preceding 2007, the ratio of household debt to income rose by an average of 39 percentage points, to 138 percent. In Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway, debt peaked at more than 200 percent of household income. A surge in household debt to historic highs also occurred in emerging economies such as Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania. The concurrent boom in both house prices and the stock market meant that household debt relative to assets held broadly stable, which masked households' growing exposure to a sharp fall in asset prices. When house prices declined, ushering in the global financial crisis, many households saw their wealth shrink relative to their debt, and, with less income and more unemployment, found it harder to meet mortgage payments. By the end of 2011, real house prices had fallen from their peak by about 41% in Ireland, 29% in Iceland, 23% in Spain and the United States, and 21% in Denmark. Household defaults, underwater mortgages (where the loan balance exceeds the house value), foreclosures, and fire sales are now endemic to a number of economies. Household deleveraging by paying off debts or defaulting on them has begun in some countries. It has been most pronounced in the United States, where about two-thirds of the debt reduction reflects defaults."

The onset of the economic crisis took most people by surprise. A 2009 paper identifies twelve economists and commentators who, between 2000 and 2006, predicted a recession based on the collapse of the then-booming housing market in the United States:Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones[63] Steve Keen, Jakob Brøchner Madsen, Jens Kjaer Sørensen, Kurt Richebächer, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

By 2007, real estate bubbles were still under way in many parts of the world, especially in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Ireland, Poland,South Africa, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, Argentina, the Baltic states, India, Romania, Ukraine and China. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in mid-2005 that "at a minimum, there's a little 'froth' [in the U.S. housing market]...it's hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles".

The Economist, writing at the same time, went further, saying, "[T]he worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history". Real estate bubbles are (by definition of the word "bubble") followed by a price decrease (also known as a housing price crash) that can result in many owners holding negative equity (a mortgage debt higher than the current value of the property).

Several sources have noted the failure of the US government to supervise or even require transparency of the financial instruments known as derivatives. Derivatives such as credit default swaps (CDSs) were unregulated or barely regulated. Michael Lewis noted CDSs enabled speculators to stack bets on the same mortgage securities. This is analogous to allowing many persons to buy insurance on the same house. Speculators that bought CDS protection were betting significant mortgage security defaults would occur, while the sellers (such as AIG) bet they would not. An unlimited amount could be wagered on the same housing-related securities, provided buyers and sellers of the CDS could be found. When massive defaults occurred on underlying mortgage securities, companies like AIG that were selling CDS were unable to perform their side of the obligation and defaulted; U.S. taxpayers paid over $100 billion to global financial institutions to honor AIG obligations, generating considerable outrage.

A 2008 investigative article in The Washington Post found leading government officials at the time (Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt) vehemently opposed any regulation of derivatives. In 1998, Brooksley E. Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, put forth a policy paper asking for feedback from regulators, lobbyists, and legislators on the question of whether derivatives should be reported, sold through a central facility, or whether capital requirements should be required of their buyers. Greenspan, Rubin, and Levitt pressured her to withdraw the paper and Greenspan persuaded Congress to pass a resolution preventing CFTC from regulating derivatives for another six months – when Born's term of office would expire. Ultimately, it was the collapse of a specific kind of derivative, the mortgage-backed security, that triggered the economic crisis of 2008.

Paul Krugman wrote in 2009 that the run on the shadow banking system was the fundamental cause of the crisis. "As the shadow banking system expanded to rival or even surpass conventional banking in importance, politicians and government officials should have realised that they were re-creating the kind of financial vulnerability that made the Great Depression possible – and they should have responded by extending regulations and the financial safety net to cover these new institutions. Influential figures should have proclaimed a simple rule: anything that does what a bank does, anything that has to be rescued in crises the way banks are, should be regulated like a bank." He referred to this lack of controls as "malign neglect".

During 2008, three of the largest U.S. investment banks either went bankrupt (Lehman Brothers) or were sold at fire sale prices to other banks (Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch). The investment banks were not subject to the more stringent regulations applied to depository banks. These failures exacerbated the instability in the global financial system. The remaining two investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, potentially facing failure, opted to become commercial banks, thereby subjecting themselves to more stringent regulation but receiving access to credit via the Federal Reserve. Further, American International Group (AIG) had insured mortgage-backed and other securities but was not required to maintain sufficient reserves to pay its obligations when debtors defaulted on these securities. AIG was contractually required to post additional collateral with many creditors and counter-parties, touching off controversy when over $100 billion of U.S. taxpayer money was paid out to major global financial institutions on behalf of AIG. While this money was legally owed to the banks by AIG (under agreements made via credit default swaps purchased from AIG by the institutions), a number of Congressmen and media members expressed outrage that taxpayer money was used to bail out banks.

Economist Gary Gorton wrote in May 2009

Unlike the historical banking panics of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the current banking panic is a wholesale panic, not a retail panic. In the earlier episodes, depositors ran to their banks and demanded cash in exchange for their checking accounts. Unable to meet those demands, the banking system became insolvent. The current panic involved financial firms "running" on other financial firms by not renewing sale and repurchase agreements (repo) or increasing the repo margin ("haircut"), forcing massive deleveraging, and resulting in the banking system being insolvent.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported in January 2011:

In the early part of the 20th century, we erected a series of protections – the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort, federal deposit insurance, ample regulations – to provide a bulwark against the panics that had regularly plagued America's banking system in the 19th century. Yet, over the past 30-plus years, we permitted the growth of a shadow banking system – opaque and laden with short term debt – that rivaled the size of the traditional banking system. Key components of the market – for example, the multitrillion-dollar repo lending market, off-balance-sheet entities, and the use of over-the-counter derivatives – were hidden from view, without the protections we had constructed to prevent financial meltdowns. We had a 21st-century financial system with 19th-century safeguards.

The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (1999), which reduced the regulation of banks by allowing commercial and investment banks to merge, has also been blamed for the crisis, by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz among others.

Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute, which advocates for private enterprise and limited government, have asserted that private lenders were encouraged to relax lending standards by government affordable housing policies. They cite The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, which initially required that 30 percent or more of Fannie's and Freddie's loan purchases be related to affordable housing. The legislation gave HUD the power to set future requirements. These rose to 42 percent in 1995 and 50 percent in 2000, and by 2008 a 56 percent minimum was established.

However, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) Democratic majority report concluded that Fannie & Freddie "were not a primary cause" of the crisis and that CRA was not a factor in the crisis. Further, since housing bubbles appeared in multiple countries in Europe as well, the FCIC Republican minority dissenting report also concluded that U.S. housing policies were not a robust explanation for a wider global housing bubble. The hypothesis that a primary cause of the crisis was U.S. government housing policy requiring banks to make risky loans has been widely disputed, with Paul Krugman referring to it as "imaginary history".

One of the other challenges with blaming government regulations for essentially forcing banks to make risky loans is the timing. Subprime lending increased from around 10% of mortgage origination historically to about 20% only from 2004 to 2006, with housing prices peaking in 2006. Blaming affordable housing regulations established in the 1990s for a sudden spike in subprime origination is problematic at best. A more proximate government action to the sudden rise in subprime lending was the SEC relaxing lending standards for the top investment banks during an April 2004 meeting with bank leaders. These banks increased their risk-taking shortly thereafter, significantly increasing their purchases and securitization of lower-quality mortgages, thus encouraging additional subprime and Alt-A lending by mortgage companies. This action by its investment bank competitors also resulted in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taking on more risk.

The financial crisis and the recession have been described as a symptom of another, deeper crisis by a number of economists. For example, Ravi Batra argues that growing inequality of financial capitalism produces speculative bubbles that burst and result in depression and major political changes. Feminist economists Ailsa McKay and Margunn Bjørnholt argue that the financial crisis and the response to it revealed a crisis of ideas in mainstream economics and within the economics profession, and call for a reshaping of both the economy, economic theory and the economics profession. They argue that such a reshaping should include new advances within feminist economicsand ecological economics that take as their starting point the socially responsible, sensible and accountable subject in creating an economy and economic theories that fully acknowledge care for each other as well as the planet.

Though no one knew they were in it at the time, the Great Recession had a significant economic and political impact on the United States. While the recession technically lasted from December 2007 – June 2009 (the nominal GDP trough), many important economic variables did not regain pre-recession (November or Q4 2007) levels until 2011–2016. For example, real GDP fell $650 billion (4.3%) and did not recover its $15 trillion pre-recession level until Q3 2011. Household net worth, which reflects the value of both stock markets and housing prices, fell $11.5 trillion (17.3%) and did not regain its pre-recession level of $66.4 trillion until Q3 2012. The number of persons with jobs (total non-farm payrolls) fell 8.6 million (6.2%) and did not regain the pre-recession level of 138.3 million until May 2014.[The unemployment rate peaked at 10.0% in October 2009 and did not return to its pre-recession level of 4.7% until May 2016.

A key dynamic slowing the recovery was that both individuals and businesses paid down debts for several years, as opposed to borrowing and spending or investing as had historically been the case. This shift to a private sector surplus drove a sizable government deficit. However, the federal government held spending at about $3.5 trillion from fiscal years 2009–2014 (thereby decreasing it as a percent of GDP), a form of austerity. Then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke explained during November 2012 several of the economic headwinds that slowed the recovery:

• The housing sector did not rebound, as was the case in prior recession recoveries, as the sector was severely damaged during the crisis. Millions of foreclosures had created a large surplus of properties and consumers were paying down their debts rather than purchasing homes.
• Credit for borrowing and spending by individuals (or investing by corporations) was not readily available as banks paid down their debts.
• Restrained government spending following initial stimulus efforts (i.e., austerity) was not sufficient to offset private sector weaknesses.

On the political front, widespread anger at banking bailouts and stimulus measures (begun by President George W. Bush and continued or expanded by President Obama) with few consequences for banking leadership, were a factor in driving the country politically rightward starting in 2010. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was the largest of the bailouts. In 2008, TARP allocated $426.4 billion to various major financial institutions. However, the US collected $441.7 billion in return from these loans in 2010, recording a profit of $15.3 billion.[Nonetheless, there was a political shift from the Democratic party. Examples include the rise of the Tea Party and the loss of Democratic majorities in subsequent elections. President Obama declared the bailout measures started under the Bush administration and continued during his administration as completed and mostly profitable as of December 2014. As of January 2018, bailout funds had been fully recovered by the government, when interest on loans is taken into consideration. A total of $626B was invested, loaned, or granted due to various bailout measures, while $390B had been returned to the Treasury. The Treasury had earned another $323B in interest on bailout loans, resulting in an $87B profit. Economic and political commentators have argued the Great Recession was also an important factor in the rise of populist sentiment that resulted in the election of right-wing populist President Trump in 2016, and left-wing populist Bernie Sanders' candidacy for the Democratic nomination.

The crisis in Europe generally progressed from banking system crises to sovereign debt crises, as many countries elected to bail out their banking systems using taxpayer money.[citation needed] Greece was different in that it faced large public debts rather than problems within its banking system. Several countries received bailout packages from the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund), which also implemented a series of emergency measures.

Many European countries embarked on austerity programs, reducing their budget deficits relative to GDP from 2010 to 2011. For example, according to the CIA World Factbook Greece improved its budget deficit from 10.4% GDP in 2010 to 9.6% in 2011. Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, France, and Spain also improved their budget deficits from 2010 to 2011 relative to GDP.

However, with the exception of Germany, each of these countries had public-debt-to-GDP ratios that increased (i.e., worsened) from 2010 to 2011, as indicated in the chart at right. Greece's public-debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 143% in 2010 to 165% in 2011to 185% in 2014. This indicates that despite improving budget deficits, GDP growth was not sufficient to support a decline (improvement) in the debt-to-GDP ratio for these countries during this period. Eurostat reported that the debt to GDP ratio for the 17 Euro area countries together was 70.1% in 2008, 79.9% in 2009, 85.3% in 2010, and 87.2% in 2011.

According to the CIA World Factbook, from 2010 to 2011, the unemployment rates in Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and the UK increased. France had no significant changes, while in Germany and Iceland the unemployment rate declined. Eurostat reported that Eurozone unemployment reached record levels in September 2012 at 11.6%, up from 10.3% the prior year. Unemployment varied significantly by country.

Economist Martin Wolf analysed the relationship between cumulative GDP growth from 2008 to 2012 and total reduction in budget deficits due to austerity policies (see chart) in several European countries during April 2012. He concluded that: "In all, there is no evidence here that large fiscal contractions [budget deficit reductions] bring benefits to confidence and growth that offset the direct effects of the contractions. They bring exactly what one would expect: small contractions bring recessions and big contractions bring depressions." Changes in budget balances (deficits or surpluses)

The Castle of Good Hope (Dutch: Kasteel de Goede Hoop; Afrikaans: Kasteel die Goeie Hoop) is a 17th century bastion fort in Cape Town, South Africa. Originally located on the coastline of Table Bay, following land reclamation the fort is now located inland. [self-published source?] In 1936 the Castle was declared a historical monument (now a provincial heritage site) and following restorations in the 1980s it is considered the best preserved example of a Dutch East India Company fort.

Built by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679, the Castle is the oldest existing building in South Africa. It replaced an older fort called the Fort de Goede Hoop which was constructed from clay and timber and built by Jan van Riebeeckupon his arrival at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. [page needed]Two redoubts, Redoubt Kyckuit (Lookout) and Redoubt Duijnhoop (Duneheap) were built at the mouth of the Salt River in 1654.The purpose of the Dutch settlement in the Cape was to act as a replenishment station for ships passing the treacherous coast around the Cape on long voyages between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

During 1664, tensions between Great Britain and the Netherlands rose amid rumours of war. That same year, Commander Zacharias Wagenaer, successor to Jan van Riebeeck, was instructed by Commissioner Isbrand Goske to build a pentagonal fortress out of stone. The first stone was laid on 2 January 1666. The fortress was partially built by slave labour. The VOC was unsure about the size of the local population groups and thus feared a revolt if they enslaved them; instead they brought in up to 60,000 enslaved people from Madagascar, Mozambique, the Dutch-Indies, and India. Work was interrupted frequently because the Dutch East India Company was reluctant to spend money on the project. On 26 April 1679, the five bastions were named after the main titles of William III of Orange-Nassau: Leerdam to the west, with Buuren, Katzenellenbogen, Nassau, and Oranje clockwise from it. [page needed]The names of these bastions have been used as street names in suburbs in various provinces, but primarily of Cape Town, such as Stellenberg, Bellville.

Sketch of Castle of Good Hope in 1680

In 1682 the gated entry replaced the old entrance, which had faced the sea. A bell tower, situated over the main entrance, was built in 1684—the original bell, the oldest in South Africa, was cast in Amsterdam in 1697 by the East-Frisianbellmaker Claude Fremy, and weighs just over 300 kilograms (660 lb). It was used to announce the time, as well as warning citizens in case of danger, since it could be heard 10 kilometres away. It was also rung to summon residents and soldiers when important announcements needed to be made.

The French author François-Timoléon de Choisy was part of a party who resupplied at the fort in June 1685 on their way to Siam, and described the building thus:

"The fortress is very attractive. The dwellings consist of houses mostly covered in thatch, but so clean and so white that you know they are Dutch. There is a garden which the Company has laid out; I would love it to be in a corner at Versailles. As far as the eye can see there are walks of orange and lemon trees, vegetable gardens, espaliers, and dwarf trees, the whole interspersed with fresh-water springs...".

During his stay, de Choisy met with the Dutch Commissioner-General and a French chevalier named de Saint-Martin, whilst other members of the party hunted locally for "partridges, roe deer and turtledoves". The Commissioner-General added small suckling pigs and wine from the Canary Islands to their rations, indicative of the stock they kept. de Choisy noted that at the time, more than 25 of the Dutch East India Company ships were stopping annually at the Cape to take on provisions of sheep, wine, fruit and vegetables.

The fortress housed a church, bakery, various workshops, living quarters, shops, and cells, among other facilities. The yellow paint on the walls was originally chosen because it lessened the effect of heat and the sun. A wall, built to protect citizens in case of an attack, divides the inner courtyard, which also houses the De Kat Balcony, which was designed by Louis Michel Thibault with reliefs and sculptures by Anton Anreith. The original was built in 1695, but rebuilt in its current form between 1786 and 1790. From the balcony, announcements were made to soldiers, slaves and burghers of the Cape.

The balcony leads to the William Fehr Collection of paintings and antique furniture.self-published source?] The collection is administered by Iziko Museums of South Africa.

It was briefly home to Lady Anne Barnard, after whom one of the Castle function rooms is named.

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), part of the castle was used as a prison, and the former cells remain to this day. Fritz Joubert Duquesne, later known as the man who killed Kitchener and the leader of the Duquesne Spy Ring, was one of its more well-known residents. The walls of the castle were extremely thick, but night after night, Duquesne dug away the cement around the stones with an iron spoon. He nearly escaped one night, but a large stone slipped and pinned him in his tunnel. The next morning, a guard found him unconscious but alive.

In 1936, the Castle was declared an historical monument (from 1969 known as a national monument and since 1 April 2000 a provincial heritage site), the first site in South Africa to be so protected. Extensive restorations were completed during the 1980s making the Castle the best preserved example of a Dutch East India Company fort.

The Castle acted as local headquarters for the South African Army in the Western Cape, and today houses the Castle Military Museum and ceremonial facilities for the traditional Cape Regiments. The Castle is also the home of the Cape Town Highlanders Regiment, a mechanised infantry unit.

The Cape Heritage Museum, located within the historic Castle of Good Hope in South Africa, is curated by Mr. Igshaan Higgins. This museum provides an inclusive narrative of South Africa's history, highlighting the interactions among different communities such as the Khoi, San, and Dutch, through various epochs including colonialism and apartheid. It aims to offer a balanced reflection on the nation's diverse heritage and complex past.

Symbolism

Prior to being replaced in 2003, the distinctive shape of the pentagonal castle was used on South African Defence Force flags, formed the basis of some rank insignia of major and above, and was used on South African Air Forceaircraft.

•  
  The South African Defence Force Ensign from 1994 to 2003
•  
  Naval ensign of South Africa prior to 1994, showing the castle insignia
•  
  Roundel of the South African Air Force from 1982 to 2003

The Castle of Good Hope is known locally as "The Cape Castle" was built in the 17th century and is a well loved historical monument in Cape Town, South Africa. The Castle was originally built on the coastline, after city re-claimed some last from the ocean is now lies a short distance inland. The Castle was uilt as a refreshment stop for ships Traveling between Europe and Asia. Some highlights include Kat Balcony with the "Kings of the Castle", Torture Chamber & Dark Hole and Military Museum.

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Maphatsoe Outlines Plans To Attract More Visitors

8th December 2018.

Cape Town – Deputy Defence and Military Veterans Minister Kebby Maphatsoe says he would like to see the Castle of Good Hope become a place of pilgramage for citizens from all political persuasions and from all parts of the country.

“We want people to say: ‘Let’s go to Cape Town not only for the beaches, but also for the Castle, so that we can see and learn about where our king or chief was jailed.”

Maphatsoe has been in the defence and military veterans portfolio since May 26, 2014. When discussing Cape Town’s most enduring landmark, he sounds like a new broom.

Central to the commemoration of the Castle’s 350th anniversary will be the unveiling, by President Jacob Zuma tomorrow, of statues of four indigenous fighters against Dutch and British colonialism: a Goringhaiqua chief named Doman, the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, the Pedi king Sekhukhune, and Langalibalele, the king of the amaHlubi people.

“We decided on honouring these four great South African leaders because we believe that not enough effort had been made to tell about how they struggled against great odds to protect the independence of their people,” Maphatsoe said.

Each of the leaders who are being commemorated demonstrated incredibly innovative leadership in their struggles against Dutch, Boer and British colonists.

Doman launched his war against the Dutch in rainy weather, having worked out that the matchlock guns of the enemy would not fire in wet weather.

Cetshwayo’s Zulu army, armed mainly with stabbing spears, shocked imperial Britain, by inflicting a stunning defeat over its Redcoats at Isandlwana.

Sekhukhune defeated the Boers and the British in a succession of battles, while Langalibalele also repulsed attacks by colonial forces in the then Natal.

“We want the history of these leaders to be told,” says Maphatsoe.

“We know that the Castle was used as a fort, as a prison for indigenous leaders, and as a place where black people were tortured and killed – from the time of the early colonists, right up to the brutal era of the apartheid regime,” he says.

“It is important for people to know what happened between its walls. We want it to become a centre of learning, healing and memory,” Maphatsoe says.

“I would like to see communities which have always seen it as a place from where their subjugation was plotted and implemented to come to it to seek healing and closure, if that is what they want. At present, only the Khoikhoi have taken up this invitation.”

Maphatsoe understands that the process he wants to champion may take time. But there have been hopeful signs, he says.

“Groups from the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga have visited.

“Moreover, when the king of the Venda people learnt that we were going to honour the kings of the past, he contacted us to say he wanted to become involved so that he could pay his respects to the Pedi king, Sekhukhune.

“These were eye-openers for the new groups of visitors to the Castle. There is so much of South African history that they did not know. The 350th anniversary commemoration of the Castle will widen their knowledge even further,” he said.

“What they are beginning to realise is that the Castle is the genesis of our freedom. It takes us on a long journey – from oppression to freedom.”

Castle To Become A Beacon Of Inclusivity

9th December 2018.

Cape Town – With talk of decolonisation echoing through the halls of universities, talk of land reform resounding around the country and nationalisation and redistribution of wealth on the lips of almost every South African, what better place to start than the land’s oldest colonial building?

This weekend, the Castle of Good Hope turns 350, and it is fast-tracking its reimagining by unveiling four statues of men who, up until now, have been little more than footnotes in the country’s history books.

They include king of the amaHlubi, Langalibalele, whom the suburb of Langa is named after and who opposed colonial rule, and Zulu king Cetshwayo, who famously led the resounding defeat of the British army at the Battle of Isandlwana.

Another is Bapedi king Sekhukhune, who through force and political manoeuvring built his kingdom Sekhukhuneland and violently opposed British rule, handing the Boers a number of crushing defeats.

Khoikhoi interpreter Doman, who led the first resistance against the Dutch by setting up monopolies of trade, so as to grow his own people’s wealth at the expense of Jan van Riebeeck and his party.

Walking between the hallowed, majestic bastions of the castle, Leerdam, Oranje, Nassau, Katzenellenbogen and Buuren, through the govenor’s chambers, the castle barracks, old munitions storage facility and the gloomy torture chamber, on guided tours, one is reminded of the cruelty of the past.

The systems of oppression and slavery, the torturous punishment of those who tried to escape slavery, or had the temerity to worship their own gods, refusing to submit to the missionaries, who forced Christianity on the indigenous enslaved tribes.

The Castle of Good Hope, far from shying away from its dreadful past, seeks to remind us, lest we forget.

However, the castle is changing. From its original purpose as the main port of defence, to the housing of the governors of the Cape, to a tourist attraction, the castle has also become a vibrant events venue, recently hosting the inaugural Cape Town Flower Show.

Daily, there are visitors from the US, the UK, Australia, Russia, Belgium and elsewhere around the world, who come to marvel at a structure that ties together iconic parts of Cape Town – timber from the vast forests of Hout Bay in the 1660s, stone from Table Mountain, held together by powerful limestone cement made on Robben Island.

Castle Of Good Hope Commemoration A Chance To Rewrite Colonial History - Zuma

9th December 2018.

Cape Town – The 350th commemoration of the founding of the “bastion of colonialism”, the Castle of Good Hope, is an opportunity to rewrite colonial history, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.

“(It is) a standing reminder and sanctuary for the defence of a brutal system that robbed the majority of South Africans of their dignity, social identity, land and other benefits of their country’s economic potential,” Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula read from a speech Zuma was meant to have delivered.

He was unable to because of a state visit by Zambia’s president.

The castle’s history could be rewritten in a manner that was inclusive and promoted healing and nation building. Its construction marked the beginning of colonial injustice, and racial oppression.

When the governor of the Cape colony, Zacharia Wagenaar, laid the foundation stone in August 1666, the intention was to build a solid defence against two enemies: The rival European powers and the indigenous population who fought to retain their land and freedom.

READ: Spirit of Krotoa returned to the Castle of Good Hope

“The castle became the political, judicial, legislative, penal and social nerve centre of the fledgling colonial administration,” Mapisa-Nqakula said.

“It is against this background that the commemoration of the 350 year’s existence of the castle offers us a unique opportunity to revisit, reinterpret and re-write our complex, brutal colonial and apartheid history in a manner that is fully inclusive, restorative, respectful and educational.”

On the last day of the 350th commemoration, three kings and “gallant heroes and heroines who took on the might of colonial armies” were honoured with statues.

These included King Cetshwayo kaSenzangakhona of the amaZulu, King Langalibalele kaMthimkulu of the amaHlubi, King Sekhukhune of the BaPedi, and Gorochougua clan freedom fighter and Khoe (khoisan) leader Doman.

This was the beginning of a commitment to honour all those who fought against colonial conquest and inspired future generations of freedom fighters.

‘Breaking the curse’

A Centre for Memory, Healing and Learning was opened at the castle on Friday. The centre was flanked by a torture chamber and jail cells where kings and chiefs were incarcerated.

The intention of the centre, sponsored by the military veterans department, was to break the curse of “oppression, persecution and ignorance”, Mapisa-Nqakula said.

Since the castle served as a haven for colonial rulers and was a strong proponent of slavery, it was perhaps no accident that the largest contradiction and conflict around identity and race was to be found in the Western Cape, and in particular Cape Town.

“We must use this opportunity to change the mind-set of the castle being glorified as a bastion of colonialism.”

The castle had been declared a national heritage site and an application would soon be made to upgrade it to a world heritage site.

The celebrations on Friday included marching bands, praise singers, and a national salute.