Flag and map from Wikipedia
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Paths out of poverty start with clean school toilets click here
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Pictures above and right, I took at the World Cafe Live, in Philadelphia,
during a concert by the integrated South African band, Freshlyground in July 2011. I
love the picture of the line to get merchandise signed by Freshly Ground
band members. Reminds me of the photo in 1994 when South Africans were
lining up to vote for the first time. And they voted for Nelson Mandela.
Who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with F de Klerk, click here.
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SABC news feed for South Africa
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These 2 pictures I took during a celebration of the 15th anniversary
of the end of apartheid in South Africa in May 2009. Cuyler Gore in
Brooklyn.
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News feed from South Africa: Times Live from Johannesburg
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Kabilagate in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo click here
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US citizen who is a son of Congo is arrested in South Africa click here
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Helen
Suzman managed to stay in parliament in South Africa for 36 years,
representing a Johannesburg electorate. From 1953 to 1989 she was the
only consistent liberal voice opposing apartheid click here
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South Africa. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2012 v6n1 p0612
I am often told I come from South Africa, I have an off-British voice, I wear African clothes and am pale. We always want to put things and people in context, and South Africa fits who I am. I have never been to South Africa, but this southern-most country in Africa is pulling me.
I remember South Africa was a part of my life growing up in Australia. My mother was working as a physician at the Australian Veterans' Affairs, called Repatriation, and in about 1970 she moved from her paperwork job in the center if Sydney to a building next to the big public swimming pool next to Central Railway. I walked around their when I was visiting my brothers in 2010, the pool was gone, the building was gone, my mother was gone.
But I remember my mother and her boss, who was a South African Jew. He frequently hosted other South African Jews, who were doing all they could to overturn apartheid.
South
Africa and Australia are both in the southern hemisphere, and I remember
a party in Sydney in 1985 which was loud. The next door neighbor came
to complain, saying he had just flown his own plane from South Africa.
This was quite a feat, over all of the Indian Ocean and all of
Australia, so we invited him in and celebrated him in ways Australians
do best.
Long before then, I knew about South Africa as a country with an amazing medical system, which produced the world's first heart transplant in 1967. I remember so well the day it was reported. I was 16, and after school had spent the afternoon on the City of Sydney Public Library borrowing enough books to last me a week. I was waiting for a bus next to Hyde Park, and I saw a headline, saying that in South Africa, a beating heart from one person had been sewn into another person.
Dr Christiaan Barnard in Groote Schuur Hospital in Capetown. He instantly became a superstar.
His brother Marius Barnard was a heart surgeon on the team of the first heart transplant with Christiaan Barnard, and he kept fixing people's hearts, and invented catastrophic medical insurance. He is still living, still working.
Hard work, and belief you can do something took the Drs Barnard a long way, and their faithfulness has impacted the lives of a lot, a lot of people.
I loved reading this week of a man in England who decided that the pinnacle of his achievements as a master engraver was to engrave on the sharp end of a razor blade the words "Nothing is impossible". He is described as swimming compulsively to lower his heart rate, and using a stethoscope during his night engraving sessions so that he only engraved in the time when his heart was not beating. Nothing is impossible, indeed!
MJoTA has published a lot about South Africa, to access these resources, click here.
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