A selection of significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, on this day over the ages
1789 HMS Bounty mutiny survivors – Captain William Bligh and 18 others – reach Timor after an incredible feat of seamanship in an open boat, covering 7 400km of ocean.
1928 Poet, medical doctor and revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, one of the most famous guerrilla leaders in history, is born in Rosario, Argentina. Referring to Che’s “restless” nature, his father declared “the first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels”. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution dubbed three years later “Castro’s brain” , he became a countercultural symbol of rebellion in popular culture. While a young medical student, Guevara travelled throughout South America and was radicalised by the poverty, hunger, and disease he saw. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the US. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while a photograph of him, Guerrillero Heroico, was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as “the most famous photograph in the world”. A main street in Durban honours him.
1929 General JMB Hertzog’s National Party wins the general election, and race plays a big role. (Hertzog said Smuts’s party supported racial equality and a Nationalist vote was for a “white South Africa”.)
1985 Army special forces attack ANC properties in Gaborone, Botswana, and 12 or 13 people are killed, one of them Thami Mnyele, an artist and member of MK.
1986 Three people die and 69 are injured when a MK cell, led by Robert McBride, plants a bomb in a car outside Durban’s popular Why Not Magoo’s Bar, where they believe security police and SADF members from near-by Natal Command hang out. McBride is later granted a reprieve from death row and amnesty by the TRC. He becomes a high-level policeman and a senior member of the State Security Agency, but keeps courting controversy.
2005 President Thabo Mbeki sacks Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
2021 Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo removes the sponsor’s coke bottles from his press table at the European Championships. He urges people to drink water. Cokes shares drop a staggering $4 billion.