SUNDAY ARTICLE SUNDAY ARTICLE
Sunday, 10 July 1836
Sir William Cornwallis Harris was born in Wittersham, Kent on 2 April 1807, and was educated at military college. After this he was posted as second lieutenant in the East India Company’s Bombay Establishment, and spent several years in India.
In India, Harris began to take part in field sports and took to sketching animals. When he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1824, Harris moved to Cape Town, where he went on to hunting and sketching local fauna after recovering from a prolonged illness.
On 10 July 1836, Harris and William Richardson of the Bombay Civil Service began a hunting trip that began in Algoa Bay (present day Port Elizabeth) and went as far into the interior as the Western Transvaal and Magaliesberg.
On this trip, Harris observed the conflict between the Voortrekkers and the Matabele, and was the first White person to observe the sable antelope, a specimen and description of which was sent to the Zoological Society of London.
Harris went on to conduct further expeditions into the Kalahari and present day Ethiopia, and was the first person to write a book on big game hunting in Africa, The wild sports of Southern Africa (1839), along with several other books.
Harris passed away from fever in Poona, India in 1848, while working as an engineer.
Thursday, 10 July 1969
The lengthy and expensive trial of Laurence Gandar and Benjamin Pogrund, of the Rand Daily Mail, on charges under the Prisons Act, ends with both being found guilty but receiving light sentences. They had been accused of publishing untrue information about prisons. The press won a moral victory, but the trial discouraged editors from publishing reports on prison conditions.
Thursday, 10 July 1986
The South African Police (SAP) and the South African Defence Force (SADF) ambushed and killed six alleged Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) members on the Breslau Road near Alldays. It emerged later during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings that their killing was a well planned and calculated thing. The operation was launched in response to information received about a planned infiltration, via Botswana, of a group of six heavily armed MK guerrillas. When the minibus carrying the MK guerillas, driven by Constable Sehlwana who was appointed to meet the group at the border under the pretext of being a taxi driver, stopped at the designated place, shooting between the police and Mk members ensued. Five of them were killed and the remaining guerrilla, alive though badly wounded, was taken away for interrogation. During interrogation, a military medic gave him an injection to stabilise his condition but he died later, on the way to Alldays. The following applied for amnesty for their role in this incident, J.H. Kruger, L.M Pretorius, M.M Sehlwana, N.S. Coetzee, P.A. Dreyer, Jan Strydom, Senior Superintendent A.J.G Erwee, P.T.C.J. Fourie, P.P.F Fuchs , FCS Swarts , J.P. van den Berg , W.J. van der Merwe, J.H. van Dyk and Josef Venter.
Wednesday, 10 July 1991
The International Cricket Council (ICC) agreed to grant full membership to the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA), which would allow South African players to participate in test matches by the end of 1991. South Africa had ceased to be a member of the ICC after leaving the British Commonwealth in May 1961. The country had been suspended from all cricket activities in 1970, to be re-instituted as a member after the formation of a new body, the UCBSA, to oversee the administration of all cricket activities. In contrast with past practice, this body was inclusive of all cricket players in South Africa, regardless of race.
Wednesday, 10 July 1991 Foreign Minister R.F. (Pik) Botha signed accession to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) on behalf of South Africa. This opened South Africa’s nuclear facilities for inspection. South Africa became the first nation in history to ever rollback its nuclear capability. Nuclear rollback occurs when a nation voluntarily achieves one or more of the following: eliminates its nuclear weapons, relinquishes at least some of the technical means to acquire nuclear weapons, or accepts a control regime to prevent it from going nuclear. The nuclear safeguards agreement entered into force on 16 September 1991.
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