Tag: South Africa stamp

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Natal, Boers to the left, Zulus to the right and stuck in the middle with the Indians

An adventurer faces many challenges. In todays case, a large and growing colony was established, but only after he paid with his life. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Natal was really surrounded. Three quarters of the people were Zulus and their off shoot, the Matebilli. They had killed the founder of the British Colony. There were about ten percent Boers, whites of Dutch decent, that had eventually lost a bloody war with the English. Another 10 percent were Indians brought in as indentured servants. That left the British the smallest minority. The British must have liked to see the portrait of Edward VII on todays stamp as a sign they had some support when trouble came. It is probably for this reason that every postage stamp issued by the colony was a portrait of the British monarch.

Todays stamp is issue A23, a half penny stamp issued by the British Crown Colony of Natal in 1902. It was part of a 16 stamp issue of various denominations showing the portrait of British King Edward VII. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents used. The 20 pound revenue stamp from this issue is worth $27,500 mint. Not many people would buy an expensive revenue stamp and then not use it to pay their taxes apparently.

Francis Farewell was a Captain in the British Merchant Marine. He married the daughter of a Cape Town merchant and scouted out a place to set up a trade post. His idea was to get into the ivory trade. Finding Port Natal, he returned with thirty settlers, 10 British and 20 Boers. He made a deal with the Zulu leader Shaka  for the land. after several petitions and further migration from Britain, Natal was accepted as a British Colony.

Zulu King Shaka. This image is European from 1824 of the actual man. Many modern statues of him are modeled after later actor portrayals.

It was found that sugar cane production was most suited to the local climate. This is very labour intensive, and the Zulus were unwilling to do the work. Indians were then brought in as indentured servants but many stayed and formed a local community that was at one point the largest Indian community outside of India. Gandhi even visited in 1898 to raise money for the struggle at home and helped found an association to prevent discrimination.

A modern museum diorama of Gandhi’s Natal visit. It is strange to see Gandhi with hair and dressed western instead of how he is remembered today. Wonder which image was the real him?

Farewell did not do so well. He travelled to the Zulu capital to trade beads. He was killed by Zulu warriors while asleep in his tent. Shaka had been deposed by his brother Dingane and things were no longer friendly. A war between the British and the Zulus was fought with the British winning and adding much Zulu territory to Natal. The Boer war later added much Boer territory to Natal. In 1910 Natal was merged to form the Union of South Africa.

Natal Colony founder Francis Farewell

Interestingly, in 1980 the apartheid South African government set up a separate state of KwaZulu as a homeland for the Zulus. It was under the former royal family of Zululand. KwaZulu was not recognized by any other country and was reintegrated by now majority ruled South Africa in 1994. The province is now called KwaZulu-Natal. Francis Farewell still has a  square named after him in Durban.

Well my drink is empty. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

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South Africa 1977, Then a time to remember but now a time to forget Totius in South Africa

A learned and pious man makes it his life’s work to translate the bible into his native tongue. The place he is from honors him with a statue sculpted by a local. Now that statue is vandalized and taken down, more than once. Why, because of the color of his skin, in the name of “justice”. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today is an issue of the apartheid regime of South Africa. As such, it is understandable to dig deeper at what the South African regime was honoring. A man who translated the bible, wrote poetry, and was the chancellor of a religious university. Sounds like uncontroversial  good work. Well not in todays world.

The stamp today is issue A189, a four cent stamp issued by the Republic of South Africa on February 21, 1977. It was a single stamp issue that honored the 100th anniversary of the birth of  Jacob de Toit, who wrote under the pen name Totius. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Totius was born in South Africa of Afrikaner decent. He was trained at home and in Holland and earned a Doctor of Theology in the Dutch Reform church. He was a army chaplain for the Boers in the second Boer War. He continued his fathers work in translating the Bible into Afrikaner. He also wrote poetry including lyrics based on the Psalms in Afrikaner. He was a conservative man who lost his young son to an infection and his daughter to a lightning strike, she fell dead into his arms as she ran to him. His poem on this, “Oh the pain thoughts” is one of his most famous works. He finished his translation of the Bible in 1932 and died in 1954.

South Africa did a lot to remember Totius in 1977 upon the 100th anniversary of his birth. In addition to the postage stamp, there was a bronze statue by Jo Roos to him commissioned. The statue as not faired well since the change in government. After being repeatedly vandalized it was removed from the park in his home town. The University where he was Chancellor then took it in 2010 and had it restored by Jo Roos and his sons. It lasted just 5 years at the university until it was removed again in a vandalized state in 2015. The church may still have it, hopefully they keep it hidden perhaps for some future time when all people’s history is respected in South Africa.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to toast Totius. South Africa was a rough place in the 19th century and apparently still is. Work to bring the Word of God and a little culture should be respected and one day it might be, not just forgotten. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

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South Africa 1991, keeping a manned science station on Antarctica

We have done a few of these Antarctica stamps. No South Africa doesn’t put out stamps from their Antarctic stations like some others. In 1991 they put out this issue to give hints about what they had going on. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This issue was on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. The treaty allows nations to have scientific stations on Antarctica but they must not be militarized. You might be surprised that South Africa took advantage of that but they have a long presence that continues.

Todays stamp is issue A280, a 27 Cent stamp issued by South Africa on December 5th, 1991. It was a two stamp issue in various denominations, this one showing the research vessel S A Agulhas. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

South Africa maintains 3 scientific stations in the South Pole region with one each on Marion  and Gough Islands and the SANAE IV station on the Antarctic mainland. To keep them manned year round is quite an undertaking and the research vessel S A Agulhas was acquired in 1978 from Japan. It is not a full icebreaker but the hull is ice strengthened. The ship is the size of a large destroyer and can accommodate 200 people. Of special importance in the hanger accommodation for 2 large Oryx helicopters. An Oryx is a South African copy  of a French Puma helicopter. Remember the ship must visit all three stations annually to replace staff and carry adequate supplies to last through the winter. All waste from the stations must be taken away as well.

I mentioned that the current mainland station is called SANAE IV. Stations tend to have a short life because over not much time at all the get buried in the snow. The current station was built in 1997 and raised up on stilts to avoid this and to just let the snow blow through. This design has been copied by newer stations. It houses 10 in winter and 50 in summer.

SANAE IV station. Notice the stilts and the red painted roofs to make it more visible from the air

The Agulhas had a bad December 1991 despite being honoured that month with a stamp. The ships rudder broke and it got stuck in a ice drift off of Gough Island. The German icebreaker and research ship R V Polarstern was able to free it. In 2002 The Agulhas’s helicopters were able to free the crew of the Russian cargo vessel M V Magdalina  Oldendorff. Part of the Antarctic Treaty is that everybody cooperates regarding safety.

Not everything is safe on board though and not just from the cold. There have been two shipboard murders on board. One by axe and one by stabbing. The charges were dropped in the first case and the suspect in the second case went overboard to escape justice. The ship was replaced in 2012 in it’s Antarctic duties by the Finnish made S A Agulhas II. Agulhas still serves as a training vessel.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the hearty crews of Antarctica stations and the ships that supply them. Sounds like great adventure but I wish they would describe more what scientific advances are being made. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Basutoland, Would Her Majesty help a fellow King with the Boers

We have done several stamps from the former colonies of South Africa before it federated. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/04/27/natal-boers-to-the-left-zulus-to-the-right-and-stuck-in-the-middle-with-the-indians/ Most had white rule, but not all and today comes a stamp from an area that kept black rule and stayed independent even as South Africa transitioned to majority rule. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Aesthetically this stamp is both quite old fashioned and yet up to date. The British policy toward the African colonies was about to change. The new policy became known as the writing is on the wall. It meant that the British were going to leave and turn over power to the majority blacks. This was most controversial in the south where there were more white settlers that couldn’t see themselves under black rule. Lots of old history now but look who is on this stamp from even earlier, the current Queen of Great Britain. It is amazing to think how long she has been guiding the ship of the Empire/Commonwealth.

Todays stamp is issue A7, a 3 Pence stamp issued by the British Crown Colony of Basutoland on October 18th, 1954. It was part of an eleven stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

Basutoland was ruled by King Moshoeshoe I. He had been successful in raiding neighboring cattle herds earning him the name the razor. He sensed early on that if his empire was to survive he needed to procure a white advisor. The appearance of Christian missionaries provided that. He also was able to acquire some firearms for his warriors. His warriors therefore did surprisingly well against Zulu and British rivals. In victory, Moshoeshoe was conciliatory and so wars were just incidents not long battles and the British established friendly relations.

King Moshoeshoe I

This would prove useful when the Boers came for the land. Boers, Dutch heritage South Africans sent what they called trekkers into Basuto land from the Orange Free State. Again Moshoeshoe had early military success against them but the Boers kept coming in ever greater numbers. King Moshoeshoe appealed to Queen Victoria for help. A deal was struck with the Boers making Basutoland a British Crown Colony with new borders that ended the Boer intrusion. Moshoeshoe I was kept on has Paramount Chief with substantial powers. The area remained far less than one percent white.

As the British read their writing on the wall in the 50s and 60s, the then current Paramount Chief was named King Moshoeshoe II of the new Kingdom of Lesotho. Relations with apartheid South Africa were tense as the ANC had a presence in Lesotho, but British pressure again kept the Boers out. Lesotho decided not to join the new South Africa   in the 1990s and Moshoeshoe I’s Royal line still sits on Lesotho’s Throne. All this stability has not translated into prosperity. The GNP per person is about one sixth that of not rich South Africa, and much of that is from remittances of Lesotho citizens working in South Africa.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the Catholic missionaries that got King Moshoeshoe’s ear. You would think that advise from missionaries would just be of a spiritual nature but their good advise lead to a stability and continuity unusual in the region. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

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South Africa 1966, A tiny minority can go it alone because they have diamonds, but do they?

Apartheid South Africa thought they could  break off from Britain and the whole world because of the wealth created by diamonds. How well though did they really control it? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The aesthetics of the stamp tell a powerful story with a simple rendering of a diamond. There is a version of the stamp with the country name in English so as not to crowd out the image with superfluous text as with some bilingual Canadian stamps. This stamp recognized the 5th anniversary of the formal declaring of a white republic and the end of British Commonwealth and Dominion status. The issue included a view of Table Mountain, to show beauty, corn to show self sufficiency, a flying bird to show the freedoms enjoyed by the white minority, but the most interesting one to me is the majestic view given to the diamond. To have the view that rule by a small minority was sustainable, what better than show a source of unending wealth. How well though was the diamond resource controlled? Perhaps less directly than the stamp implies.

Todays stamp is issue A126 a one cent stamp issued by the Republic of South Africa on May 31st, 1966. It was part 8 stamp issue in vaious denominations celebrating the 5th anniversary of the unilateral declaration of republic status. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

Diamonds were first mined in South Africa in the colonial period after being discovered by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes was a homosexual and therefore lacked heirs who could run the operation after his death. Into the void came a mining engineer named Oppenheimer that had emigrated from Germany and invested in the De Beers operation. He converted to Anglican and started the Anglo- American mining that merged with de Beers. By then the de Beers operation controlled 90 percent of the worlds diamond mining. In addition to Southern African production, they bought the output of other producers and routed the output through a system of diamond cutters in Israel. The spread out structure of the operation allowed de Beers to get around sanctions. To the Israelis it was a Jewish concern, opposed to Apartheid and employing many blacks. To London operations, the diamonds were coming from Israel. De Beers was 10 percent of the GNP of South Africa and 40 percent of the exports. All the middlemen meant that South Africa was not getting as rich as it might have had the operation been more purely South African. Yet that would have subject to the sanctions that fell on South Africa after breaking the ties to Britain.

In the 1950s, the British saw the writing on the wall and were preparing to turn over the African colonies to local African leaders. To a place like South Africa, with a relatively large number of white residents this was threatening as they did not see black rule as realistic. Unilaterally, South Africa ended Dominion status and declared itself an independent Republic. Only whites voted on this and the measure only carried 52-48. Over time, ever greater international sanctions fell on South Africa in order to pressure them to face the inevitable. South Africa however was by far the richest country in Africa and even their repressed black residents enjoyed a much higher standard of living than black run former colonies to the north. This attracted ever more black Africans to move to South Africa while there was a steady stream of whites out. Eventually a deal was struck and white rule ended.

Ever resourceful de Beers goes on. It had always maintained an official position against white rule and has been generous with new black governments in the area. A new trick is the blood diamond. de Beers announced in 1999 that no diamonds would be sourced from countries in Africa with long running civil wars. This helped delegitimize alternate to de Beers sources of diamonds. The diamonds were supporting long running civil wars in places like Sierra Leonne and Angola but it does seem to be throwing rocks from a glass house.

Well my drink is empty and I am left staring at the majestic diamond on todays stamp. The decision to break with Britain and try to continue alone could not have been easy. They must have been heavily counted on wealth from de Beers, so much of which was syphoned off. The original blood diamond? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Cape of Good Hope 1875, don’t tell us how to run our colony

Colonists are a long way from home, but that does not mean they want the home country telling them what to do. This is especially true if the instructions will complicate their life. So slip on your smoking jacket fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today features Hope, the Latin female embodiment of the English colony. Such visualizations were much more common in the 19th century. It is worth noting that the first British monarch did not appear on a Cape of Good Hope stamp till 1902. This is reflective of the poor relations between Britain and the colony.

The stamp today is issue A6, a half penny stamp issued by the Cape of Good Hope Colony in 1875. It is part of a 12 stamp issue in various denominations issued over many years. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $16 used.

The Cape of Good Hope is on the coast of Southern Africa about 90 miles west of the division between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. There is a legend that an Indian junk landed around 1000 AD but the Portuguese arrived in the 1490s. Local African Hottentots in the area were nomadic hunter/gatherers with no fixed settlements. The first settlements were Dutch under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, as a natural stop on the India trade. The Dutch settlers, called Boers, many of whom were German or French Huguenots, often trekked far inland in search of prime farmland. The Colony fell to the British during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1834, the British banned slavery and this sent many of the remaining Boers to Transvaal and the Orange Free State. There had been trouble with the native Xhosa tribe. This trouble dropped away when the Xhosa chief was convinced that if the tribe killed it’s own cattle and burned its crops and clothes that their ancestors who rise up from the dead and kill all the white settlers. The British settlers seeing what was happening, left food out for them, but the tribe decimated itself. This tragedy had the silver lining that the Cape colony became unusually peaceful and prosperous with it’s place on the India trade route.

Into this success came the colony masters from London. They had the idea to federate the multiple colonies of southern Africa into a federation modeled on what had recently been done with Canada. This did not take into account the different ethnicities of the white settlers and the still African ruled homelands in the area. The Cape Governor John Molteno fought the British intrusion as best he could, understanding that other areas of South Africa were much less stable and plagued with wars. He was British, but of half Italian decent and his first wife and child were mixed race. He was a trader and farmer and a rougher character than the British were used to. The British deposed Molteno and sent a new governor from Britain to try to pull off the home country’s federation idea. This did not go well with the outside governor leading a disastrous war with the Zulus and he was eventually sent back to London under charges. South Africa did not unite for another 30 years.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to the toast the white settlers of the Cape that left out food for the suiciding Xhosa tribe. The Xhosa’s hatred must have been very strong to do what they did. It was a touching act of Christian grace to reach out and try to save them from themselves. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collected.

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The Dutch Reform Faith Healer

Welcome readers to today’s offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take the first sip of your favorite adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Todays story will be new to most of you.

Todays stamp is labeled RSA. This means it comes from South Africa and was issued in the later years of the apartheid government. Earlier South African stamps were labeled Suid-Africa. Today South Africa is how the stamps are labeled. RSA stood for the Republic of South Africa.

Our stamp today is issue A197, a four cent stamp issued on May 9th, 1978. The stamp was issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Andrew Murray. According to the Scott catalog, it is worth 25 cents, whether mint or cancelled.

Dr. Andrew Murray was a minister, an educator, an evangelist, an author, and a faith healer. He was born in Graaf Reinet, South Africa in 1828 to a French mother and a Scottish father. He was educated in Scotland and the Netherlands and began his faith journey in the Dutch Reform Church.

Much or Dr. Murray’s early work involved education. Achievements in this field included schools for girls, who prior to his time were underserved. He was also the first President of the South African YMCA. Dr. Murray somehow found the time to author 240 books on Christian issues.

Dr. Murray is very involved from his early years in a new revival of Christianity called the Keswick movement. They very much believed in the healing power of prayer. The praying for the healing of maladies and exorcism of demons was controversial among the more conservative church authorities. Indeed the movement is considered discredited by some Christians. By others however,  the Keswick movement is respected as a precursor to the Pentecostal movement.

I suspect that the doctrinal differences are not what is being celebrated by this South African stamp. The work in rural education is being honored. Dr. Murray’s evangelical movement spread to other countries in Africa and the South Africa General Mission that he founded is the root of the Serving in Mission organization that is active in Africa to this day.

South Africa today would probably not find Dr. Murray worthy of a stamp issue today. This though is one of the great things about stamp collecting. The commissioning of stamps goes on for such a long period that one gets to see different perspectives and ideologies reflected in them. Through the stamp of a long ago era, we can put ourselves in the position of a citizen of the day. We then can imagine how they viewed the world being presented to them by their government.  This can be extra interesting when the government is controversial and even deeply flawed.

Well, my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.