1. The Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto
Some cool South African Youth Hostels images:
The Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto
This is the view of the medical facility looking south from Healthcare facility Footbridge in
Diepkloof , Soweto in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. The bridge spans the
Potchefstroom Roadway at the north of the medical center. The healthcare facility’s entrance
gates are at the position of marker A on this map. Potchefstroom is a town lying about 110 km
southwest of Soweto.
As can be seen from this Street View, the construction described in the yellow notice on the
photo has been finished and the entrance is open once more. The StreetView additionally
shows that bridge itself has actually been covered over since we were there in 2007 when it
looked much more like this.
The Chris Hani Baragwanath Healthcare facility is reputedly the biggest hospital in the globe,
occupying 173 acres, with 3200 beds and 6760 personnel members. There’s an aerial view of
the site here. The hospital was opened by the then Prime Minister, Jan Smuts on 23 September
1942. It was the middle of WWII and six years were to pass prior to the seeds of apartheid were
to be grown by Smuts’ successor, Daniel Malan. Throughout the opening ceremony, Smuts
stated that after the war the Imperial Military Medical facility, Baragwanath, as it was then called,
would be used for the Black population of the Witwatersrand. In the meantime the medical
facility would be treating the war casualties. At first they were mainly from the Center East
command but, to the end of the war, the medical facility began to specialize in tuberculosis
clients, both from the Center East Command and from the Far East Command.
The hospital was built alongside the site of a hostel founded by John Albert Baragwanath
(1842-1928), a Cornishman who had emigrated to South Africa in the 1890?s. He was born in
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2. Falmouth, but the family members’s roots were in Towednack near St Ives. There are still
Baragwanaths in South Africa. Check out about them here, here and right here.
In 1948 Smuts’ United Party was defeated by the National Party led by Malan. A couple of years
later, South Africa left the British Commonwealth. This made” Imperial” an inappropriate
summary so the establishment was relabelled Baragwanath Medical facility. Check out even
more about the history of the medical center right here and about how it is in the present day
here. In 1997, the medical center, already by then one of the biggest on the planet, was
renamed the Chris Hani Baragwanath Medical center in his memory. Nowadays it accepts more
than 2 thousand customers daily. About half of them are HIV positive.
It’s stated that, in his time, Chris Hani was the most popular member of the leadership of the
ANC after Nelson Mandela– specifically amongst the poorest neighborhoods. He was born as
Martin Thembisile Hani, the fifth of six youngsters, on June 28, 1942 in kuSabalele in the
Transkei (now the Eastern Cape). That region was the place of origin of lots of other leaders of
South Africa’s protest motions– names such as Nelson Mandela himself, Walter Sisulu,
Clarence Makwetu, Bathandwa Ndondo, Lindiwe Msengana-Ndlela, Steve Biko and Matthew
Goniwe were all born in and around the Eastern Cape.
Chris Hani went to Lovedale school and went on to study literature at the University of Fort Hare
. When 15 he enrolled with the ANC Youth League and engaded in protests against the Bantu
Education and learning Act. After finishing, he enrolled with Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed
wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1963 he was exiled to Lesotho where he was
the target of assassination efforts. He obtained military exercise in the Soviet Union and, after
serving in the Rhodesian Shrub War in just what is now Zimbabwe, he transferred to the ANC’s
head office in Lusaka, Zambia coming to be head of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
In February 1990, President F.W. de Klerk revealed the lifting of the bans on the ANC, the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and thirty-one other
organizations which, unitl then, had been declared to be illegal by the apartheid regime. Soon
after, Chris Hani went back to South Africa and took over from Joe Slovo § as head of the
SACP in 1991. He supported the suspension of the ANC’s armed battle in favor of negotiations.
On 10 April 1993, Chris Hani was executed by a Polish far-right immigrant named Janusz
Walu?, who shot him in the head as he stepped out of his automobile. Walu? ran away the
scene, however was detained soon afterwards after Hani’s neighbor, a white female, called the
police. Clive Derby-Lewis, a senior South African Conservative Party M.P., who had actually
provided Walu? his pistol, was additionally apprehended for complicity in Hani’s murder.
Derby-Lewis was attempted and sentenced to death for his duty in the assassination but the
sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when capital punishment was banned in 1995.
In June 2010 Derby-Lewis obtained parole on the grounds that he was over 70, and was
entitled to parole in regards to South African law for having served in extra of 15 years in prison.
In November 2010, Derby-Lewis’ lawyer stated that Derby-Lewis was receiving treatment for
skin cancer and prostate cancer, hypertension, and for a gangrenous spot in his leg. The
Correctional Services department reported that a choice on his parole could possibly be
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3. announced in early December. As at March 2011 I do not understand whether such an
announcement was made.
The Diepkloof area of Soweto has associations with Alan Paton, the author of the inspirational
publication Cry, the Beloved Country that was composed in 1946 while the writer was exploring
Europe and America. Smuts was still Prime Minister of South Africa while the publication was
being written however by 1948, when the book was released, the National Party had actually
won power and the seeds of Apartheid were being sown. There is a mention of the hospital in
the book.
Paton was born in 1903 in Pietermaritzburg capital of exactly what was then Natal and is now
KwaZulu-Natal. He was the Principal of the nearby Diepkloof Reformatory from July 1935 to
June 1948. In Diepkloof– Representations of Diepkloof Reformatory, Clyde Broster, senior
English master at Rondebosch Boys’ Senior high school, Cape Town, has selected some
extractions from Paton’s works that were motivated by his time at the Reformatory. First in the
collection is To a Small Boy Who Died at Diepkloof Reformatotory– a poem in memory of a
6-year-old pupil of the Reformatory. I rely on that such a boy, should he have actually offended
nowadays, would be much more humanely treated. Additionally in the publication is a poignant
short tale about a boy called Ha ‘cent spent time in the Reformatory in the very early 1940s. It
could be read in full right here. It’s just a few web pages long– however it’s well worth reading.
Alan Paton perished in 1988– simply prior to the ANC Government took power. He had regularly
opposed the apartheid routine and many of his specified beliefs are now enshrined in South
Africa’s Expense of Rights.
A couple of days prior to very first writing this in January 2009 I had actually heard the updates
of the death of Helen Suzman, an excellent South African dissident with Lithuanian Jewish
ancestry. Suzman was born in Germiston in the Witwatersrand in 1917 and first got in the South
African Parliament in 1953 as a member of the fast-declining United Party. She later switched to
the Progressive Party which ultimately came to be the Progressive Reform Party. At one phase
Suzman was the only woman– and the only member opposing apartheid– in the South African
Parliament. Suzman typically asked questions in parliament about abuses of civil rights. On one
such celebration, a cabinet minister hollered at her “You put these concerns simply to
embarrass South Africa overseas.” She responded “It is not my concerns that embarrass South
Africa– it is your responses”. Her Progressive Reform Party was one of those which merged to
become the present-day Democratic Alliance (South_Africa), now (February 2009) the official
opposition party in the South African Parliament. Helen Suzman stood beside Nelson Mandela,
the country’s very first black president, when he signed the new constitution in 1996.
Joe Slovo (1926-1995) was an additional excellent South African dissident with Lithuanian
Jewish origins. His household emigrated to South Africa in 1934 when he was eight. He joined
the SACP in 1942 and in the early 1960?s was important in forming an alliance between the
Communists and the ANC. In 1963 he was exiled and lived in Britain for a while. In was selected
general assistant of the SACP in1984 and returned to South Africa in 1990. He perished of
cancer in 1995. A settlement east of Cape Town has been named after him.
In case you’re asking yourself, the Motorizr Z3 is (or perhaps was) a smart phone.
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4. Images of some of individuals described in this description can be seen in my remark below.
Others could be seen by clicking on the appropriate links that follow. A few of the links contain
extra info:
Chris Hani
Jan Smuts
Daniel Malan
Nelson Mandela and Helen Suzman (scroll down to see four relevant images)
Walter Sisulu
Clarence Makwetu
Steve Biko
F.W. de Klerk
Janusz Walu?
Clive Derby-Lewis
Alan Paton
Joe Slovo
Robert Cutts, bob@winton.me.uk
This description was first integrated in June 2007 and has been revised and increased several
times since. The present version dates from March 2011.
Image published: June 2007 (approx)
500th view: 4 September 2009
1000th view: 4 November 2009
1500th view: 11 January 2010
2000th view: 16 March 2010
2500th view: 24 May 2010
3000th view: 27 August 2010
4000th view: 20 February 2011
5000th view: 14 June 2011
6000th view: 6 November 2011
7000th view: 30 March 2012
8000th view: 28 August 2012
More information on South African experience at :
http://southafricanexperience.com/the-chris-hani-baragwanath-hospital-soweto/
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