“Port St. Johns (or Port Saint Johns) is a town of about 6,500 people on the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated at the mouth of the Umzimvubu River, 220 kilometres (140 mi) northeast of East London and 70 kilometres (40 mi) east of Mthatha.

Port St. Johns is situated on the Wild Coast, a coastline of about 270 km long, boasting some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the country. It lies at the mouth of the Mzimvubu River, a river flowing through an impressive gorge known as the “Gates of St John” into an estuary located on the Indian Ocean. On both sides of the river ravine are high sandstone mountain peaks: Mount Thesiger (342 meter above sea level) andMount Sullivan (304 meter), named after two British Military officers.

It is the main settlement in the Port St. Johns Local Municipality which forms part of the O.R. Tambo District Municipality in Pondoland of the former Transkei. According to the 2011 census it had a population of 6,441, of whom 90% where Xhosa-speaking.^[2]

The climate is humid subtropical (Köppen: Cfa).

This town is thought to have been named after a Portuguese ship (the São João),^[6] which was actually wrecked at Port Edward.^[7] Later seafarers mistakenly identified the mouth of the Umzimvubu River as the site of this wreck.^[6]

The town was established in the 1880s by the British, after negotiations with local Pondo chiefs for rights to the banks of the river and adjacent territories.^[6] The river mouth was used as a port, however this activity was abandoned in the 1940s due to siltation, which caused the river to become too shallow for vessels.” ~ Wikipedia

Photography, Travel

Devan of Chatsworth

November 15, 2014 Andrew Harvard 2 Comments

Wikipedia ~ “Chatsworth, is a large suburb created in the 1960s to house the predominantly South Africa Indian population. The suburb is situated in South Durban basin in South Africa and is roughly bordered by the Umhlatuzana River in the North and Umlaas River in the South.

In the 1940s, The Pegging Acts and the Ghetto Act were passed. These acts gave the government the right to remove and destroy shacks and small self-made shelters, with the putative intention of improving sanitary conditions. This led to the Group Areas Act of June 1950, which designated certain areas for the Whites and other areas for Indians, Coloureds and Africans. Indians were removed from areas such as Mayville, Cato Manor, the Clairwood, Magazine Barracks, Bluff, Riverside, Prospect Hall, Duikerfontein and Sea Cow Lake. The removed populace was moved into primarily the two large Indian suburbs of Phoenix, which is situated North of Durban, and Chatsworth in the South.

During the later 1940s and early 1950s, there were advertisements in the papers of an exclusively Indian suburb, Umhlatuzana. Then in the early 1960s Chatsworth was planned, opening in 1964 and consisting of eleven neighbourhood units. Modern day Chatsworth is spread over seven municipal wards which all fall roughly in the South Central municipal area. Chatsworth was deliberately built to act as buffer between white residential areas and the large African township of Umlazi.”

Photography

Pondo Mornings

November 13, 2014 Andrew Harvard 2 Comments

Wikipedia “The Pondo or Phondo^[1] are a Xhosa speaking ethnic group who have given their name to Pondoland, a sub-region comprising much of the northern seaboard of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The Pondo comprise several tribal groups, and after years of assimilation, are usually classed as a sub-group of the amaXhosa.

Their territory was annexed peacefully to the Cape Colony in 1884: missionary work had already begun in 1873 on the initiative of Henry Callaway, Bishop of St John’s Kaffraria.^[2]

The Pondo Revolt (1960–1962) was the result of the resistance of the Pondo people against the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act, part of the Apartheid legislation. Under the Apartheid ideology, separate development of the various ethnic groups of South Africa was proposed and part of that was to segregate black Africans into ‘homelands’ that were granted independence from South Africa.

Transkei was the homeland that incorporated all of Pondoland and its people, in addition to other Xhosa tribes such as the Gcaleka, in what used to be the eastern reaches of the then Cape Province”.

Photography, Travel

South Beach Durban

November 11, 2014 Andrew Harvard Leave a comment

Nifty-Fifty 1.8 II from Orms @ F10, ISO 3200, speed various, panorama, Canon South Africa 6D body. This is the 1.1MB JPG; the 328 MB TIF is a lot sharper (although over sharpened in places) — in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.