30-07-2025
Chinese, Japanese, does it matter? Of course it does, and all the more so when it's your wife!
Lawyer and political visionary Anton Lembede (1914-1947), and after whom a main street in Durban is named, was the founding President of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, formed in 1944 to counteract the 'passivity' of the ANC's older leadership. He was born near Pietermaritzburg on the white-owned farm where his father worked. His mother was a teacher, and she home-schooled him until age 13. On entering formal education, Lembede achieved exceptional results and eventually qualified as a teacher himself. In the 1930s, while stationed in the Orange Free State (and studying through Unisa), he encountered Afrikaner nationalism. Employing his training in philosophy, he espoused a rival modernised African nationalism, which advocated independence from white liberalism and international communism. Lembede's spirit underpinned the ANC's new militancy and the formulation of its 1949 Programme of Action. But Lembede did not live to enjoy the movement's successes of the 1950s (including the Defiance Campaign) – he died in 1947 aged 33
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On this day in history, July 30
1870 The diggers on the diamond fields between the Vaal and the Harts Rivers proclaim Klipdrift a republic, with Stafford Parker as first (and only) president.
1930 Uruguay wins the first Fifa World Cup.
1935 The first Penguin book is published, starting the paperback revolution.
1945 A Japanese submarine sinks the USS Indianapolis – which ferried the atomic bomb from the US to an airbase on a Pacific island from where it was loaded on a bomber and dropped on Hiroshima – killing 883 seamen. Most die during over four days; some by sharks, others by dehydration. The loss of the ship is a great embarrassment for the US Navy – it is the greatest loss of life at sea from a single ship in the history of the US Navy which only noticed that the ship was missing three days later. Captain McVay, the ship's commander, is vilified and dies by his own hand. In 2000, Congress passes a resolution, signed by president Bill Clinton, that McVay's record should state that he be exonerated for the loss of Indianapolis. Although several hundred US Navy ships of the were lost in World War II, McVay was the only captain court-martialed for the sinking of his ship.
1947 Anton Lembede, teacher, lawyer, politician, and principal architect of Africanism, dies in Johannesburg, aged 33. He was the first president of the ANC Youth League. His family listed the cause of death as cardiac failure linked to a blocked intestine. However, some speculate he may have been poisoned, but he did have a history of intestinal problems and surgery in 1940 and 1941.
1966 England beat West Germany to win the World Cup at Wembley, after extra time.
1969 An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 fighter collide over Morioka, Japan, killing 162 people.
1975 Mobster Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of a Detroit restaurant.
2018 British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt mistakenly calls his Chinese-born wife 'Japanese' in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing.
2024 Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh is assassinated by Israeli secret agents in Iran's capital, Tehran.
DAILY NEWS
