Cecil rhodes grandchildren tattoo

For the first few hundred million years of our history, the story of life on the planet was one of ever-growing complexity. Evolution leads to a constant increase in biological diversity: think of the tree of life, continually taking species down ever smaller, more specialised branches, new niches evolving in cracks and not least in the root system, for it is easy to forget that trees grow downwards as much as upwards. A comparable riot of creativity is evident in the much shorter cultural history of our species. Especially during the last 60, years, cultures and social forms have fanned out, specialised, adapted to local circumstances, diversified in extraordinarily diverse ways, ranging from small family-based foraging communities to empires. As a result, across the human journey there have been ever more forms of religion, art and self-expression, more systems of social and economic organisation, more approaches to family and social life, and not least, more solutions to the challenges facing human societies.

For the first time in history, this tendency is being reversed. The range of alternatives is rapidly narrowed down in both nature and culture, and this should be a cause of concern for anyone who wishes humanity to thrive beyond the tw

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Mementos of the Anglo-Boer War

Gwynne Schrire, a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and a long-serving member of its editorial board, is Deputy Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies – Cape Council. She has authored, co-written and edited over twenty books on aspects of South African Jewish and Western Cape history.

“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories,” wrote bestselling Japanese writer and Jerusalem Prize winner Haruki Murakami. However, the same does not hold true of one’s children or grandchildren who live in another time. With the passing of years, memories become mementoes and those mementoes can land up in the bin, or in junk shops, auction houses and, sometimes, in museums. To the descendants, they are mere artefacts occupying space, and the experiences that were the reason for their original owner holding on to them shrivel and then disappear altogether.

This article will try to bring back to life the forgotten stories behind four of these artefacts, each associated with an event that took place years ago. Two are on display at the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies and two are in this writer’s possession.

Hanging on the wall of the Samson Centre, where the SAJBD’s Cape offices are housed, is a

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