ON THIS DAY IN SA HISTORY

OCTOBER 25

TODAY is the 298th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 67 days until the end of the year.

◆ 1854 Makapan’s Cave besieged after warriors of Ndebele chief Makapan (Mokopane) murdered 23 white men, women and children on a hunting expedition in the northern Transvaal. The siege lasted 25 days, and hunger, thirst and bullets nearly wiped out the whole tribe.

◆ 1919 South African Aerial Transports services are inaugurated.

◆ 1944 A scheme to convert Newclare, Western Native Township and the southern part of Claremont to coloured townships, the removal of residents to Orlando and the rezoning of Martindale and Sophiatown conveyed to the Johannesburg City Council in the form of a letter.

◆ 1972 The International Monetary Fund announces it has agreed to a proposal by the government for a change in the par value of the rand.

◆ 1980 SA sculptor Israel Isaac (Lippy) Lipshitz dies in Kiryat Tivon, Israel.

◆ 1986 The International Red Cross ousts SA delegates from a Geneva meeting because of apartheid, the first such ejection in the body’s 123 years.

◆ 1987 The IFP declares attacks on the UDF as self-defence; and the US House of Representatives demands the release of children in detention in SA.

◆ 1988 The Soweto Students’ Congress and the Azanian Co-ordinating Committee are restricted by Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok.

◆ 1990 The SA Agricultural Union decides to allow membership of all races, despite strong resistance from the Transvaal Agricultural Union.

◆ 1993 South Africa is invited to rejoin the Commonwealth of Nations.

◆ 1999 South African author JM Coetzee wins the Booker Prize for fiction, for the second time, for his novel Disgrace. | Source: SA History Online, Wikipedia