Émile Genest: 12

Émile Genest

Canadian actor who said: "a tourist is a fellow who drives thousands of miles so he can be photographed standing in front of his car"

josie dew - the wind in my wheels p279.

Gert Sibande: 11

The Unveiling of Gert Sibande Statue
Tribute to the late Gert Sibande

26 December 2008

Thank you Programme Director, Comrade Mahlangu

To the Sibande family, I wish to salute you for having allowed your father and grandfather to be part of liberation forces in our country.

To comrade Mabuza and the entire leadership of the ANC, both at the national and provincial levels
To the leadership of the SACP and COSATU and affiliated unions
Comrade Premier and other deployees in government
All protocol observed

Indeed it is an honour and I feel humbled to speak at this historic event. This is an event meant to honour and pay a befitting tribute to a stalwart of our movement and a veteran of trade union organization

The Lion of the East is a product of suffering, of struggle waged on this suffering, and of organization to pursue this struggle against this suffering

Comrade Gert has proven a fighter of high note. A son of working class parents, a child growing on farms and under horrible and slave-type living conditions, he reached a moment in life when he decided that this situation cannot be tolerated.

He was instrumental in organizing farm workers - a first farm workers organization at the time. He proceeded to be part of our movement, rising in stature to become the Transvaal Vice President of the ANC.

One of the key defining moments of his skilled organizational capabilities was when he, with the assistance of Ruth First and other progressive journalists under the stewardship of Brian Bunton, organized and led a successful potato boycott in the 1950s.

This ANC boycott campaign owes its origin and conceptualization to comrade Gert Sibande's brains and efforts. We salute him for this and other achievements. The potato boycott was about terrible working and horrible living conditions of our farm workers and dwellers.

Has the situation changed from 50 years ago? I wish to be blunt and say the situation on farms has not changed an inch for workers and dwellers.

Farm workers still work in conditions of hostile weather, be it scorching sun to rainy conditions, to long working hours, from sunset to sunrise, to handling dangerous chemicals without protective clothing.

These workers and their other family members still live in conditions far from decent. Some still draw water from the same stream used by live-stock and they still do not have access to electricity and sanitation facilities and some still share accommodation with pigs in a pig stall.

To make it worse, some of these farm dwellers do not know what liberation is. They still have their identity books confiscated so as to deny them the right to vote. They are afraid to report abuses against them to police station, where they do report little, if any investigation is made. If such investigation is made then prosecution is poor and where prosecution is successful, then punishment is 'a slap on a wrist'.

In his honour we call on our movement to take the plight of farm dwellers as a serious and urgent mission. The situation as it exists cannot continue any longer. Liberation and a better life have to reach this sizable section of our society.

This would the best befitting tribute, in addition to this statue, to the memory of Gert Sibande

Samuel Coleridge: 10

A heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success, as in The failed real estate scheme became an albatross around her neck, for now she could not interest other investors in a new project. This idiom comes from Samuel Coleridge's narrative poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), which is based on the widespread superstition that it is unlucky to kill this large white sea bird. In the poem a sailor does kill an albatross, and when the ship then is becalmed near the equator and runs out of water, his shipmates blame him and force him to wear the dead bird around his neck.

www.answers.com/topic/albatross-around-one-s-neck

Paco Rabanne: 9

Apart from his dress designs and line of fragrances, Rabanne also has an interest in paranormal phenomena, and became infamous for his false prediction of the Russian space station Mir falling to Paris in 1999. Some media referred satirically this episode as "Pacolypse".


Mentioned in the Star (johannesburg) article in "book of the week" Yhe year 1000 by lacy and Danziger - in 2000

Rodulfus Glaber: 8

"Especially significant is his treatment of the end of the first millennium. He is the primary source for claims of widespread fear and divine omens (famines and eclipses) anticipating the end of the world. Nineteenth-century historians relying too heavily on this one monk of ill repute popularised the notion that the people of the late tenth century lived in superstitious fear of nonevents."

Wikipedia.

...Sure there were prophets of doom, like the monk Rodulfus Glaber, who had the unpleasant experience of having the devil appear at the end of his bed several times, 'a shaggy, black, hunched up figure with pinched nostrils, a goats beard and blubbery lips'. But few people listened to his predictions and he was shown the door of monasteries across France. (The Star - Johannesburg 2000: Book of the week - The year 1000 by Robert Lacy & Danny Danziger)

Phil Spector: 8

Da Do Run Run

Legendary music producer Phil Spector was convicted Monday of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra mansion six years ago. The verdict means Spector, famed for his work with Tina Turner, The Beatles, The Righteous Brothers,The Ramones and others

Dick Fosbury: 7

As a young high jumper in the early 1960s, Dick Fosbury had trouble mastering the standard technique, called the straddle. Instead he began doing the high jump by approaching the bar with his back to it, doing a modified scissor-kick and going over the bar backwards and horizontal to the ground. As goofy as it looked, it worked. Dubbed the "Fosbury Flop" by a Medford, Oregon reporter, Fosbury caused a sensation when he won the gold medal in the 1968 Olympics, jumping a height of 2.24 meters. The Fosbury Flop has since become a standard technique for high jumpers.

http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/02/13/sports/story2.html

Richard Douglas Fosbury (born March 6, 1947) is a retired high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field.

Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current men's record holder with a jump of 2.45 m (8 ft 01⁄4 in) set in 1993 – the longest standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record at 2.09 m (6 ft 101⁄4 in) since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event.

Manfred Mann: 6

Manfred Mann (born Manfred Sepse Lubowitz,[1] 21 October 1940, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa) is a professional keyboard player, best known as the founding member of Manfred Mann and Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

Helen Joseph: 5

For forty years Helen Joseph dedicated herself single-mindedly to opposing apartheid. Her commitment earned her the ANC's highest award, the Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe Medal. It also led to a relentless government campaign to silence her, a campaign which ultimately failed - for generations of South Africans, Helen was an inspiration and a symbol of defiance, integrity and courage.

Helen Beatrice May Fennell was born in Sussex, England, in 1905. She graduated from King's College, University of London, in 1927, taught for three years in India, then came to South Africa in 1931, where she met and married Billie Joseph. Her service as an information and welfare officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War, and her subsequent decision to become a social worker, exposed her to some of the realities of South African life.

for more see the ANC website

Harvey Ball: 4

Harvey Ball, the inventor of the smiley face.

Rob Armitage: 3

Eastern Province and South African cricketer Robbie Armitage.

Died of cancer(45), December 2000