JUNE - SOUTH AFRICA

SOUTH AFRICA

 Ce mois-ci, les élèves de 4eme6 vous emmènent pour un dernier voyage en Afrique du Sud. Un pays ou les arts et le sport ont souvent eu des répercussions politiques dans un combat pour un pays sans discrimination. Ils vous parlent de rugby, de grands artistes comme la magnifique Charlize Theron ou l'exceptionnel chanteur Johnny Clegg. Ils vous presentent les spécialités locales comme le Bobotie et une liqueur. Sans oublier le Voortrekker Monument et l'icone universelle pour un monde plus juste, Nelson Mandela, dont nous risquons d'apprendre incessamment la disparition avec grande tristesse. C'est avec ces histoires fortes que nous clôturons la première année du Blog des 4eme6. Nous reprendrons l'année prochaine avec de nouveaux élèves. Merci à tous pour leur travail et j'espère qu'ils auront ainsi découvert de nouveaux univers, que ce blog aura éveillé chez eux une nouvelle curiosité qui leur donnera envie d'explorer le monde.

Bonne lecture.
Bonnes vacances.
A l'année prochaine.

Miss Kahel

FAMOUS PEOPLE - AN ICON OF PEACE

Nelson Mandela

 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, whose tribal clan name is "Madiba",was born on the 18th of July 1918 in Mvezo (Union of South Africa). He is a politician and was part of the African National Congress (ANC)

His father died of tuberculosis when he was only 9 years old and the Regent of Jongintaba became his guardian. His new school was that of a Methodist mission next to the palace of the regent. Upon reaching the age of 16, he underwent an initiation following the Thembu custom
There, he practiced boxing and running

In 1944, the African National Congress was experiencing a new force under the direction of Alfred Xuma. This is the same year that Mandela married Evelyn Mase Ntoko. In 1945, Xuma introduced for the first time the requirement of non-racial universal suffrage (one man one vote) in the demands of the movement, a major change in that community claim. The party moved from the simple struggle against racial discrimination to a broader struggle for political power. 

Fighting himself against the political domination of the white minority and racial segregation, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned because he led the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) and fought against the political domination of the white minority rule and Apartheid in South Africa.The 27year-old Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on the island prison of Robben island (South Africa island, off Cape Town) for 18 years.

In March 1982, he was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison (outside Cape Town), where he remained seven years before being released on February 11, 1990 after 27 years in prison.If it was considered a time that the transfer was made ​​to expel the leaders of the new generation of blacks imprisoned on Robben Island, nicknamed the "Mandela University" the Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee has said instead that the transfer was made ​​in order to establish a discreet contact between them and the South African government. In June 1988 a tribute concert was held on the 70th anniversary of Nelson Mandela at Wembley, watched by six hundred million viewers in sixty-seven countries, which denounced globally Mandela's captivity and the oppression of the Apartheid, and , according to the ANC, the South African power regime and demanded to release Mandela earlier than expected

In 1994, he became the President of South Africa and started a policy of reconciliation between the whites and the blacks in the country under the policy of the "rainbow nation". In 1999, suffering from many ailments, he decided to retire but he didn't stop his activism, fighting against injustice and the spreading of AIDS.

Nelson Mandela is now 94 years old and is suffering from a lung disease. His days are numbered but as a worldwide icon, everybody will mourn the day he eventually disappears.

Gaignot Francky and Timothy Mendes Ramires

AFRICAN LANDMARK

Voortrekker Monument

 The Voortrekker Monument, located in Pretoria, honors Boer pioneers who left in 1835 to 1838 in the Cape Colony to bring their culture and civilization within the South African land. This great migration was called "Great Trek." It is responsible for creating the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

Symbol of Afrikaner nationalism, the monument stands since 1949 on a hill at the southern entrance to the South African capital. It is, at the turn of the century, the most visited place in the province of Gauteng and one of the 10 major cultural and historical sites in the country.

It has been part of the South African national heritage (national heritage site) since March 16, 2012 .

The idea to build a monument in honor of the Voortrekkers returns to the President of the South African Republic of Transvaal, Paul Kruger at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Blood River (December 16, 1888).

The idea remained in gestation until 1931 when the "Commission of Monuments of the people of the Center" (Sentrale Volksmonumentekomitee - SVK) made ​it its main project.

The construction began on July 13, 1937 on Monument Hill. On December 16, 1938, the stones supporting the four corners of the monument were filled by three descendants of voortrekkers leaders: Mrs. JC Muller (granddaughter of Andries Pretorius), Mrs. KF Ackerman (great grand-daughter of Hendrik Potgieter) and Mrs. JC Preller (great-granddaughter of Piet Retief) in the presence of 250,000 people celebrating that day in Pretoria the centenary of the Great Trek.

 

The monument itself was inaugurated in front of over 150,000 people on the 16th of December 1949 in the presence of the South African government as a whole.

A large amphitheater seats 20,000 was later built north-east of the monument.

Joey & Alexandre

FOOD

Creators : Christopher & Jason 4°6

African Food

Bobotie

The recipe probably comes from the Dutch colony of Batavia. The name is derived from the Indonesian Bobotok. The recipe was imported into South Africa in the seventeenth century and was adopted by the community of Cape Malays.

Bobotie was originally made with lamb or pork, today it is made with beef or lamb. Powder curry, sambal or chutney, ginger, marjoram, lemon zest, onions, dried fruits like apricots or raisins, nuts or bananas, decorate the dish, often served with basmati rice. The recipe was taken away by South African settlers throughout Africa (Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia). It was found even among the 7000 Boer settlers who settled in the valley of Chubut in Argentina in the early twentieth century. The Bobotie is a South African dish of spiced minced meat, browned in the oven with a topping made of egg and bread soaked in milk.

Drink

The Amarula is a liqueur made of sugar, cream and marula fruit, widespread in southern Africa and the Sahel-Saharan tree. This drink was launched in September 1989 by a South African company, the Southern Liqueur Company. It has a very sweet, close to caramel taste.

MUSIC

Johnny Clegg

 Johnny Clegg was born in England on the 7^th of June 1953 (he's 60) of South African parents and grew up in South Africa.
He has been a singer since 1980 and plays guitar and sings.
His nickname is the White Zulu because he plays black influenced music whereas he is white.

Six months after his birth, his parents divorced, and after a brief visit to Israel, the mother returned to raise her child alone on the family farm in Gwelo near Selukwe, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). White child in South Africa under the Apartheid, Jonathan grew up in an isolated environment within the African culture.
When he was six, his mother, who was a singer in night clubs, toured the country and sent him to an English pension reserved for whites with a strict discipline from which he keeps a very bad memory.

A year later, his mother married a South African journalist, Dan Pienaar, and the family settled for two years in an apartment in the center of Johannesburg. Writer and poet from a very poor white working class, his stepfather had a strong influence in the education of Jonathan (who knew his biological father only at age of 21) and he shared his passion for Africa.

The family then went to live for two years in Zambia, where the step-father of Jonathan had found a place in a newspaper in Lusaka and went to cover the war in Congo. During this time, the new independence of Africa helped Jonathan Clegg to enter for the first time in a multiracial school. He returned to Johannesburg. His stepfather taught him to survive in the wilderness by taking him all weekend camping in the bush. While the boy began his teens, his stepfather fled overnight to Australia with another woman, taking the half-sister of Jonathan, who had just turned three years old.

Thirteen years old, feeling completely foreign to religion and to the Jewish community that he thought too passive in the face of the Apartheid, he refused to do his bar mitzvah. At fourteen, he couldn't bear school either and he ran away for three weeks in Zulu territory with two friends before being found by the police. Back in Johannesburg, he began hanging out in the streets without enthusiasm.

Jonathan, everyone started calling Johnny, was introduced to the guitar at fifteen, allowing him to meet a musician who played Zulu music in a street near his home, Mntonganazo Mzila. Despite the language barrier, Clegg learnt the basics of Zulu music and Ihhlangwini accompanying Mzila in all "hostels" accommodation centers for migrant workers during two years, violating the ban on blacks and whites to cross the boundary of reserved sectors. This allowed Clegg to get a reputation as a good musician and really understand the gap of the Apartheid.

At the same time, Sipho Mchunu had left his native Zulu land to work as a gardener in Durban. Having earned a reputation as a good guitarist, and attracted by the prospect of a higher salary, he decided to go to the big city, where he heard for the first time of a young white talented Zulu musician .

It turned out that the district was also the one where Johnny and Sipho worked. This led to the inevitable meeting between the two musicians. First driven by their desire to compare their guitar skills, the two friends joined together to form an extraordinary duo, which would be an international success.

In 1976, Johnny and Sipho found their first real contract, under the name Johnny and Sipho and followed the release of their first album Woza Friday (Come Friday) that amazed the whole country. This is where the concept started: Johnny Clegg mixing English lyrics and Western melodies with Zulu music. In 1979, the duo changed its name to become Juluka whose debut album, despite positive critical acclaim, was censored in South Africa, still under the thumb of the Apartheid. Their second album, African Litany, was their first major national success, including their first hit Impi. Finally, the fourth album marked their breakthrough on the world stage. The fifth album of Juluka became gold record and won two platinum records later on.
In 1985, the adventure ended with Juluka because Sipho returned to provide assistance to the community. Johnny formed his second band Savuka. Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu never lost contact and decided later to repeat a tour and a new album together.

 

The first album of Savuka, Third World Child , (a title that announced engagement) was a huge success, with more than two million copies sold worldwide and titles flagship like Asimbonanga (song dedicated to Nelson Mandela, then a prisoner on Robben Island off Cape Town) 

and Scatterling of Africa, which was taken for the soundtrack of the film Rain Man, which attested to its international success at that time. 

The next Shadow Man allowed Clegg to undertake a world tour, sharing the stage with Steve Winwood among others the United States and George Michael in Canada. In 1988, he was the biggest seller of singles in France. The fourth album Heat, Dust and Dreams was nominated in the Best World Music category and won the Billboard Muscic Award for best album in the world in 1993.

During all these years, Johnny Clegg never stopped touring in South Africa. In 1994, he promoted his compilation album of the best titles In My African Dream. In 1997, Johnny and Sipho met to work on a new Juluka album, after a break of ten years. This collaboration produces the album Ya Vuka Inkunzi (The Bull Has Risen, Crocodile Love).

Released in 2006, One Life was produced by Chad Blake. Among them was a song about child soldiers (Boy Soldier). With this album, we also discovered a new Johnny Clegg with a song in French Should not give up.

In December 2009, the song The Crossing (Osiyeza) was part of the soundtrack of the film Invictus directed by Clint Eastwood, which traced the journey of the South African team to the Rugby XV World Championship in Africa in 1995.

2010 saw the release of Spirit is the Journey, subtitled "Celebrating 30 years of Johnny Clegg," a compilation made by the artist himself, who presented a selection of 17 titles period Savuka and 17 titles from the period Juluka and some lesser known titles of solo albums (New World Survivor, One Life), a large sample of his production during his thirty-year career.

2010 was also the year of the release of the album Human, produced by Nicolas Fiszman, and a European and North American tour took him to over 35 cities in the United States and Canada .


His song Ibhola Lethu dealing with segregation in the stadiums during the Apartheid period where teams of Soweto dominated but where blacks were banned from stage alongside whites, was chosen as an anthem for the World Cup 2010 .

Gaetan and Nathan

CINEMA

Charlize Theron

 Charlize Theron, born August 7, 1975 in Benoni, South Africa, is an actress and former model. She began her acting career in the United States and rose to fame in the 1990s with films like The Devil's Advocate (1997) or That Thing You Do! (1998)

Monster was released in 2003 and Charlize Theron became a global star performer of very different roles, revealing that she has a very good actress.

 

She now has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood.

She became the mother in March 2012 of a boy she adopted in South Africa and his name is Jackson. She lives in Los Angeles.

In her youth, at the age of 12, Charlize was sent to the National School Of The Arts in Johannesburg. She maintained her passion for dance, she began to practice from six years old with ballet classes. Her performances were a delight to her mother, who encouraged her to develop her artistic talents. These positive experiences made returns to home more difficult, as her family situation deteriorated. Her father, Charles, fell gradually into alcoholism, and was more distant vis-à-vis his family. Then one day in 1991, while Charlize was back from school for the weekend, her mother Gerda underwent again the violence of her husband, and shot and killed him in self-defense . Yet, no prosecution was instituted.

Her mother had a positive influence in her life, and then she was enrolled in a modeling contest. Charlize, then aged 16, won the contest and flew to Italy to represent her country at the International New Model Today5. She once again prevailed, offering herself the opportunity to become a professional model. She left school and flew to Milan with her mother, to start her modeling career. Three months later, her mother Gerda returned to South Africa in her activities, while Charlize moved to Milan and traveled throughout Europe for her work.

After a year working as a fashion model, Charlize decided to pursue her passion for ballet and enrolled at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, while accepting some photo shoots to finance her stay. After 8 months

of classes, a knee injury forced her to draw a line on her dancing career. She then moved to Miami for a few months and continued modeling. But Charlize was not interested in the life of a top model: she seeked to develop her artistic talents.

In the mid 1990s she had a relationship with actor Craig Bierko. Then in 1997, she was with Stephan Jenkins, lead singer of Third Eye Blind in 2002, she met Stuart Townsend on the set of a film. The couple separated in 2010.

Nowadays, Charlize Theron is famous for films like The Cider House Rules (1999), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Snow White and the Hunstman (2012) and Prometheus (2012).

Laura & Cecile

SOUTH AFRICA - SPORT

RUGBY IN SOUTH AFRICA

Rugby is a popular sport in South Africa, one of the three major sports with football and cricket. Its evolution, organization were related to political and racial history.

 

Until the 1990s, the rugby was considered a bastion of Afrikaners, descendants of Batavian emigrants. The sport was also popular among white South Africans of English descent, but sometimes they chose to wear the colors of their original nation (as Stuart Abott and Mike Catt for England and Clyde Rathbone for Australia's.

''Springbok'' is the name of gazelles in southern Africa and was the symbol of white rugby and the black majority was not interested in rugby or they supported the opposing team.

During 2007 it was still a sport that had a strong support and rooting among whites as blacks prefered South African football.

In the past, the system of Apartheid segregation operated and prevented non-whites to face the white players and they were not accounted for the South Africa rugby union. Since, the end of the Apartheid arrived but even after the World Cup Rugby in 1995

and the many reforms of the administation of rugby, it was a very sensitive issue and crises erupted. Competitions applied racial quotas to allow the integration of non-white players. While officially there was no quota for the national team, the suspicion was in order to justify the choice of a black or mixed race player, the forward position was often assigned to a non-white player.

Today, five South African franchises(Bulls, Lions, Central, Cheetahs, Sharks, Stormers) participate in the Super 14, which is a provincial and international competition. There is a prestigious national competition level below the Super 14, Currie Cup.

The South African Rugby Federation, the South African Rugby Union (SARU), is responsible for organizing and developing rugby in South Africa. It manages the team of South African rugby.

The Springboks compete annually for the Tri-Nations against teams from New Zealand and Australia, they also conduct regular tours to confront the European teams and these teams meet every four years during the rugby World Cup. The South African team won the title of world champion in 1995, they reissued the performance in 2007.

In 1995, South Africa hosted the World Cup of Rugby. Nelson Mandela began his first term as president. Against the opinion of his supporters, he felt the sporting event could create a sense of national unity behind the Springbok team, symbol for decades of white South Africans, and their domination of apartheid (1948-1991). "One team, one country". The story was so symbolic that Clint Eastwood decided it was a good subject for a film and he named it “Invictus”
This film combines the political history and the symbolism of the sport: can a sport influence the state of mind of men? This was the political and human challenge of Nelson Mandela after 27 years of imprisonment, against the reciprocal fear of communities in South Africa causing a climate of tension. This was to support the nation's “rainbow sky”. Mandela, in peace, trying to change things, attitudes, he had to learn to change himself to try to change the rest. That's what this film depicts the necessary struggle for forgiveness. A president and a team captain from each community hating each other, two leaders for a cause: the union. Did the Springbok team help for reconciliation in South Africa? "This nation is hungry for greatness" was Mandela's hope.

Mandela sent forward to Springbok's captain a poem by William Ernest Henley, from which is derived the title of the film, where it is stated in particular: “I'm the master of my fate, I'm the Captain of my soul.”

A wonderful lesson of sport and humanity.

Leyla & Tiffany.