Friday, 31 January 1941
Eugene Ney Terre’Blanche was born in Ventersdorp to staunchly Afrikaner nationalist parents on January 31, 1941.
After matriculating he joined the South African Police service and served for five years before he left to become a farmer.
On 3 July 1973, with six others, he founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in a garage in Heidelberg, in the then Transvaal (Gauteng).
The AWB’s intention was to establish a homeland for the Boer ‘volk’ (people).
The AWB functioned as a semi-secret organisation for five years before it became public.
Terre’Blanche viewed the end of Apartheid in 1990 as the beginning of communism and threatened the then President F.W. de Klerk with civil war.
Friday, 31 January 1964
The University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), came into being on 31 January 1964 with the adoption by Parliament of Act 1 of 1964.
The first academic year commenced on 1 March 1965.
Built on 830 hectares of land donated by the then Port Elizabeth City Council UPE was the country’s first dual-medium residential university.
The university later merged with the PE Technikon and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University (Vista PE) to form the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). Opened on 1 January 2005, this union of three unique institutions came about as a result of governments’ countrywide restructuring of higher education institutions.
Thursday, 31 January 1985
On 31 January 1985 State President P W Botha offers Nelson Mandela, leader of the banned African National Congress (ANC), conditional release from the prison sentence he had been serving since the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial in 1964.
The condition of his release is that he renounces violence, and violent protest, as a means to bring about change in South Africa.
Mandela communicates his refusal of the offer through his daughter, Zinzi Mandela, who reads his statement to this effect at a rally in Soweto on 10 February 1985.
He states that the ANC’s only adopted violence as a means of protest ” when other forms of resistance were no longer open to us “.
Mandela had refused previous offers of conditional release where the condition was that he be confined to the Transkei.
The offer was also extended to prisoners serving long jail terms for sabotage.
18 accepted, including Dennis Goldberg, the only White found guilty at the Rivonia Trial, and 4 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) members.
Goldberg left South Africa for Israel on 28 February 1985 and the PAC members were released on 15 February.
Friday, 31 January 1986
Zubeida Jaffer, former reporter from the Cape Times and her husband Johnny Issel, were detained by the security police on 31January 1986.
Jaffer who was three months pregnant at the time she was held incommunicado, with no access to a doctor and her lawyer was also detained.
At the time of her detention she was amongst 335 other people who were detained under the State of Emergency regulations.
Jafffer was detained more than once as she was also held in police custody between August-October 1980 in solitary confinement and charged with possession of banned books.
She was released on bail and finally acquitted in February 1981.
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