Tuesday, 21 August 1900
On 21 August 1900 the Boers and the British again clashed in what became known as the battle of Dalmanutha (Bergendal). The battle lasted six days, ending on the 27th of August when the Boers retreated. This was the last conventional battle of the South African War (1899-1902). The climax of the battle of Dalmanutha came on the last day, when 70 men of the Johannesburg Zuid-Afrikaansche Rijdende Politie (ZARP), a special mounted police corps of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) or the Transvaal Republic, faced a full attack by General Sir Redvers Buller’s Natal Field Army (also known as the Natal Field Force). By 24 September the entire Transvaal south of Delagoa Bay railway was under British control.
Monday, 21 August 1961
Kenyan political activist and President of Kenya Afican National Union, Jomo Kenyatta was released from jail after serving 9 years. During the 1952 Mau Mau rebellion, Kenyatta, together with other nationalist leaders was imprisoned by the British authorities. The rebellion took the British by surprise and rendered the country ungovernable for almost eight years. It was this rebellion that paved the way for the independence of Kenya out of the bondages of Britain. Kenyatta subsequently became president in 1964 a year after the country became independent from Britain.
Friday, 21 August 1998
George Magistrate Victor Lugaju found former President P.W. Botha guilty of contempt for repeatedly ignoring subpoenas to testify in public before the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the body responsible for investigating human rights abuses committed during the apartheid era. Botha was fined ten thousand rand and given a one year prison sentence, suspended for five years, which could be brought into effect if he defied another TRC subpoena. The TRC wanted to question Botha about human rights abuses perpetrated by security forces during the apartheid era, as he chaired the State Security Council from 1978 to 1989.
Botha had already been named in amnesty applications by former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, and former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock as having directly ordered murders, bombings and torture of anti-apartheid activists. Botha denied having given any such order in his written responses to the commission. Despite the fact that the TRC had concluded its information gathering phase in July another subpoena for Botha was to follow from the amnesty committee.
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