Wednesday, 8 October 1828
Dr James Barry graduated from the all-male Edinburgh College of Medicine in 1812. After qualifying, James joined the British Army as a medical officer and was sent to South Africa a year later, where he gained a reputation as a first-class surgeon. It was at the Cape that he performed what is believed to be the first recorded, and successful, Caesarean operation, in 1826. On 8 October 1828, James left the Cape for Mauritius. Upon his death in 1865 in London, it was found that the physician was a woman!
” … a woman had posed as a man to become the first female medical graduate in Britain, fooled the army into employing her and then kept her sex secret for half a century.” – Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent, The Telegraph
Saturday, 8 October 1853
Pieter Jacobs Marais reported his discovery of alluvial gold in the Jukskei River on B.J. Liebenberg’s farm, Bultfontein, in 1853. The site was just north of the present Sandton. Though Marais thought that he was the first person to discover gold in this area, Johannesburg history proved him wrong. Allegedly Carel Kruger, who was hunting in the area, had discovered gold in 1834, while John Henry Davis, an English geologist, prospected around Krugersdorp in 1852, where his effort was apparently met with some success. The discovery of the Witwatersrand Main Reef by the two brothers H.W. and F.P.T. Struben in 1886, led to the birth of Johannesburg.
Friday, 8 October 1993
On 8 October 1993, five youngsters, including two twelve-year-olds, were murdered as they lay sleeping in their Umtata home. The house was believed to be the arms storage facility for the Azanian Peoples’ Liberation Army (APLA), and police intelligence also believed that there were eighteen APLA operatives staying at the house. According to General George Meiring, Chief of the Defence Force at the time, ” There were actually only five people in the house and all were killed because they reacted hostiley [sic]”
According to the police docket, seventy-eight cartridges and twenty-six projectiles were found in the house, with four of the children found with gunshot wounds to the head. According to the police, some weapons were allegedly found together with some documentation. No weapons cache was discovered and when lawyers for the family arranged for an international US forensic specialist to examine the seized weapons, the SADF failed to produce the weapons for examination.
Two years after the cold-blooded killings, the Minister of Justice, Dullar Omar, released the following statement on behalf of the Government of National Unity: ” The raid on the house in Umtata was authorised on the strength of intelligence provided by the security forces, that it was being used as an armed cache for attacks against civilians in other parts of South Africa. That information was inaccurate at the time of the operation and the killing of the youthful occupants was unjustified and inexcusable”.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the killings were a gross violation of human rights for which the former State Security Council (SSC) and the SADF were responsible. They found further that the failure by the SADF to produce the weapons allegedly seized in the house for independent forensic examination cast serious doubt on the existence of such weapons.
Friday, 8 October 1993
The General Assembly of the United Nations requested member states to terminate prohibitions or restrictions on economic relations with South Africa immediately, and to terminate the oil embargo against South Africa when the Transitional Executive Council in South Africa became operational. A resolution calling for economic and diplomatic sanctions against SA had been passed in 1962 and in 1963 the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for an arms embargo. In 1965, the General Assembly passed a motion calling for mandatory sanctions against SA and in 1974, South Africa was suspended from the UN General Assembly.
The revocation of sanctions ended years of conflict between the UN and the South African government, during which the country’s credentials were sometimes not accepted and efforts were made to expel South Africa from the Organisation. The conflict centred on South Africa’s contested mandate in South West Africa (now Namibia) and the UN’s struggle against apartheid.
Friday, 8 October 1999
The 26-year-old Tanzanian by the name of Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, who was a prime suspect in the bombing of two United States of American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998, pleaded not guilty to charges pressed against him in New York. Mohamed was traced to Cape Town, South Africa, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and extradited to the USA to stand trial. He was charged along with sixteen others, including Saudi exile Usama bin Laden, for allegedly planning attacks on Americans overseas and embassy bombings. If convicted, Mohamed could have received a death sentence, but he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
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