This past Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published an excellent article discussing the precious and amazing rock art and cave paintings in southern Zimbabwe, in a region called the Matobo Hills.  Michael Fitzgerald, the article’s author, rightly points out that we know much more about the origins and meanings embedded in cave paintings in Africa than we do about those in Europe’s Lascaux or Altamira.  Fitzgerald also describes some of the key features of the San belief system and cosmology.JSTOR has two distinguished groups of researchers that continue to contribute digitized images from their rock art expeditions across Africa - the Trust for African Rock Art in Kenya led by David Coulson and the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of Witwatersrand, led by Dr. Ben Smith.  In the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection, we have  today over 900 images of rock art located in Zimbabwe; and just as important, we have some of the most valuable research on Africa’s rock art in some key academic journals including both the Goodwin Series and the South African Archaeological Bulletin .

Late in 2009, Appfrica posted an illuminating blog post about the state of Africa’s internet and telecommunications use.  We’ve included the graphic that they produced below.  Some quick and surprising conclusions: Tunisia has better network readiness than South Africa, international bandwidth costs will decrease substantially with the development and launch of new undersea cables, and the startling fact that mobile penetration exceeds electricity penetration across Africa.

Nasreen Khan at DISA recently wrote a blog post about the life and contribution of the late South African poet and activist Dennis V. Brutus - a long time advocate for a free South Africa, once labeled as the “poet laureate of South Africa” and someone who was particularly vocal about the “the unfairness in the selection of athletes” in the apartheid nation’s sporting events and led a series of protests which led to the eventual banning of the apartheid regime from majory international sporting events.  A number of resources in the Struggles for Freedom collections document his role and contribution in the fight against apartheid including pages 41-44 in Supplement No. 22 (A/8722), A Report of the Special Committee on Apartheid and an article he wrote about Robben Island on page 12 of this issue of Sechaba (contributed to the Struggles collection by DISA).  Brutus was also a prolific scholar and poet.  A number of his poems and writings also appear in various journals and publications archived in JSTOR.  Additional materials of interest to students and historians may be an interview from 2005 with the late poet available online and information about his personal papers and correspondence from 1960-1984 that reside at the Herskovits Library at Northwestern University.

In 2009, the most popular digital object that was accessed in the Struggles for Freedom collection was a two-page digital copy of South Africa’s1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No. 55.  The document was contributed to JSTOR by Digital Innovation South Africa, one of our earliest content partners from South Africa.  Incidentally, our most popular photograph in our flickr page is one of the Great Enclosure, located within the Great Zimbabwe monument in Zimbabwe. In 2009, JSTOR released over 800 digital objects (images, aerial photographs, panoramas, 3D models, and GIS data) about Great Zimbabwe to the Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection - the vast majority contributed by Professor Ruther’s Zamani team at the University of Cape Town.  Great Zimbabwe was inscribed to the World Heritage List in 1986.  A wonderful and interactive panorama tour of Great Zimbabwe is available here.

A number of scholars and researchers have explored and researched Songo Mnara, a Swahili stone town located here (map) on the southern coast of Tanzania.  Earlier this year, Rice University faculty conducted a six week archaeology field school session in Songo Mnara.Just last month, Professor Heinz Ruther and his Zamani team, based at the University of Cape Town also visited Songo Mnara to document the site using laser scanners, photogrammetry, and GIS.  We expect to have this data available in the African Cultural Heritage Sites collection in 2010.  Songo Mnara was inscribed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO along with Kilwa Kisiwani in 1981.

“From director Clint Eastwood, “Invictus” tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country.Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa’s underdog rugby team [the Springboks] as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.”*Want to learn more about the history behind this event? The Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa Collection provides access to fully digitized documents, books, and oral testimonies about apartheid and liberation movements across southern Africa. You can search terms and topics as broad as race relations or as specific as Nelson Mandela. Start your investigation using the highlighted search terms or simply going to www.aluka.org. Book: Black Politics in South Africa since 1945. Lodge, Tom.*Synopsis taken from Invictus movie official website.

Reverend Canon John Paul, an Anglican missionary who dedicated the majority of his life to Mozambique passed away on September 23, 2009 at 81 years old. An obituary can be found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk.

Reverend John Paul’s memoir, Mozambique: memoirs of a revolution, chronicles his life and work in Mozambique. This book is available in the Core Readings Collection in Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa.

Professor Francis Wilson, former Director of the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and contributor of the SALDRU Clippings Collection: 1975-2000 to the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa Collection, has recently authored a new book.

Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy: A short, short history of South Africa was released and published by Umuzi in October 2009 in South Africa. See this link to learn more: http://umuzi-randomhouse.co.za/dinosaurs.html. Congratulations Professor Wilson!

The Janette Deacon Collection in African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes contains 5,037 images of rock art. Janette Deacon, a South African archaeologist, has studied and worked on rock art in Southern Africa for decades in various capacities. In her earlier career, she was a Lecturer in Archaeology at University of Cape Town; edited the South African Archaeological Bulletin; and served as archaeologist at the National Monuments Council in South Africa. For the past decade, Janette Deacon has continued to focus on rock art by organizing courses on rock art site management, advising the Southern African Rock Art Project; and managing the South African Rock Art Initiative, which trains rock art tourist guides and managers.

Her collection comprises photographs and tracings of rock engravings of the /Xam people, slides and prints from a survey of rock paintings in the south-western Cape, and before and after photographs of rock paintings sites with charcoal graffiti.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation and 46664 celebrate with the world Mandela Day on July 18th, President Mandela’s birthday. Mandela Day is a tribute to President Mandela and a call to action for people worldwide to not only celebrate the legacy of President Mandela but to engage in positive social change for the global community around issues such as human rights, education, civil liberties, poverty, and health.For more information on Mandela Day, please see http://www.mandeladay.com/A wide berth of information about President Mandela and his fight against the apartheid system in South Africa can be found in the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa Collection in Aluka, which contains over thirty-five collections that have rich and diverse material on Nelson Mandela.