The Sunken Graves Of Cradock

The Sunken Graves Of The Cradock Cemetery

If you ever come to Cradock, the old town in the heart of the great South African Karoo take a walk over the old cemetery outside of town. Walk into the past. And you will treasure life.

The Cradock Cemetery

There you find the graves of the ones, who came to foreign lands to live a better life. Today their are called the settlers. Back then they were only people who brought their memories of their own countries to the African soil. 

Africa became their home for a while. Some never saw their own country again. The Cradock Cemetery is their home now for eternity. But their last resting places are sunken into the white thorny ground. Is that how it is supposed to be?

A witness to the past of the ones who came to live a better life - Cradock cemetery

 

The Cradock Cemetary, nested close to the silent Karoo mountains, holds their memories under bleached tombstones that have to bear the bright, hot and white Karoo sun for hundreds of years.

Protection, that is not needed anymore

Once there was protection, now there is none. It is just the mountains, the sun and the graves.

A sunken grave on the Cradock Cemetery

Life was short. The stones are witnesses of real short lives.

The Last Resting Place of A Child Under A Bright African Sun

 
Africa treated them all the same. And it gave no pardon to the young and very young ones. 

A distant memory of a loved one on the Cradock Cemetery

Settler hearts must have been broken in a million pieces, when the children were buried. Angels and doves are watching over them still today.

At the young age of two years and eight months- no pardon from the Karoo Heartland for the young ones

" Our Darling" came to rest under a bright Karoo Sun on the Cradock Cemetery

The graves are sunken in and few of them are remembered. And it seems as if none of them are visited.

This stone remembers no one - Cradock Cemetery

The light is so very bright and and the stone can not tell us anymore who it was it protects.

In loving memory of 38 years of life

Just Mother and Father - Cradock Cemetery

Fences and some dead flowers on the Cradock cemetery

Hardly keeping together anymore

The ground shifts, has its own force. It is time to move the things. that have been static for so long.   

A bouquet of flowers chiseled into stone to remember a ten year and seven months old child

Siblings Rest Together on the Cradock Cemetery

Husband And Wife - Cradock Cemetery

Died in 1900 and 1917!

A headless angel still praying over an 4 month old infants grave

Once My Home Was Switzerland

More than one story to tell- the Cradock Cemetery

The picture can tell you their stories better than I can do!

A Walk in Silence 

 

The Daily Dispatch In East London

The building of the ' Daily Dispatch", a South African newspaper published in East London in the province of the Eastern Cape. It was founded in 1872 as the East London Dispatch. According to the Wikipedia, the Dispatch is today the Eastern Cape's best selling daily with a circulation of about 33,000 copies. The newspaper covers areas such as local news, sports, business, jobs, and community events. Published in English also includes a supplement in Xhosa.

 

 The newspaper is internationally known for its editor from 1965 to 1977, Donald Woods.

Woods became a friend of Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, and provided support to Biko through his editorials.

After Biko's death in police custody, Woods went into exile to expose the truth surrounding Biko's death in his book Biko.

The Orient Hotel - A Tale Of Colonial Architecture In The Eastern Cape

Once the Orient Hotel  in Quigney, now the Thuthuka Student Residence of the Fort Hare University in East London.

The many student residences in Quigney have caused controversy amongst the residents of this old suburb where many still live in the colonial houses built by settlers who came to South Africa.

 

It seems as if there is a clash in lifestyle and culture. Although most of the student residences are there since  a couple years, this problem still exists up to today. The students with their more outgoing and fun-loving life style are blamed by the " old Quigney residents " for bringing, crime, noise, prostitution, littering, booze and loud music to the suburb, while the newcomers say racial prejudice prevails.

The Thuthuka residence is an example that old and young can work it out together. The Fort Hare Univesity has taken the initiave to create a supervising student committee that has set up rules for the students who live in the residence. It is the commitee's task to oversee the coming and going in the house. 

The committee seems to work

But littering has become a problem all over South Africa.