Phila Portia Ndwandwe (b.1964-d.1988, also known as Zandile or Zandi) was a fighter of the Natal cadre of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) formed by Muzi Ngwenya (Thami Zulu or “TZ”) operating from Swaziland. MK was the armed wing (Spear of the Nation) of the African National Congress, created by Nelson Mandela in 1961. Zandi was a breastfeeding mother when she was abducted by Apartheid forces and tortured for 10 days to convert her into becoming an informer for the South African government. She was shot in the head after being made to kneel in front of her captors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phila_Portia_Ndwandwe

Phila Portia Ndwandwe

• 
  Phila Portia Ndwandwe
  Synopsis:

  MK commander, murdered by South African Security Police members
  First Name:

  Phila
  Middle Name:

  Portia
  Last Name:

  Ndwandwe
  Date of Birth:

  02-June-1965
  Location of Birth:

  Mlazi,Durban
  Location of Death:

  Elandskop, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal
  Gender:

  Female

Phila Portia Ndwandwe (also known as Zandile or Zandi) became part of the Natal Machinery of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) in 1985 under the leadership of Muzi Ngwenya (Thami Zulu or “TZ”) operating from Swaziland. She was in the unit headed by Ayanda Dlodlo that was responsible for the infiltration of African National Congress (ANC) cadres into Natal. In October 1988, she was abducted by two former MK militants turned informants who requested a meeting with Ndwandwe at the George Hotel in Mazini, Swaziland. Unaware they had become police informers, she attended the meeting with them.The informants entered Swaziland illegally through false documents which was all part of an elaborate plan by the Port Natal Security Branch to abduct Ndwandwe and turn her into an informant as well. The police monitored their meeting and captured her after the two informers turned her over to them.  

https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/phila-portia-ndwandwe-1

On the pain of death

Antjie Krog gave the keynote address at the Goethe-Institut’s Über(W) under Art in Troubled Times conference. This is an extract.

The first artwork [I want to discuss] is by an artist responding to a traumatic revelation at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the second, a sculpture by an artist dealing with her own personal trauma.

The truth commissioner spreads the photos on the table. He is reporting on the digging up of the grave of ANC commander Phila Ndwandwe.

https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-09-on-the-pain-of-death/

Breast Tax in South India and the story of Nangeli

The Breast Tax (Mulakkaram or mula-karam in Malayalam) was a tax imposed on the lower caste and untouchable Hindu women by the Kingdom of Tranvancore (in present-day Kerala state of India) if they wanted to cover their breasts in public, until 1924. The lower caste and untouchable women were expected to pay the government a tax on their breasts, as soon as they started developing breasts. The lower caste men had to pay a similar tax, called tala-karam, on their heads.^[6] Travancore tax collectors would visit every house to collect breast tax from any lower caste women who passed the age of puberty. The tax was evaluated by the tax collectors depending on the size of their breasts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_Tax?

Nangeli: Woman Who Rebelled For Dignified Existence

It is no secret that women belonging to marginalized communities and scheduled caste were subjected to heinous discrimination until there was a collective reckoning post-independence. 

During the 19th century, women from oppressed caste had to pay 'Mula Karam' or breast tax for covering their breasts and the amount was determined by the size of their breasts.

Mainly the Nadar and Ezhava communities were not allowed to cover their chests in front of the privileged caste men. This is because clothes were regarded as a sign of ‘wealth’ and prosperity. Covering the chest was considered as an ‘immodest’ move by the oppressed caste before the rich and royalty. The members of the oppressed caste were burdened with many forms of taxes during this period. Brahmin and Nair communities thrived at the cost of the marginalized people. As per the records, despite the privilege, even Nair women were expected to be "modest" and not cover their chest in front of the Brahmin men. https://www.beyondpinkworld.com/

Santhal rebellion

The Santhal rebellion (sometimes referred to as the Sonthal rebellion), commonly known as Santhal Hool, was a rebellion in present-day Jharkhand, in eastern India against both the British colonial authority and zamindari system by the Santhal people. It started on June 30, 1855 and on November 10, 1855 martial law was proclaimed which lasted until January 3, 1856 when martial law was suspended and the movement was brutally ended by troops loyal to the British. The rebellion was led by the four Murmu Brothers - Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhal_rebellion

সাঁওতাল বিদ্রোহ

প্রহ্লাদ রায়

‘হুল’ অর্থাৎ বিদ্রোহ। ১৮৫৫ সালের ৩০ জুন সাঁওতাল বিদ্রোহের অন্যতম দুই নেতা সিধু ও কানহু ভাগনাডিহির মাঠে হাজার হাজার সাঁওতাল ও হিন্দু-মুসলিম, চামার, বাগদি সহ নানান ধর্ম ও জাতের মানুষদের ইংরেজ ও ব্যবসায়ী-ব্যাপারীদের মাত্রাছাড়া শোষণের বিরুদ্ধে লড়াই করার ডাক দিয়েছিলেন। এটা ছিল তথাকথিত নিচু জাতের মানুষদের বিদ্রোহ। ভারতের মাটিতে দলিত-আদিবাসীদের প্রথম সংগঠিত আন্দোলন।
http://www.thebackgroundd.in/
সাঁওতাল বিদ্রোহ: ভারতবর্ষে স্বাধিকার আদায়ের ইতিহাসে উজ্জ্বল মাইলফলক
https://roar.media/bangla/main/history/santhal-rebellion/

A Slave Changes History 480 BCE

It was a time when civilization in the West was divided between two cultures. The largest was the Persian centralized empire, which was based on having an all-powerful ruler with little regard for the individual. The other culture was much more dynamic but smaller and poorer; it was the emerging democracy of Greece. In spite of the fact that there were places in ancient Greece with dictatorial and oppressive city-states, such as Sparta, individual heroism was honored. It is a divide we still see today in the different values found in Iran, Iraq, and the other nations that are descended from ancient despots, and Western cultures that are descended from the Greek traditions.

In 480 BCE, things had not gone all that well for Xerxes, ruler of the Persian empire, particularly in regard to his invasion of Greece. His object was to revenge his father’s loss at Marathon and to incorporate the impudent and pugnacious Greek city-states into the Persian empire. The free city-states were both a direct threat and a threatening example to the many diverse peoples in his empire, especially those of Greek descent.

https://graeco-roman.blogspot.com/

Australia's Aborigines have a long and rich history that stretches back nearly 60,000 years.

For thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians have lived throughout the continent. But new evidence reveals that their existence in the continent’s deserts dates back much further than previously believed.

Aboriginal Australians became genetically isolated 58,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before other ancestral groups, making them the world’s oldest civilization. They then settled in Australia around that time. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/

WWII’s brutality still haunts the children who survived it

AT THE AGE of eight, my mother Teresa was robbed of her childhood.

Asleep in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, she was clutching a beloved stuffed fox when the fearsome thunderstorm of a German air assault announced the outbreak of World War II.

Fifteen days later, the war arrived in her front yard as Polish soldiers dug foxholes in the family garden. Germans advancing on Warsaw fired artillery on Młociny, the picturesque village where her family lived, eight miles northwest of the capital. Horses galloped through the meadow as a Polish cavalry regiment joined the defense. Germans ambushed and “killed them—just like that,” my mother recalls, snapping her fingers. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Why the Founder of Mother’s Day Turned Against It

Anna Jarvis, who founded Mother's Day in 1908, passionately opposed its growing commercialization and eventually campaigned against the holiday.




Anna Jarvis, who had no children of her own, conceived of Mother’s Day as an occasion for honoring the sacrifices individual mothers made for their children.
In May 1908, she organized the first official Mother’s Day events at a church in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia, as well as at a Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, where she lived at the time. Jarvis then began writing letters to newspapers and politicians pushing for the adoption of Mother’s Day as an official holiday.
By 1912, many other churches, towns, and states were holding Mother’s Day celebrations, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association. Her hard-fought campaign paid off in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
Jarvis’ conceived off of Mother’s Day as an intimate occasion—a son or daughter honoring the mother they knew and loved—and not a celebration of all mothers. For this reason, she always stressed the singular “Mother’s” rather than the plural. She soon grew disillusioned, as Mother’s Day almost immediately became centered on the buying and giving of printed cards, flowers, candies, and other gifts. 
https://www.history.com/news/why-the-founder-of-mothers-day-turned-against-it?cmpid=email-hist-inside-history-2020-0506-05062020&om_rid=

50 years on, the Vietnam moratorium campaigns remind us of a different kind of politics

Fifty years ago this month, hundreds of thousands of Australians assembled across the country to call for an end to the Vietnam War. The first of the moratorium campaigns, the demonstrations of May 8, 1970, was the zenith of the anti-war movement in Australia that had been five years in the making.The largest of the May 8 marches took place in Melbourne, confirming its status as the national capital of protest politics. An estimated 100,000 demonstrators clogged the city’s streets.
https://theconversation.com/

Nixon's Invasion of Cambodia Triggers Protests

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard trying to disperse a crowd of student demonstrators at Kent State University opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others.

More than any other single event, the Kent State shootings would become a focal point of the ongoing, bitter divisions among Americans over the Vietnam War. The deadly outburst marked the culmination of several days of confrontations between law enforcement and protesters, which had begun after President Richard M. Nixon announced in a TV broadcast that he had authorized U.S. troops to invade Cambodia.

Nixon’s decision, which expanded the Vietnam War at a time when the United States had been in the process of withdrawing its troops, immediately sparked anti-war protests at colleges across the country—including Kent State. https://www.history.com/

History of Quebec

Quebec has played a special role in French history; the modern province occupies much of the land where French settlers founded the colony of Canada (New France) in the 17th and 18th centuries. The population is predominantly French-speaking and Roman Catholic, with a large Anglophone minority, augmented in recent years by immigrants from Asia. The political alienation of the Francophones from

the Anglophones has been a persistent theme since the late 19th century. Tensions were especially high during the First World War. Historically, British merchants and financiers controlled the economy and dominated Montreal. The Catholic Church, in close cooperation with the landowners, led a highly traditional social structure in rural and small-town Quebec. Much of that changed during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Quebec's separatists, calling for an independent nation, gained strength but were narrowly defeated in two referenda. Quebec imposed increasingly stringent laws favoring the French language; many Anglophones left, as did many of the national and international corporations that had been based in Montreal. From 1966, Montreal's population fell until the 1980s, according to census data. Montreal had been twice the size of Toronto for almost all of the 20th Century. But by 2001, it was finally, no longer the largest city in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Quebec

https://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+quebec&sxsrf=ALeKk035_fp8_wgpo-tTttCB7rGQ3WRDcA:1586947965163&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=C829BV3IuhZQFM%253A%252C4yz4SWBClqzsiM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kS_k2Vbpz0tfcdS6pGvq55eXCN25Q&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiT_fXtoeroAhXEYysKHeIVBKkQ_h0wAHoECAgQBA#imgrc=C829BV3IuhZQFM: