Friday, July 26, 2024
SOUTH AFRICA'S FIRST INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
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This is lengthier than I originally intended. As I was preparing iiit, like Topsy it 'just growed'.
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Apartheid:
Apartheid, meaning "separateness", “aparthood', was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap ('boss-hood'), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. White citizens had the highest status, with them being followed by Indians, Coloureds and then Black Africans.
The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.
Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party ruling government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention.The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that there were 21,000 deaths from political violence, with 7,000 deaths between 1948 and 1989, and 14,000 deaths and 22,000 injuries in the transition period between 1990 and 1994. Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups.
Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC), the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, leading to multiracial elections in April 1994.
In South Africa in June 1985, the ban on marriage between people of different ethnic backgrounds was finally lifted. The laws were repealed by the Immorality and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Amendment Act, which allowed interracial marriages and relationships.
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Suzanne Le Clerc and Protas Madlala:
A white who married across the colour line took on the legal status of the darker spouse. That meant living in an area segregated for blacks, Indians or people of mixed race known as “coloureds.”
American Suzanne Le Clerc and South African Protas Madlala (pictured below) were the first couple to tie the knot under the new rules.
However, while whites and nonwhites could marry, the rules of apartheid still dictated where they lived and worked. For Suzanne Le Clerc and her husband Protas it meant they either lived together in a squalid black township or lived apart. Unable to get permission to work in South Africa, Le Clerc took a job in Transkei, a nominally independent black homeland in South Africa, 235 miles from her husband. He lived in a church-run settlement near Durban, where he had a job as a community worker. Tired of being gawked at by curious blacks and sometimes hostile whites, Madlala and his wife avoided shopping or eating out together during their reunions once a month.
For two years, they saw each other once a month, meeting at a friend’s farm halfway between their homes. When Suzanne became pregnant with their first child, they were determined to live together, asking around until they found a white woman who agreed to let them stay in hiding in an apartment on her property. With two children who had been involved in the fight against apartheid—a daughter jailed for sending photographs to the press, and a son exiled for organising trade unions on the docks of the city of Durban—she was willing to take a risk for the young couple.
The baby was a boy, named Darius. After his birth, the Department of Home Affairs required the infant be classified as black, white, Indian, or “coloured,” a term that referred primarily to South Africans of mixed Asian, indigenous, or European descent. Suzanne and Protas refused, adamant that accepting race classification meant accepting the systematic degradation that came with it. “For his race, I wrote ‘human’ on the form,” says Suzanne. The designation was changed afterward by the Department of Home Affairs to “undetermined.”
She remembers her early days of motherhood with some sadness: “I wanted to be a new mother doing new mother things, pushing the baby around in the pram.” Instead, she bundled Darius in blankets to hide his dark skin, sneaking him onto the bus when she occasionally went into the all-white town. “People would look me up and down and gossip,” says Suzanne. “Some recognised me from television. ‘Aren’t you the woman we saw?’ I would say no. Or I would speak French.”
At five years old, Darius was killed by a hit-and-run driver in front of their home. Suzanne does not know if it was an accident or deliberate, related to the black chickens that had been tossed into their yard, the pervading sense they were being watched, retaliation for Protas’s outspoken activism. “The U.S. Embassy looked into it,” says Suzanne, but they were unable to find any conclusive evidence.
Apartheid ended in 1994, but the pressures on Suzanne and Protas—social, political, professional—did not. In 2001, they separated. Adding to tensions, Suzanne had become increasingly worried for the safety of their daughters, four in all: Alicia was born in 1989, then Racquel, Darienne, and the youngest, Saroya. As a chief research specialist and professor of anthropology at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal in Durban, where her work focused heavily on how gender roles and culture were connected to the spread of HIV and AIDS, Suzanne feared the country’s growing climate of sexual violence. “When you have a bigger struggle, all other struggles take a back seat,” says Suzanne. “Once apartheid ended, other issues came to the foreground—gender inequality, violence, criminality—issues that there had been no space for when all energies were focused on fighting against segregation.” She and Protas questioned whether South Africa, reeling from tensions caused by sudden political change, was the right environment for their young girls. “Alicia would dress as a boy to walk to school because she couldn’t stand the harassment,” Suzanne says. “As a young woman, I had enjoyed exploring and riding my bike freely through the neighborhood—I wanted my daughters to know how that freedom felt.”
Left to right, Darienne, Saroya, Alicia, and Racquel on the day of Saroya’s graduation from high school.
In 2009, Suzanne and the girls moved to D.C., where she is now a senior anthropologist for the Global Health Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development, addressing the socio-cultural and economic determinants of health. Protas stayed in South Africa, where he is a noted political analyst.
Her work still brings her to South Africa, where she remains an external examiner for the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal. It is a small world: One of her colleagues turned out to be the exiled son of the woman who had rented the apartment to Suzanne and Protas when they left the black township. “I knew about his whole life,” says Suzanne. His name is David. They are now married.
Suzanne visits a Zulu craft shop on her first day in South Africa.
Above left, news clippings from the family scrapbook show Suzanne and Protas at the church and crowds of onlookers at the history-making wedding; at right, Suzanne visits a Zulu craft shop on her first day in South Africa.
On the morning of the wedding, Protas Madlala and Suzanne Leclerc ’78 rode to the church together. It was customary for a bride and groom to arrive separately, but caution prevailed. Although there had been talk of the South African government relaxing its laws, and an official from the U.S. Embassy had agreed to attend the wedding in case of trouble, as they turned down the passage through the sugar cane fields—a deserted road of blind turns and steep, grass-covered hills, the most likely spot for an ambush—the Zulu groom and his white, American bride were afraid.
But the ambush that awaited was not the one they expected. When they reached the church, they found hundreds of onlookers lining the streets, many cheering and crowding the wedding car. Some had followed gossip overheard hours away in Johannesburg; one news photographer was on a rooftop, angling for a shot of the mixed-race couple about to defy the government and marry.
Leclerc, in a handmade gown she had sewn in secret while staying with nuns in a nearby guesthouse, was struck by a song that rose from the crowd: Africa will be saved. “It wasn’t exactly ‘Here comes the bride,’” she reflects.
At the altar, the couple learned their wedding night would not be spent in prison—the apartheid ban on interracial marriage had been lifted just the night before, in tacit acknowledgement of the couple’s wedding plans. Suzanne and Protas would read about it on the front page of the next morning’s newspapers, alongside the photo that accompanied headlines around the world: On Sunday, June 15, 1985, they were South Africa’s first legally-married interracial couple.
As a child in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Suzanne had been an adventurer. She spent hours playing pilgrim or building huts in the woods, soaking up stories her father, an appliance business owner and World War II veteran, told her about life on a submarine in the South Pacific. “I knew that someday I wanted to travel,” says Suzanne. “Not just for the sake of it, but to do something while I was there.”
After graduating high school early, she left home to study health sciences at a community college in Connecticut, then transferred to the University of Rhode Island to major in anthropology. On the second or third day of classes, she sat in a classroom at Chafee Hall and listened as Professor James Loy vocalized the pant hoot of a chimpanzee. “I was so impressed,” says Suzanne. Not long after earning her degree, she announced to her parents that she was joining the Peace Corps. Her mother was initially perplexed—first the anthropology degree (“She didn’t see jobs in the paper for anthropologists,” says Suzanne), now the Peace Corps, which didn’t seem suitable for a young woman—but ultimately supportive. “My dad was very proud,” Suzanne says. “He thought it was wonderful.”
For two years, Suzanne taught English at a lycee in Gabon, on the west coast of central Africa. When it was time to return to Rhode Island, Peace Corps administrators asked her to stay in Gabon for a third year to build a school. There were no other women in the construction program, but having spent part of the previous year working with local doctors to collect ethnographic data researching how people managed illness in their families, she was eager for the opportunity to immerse herself further in the local community. Armed with an instruction manual on how to mix cement and pour a foundation, she hired a crew of nine Gabonese men, making sure to include the native Baka pygmies, whom she had observed as marginalized by the villagers. “Everybody has their prejudices,” she says.
She thinks of returning to Gabon, to see if the school she built still stands. She says, “It’s on my bucket list.”
In graduate school, she met Protas. She had returned to the U.S. to study medical anthropology at George Washington University in D.C.; Protas was a student at American University, earning his master’s in international relations and communications. They met through a mutual friend who was living in the basement apartment of the house Suzanne had rented with other students. Passionate, political—their similarities were striking for a couple that would go on to shock so many with their perceived differences.
Her parents found common ground with their daughter’s boyfriend as well. Suzanne’s father and Protas talked war, politics, history. “The first time I brought Protas home, my father had a big stack of Time magazines for him to read and discuss,” she says. He passed away before he saw Suzanne marry, but she knew she had his blessing. “He liked Protas very much,” says Suzanne.
The couple had planned to settle in the States, but when Suzanne asked Protas to take her home to South Africa to meet his family before the wedding, plans changed. “He was very involved in the movement against apartheid,” says Suzanne. “Everywhere we went, people kept saying, ‘We need him here.’ I felt guilty taking him away.”
By then, Suzanne’s mother was unfazed when she called home to say they had decided to remain in South Africa to marry. Her mother made the journey to South Africa two months later for the wedding—her first time overseas. “At the wedding, Protas’s family presented her with a big bowl of cow’s blood as an offering of thanks,” says Suzanne. “She took it in stride. When reporters asked what she thought of the wedding, she said, ‘Protas is a nice Catholic boy.’ To her, that was the most important thing.”
After the wedding, law did not permit Protas to live outside the black townships. Though interracial sexual relations and cohabitation bans had been repealed, the Group Areas Act—restricting races to live in designated areas—remained. Suzanne was assigned her husband’s legal status (“honorary black,” she says), and the newlyweds lived in a tin-roofed shack in Mariannhill with no electricity or running water, typical conditions in many of the townships that were left to deteriorate by the government in hopes of driving nonwhites out of urban areas to designated rural homelands. While the villagers embraced the couple (“They were so welcoming and supportive, but they were embarrassed that Protas and I were university graduates living in these conditions”), the streets turned violent at night. “The army would come down the main road, patrolling with their guns,” says Suzanne. Suspected informers were necklaced—a rubber tire shoved down over their shoulders and set on fire—or their houses were burned. Unable to obtain a work permit or take the black bus to reach town (her legal status only applied to her residence), Suzanne was isolated. Even so, she still finds things to miss about their life on the homestead. “It was a simple life,” she says. “My sister-in-law would wash her clothes outside in the bucket, and I would wash mine next to her, and we would talk. Neighbors would come around. We would make tea on the kerosene stove, eat avocado sandwiches. In many ways, it was a quiet, simple time.”
By the end of the first year, Suzanne moved out of the township to the city then called Umtata (now Mthatha) in the territory of Transkei, one of the designated homelands nearly 250 miles away from Mariannhill, where she had obtained a work permit to teach at the local university. Protas, whose work as a community organizer was heavily tied to Mariannhill, stayed behind. For the next two years, they saw each other once a month, meeting at a friend’s farm halfway between their homes. When Suzanne became pregnant with their first child, they were determined to live together, asking around until they found a white woman who agreed to let them stay in hiding in an apartment on her property. With two children who had been involved in the fight against apartheid—a daughter jailed for sending photographs to the press, and a son exiled for organizing trade unions on the docks of the city of Durban—she was willing to take a risk for the young couple.
According to Suzanne, “It clamps your personality, living in segregation. You don’t feel that you belong in the public space, you don’t feel free. The apartheid system was so successful at keeping those worlds separate, you had these white grannies going on about their lives, talking about their granddaughters taking ballet. They had no idea of the conditions that blacks were living in beyond their suburbs.”
She adds: “I felt angry at the government, angry at the people. You couldn’t blame them for wanting to enjoy the sunshine and get on with their lives, but they should have wanted to know about their country and the great injustice going on in their backyard. You can’t just live your nice life—with laser security around the house and killer dogs at the gates. Can you enjoy your life like that?”
The daughters, each in their own way, have followed in their parents’ paths. Darienne left this past October for the Peace Corps. Saroya, an international development major, spent her last semester abroad in Central America. Alicia recently earned her master’s in school counseling, and Racquel works in communications for the National Multifamily Housing Council. “Our parents taught us that it was okay to challenge the status quo,” says Alicia. “The things they did together represent making a big, positive change in the world. We are all trying, in the careers we pursue, to make a difference.”
The girls used to go back to South Africa to visit their father, and they visit Suzanne’s family in Rhode Island each year, struck by the two worlds. “When I go to Cumberland, I am always amazed that she met our father and chose to help him with the struggle,” says Alicia. She has imagined the life of her mother: a young woman working in construction with the Peace Corps, a newlywed living in squalor, a first-time mother hiding her newborn baby on the bus. Scrutiny, harassment—even now, fighting for global health—all starting from a childhood in a small town that seems to have changed little since Suzanne was an adventurous girl, riding her bike and hanging on to her father’s stories.
“I am amazed,” Alicia repeats. “She could have lived an easy life.”
Protas Madlala went on to become a respected anti-apartheid activist and political analyst. He started his career as a journalist at ‘The Mercury’ in Durban in the 1980s and later studied in the US where he obtained a degree in International Communication, as well as later being awarded an honorary Doctorate. Madlala died in 2023 aged 68.
Professor Leclerc-Madlala is now an anthropologist whose research and publications since 1995 have focused on the intersections of culture, sexuality, gender and HIV in Africa, especially in South Africa and in relation to young women’s vulnerability. Her academic work as former Professor and Head of the Anthropology Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal was complimented by active involvement in the design, implementation and evaluation of HIV programs in South Africa and its neighboring countries. She is currently working as a Senior Advisor for HIV and health with the US Agency for International Development.
Prof Leclerc-Madlala has worked as a consultant to UNAIDS, SADC, the World Bank, and WHO, as well as to several regional non-government organizations and community-based organizations. She helped to draft South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act and the Children’s Bill and authored UNAIDS’ 2009 Action Brief on Inter-generational and Transactional sex in Southern Africa. She worked with the Commission on Gender Equality, the South African Law Commission and other legal bodies to assess various cultural and medical practices for human rights violations. Professor Leclerc-Madlala is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the International AIDS Society, the American Anthropological Association, and the Southern African Association of Anthropologists.
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Gallery:
Apartheid, 1967
Sign in Durban that states the beach is for whites only under section 37 of the Durban beach by-laws. The languages are English, Afrikaans and Zulu, the language of the black population group in the Durban area.
A sign in Johannesburg
Thursday, July 25, 2024
FUNNY FRIDAY
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Enjoy readers, have a pleasant weekend.
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SOME HUMOUR:
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A waiter walks up to a man and asks "Sir, are you ready to order?"
Man: "I am, but my wife is in the bathroom."
Waiter: "Well do you know what she's having?"
Man: "It's been 10 minutes so probably a number 2."
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A waiter takes an order from a customer who asks for half a Caesar salad.
The waiter says "Well, we have a small and a large, would you like the small?"
The customer says, "No, I don't want a small or a large. I want HALF a Caesar salad. Why is that so hard?"
The waiter says "Ok.... let me go check with the chef." The waiter walks off toward the kitchen, but he doesn't see that the customer has gotten up from his table and is following right behind him.
The waiter gets to the kitchen, and says to the chef, "Some asshole jerk weirdo out there wants me to get him HALF a Caesar salad..." and he jerks his thumb toward the dining room, and in so doing, he sees the customer standing right behind him.
"And this fine gentleman would like the other half."
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A waiter walks up to a table full of Jewish women dining and says "ladies, is anything ok?"
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Sat down in a restaurant to eat dinner last night, and the waiter asked if I'd like to hear today's special.
I said yeah.
He said, today is special.
I said, I can appreciate a good dad joke, but can you tell me about the menu please.
The waiter slammed his notebook down on the table and said ‘Sir, the men I please is my own private business.’
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My Chinese waiter thinks all white people look alike and gave my food to the wrong customer
Wait. Never mind. That wasn’t my waiter.
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I can’t believe the nerve…
An old friend of mine just finished serving several years in prison for fraud, and as soon as he got out he started trying to get me to invest in some new business venture.
Clearly he never learned his lesson: you should NEVER end a sentence with a proposition.
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An old woman is sitting at home one afternoon when the doorbell rings.
She opens the door and sees a man with a collecting tin and a name badge. "Good afternoon, madam," he says. "I am collecting for the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band Instrumental Purchase and Repair Fund. May I ask you for a small donation?"
"Eh?" says the old lady.
The man repeats, "Good afternoon. I am collecting for the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band Instrumental Purchase and Repair Fund. May I ask you for a small donation?"
"Eh?" says the old lady, and seems to fiddle with her hearing aid.
The man smiles patiently and says "Good afternoon. I am collecting for the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band Instrumental Purchase and Repair Fund. May I ask you for a small donation?"
"Eh?" she says again.
"Good afternoon..." the man begins, then sighs and spins on his heel, muttering "Screw her anyway, the deaf old bitch!"
"Yes," says the old lady, "and screw your Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band Instrumental Purchase and Repair Fund!"
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#1:
Last night, I went with some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange. When the waiter brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around I saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.
When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, "Why the spoon?"
"Well," he explained, "the restaurant's owners hired a consulting firm to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift."
As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare. "I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now."
I was impressed!
Later I noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly.
Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. I asked the waiter, "Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"
"Oh, certainly!" Then he lowered his voice. "Not everyone is so observant... That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can also save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the end of our "you know what," we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent."
"Hhmmm...After you get it out, how do you put it back?" I asked.
"Well," he whispered, "I don't know about the others... but I use my spoon."
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#2:
Two chemists went to dinner together.
After they ordered, one of them told the waiter: "A cup of H2O, please."
The other chemist told the waiter: "H2O, too."
He gulped down his drink and then he died.
(H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide).
In a similar vein:
My favourite teacher took a drink but he will drink no more,
For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4.
(Sulfuric acid).
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LIMERICK OF THE WEEK:
Sure, I dine at the best spot in Cork,
On the best of pig’s head and of pork,
I eat spuds and boiled eggs,
And turkey-cocks legs,
And I don’t have to use knife or fork !
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GALLERY:
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CORN CORNER:
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The sweet thing my wife says every time after sex:
Happy Birthday!
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People say being a waiter is a bad job...
... but, hey, it puts food on the table.
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The waiter came to my table and asked "Do you wanna box for your leftovers?"
So I knocked his arse out with a left hook.
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At a restaurant a waiter comes over and asks a man "Comfortable sir?"
"No no, comforfood"
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What do you call a hippies' wife?
Mississippi
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024
PARIS SUMMER OLYMPICS 2024 – SOME FACTS
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The symbol for the 2024 Olympics is:
The logo for Paris 2024 combines three separate symbols – the gold medal, the flame and Marianne, the personification of the French Republic.
It is the first time in history that thee same emblem has been used for both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games.
According to the Olympics website:
The gold medal symbolises achievement, not only of champions but all those who give everything they have and enable others to do the same.
The flame symbolises the energy that drives the event, encouraging people to be bold and forge a new way of organising the Games to rise to the challenges faced today.
The lips and stylised face represent Marianne, the personification of the spirit of creativity that inspires the Games. Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, represents the same values found in sport, the Olympics and the Paralympics – humanism, fraternity, generosity and sharing. Marianne is a familiar face in French culture that is omnipresent in day-to-day life, appearing on stamps and outside every town hall for example.
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Marianne has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. As a national icon Marianne represents opposition to monarchy and the championship of freedom and democracy against all forms of oppression.
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The typography of the words in the logo has been created especially for the Paris Olympic Games. Named Paris 2024, it is directly inspired by the Art Deco style and is a nod to the previous 1924 games, giving an elegant, original and French effect.
Under the words Paris 2024 is the official symbol of the Olympic Games. All Olympic Games logos must include this logo.
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The Phryges are the official mascots of Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. They are two anthropomorphic Phrygian caps, a symbol of France.
The Phrygian cap, a soft, generally red hat, was worn by freed slaves in Phrygia, an ancient Greek kingdom in what is now Turkey. At the time of the French Revolution, the Phrygian cap was worn as a symbol of freedom. Marianne, the national personification of France and basis of the Paris 2024 emblem, is often depicted wearing a Phrygian cap.
Each Phryge was given a personality.
The Olympic Phryge is "the smart one" with a "methodical mind and alluring charm."
The Paralympic Phryge is "a party animal, spontaneous and a bit hotheaded." The Paralympic Phrygian is the first Paralympic mascot since Sondre, the mascot of the 1994 Winter Paralympics, to have a disability as she wears a prosthesis on one of her legs.
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Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics in history to achieve numerical gender parity on the field of play, with an equal number of female and male athletes participating in the largest sporting event in the world. Out of the 10,500 athletes participating in the Games, 5,250 will be men and 5,250 women.
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The International Olympic Committee gives the privilege of hosting a Summer or Winter Olympics to cities, not to countries. This is chosen via a vote by the members of the IOC, who are not allowed to vote for the country they hail from.
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Greece, Switzerland, Great Britain, Australia, and France are the only countries to have sent an athlete to compete in every Summer Olympics.
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Athletes are not paid by the IOC for competing in the Olympics, and any money they make usually comes from their home country’s Olympic body, or sponsors.
However, for the first time in Olympic history, athletes in Paris 2024’s track and field events will win $100K for gold medals, $50K for silver, and $25K for bronze.
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The Olympic Games Paris 2024 will officially be held from 26 July until 11 August 2024, while the Paralympic Games will take place from 28 August until 8 September.
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The Olympic competitions for football and rugby at Paris 2024 will begin on 24 July, two days before the Opening Ceremony.
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The Olympic Games Paris 2024 takes place exactly 100 years since Paris hosted the Olympics back in 1924.
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Paris joins London as the only cities to host the Olympics three times. The Games were in Paris in 1900, 1924 and now in 2024, while London hosted the Games in 1908, 1948 and 2012.
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On 26 July 2024, the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris will be held almost exactly 100 years after the 1924 Closing Ceremony, which was held on 27 July.
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The Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony will not be held in a stadium for the first time ever. Instead it will be done on the Seine, the river that crosses the centre of Paris.
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Some Olympic events will happen in iconic places of Paris: beach volleyball will be held at the Champ de Mars (under the Eiffel Tower), urban sports will be held at La Concorde, fencing and taekwondo at the Grand Palais, the start of the Marathon at the Hotel de Ville.
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Breaking, commonly known as breakdancing, will be included at the Olympics for the first time in Paris. It will not return for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
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For the first time ever, the 2024 Games will also take place in the French territory of Tahiti, where the surfing competition will be held on the Pacific island’s legendary Teahupoo wave, located about 15 000km from Paris.
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In canoe, there will be a new event introduced at Paris 2024: Extreme slalom. Four athletes tip off a ramp at the same time and whoever gets to the bottom of the course first is the winner. There will be one event for men and one event for women.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
FROM THE VAULT, UPDATED
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From:
Bytes
Monday, December 14, 2015
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Shamekh Bluwi
Shamekh Bluwi is an architect, visual artist and fashion illustrator living in Jordan who has become known for his unique paper cutouts. He firstly draws a figure with or without surroundings, then cuts away parts of it. The resultant cutout held up to various backgrounds creates constantly changing images, assisting in design work and giving an idea of what the fashion item might look like in various styles.
Following are some examples of his art.
One word of caution – I have added my own piece of cutout art, see if you can work out which one it is.
So did you work out which was my one? It's the second last one. Here it is again with a different background . . .
Plus some more . . .
. . . and some of his fashion illustrations without the cutouts . . .
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