The daughters of Jewish immigrants, Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, a small town on the East Rand of Johannesburg. She went to a Convent school and later studied for a year at the University of the Witwatersrand without taking a degree. In 1948 she moved to Johannesburg, where she lived all of her life.

She began writing at the young age of nine and her first story was published in a South African magazine when she was only fifteen. Her first collection of short stories was published in 1949. "Face to Face" and the first novel "The Lying Days" appeared in 1953. Nadine Gordimer is an author of fourteen novels, thirteen story collections, five non-fiction collections, several volumes of essays, four film scripts derived from her fiction, and three documentary film scripts. She achieved lasting international recognition for her works and her awards include fifteen honorary doctorates , 11 literary awards and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Her novels and short stories have been published in 40 different languages.

Concerned about racial and economic inequality in South Africa from an early age, Nadine Gordimer joined, and became an active member of the African National Congress. During the Apartheid era she regularly took part in anti-Apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, and while travelling internationally spoke out against Apartheid, discrimination and political discrimination. She also resisted censorship and state control by serving on the Steering Committee of the Anti-Censorship Action Group.

In the post-Apartheid era, Nadine Gordimer continued to write about the effects of Apartheid and life in South Africa after 1994, and was active in the HIV/AIDS movement.

Nadine Gordimer died on the 13 July 2014 in Johannesburg.

Grace Dieu was an Anglican training college for native school teachers under the supervision of the Diocese of Pretoria of the Church of the Province of South Africa. It existed from 1906-1958 and went through the stages of being a small missionary settlement, mission school, industrial and domestic science school and teachers training institution. It was founded in 1906 on the farm Jakhalsfontein, 18 miles by road from Pietersburg, by Archdeacon (later Bishop) Fuller as a centre for missionary work in the Transvaal. Inspector W.E.C. Clarke of the Transvaal Education Department suggested a school be started and by 1907 the first principal and students had arrived. The main function of Grace Dieu was to train native teachers to staff the many Anglican mission schools in the Transvaal, as it was the onlyAnglican training college in the dioceses of Johannesburg and Pretoria. It did, however, receive students from all parts of South Africa, the Protectorates and Southern Rhodesia. Chief Leabua Jonathan of Lesotho is e former pupil of this college. The effects of the Bantu Education Act of 1953 were such that the teachers training department was closed in 1955 but Grace Dieu continued as a secondary school, extended to standard 10, and an industrial school from 1956-1958. The Anglican church withdrew because of financial difficulties and because the church felt unable to accept the conditions laid down by the authorities for the registration of the school. The buildings were bought over by the Education Department, The first two principals were C. O'Dell, 1906-1909 and W. B.J. Banks 1909-1912. From 1912-1924 the principal was the Rev. W.A. Palmer (later Dean of Johannesburg), under whom there was considerable development. Succeeding principals were S.P. Woodfield, 1924-1938 and 1953-1957, C.M. Jones 1938-1949, H.W. Hosken 1949-1953 and R.M. Jeffery 1957-1958, all of whom contributed to the development of Grace Dieu, Important occasions in the history of the college were the opening of the 3 halls by the Governor General Lord Buxton in 1916, the dedication the new chapel in 1917, the Hickson Healing Mission of 1922 under the Rev. J. M. Hickson, the inspection of the college Pathfinders by the Prince of Wales 1925, the dedication of the Bell Tower and visit of Princess Alice 1925 and the visit of the Governor General and his wife, Earl and Countess Clarendon in 1932, In addition to training teachers, Grace Dieu had a strong practical function. The carpenter's shop made furniture for the college and the carving department carried out orders for crucifixes, prayer-desks, statues etc., from all over South Africa and overseas, The girls under the sisters of the Community of the Resurrection were trained in all branches of housewifery. Extra-mural activities also played an important part in college 1ife: sporting competitions between the various houses took place, The Pathfinder(Scout) movement had its origin at Grace Dieu in 1922 and later the equivalent girls movement, the Wayfarers, was added.

Historical note relating to Radio ANC, as remembered by Lionel S. Gray. Being a member of the South African Communist Party since 1962, and a Lecturer of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand, he was approached by the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) to develop a radio transmitter. One of his radio transmitters was found at Liliesleaf Farm during the raid in 1963 and subsequently became an exhibit in the Rivonia Trial 1964.

Evelyn Groenink (1960) started her journalism career in the eighties of the last century at a small left-wing newspaper in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As correspondent in Central America during the mid-eighties her reports from that region won her ‘runner up’ in a Dutch award contest for young journalists. After 1987, partly as a result from her association with the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Netherlands, her journalistic focus changed to South and southern Africa. She was deputy editor for Dutch Anti-Apartheid News when ANC representative Dulcie September was killed in Paris, France, in 1988.
It was this event that prompted her to start investigating how it was possible that an ANC diplomat was assassinated in a Western country that formally abhorred apartheid and was governed by a socialist president at the time. Gradually discovering that the subsequent murder of Anton Lubowski in 1989, and the murder of Chris Hani in 1993, showed similar patterns to what she had discovered in the case of Dulcie September -namely arms deals and related natural resource exploitation-, she developed a specialisation in matters of international arms trade. This led to her taking part in the South African research for the seminal work by Dr Peter Hug on Swiss military collaboration with apartheid in 2005, as a result of which she won a ‘Golden Key’ award for ‘best use of the South African Promotion of Access to Information Act.’ Se also collaborated with the Mail & Guardian with regard to a number of investigative publications on the South African arms deal in 2007.
Having started to collaborate with investigative journalists in other African countries on arms- and other cross-border trade investigations, she co-founded the Forum for African Investigative Reporters in 2003, which grew to a network of 70+ members in 24 African countries. She currently acts as investigative editor for the African Investigative Publishing Collective and its partner ZAM in the Netherlands. In 2016 and 2017, the partnership published transnational African investigations on inter alia the US-dominated “war on terror” on the African continent, witchcraft, land conflicts, misdirected development aid and plunder by African oligarchs.
Evelyn Groenink has published three books on South Africa through Atlas Publishers in the Netherlands (in Dutch): Wonderland, 1996; Dulcie, 2001; and ‘Bij de Blanken is het Beter’ (It’s Better where the Whites are), 2013. “Incorruptible” is her first book in English translation.
She is married to Ivan Pillay and the couple have two daughters, Devi and Vani.
(From the website of Evelyn Groenink: https://evelyngroenink.com)

John Gubbins was an Africana book collector, antiquarian and writer. He donated his Africana collection of old books, pictures and manuscripts to the University of the Witwatersrand. A disastrous fire in 1931 at the University's central block destroyed thousands of books, and a large part of Gubbins' Africana collection. Gubbins and his patrons, including the South African Institute of Race Relations, started on a new collection which eventually became the 'Gubbins Library' and which he donated to the William Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the Johannesburg's Africana Museum. The University conferred an honorary D.Litt. on him.