Eastern Cape Inland and the Karoo - Grahamstown
Grahamstown
Grahamstown is home to Rhodes University, a few thousand students and a lot of churches. Renowned for its diverse festivals and wild parties, the most important annual event is the National Arts Festival in July. It’s a short trip from here to the coast, the Great Fish River Reserve and the Addo Elephant Park.
A rose by any other name…
The town was originally called Graham’s Town after its founder, Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham. It was established as a military outpost in 1811. Thanks to the arrival of the 1820 settlers it became a successful trading post on the frontier and thrived.
Grahamstown is also known as a City of Saints, thanks to the fact that there are around 70 churches here. Sounds more like City of Factions. Although maybe there used to be too many people to fit into the normal number of churches.
These days Grahamstown is best known as the Festival City. The National Arts Festival in July lasts for eleven days and is the largest festival in Africa. The town is transformed into a street market and every available hall seems to be a performance venue. Music ranges from opera to street jazz, and theatre performances from Shakespeare to experimental. Whether you want to shop, party, visit art exhibitions or find the lunatic fringe, there’s a place to do it.
Other festivals include Business Leaders Week and the Science Festival.
Culture
• The Albany Museum complex is made up of several buildings housing a variety of exhibitions.
• The Observatory Museum has a working camera obscura which reflects the view from the street onto a wall in the building.
• The institute of Ichthyology is named after Professor JLB Smith who rediscovered the supposedly extinct coelacanth. There’s a stuffed one in a glass box to prove it.
• The Cathedral of St Michael and St George started as a small church in the town centre in 1824 and took 128 years to complete. The bells are the oldest and heaviest ring of eight bells in Africa. The largest bell weighs 1,25 tons.
A bit of background…
After a turbulent history of warring between British and Xhosa warriors, Grahamstown became a busy trading centre in the early 1800’s. Ivory, skins, ostrich feathers, aromatic gums and cattle were bartered in exchange for beads, blankets, copper and European produce. The town was the one place where warriors and soldiers encountered each other without reaching for weapons and as many as 2000 wagons lumbered into the town on market days. With time many of the settlers disillusioned by their allocations in poor farming situations moved to the town and resumed their original trades as millers, wheelwrights, wagon makers, gun smiths and mechanics.
At this time Grahamstown was the second largest town in Southern Africa.
It now has the highest rate of unemployment in the Eastern Cape, and possibly in the country.
Today the school and university life dominates the town. During vacation periods, the streets are empty and the stillness of the air is disturbed only by the subdued weeping of commercial travellers (urban legend, ok?).
Kid you not though, it's a great spot to go and have fun when the fun is happening.
Grahamstown is 125km inland from PE and 180km from East London.
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