20th Century Great South Africans Quiz

Answer: Madiba

Madiba is an honorific term, meaning 'our great father' or 'father of the nation' and he is considered by all South Africans across the colour divide to be the most influential and beloved person in that country.
Nkosi means 'God'; Mandela is his surname; mahala means 'nothing, free or gratis' and is used widely by all language speakers, though it derives from Zulu.

Answer: Alan Cormack

Interestingly enough, there were two winners, the other being Godfrey Hounsfield from the UK. These two co-winners never knew each other. They were both chosen because the Nobel Committee could not decide on one winner.

Answer: Chief Albert Lutuli

Albert Lutuli was both the chief of his tribe and a political campaigner. His life's philosophy was strictly non-violent, and he toiled throughout his life to ensure transition and power sharing in SA. He was also the president-general of the ANC, the current leading party of the SA government.
Bishop Tutu was the first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
Mandela and De Klerk shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993

Answer: Kevin Carter

Kevin Carter was born in SA in 1961, and took his own life in 1994 only a couple of months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for photography. He was a freelance photographer who dedicated his career to covering the ongoing conflict in SA.
Ken Oosterbroek was another multi-award winning South African photographer. He was shot at age 32 when members of the National Peace Keeping Force panicked - just nine days before SA's first free election day.
John Kaplan is a Pulitzer Prize winning American photographer who has worked (among others) in South and West Africa.
David Goldblat became the first South African photographer to be honoured with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His book "The Afrikaners" was a ground-breaking piece of work on white poverty in the mines in the 1960s.

Answer: JM Coetzee

JM Coetzee is a South African now living in Australia. In the 1980s and 1990s he attracted much attention for his works, most notably "Waiting for the Barbarians" (1980) and "The Life and Times of Michael K." (1983. Michael K earned him his first Booker Prize. His second Booker prize was for "Disgrace" (1999).
(The other author to receive the Man Booker twice is Australian Peter Carey.)
Lessing was born to British parents in Iran but grew up in Zimbabwe. Now residing in the UK, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
Gordimer, a SAn, won her Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
Chinua Achebe is from Africa, but hails from the country of Nigeria. One of Africa's foremost authors, he won the Man Booker prize in 2007.

Answer: Zola Budd

Zola Budd was born in Bloemfontein in 1966. She always trained and raced barefoot, and had broken the world record in women's 5000 metres twice before her 20th birthday. She was also twice the winner of the World Cross Country Championships. At the 1984 Olympic Games (competing for Britain) she and Mary Decker bumped, causing both to lose their hopes to win the title.
In SA, 'Zola' is slang for a taxi, specifically in the townships.

Answer: A Khoisan (bushman) actor who played the lead in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy"

N!xau (to pronounce: click your tongue and then say 'ow'), a Kalahari bushman, or Khoisan, rather, from the plains of South Africa, was cast in Jamie Uys' 1982 film "The Gods Must Be Crazy", a lighthearted tale about how a Coke bottle dropped from a plane onto the African veld turns an entire village upside down. N!xau was chosen because, like the character in the film, he had had no exposure to any aspect of modern civilization, giving the film an authentic feel.

In 1984, the movie was released in America, propelling it into the record books as the one of the most successful foreign films ever to be shown in the U.S. SA's new motto is also in Khoisan, !ke e: /xarra //ke, meaning "diverse people unite".

The other two questions were humbug.

Answer: Miriam Makeba

Born in 1932 in SA, she moved to the United States in 1959 and sang at JFK's birthday party, not bad for a girl from Sophiatown! She later worked with Harry Belafonte.
In 1963 she addressed the United Nations about apartheid and she was not allowed to return to SA. She stayed in the US and married Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael. Mama Afrika performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland tour. She now lives in SA again.
The other three are all prominent jazz musicians and singers from South Africa.

Answer: The Springboks

The Springboks (Springbokke in Afrikaans and Amabokkebokke in isiZulu) is the name of the national rugby team. The game has been played in SA since the late 1800s, but the team was first called the Springboks during their first tour to Britain in 1906/7. Even then, rugby was immensely popular, so much so that in 1902 there was a temporary ceasefire in the Second Boer War so that a game could be played between British and Boer forces.
Bafana Bafana is the national soccer (football) team.
Proteas is the national cricket team.
The Cheetahs is a strong provincial rugby team (that of the Free State)in SA.

Answer: Embeth Davidtz

Davidtz was born in 1966 in the USA but move with her family to SA at the age of nine. She studied drama and English literature at Rhodes University and received her masters degree with honours. She moved to Los Angeles in 1991.
Theron (a South African) won an Oscar in 2004 for "Monster" and was again nominated in 2005.
Alice Krige (also a South African) has played opposite Richard Gere in "King David" (1985), the lead female role in "Chariots of Fire" (1985) and in "Lady Killers" (2006).
Thandie Newton was born in Africa, but in Zambia. Her family fled the country and went to England. After a brief stint in LA, she returned to the UK. Her films include "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006) and "Jefferson in Paris" (1995).