Q 01/05

Vasco da Gama named the coast of today's KwaZulu-Natal 'Natal' after sighting it on which day in 1497?

A) Christmas Day

B) Easter Sunday

C) New Year's Day

D) All Saints' Day

Answer · why

A) Christmas Day

Christmas Day is 'Natal' in Portuguese, the name Vasco da Gama gave the coast as he sailed for India; it outlived the 1994 merger of Natal province wi...

Q 02/05

South Africa's longest river was named in 1779 by Robert Gordon, a VOC garrison commander, after which royal dynasty?

A) The House of Hanover

B) The House of Orange

C) The House of Bourbon

D) The House of Habsburg

Answer · why

B) The House of Orange

The House of Orange, the Dutch ruling family, was honoured by Gordon on a trip into the interior from Cape Town; the Orange River's name has nothing t...

Q 03/05

Mandela cast his 1994 vote at Ohlange school so that he could lay a wreath on which first ANC president's grave?

A) Sol Plaatje

B) Pixley ka Seme

C) John Dube

D) Walter Rubusana

Answer · why

C) John Dube

John Dube founded Ohlange with his wife Nokutela as the Zulu Christian Industrial School and is buried in its grounds; Mandela chose it so that his fi...

Q 04/05

Which future British prime minister, captured as a war correspondent in 1899, escaped a Boer prison camp in Pretoria?

A) David Lloyd George

B) Neville Chamberlain

C) Clement Attlee

D) Winston Churchill

Answer · why

D) Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was covering the war for the Morning Post when Boers ambushed his armoured train near Chieveley; that December he escaped, hid in a ...

Q 05/05

Women who marched on Pretoria against pass laws in 1956 sang that to strike a woman is to strike what?

A) A rock

B) A mountain

C) A lion

D) A river

Answer · why

A) A rock

A rock is what prime minister Strijdom had struck, the marchers sang, and the line became a slogan of women's resistance; up to 20,000 women took anti...