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 gave the region its name, since Natal refers in Portuguese to the birth of Christ. Vasco da Gama saw the coast on 25 December 1497 on hi...

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. At 2,432 km the Orange River is the l...

Q 03/05

Mandela cast his 1994 vote at Ohlange school, founded in 1901, to 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 picked the school delib...

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 Boer shelling derailed his armoured train at Chieveley. That December he slipped out,...

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, the marchers sang, is what the government had struck, and the line became the slogan of women's resistance. Some 20,000 women delivered anti-p...