Abstract Abstract Although there have been various quality assurance schemes operative in South Africa for several years, efforts were largely fragmented and informal. Initially the Fertilizer Society of South Africa, together with representatives of Government departments, cooperatives, private laboratories, research councils, and universities met informally to discuss the analysis of materials of agricultural importance: soils, plant material, fertilizers, liming materials, animal feeds, and waters. The need for a more formal structure was long felt and it came to fruition with the formation of Agricultural Laboratory Association of Southern Africa (ALASA) in September 1993. Apart from a constitution, there is a central council comprising representatives of subcommittees representing the different disciplines. Although lots has yet to be put in place, it is confidently expected that this will go a long way to ensuring reliable analyses of materials of agricultural importance in Southern Africa.
Hass on Duke 7 and G755 were compared in a water culture nutrient elimination study. Hoot disease conditions, which developed in water cultures (especially associated with Cylindrocarpon spp) especially affected Duke 7 plants and these became stunted and eventually died. Deficiency symptoms of N, S, Cu and Fe were clearly shown. Observations relating to the elimination of N, P, Caand B, and disease manifestation, warrant further investigation.
In our age of instant communication, personal vituperation passing as political rhetoric, and disregard for the rule of law, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela offers much food for thought. Indeed, Mandela’s prison letters are instructive and uplifting, despite the many moments of heartbreak and frustration they record. One letter in particular, from the middle of this sizable volume, strikes me as particularly arresting today. It is a long and careful missive to the commissioner of prisons, written shortly after the Soweto Uprising, in which Mandela strenuously objects to various abuses of authority. His indictment, formulated as a series of numbered charges, is sweeping but systematic; indeed, its style and procedures remind us forcefully that Mandela is best understood not as a martyr or saint, but as a lawyer through and through. The letter also demonstrates other qualities. Though politically uncompromising—it essentially protests against the growing interference of the Security Branch of the South African police in the management of political prisoners—it builds the case with tact. It interpellates the addressee as a man of reason, granting him the face-saving alibi that he might not know what is happening on the ground. It reveals respect for regulations and laws, knowledge of historical precedent, awareness of the proper functioning of state bureaucracies, and only regretfully stoops to accuse low-ranking officials by name for their arbitrary cruelties. The letter begins with a powerful assertion on Mandela’s part that he has never, outside or inside prison, considered anyone his superior, and that his respect for persons is based not on their skin color or vaunted authority, but solely on merit. The performative politeness, in other words, is no white flag: on the contrary, it is an acknowledgment that opponents will do battle but should do so as honorable warriors, agreed on certain rules of conduct.
Two families have been described previously with the features of an autosomal dominant familial cerebral amyloid angiopathy with nonneuritic plaque formation. The clinical features of the cases were dementia, spastic paralysis and ataxia. It has now been established that both families were descended from a common ancestor and the case histories of 26 affected individuals in 5 generations of this pedigree are reported. An autopsy study has been performed on a recent case. The findings are described and compared with the four previously published autopsy studies in this family, which is then discussed in the context of recent advances in the nosology of familial disorders in which cerebral amyloid angiopathy and other forms of cerebral amyloid deposition occur.
There is no need for us to quarrel with Alfred Kazin when he writes in the introduction to On Native Grounds (1942) that modern American fiction is “at bottom only the expression” of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. No one cause or project can be singled out as the defining feature of this diverse body of writing. “Everything,” says Kazin, “contributed to its formation.” Its roots were “nothing less than the transformation of our society in the great seminal years after the War” and its project was ultimately a cognitive one: “the need to learn what the reality of life was in our modern era.”
In his introduction to Barack Obama’s 2018 Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, the South African writer Njabulo Ndebele commented on the dire political situation on both sides of the Atlantic: ...
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