A powerful and poignant drama based on real events, “Skin” is the true story of a black child born in the 50s to white parents in apartheid South Africa.

Sandra Laing (Sophie Okonedo) is distinctly black — in appearance at least — despite the fact that both her parents, Abraham (Sam Neill) and Sannie (Alice Krige) are white Afrikaners.

Store owners in a remote area of Eastern Transvaal, South Africa, Abraham and Sannie are unaware of their own individual black genetics and have lovingly raised Sandra as their white little girl. Things soon drastically change when she is sent to an all white boarding school in the neighboring town of Piet Retief.

Ridiculed and shunned by her classmates, she’s finally examined by State officials after several complaints pour in from other parents and teachers. After being classified as ‘colored,’ she is expelled from the school and the story soon becomes an international scandal as her parents tackle the Supreme Court to have the classification reversed.

This true story follows Sandra’s story to present day.

SKIN: The movie opens on National circuit here on 22 January at Cinema Nouveau around the country. (Read the review)

Charles Darwin spent most of his time geologising at the Cape - as he did everywhere else on the voyage of The Beagle. Andrew Smith, the Scottish surgeon, naturalist and zoologist and the first Superintendent of the South African Museum in Cape Town, accompanied him to the important Cape Peninsula sites, and he collected a variety of rock specimens. He kept a special geological notebook in which he described in considerable detail his geological and geographical observations of the road from Simonstown to Cape Town, Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Rump, the Sea Point Contact, the road to Paarl, Paarl Rock, the Drakenstein Mountains, Franschoek and the pass to Houw Hoek, Sir Lowry’s Pass and the Cape Flats.

Download the original article which appeared in the South African Journal of Science.

January

Summer School Lecture Series: A Genetic Journey Through The History Of Human Origins, Diversity And Disease

Co-ordinated by Professor Raj Ramesar, Division of Human Genetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town

18 to 23 January - Contact details for this UCT series are 021 650 2888 and website is www.ems.uct.ac.za

LECTURE TITLES

1. 18th: The story of human origins and diversity in Africa - Prof Himla Soodyall, National Health Laboratory Services and Wits University
2. 19th: Genetics in the media: ancestry testing, the myth and the reality - Prof Wilmot James, Africa Genome Education Institute
3. 20th: Human history: linguistic perspective and its relation to genetic history - Prof Rajend Mesthrie
4. 21st: Human health and genetics - Dr Mike Urban

5. 22nd: Prospects for the future: controversies and ethics - Prof Raj Ramesar

March

Professor Nina Jablonski - University of Stellenbosch

April

Professor Ekerhard Wolff: Languages and Genetics in sketching Population History

July

Vanessa Lynch:  The Criminal Justice system:  Our role with respect to the "DNA Bill"

August

Professor Sir John Burn:  Can we cure genetic disease?

October

Wilmot James: Science and Technology in Government Higher Education or Genetic Ancestry Testing (TBC)

The Darwin Exhibition: Darwin and the Cape, opened at the Iziko South African Museum on Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town on 23 November and runs until April 2010. It is one of the many events celebrated in South Africa this bicentennial year. Professor Chris Stringer Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and world renowned palaeontologist from London’s Natural History Museum, opened the exhibition and delivered the Nelson Mandela Science lecture at the University of the Western Cape the following day.

Focusing on Darwin and his visit to the Cape in 1836 presents a unique opportunity to reclaim this heritage and also introduce the public and learners to issues of science and local history that they could identify with more readily.

The Darwin ‘story’ brings this remarkable scientific thinker into South Africa and into the present day.

Darwin and the Cape is a collaborative project with Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, the Africa Genome Education Institute and Iziko Museums of Cape Town (South African Museum).

Enquiries:  Olga Jeffries 021 4813897 | Download press release

www.iziko.org.za

The genius of Charles Darwin shows us that we have so much more in common, as human beings, than we have things that separate us. Once you’ve peeled away the superficial markers of “identity” – like skin colour, shape of nose or mouth, weft of hair – you find we’re all built of the same stuff. Our bodies are the result of about seven million years of evolutionary process that took place right here in Africa.

The “deep roots” of our anatomy evolved in Africa, before colonisation of the rest of the world began. It is only in very recent times, possibly the past 50 000 years, that superficial differences like hair colour and eye shape began to creep in as groups of humans settled into different parts of the globe and began to develop common features in isolation from other groups of humans.

“Our shared species features originated here in Arica,” anthropologist Prof Chris Stringer from the London’s Natural History Museum said during the Nelson Mandela Science Lecture at the University of the Western Cape, on Wednesday. The lecture marked the 150th year since the publication of Darwin’s groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The difference between Spanish and Dutch etiquette is the ‘former never
asking his guest a single question beyond the strictest rules of politeness,
whilst the honest Dutchman demands where he has been, where he is going,
what is his business, and even how many brothers, sisters, or children he
may happen to have.’

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

Download the full article here (requires Adobe Acrobat).