AN HISTORICAL EVENT AT THE TIME UNION COINAGE OF SOUTH AFRICA WAS BEING USED IN 1947
The recent discovery in the cellar of a home in Saxonwold, Johannesburg of an old discoloured, brass plaque is a heritage opportunity and opens space for reviewing the motives and outcomes of the Royal Visit to South Africa in 1947.
The plaque commemorates the visit of the Royal Family to the Zoo Lake Sports Grounds on 5th April 1947. The current owner of the house does not know how the plaque came to be in the cellar of her home. She has generously passed the plaque on to the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation for preservation. The JHF has arranged for the professional restoration of the plaque by two of its members; it has been rebuffed and black enamel lettering repainted. A quality photograph will be taken and this will be presented to the Zoo Lake Sports Club, while the plaque will be presented to Museum Africa to become part of Johannesburg’s history. The Zoo Lake Sports Club’s website shows that it was renovated some years ago and it was possibly during that renovation that the plaque was discarded. It is time for a reappreciation.
Up to 1960, South Africa used the British system of 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound (240 pennies to the pound). This coinage system dominated South Africa for more than a century as Lord Charles Somerset issued an ordinance as far back as 6 June 1825 declaring British Sterling as legal tender at the Cape (Arndt, 1928). This was part of a process to introduce a uniform monetary system for the British Colonies at the time. A shortage of coins nevertheless delayed this process for several years, but after 1848, only coins of the Sterling series were accepted. These coins became firmly entrenched throughout the whole of South Africa and even the Kruger coins, minted in the Transvaal Republic during 1892 to 1900, conformed to the British system (Engelbrecht, 1987).Source: Francois Malan
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