The picture below is a scan of a bad copy of the last letter my Maternal Grandfather wrote before being shot in Joubert Park Johannesburg.
The year is 1922 and my grandfather, a part time private in the Rand Light Infantry and is called up to put down the uprising now refer to as the General Strike. Smuts declared Martial Law and my grandfather was called up. The letter was written in Ellis park but his regiment was billeted in Joubert Park.
Sometime during night strikers attacked the encampment and in the skirmish my grandfather came face to face with one of his apprentices. He refused to shoot the man, who promptly shot him only to be shot in turn by an RLI soldier.
Six months later my mother was born.
One quietly forgotten fact about the Strike was that it was organised by Afrikaner organisations allied with the Communist Party.
