An account of the life and work of Charles Michell, the first surveyor-general and civil engineer of the South African Cape Colony, this work examines in depth, the many interests and achievements of the man, as well as the essence of the time in which he lived, by referring to unpublished personal diaries, sketchbooks and letters.

Keywords: history, surveying, land tenure, land rights, cadastre, cadastral, professionalism, law, land administration, land policy, land boundaries, river, bank, high water mark, high-water mark, estuary, ICMA, mineral rights, international law, maritime zone, marine spatial planning, diagram, general plan, lease, sectional title, case law Explaining the principles of cadastral law and interpretation in practice, this is the first publication of its kind in over 45 years. It as a comprehensive text for aspiring and practicing professional land surveyors, those in the real property business, and those involved in land administration. Written for the South African practice environment, it will also be of interest to an international audience. The authors’ approach is progressive with the intent to inspire development to meet the needs of our society for secure land tenure for all. A broad range of topics are included: historical roots of tenure in the ancient world, the early development of the cadastre in South Africa, and development of the land surveying profession and professionalism. This provides context to the discussion on land law, tenure and rights; on legal institutions, on land administration, as well as government policies and reform imperatives. Defining property boundaries of rights in space is a particular challenge of the cadastral land surveyor. The chapters on the definition of beacons and boundaries cover a broad range of onshore and offshore application environments. They span the extent of ownership and limited real rights within the sovereign area of the Republic of South Africa. These environments include the air, the land surface and subterrestrial; coastal waters, and the sea bed. Particular attention is paid to complex river and coastal property boundaries. Case law is a key driver for changes in legislation and is also highly directive in terms of practice. The final chapter of the book is dedicated to a themed exploration of case law relating to beacons, boundaries, evidence, rights and restrictions. Cadastre: Principles and Practice will be an important addition to your professional bookshelf. Order it here: https://www.sagi.co.za/product/cadastre-principles-and-practice/

In Colonial Survey and Native Landscapes in Rural South Africa, 1850 - 1913, Lindsay Frederick Braun explores the technical processes and struggles surrounding the creation and maintenance of boundaries and spaces in South Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The precision of surveyors and other colonial technicians lent these enterprises an illusion of irreproachable objectivity and authority, even though the reality was far messier. Using a wide range of archival and printed materials from survey departments, repositories, and libraries, the author presents two distinct episodes of struggle over lands and livelihoods, one from the Eastern Cape and one from the former northern Transvaal. These cases expose the contingencies, contests, and negotiations that fundamentally shaped these changing South African landscapes.

A great American crank, in the best sense of the word, Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) spent his life hunting down reports of "anomalous phenomena"-"damned" events such rains of frogs, cattle mutilations, and UFO sightings-and studying them from a true outsider's perspective, one that characterized even objective science as wearing blinders in its approach to them. In this modern classic of analytical biography, Colin Bennett examines not only the life of this one-man investigator of real-life X-Files but his work as well, likening him to such diverse figures that loom in the cultural imagination as Lee Harvey Oswald and Shakespeare's Hamlet. A must-read for fans of the strange, this riveting book explores why the 20th century, which gave rise to conspiracy-theory philosophies and widespread distrust of social authority, embraced Fort so wholly that his name has been immortalized in the adjective "Fortean." In the course of a delightfully misspent youth, COLIN BENNETT was employed as both a musician and as a mercenary soldier. He was far better at the second than at the first. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he is the author of the novels Infantryman and The Entertainment Bomb, and paranormal nonfiction including Looking for Orthon, a biography of George Adamski; Politics of the Imagination, a biography of Charles Fort; and An American Demonology, about the head of the 1950s UFO-hunting agency Project Blue Book.

The San or Bushmen of southern Africa have exerted a fascination over generations of writers and scholars, from novelists and anarchists to ethnologists and geneticists, and also occupy a special place in the popular imagination as the First People and the contemporary remnant of spiritual and natural man. The ways in which particular groups of people from southern Africa have been traditionally categorised and positioned as objects of scrutiny by a range of academic disciplines is increasingly being contested and questioned. There is a growing awareness of the cultural, economic and genetic entanglement of the peoples of the region. This book examines how San and Khoe people are represented, by others, as well as by those who identify as San or Khoe. The book interrogates the ways in which disciplines, through their methodologies and ways of authorising knowledge, not only "discover" or "reveal" knowledge but produce it in ways that involve complex and often ambiguous relationships with power structures and forms of intellectual, symbolic and cultural capital. One major trend that emerges is that the San and Khoe can no longer be seen as people of the past but have to be acknowledged as contemporary and socially situated individuals and communities who are increasingly contesting the representations which others have imposed on them. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies.