With the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, Dr Wilmot James looks at Charles Darwin's early views on race and reflects on the modern molecular view more broadly of human variation at the next FREE Darwin lecture on September 2. He will illustrate the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the biology of human difference.

When Charles Darwin visited the Cape in 1836 as part of his circumnavigation of the world on the HMS Beagle, he and Captain Robert Fitzroy observed that the missionaries had done well to turn human beings living in a state of savagery to become social beings capable of civilization, which is why Fitzroy and Darwin felt the Cape Europeans’ antipathy to missionaries was sorrowful. The origin of the feeling was, of course, the missionaries’ support for the abolition of slavery – a cause with which Darwin, more than Fitzroy, happened to agree. The idea that the moral nature of people was not unalterably fixed was a forward-looking one at the time. Neither was the proposition racially defined, for Fitzroy and Darwin applied the notion of the ‘alterable savage’ to their own Saxon ancestors whom they referred to as ‘barbarians’.

Date :   Wednesday 2 September 2009
Time :    5:30pm for 6:00pm
Venue: New Learning Centre, Health Sciences Campus, UCT, Anzio  Road, Observatory

RSVP:   Linet at 021 557 0246
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In 1998, the ordinarily placid world of biology and genetics was torn apart when a gauntlet was thrown down.

In 1990, a genial project was announced by James Watson, the co-discovered of DNA and head of the National Centre for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States.  The purpose would be, over a period of 15 years, to extract the complete genome of human beings.

It was a big project and received support and finding from big governments.  As with all such projects, it would be difficult to measure exactly how rapidly such a project could be run and at what cost. 

You will now be able to follow the route that Charles Darwin took when he visited Cape Town aboard the HMS Beagle.

In 1836 Charles Darwin spent 18 days in and around Cape Town.  In 2009, the year that we are celebrating his Bicentennial, the importance of his visit to the Cape aboard the HMS Beagle is being reassessed.  The actual route he followed has been plotted and forms what is now designated as the Darwin Trail.

The HMS Beagle anchored in Simon’s Bay on 31 May 1836 and the small settlement did not impress Darwin.  ‘The little town of Simon’s Bay offers but a cheerless aspect to the stranger’ he recorded in his diary.  On 1 May he set off through Constantia to Wynberg, Claremont, Observatory to Cape Town.

Side one of the Darwin Trail takes you along this route with information on what Darwin saw and observed.  There are also some suggestions on what he mught add to his itinerary if he were visiting the Cape today.

His trip into the hinterland is recorded on side two.  You can follow the path he took, accompanied by an English speaking Khoi groom.  They travelled to Paarl to visit the granite outcropping – Paarl rock.  From there they journeyed along the Burg River to Franschhoek.  They crossed Franschhoek Pass and over-nighted at the Toll House on the Eastern side of the pass.  There was another stop over at Houwhoek before journeying back over the Sir Lowry Cole’s Pass, across the Cape Flats and back to the city.    

The Darwin Trail provides a wonderful journey through some amazing landscapes and to a range of significant sites and sights.  It also provides an opportunity for re-assessing what Darwin’s visit contributed to his work and ultimately to his major contribution to modern science. 

The printed Darwin Trail will be available from Cape Town Tourism from end August 2009 as well as on this website.