The golfer Gary Player was born in Johannesburg on 1 November 1935. He won his first of nine major championships in 1959 (the Open at Muirfield, Scotland) and his last in 1978 (the Masters at Augusta, Georgia). Over his career, he won all four major championships, the first non-American player to do so. He also became well-known as a designer of golf courses and as a writer on the game.
2. Oscar Pistorius
Answer: Sport
Oscar Pistorius was at one time one of South Africa's best-known athletes, though sadly not always for the best reasons. He was born in Johannesburg on 22 November 1986, with the abnormality fibular hemimelia, which led to the amputation of both his legs below the knee when he was 11 months old. He nevertheless became a keen sportsman as a child, playing several sports. He began focusing on running in 2004, using running "blades" attached to his lower limbs, and quickly qualified for the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens.
He controversially began competing in non-disabled events, despite claims that his "blades" gave him an unfair advantage. In 2012 he competed at the main London Summer Olympics, reaching the semi-final of the 400-metres race. Then, in February 2013, he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his house in Pretoria. He claimed to have mistaken her for an intruder, and in 2014 was found guilty of "culpable homicide". Following an appeal by the prosecution, this was upgraded to "murder" and his sentence increased accordingly. He was released on parole in January 2024.
3. Basil D'Oliveira
Answer: Sport
Basil D'Oliveira was born in Cape Town on 4 October 1931 and became an accomplished cricketer in his home country. However, being of Cape Coloured background, under the apartheid system he was barred from playing for the South African "all white" national side. As a result, in 1960 he emigrated to the UK and became a British citizen in 1964. In 1966 he won his first Test cap for England, playing against the West Indies.
Two years later, in 1968, he was selected as a last-minute replacement for the England tour of South Africa. The South African authorities refused to allow the tour to take place if D'Oliveira was a member of the party. To their credit, the MCC refused to back down and the tour was cancelled. This led to South Africa being banned from all Test cricket for the next 22 years.
D'Oliveira continued to represent England until 1972, playing in 41 Tests in total, and continued to play for his adopted county of Worcestershire until his retirement in 1980. In 2004, as a symbol of the new post-apartheid era, a trophy was struck named the "Basil D'Oliveira" Trophy, to be competed for in Test cricket between England and South Africa. D'Oliveira lived to see this, dying in 2011 at the age of 80.
4. Nelson Mandela
Answer: Politics
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was born in the village of Mveso in the Eastern cape region of South Africa. After training as a lawyer, he became involved in revolutionary politics with the aim of overthrowing the white-only government of the South African National Party.
In 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for treasonable activities, later becoming the main focus of international calls to end the apartheid system. In 1990, the South African president F. W. de Klerk freed Mandela and between them they negotiated a new multi-racial system of government. Mandela became the first president of the new unified South Africa in 1994.
He died in 2013 at the age of 95.
5. Jan Smuts
Answer: Politics
Jan Smuts (1970-1950) was born on a farm just outside the small town of Riebeek West in what was then the British-run Cape Colony. After studying law in Stellenbosch and Cambridge, England, he became involved in politics and supported the creation of a united South Africa, which was achieved in 1910. Smuts then served in the First World War and was a key player in the creation of the League of Nations in 1920.
He was twice prime Minister of South Africa, first from 1919-24 and again throughout the Second World War (1939-48).
He died of a heart attack in 1950, a few weeks after his 80th birthday.
6. Jacob Zuma
Answer: Politics
Jacob Zuma was born in 1942 in the town of Nkandla in what is now the KwaZulu-Natal province. He became involved in revolutionary politics as a teenager and spent ten years in prison on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela. After his release he left South Africa but returned in 1990 and continued his political activities in KwaZulu-Natal.
In 1997 he was elected deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) and deputy president of South Africa two years later. Despite many scandals, including indictments for corruption and rape, he was elected president of South Africa in 2009.
His term of office was mired by numerous further scandals, and he was eventually forced to resign in 2018, being replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa.
7. Elon Musk
Answer: Science/ Technology
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971 and emigrated to Canada (his mother's birth country) in 1989 at the age of 18. He then moved to California and became involved in a series of business ventures. An early involvement in the company that became PayPal made him wealthy when it was bought by eBay in 2002.
He then played a major role in the success of the Tesla electric car company, and his own SpaceX technology firm became a world leader in reusable space rocketry. By 2026 he was assessed to be the richest man in the world and his overall wealth made him the first US dollar trillionaire.
8. Christiaan Barnard
Answer: Science/ Technology
Christiaan Barnard was born in 1922 in the town of Beaufort West in the Cape Province. After studying medicine in Cape Town, he moved to the United States from 1955-58, where he became interested in transplant surgery. He then returned to South Africa and worked at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
It was here that, in December 1967, that he performed the first human-to-human heart transplant operation. His patient, Louis Washkansky, survived for 18 days before dying from pneumonia. Other surgeons began to perform similar operations and although at first the patients tended to survive for a few months at most, the development of improved immunosuppressive drugs meant that survival rates improved significantly. Barnard retired in 1983 and died in 2001 aged 78.
9. Max Theiler
Answer: Science/ Technology
Max Theiler (1899-1972) was born in Pretoria and studied medicine at universities in South Africa and London. He became interested in research, and in 1922 took up a post at Harvard University in the USA. Here he became interested in the epidemiology of yellow fever, and (after moving to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York) began working on an effective vaccine against the disease.
In 1937 he and his team developed a vaccine strain which passed human trials successfully and was deployed worldwide as the first effective prevention against the disease. For this work, Theiler was awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the first African-born recipient of a Nobel Prize.
10. Miriam Makeba
Answer: Arts
The singer Miriam Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. She began her singing career in South Africa in the 1950s, before appearing in the 1959 semi-documentary film "Come Back, Africa". This brought her invitations to perform in Europe and America, and in 1960 she moved to New York and recorded several albums of songs, often performing and recording with Harry Belafonte.
More controversially, she became involved with the civil rights movement and married Stokely Carmichael, a prominent member of the activist Black Panther party. This led to the revocation of her US visa, and she was forced to return to Africa, where she continued her singing career. Sometimes known as "Mama Africa", she was one of the first African-born singers to become famous in the West. She died of a heart attack in Italy in 2008 while performing in a concert.
11. Charlize Theron
Answer: Arts
The actress Charlize Theron was born in 1975 in the town of Benoni, near Johannesburg, and grew up on her parents' farm. After working as a model in Italy, she trained as a ballet dancer in New York, before a knee injury forced her to leave. She moved to Los Angeles and joined an acting school, taking on small film roles along the way. Her first role in a major film was as the wife of Keanu Reeves's character in "The Devil's Advocate" (1997), and this led to a steady sequence of film roles.
Then in 2003 she played the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in "Monster", for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress - the first South African to do so. Since then, she has successfully mixed serious roles with parts in big-budget blockbusters such as "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015) and several films in the "Fast and Furious" franchise.
12. Athol Fugard
Answer: Arts
Athol Fugard was born in June 1932 in the Eastern Cape town of Middelburg. After dropping out of university, he spent two years as a merchant seaman before marrying and moving back to South Africa. In 1958 he formed a theatre group and began writing, acting, and directing.
As his career progressed, his plays naturally focussed on issues of race, segregation and the apartheid system, and began to be performed overseas. His 1972 play "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" was written with the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona and performed by them in London and on Broadway to great acclaim.
This was followed by many other plays including "`Master Harold` ... and the boys" (1982) and "The Road to Mecca" (1984). Fugard died in South Africa in 2025 at the age of 92.
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor ponycargirl before going online.
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