There are days in history that stands out as something unique and amazing. Days you will remember for the rest of your life. The kind of days about which those who were alive when they happened will one day ask each other: “What were you doing when X happened”.

Today just happens to be one of those days – the day America swears in it’s first black president, and more importantly – it’s first president in many years to suggest anything remotely approaching intelligent solutions to the challenges his country and the world face. My personal favorite being his belief that the answer to the problem of outsourcing (from an American point of view) is not protectionism (which only distances American allies and doesn’t work anyway because the corps who cash in on it happen to pay such large chunks of campaigns) but instead: to change the system until everybody who has the ability will be able to afford a tertiary education. Wait let me get this straight: he is suggesting that he can solve the problem of foreign labor being of equal quality at a lower cost – by making his own people more competitive, rather than by trying to make others artificially less so ? Yep, genius.

Well I don’t intend to write a big blog about Obama, heck the entire blogosphere is on the topic so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve said what I wanted to say about him. I want to focus on days like this – the days which stand out in history, which ones stand out for me – and what was I actually doing when I heard about them ? Today, my day won’t be all that special, I will finish my workday, then go home and watch the inauguration on television, my wife is sick in bed so there is no option of going out.

Now, without further ado: the greatest days I’ve lived through and what I was doing when I heard about them:

1) Date: April 10, 1980
What happened: I was born
What was I doing at the time: Getting spanked.
Thoughts: Okay, so maybe not a great day for the whole world, at least not unless I manage to fit some much more legendary stuff into my life while I’m still here, but still a pretty important day in my life.

2) Date: November 9th, 1989
What happened: The fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war
What was I doing at the time: Watching the evening news with my family
Thoughts: I didn’t at the time realize the significance of the event, for starters I was just 9 years old – but it was an event that changed a large part of the world, and specifically would change a massive amount of my own life. The fall of the Berlin wall removed Russian imperialist drive into African and Russian funding to the ANC. This in turn removed the risk of an ANC government being outright communist and opened the door for the new South Africa.

3) Date: 2 February, 1990
What happened: F.W. De Klerk in his first official speech as president, unbanned the ANC, released Nelson Mandela and called for a non-racial South Africa.
What was I doing at the time: As with the previous one – I first learned of this while watching the news.
Thoughts: It’s odd what one remembers eighteen years later, I don’t remember anything of De Klerk’s speech though I do remember seeing video’s of it later. What I remember vividly is the interview the then minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha gave outside the Union Buildings after the speech. I most notably remember the following line (my translation as the interview was in Afrikaans): “When the sun set tonight, it set for the last time over the old South Africa, and tomorrow it will rise over the New South Africa”.
I could be wrong but I know that was the first time I heard the phrase “New South Africa” and it’s very possible that it was in fact coined in that interview (either that or De Klerk used it in his speech earlier the same day).

Date: 17 March 1992
What happened: A referendum, the last ever whites-only vote, in which white people had to state whether they agreed with De Klerk’s reforms and the continuing of negotiations with the ANC. The “yes” side won an overwhelming victory.
What was I doing at time: I was campaigning, I had been putting up “yes” posters for weeks and though I wasn’t of voting age I was desperately working (along with my family) to help ensure those who were, would vote for change.
Thoughts: This one is perhaps a more important memory to me as a white South African than to many other South Africans, it marked not only the first time I was politically active (at age 12) but more importantly it proved that white South Africa was not the crusty, conservative racists we were made out to be. That minority who were like that had insisted in a referendum, convinced they would easily prove that the white people were opposed to what they claimed De Klerk was doing in violation of his mandate. Instead the overwhelming result was that we wanted the talks to succeed, we accepted the possibility of a black government and we were prepared to build a future without racial discrimination. We wanted the suffering and the violence on both sides to end and we were tired of race being a determining factor in people’s lives, even as the people who had gotten the beneficial determination.

Date: 27 April, 1994
What happened: The first multiracial election in South Africa
What was I doing at the time: The day was spent with my family who were voting. That evening I was with them at a party to await the results, where I met F.W. De Klerk personally in what would end up being one of his last official appearances as president.
Thoughts: I don’t think I need to say much about this day, it was internationally watched and it was seen as the outcome of almost six years of hard negotiations to build a South Africa where everybody could have an equal chance at life. It was also the beginning of rainbowism – probably the single best philosophy ever used by a ruling party in South Africa (although, sadly one that did not last after the retirement of Nelson Mandela).

Date: April 2000
What happened: Then president Mbeki appeared at an international AIDS conference and made a speech that would begin his years of HIV denialism and lead to many needless deaths. A New York Times article in November 2008 put the number at 365 000 people. The speech made international news and the same South Africa that was recently lauded for our victory over apartheid was back in the news – this time to be ridiculed and pitied.
What was I doing at the time: Ironically, this same month marks the month myself and some friends founded PLUG, at the time only the third Linux Users Group in South Africa. On the day Mbeki made his speech, we had our inaugural meeting, in which the head of the parliamentary committee on telecommunication was the speaker. The debate between us and him I remember to this day. I had not realized until much later that this would be the day that a problem would start which would end up being much more concerning to me than the telkom monopoly I was busy arguing against.
Thoughts: Despite my being unaware of the event when it happened, I would become aware soon enough – and campaigning for better combating of HIV would become one of my personal biggest goals. While my role has been small (I am neither a politician nor a doctor, just a concerned citizen) – I believe that in problems on this scale, every little bit helps.

Date: September 11th, 2001
What happened: A number of airplanes were hijacked in the USA. Two flew into the World Trade Centre’s twin towers in New York, one hit the pentagon and the last failed to hit it’s target and crashed in Pennsylvania.
Where was I at the time: When the first plane hit, I vividly remember being at a gas station with my then girlfriend filling up the car, we were on our way to a cocktail party to celebrate the end of her final exams (she would graduate later that same year), and seeing the news on a TV set up at the gas station. We tuned in on the radio and listened on our way there. By the time the second plane hit I had left the party though and was sitting at the campus radio news office where I worked part-time as a news translator. By around 7pm South African time, as the last plane crashed, the news story going out on the radio in Afrikaans to cover the events thus far, had been written by me. It was the hardest story I had ever had to write.
Thoughts: This day changed the world, from a period of relative piece we went into a state of warfare particularly from the American side which persists to this day. Terrorism became the biggest, most successful scare-word in recent history and under it we saw the decline of global civil liberties. As the Y-generation entered the work-force, 9/11 ensured that the Z-generation would not share their passion for curiosity and exploration but would be a generation raised in tight restriction and control based on entirely irrational fear.

There are many other notable events I could name, but these stand out as the most important internationally known events I had lived through or in some cases, even played a small part in. As the future comes, perhaps some of these will fade into obscurity – dwarfed by newer, more significant events but many of them will, I believe, still have relevant lessons to teach us when I recount them to my grandchildren one day.
The point of course, is not to boast about my small little roles in them, but to remind everyone who reads this that you all have played such roles in various events which would turn out to be world-changing. Perhaps fitting on the day of Obama’s inauguration as he has built his campaign on inspiring people to believe in their power to change the world. I’m an ordinary person who has done nothing truly more noteworthy in my life than to care about other people. Everything I think I did that was really worth while was just that – caring about others. Just as I have these memories, each of you have memories like this – of times you helped do something amazing, or were inspiring by seeing something terrible. When we remember them, we can redouble our efforts and maybe even leave our children a better world than we inherited.