Alessandro Palmas

The Rose of Weenen Alessandro Palmas

This book contains a personal experience of a trip through Africa in the 60s and the related stories from those experiences. My arrival first in Rhodesia and later in South Africa where I lived for a long period of time. It is also a cronicle of the discovery of a new route around Africa made by the Portuguese sailors of the 16° century in search of a direct access to the lucrative markets of the spices of the Far East and the following events that took the Dutch representatives of the company VOC to found the Colony of the Cape of Storms later renamed by the British Empire, Cape of Good Hope. It also recounts the odissey of the Dutch settlers in search of freedom from the hated British dominion travelling across Southern Africa in search of a new home. The battles they had to fight with the tribes in those lands and some tragic experiences that finally took them to fund the Nation of South Africa. Related to this story is one episode that made me discover the existence of the Valdese religious community that had an important part in this events The tragic story of Teresa Viglione a member of the Valdese community born in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, that lived a short love story ended in tragedy with her Young Boer lover, during the "great trek" taken by this community in search of a new home. And also unknown to many, the important part that the Italian community had in the Birth of the South African nation. The closing part of the book deals with present day multiracial South Africa and the challenges this nation is facing after the dream of a Rainbow nation envisaged by Nelson Mandela that these days appears to be on the brinx of failure.