As I wrote this article on November 23, it was 20 years to the day since the first Tamagotchi – created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita – had gone on sale. If you are old enough, you will remember that it quickly became one of the biggest toy fads of the 1990s, particularly in the US, earning Japanese toy maker and video game company Bandai $150-million in retail sales in just seven months.

The name Tamagotchi is a portmanteau of tamago – Japanese for ‘egg’ – and the English word ‘watch’ for a virtual pet, which was the size of a key chain. It was a small egg-shaped computer with an interface consisting of three buttons. Once your virtual pet had been activated, it had to be fed – by pressing a button – and taken care of; otherwise, it would die. Once it was dead, you were unable to resurrect it. No, you could not reboot it, as you do nowadays with your favourite electronic appliances.

But the Tamagotchi craze, admittedly not as intense as it used to be, has not died a natural death. After sales of more than 80-million units, its life has been renewed through the release of an upgraded version as well as an app. Its return, just in time to cash in on Millennial nostalgia, with Tamagotchi Friends Digital Friend, now includes ‘five fun games’ that you can play with your pet. In addition, you are now able to interlink your pet with a friend’s pet and embark on a host of activities such as play dates and ‘friendship meters’, and you can also send text messages from one pet to another. Let us see if it ignites a craze. Somehow, I seriously doubt it.

It made me think: What else happened on this day, November 23, in history? I recall, many years ago, that, just before the 06:30 news, as we were about to leave for school, there was a radio programme that gave a brief overview of what had happened on that day in history. (Trivia: the word ‘history’ originates from the Greek word historia, and is not, as urban legend would have it, a blend of the English words ‘his’ and ‘story’.)

So, what happened in South Africa on November 23 – specifically, on November 23, 1996? Nothing happened in South Africa on that particular day, but something did happen in the Comoros that involved a South African tourist. The tourist recorded – with a video recorder – an airplane crash that is considered the second-worst air crash in history – second only to the September 11 attacks in the US. If you are interested, you can read the full story on http://www.sahistory.org.za. On that day, three Ethiopian men hijacked an Ethiopian Airlines B-767 aircraft en route from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to Nairobi, in neighbouring Kenya. They held up the airplane using a fire extinguisher, a fire axe and a liquor bottle disguised as a bomb, and then forced the pilot to divert the plane towards Australia. The airplane ran out of fuel as it was approaching the Comoros islands. Even though the plane had been cleared to land in the Comoros, it simply was not able to do so and crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing 125 people, including the three hijackers.

As to a significant event that happened in South Africa on November 23, in any given year, I found a reference to 1887. On that day, a certain Dr Hendrik Johannes van der Bijl was born in Pretoria. Do you know who he was? Consider his surname. Your first clue: Van der Bijl is considered one of the most influential South Africans of the twentieth century. The second clue: Times Live calls him the “man who was the driving force behind the creation of the Electricity Supply Commission, or Escom – now Eskom – the Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa (Iscor) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), among other entities”. At one time, he was simultaneously chairperson of Iscor, Amcor, Eskom, Safmarine, Vecor and the IDC. Just in case you thought that he was merely tasked to lead these organisations, now predominantly State-owned enterprises, he was, in fact, the founding chairperson of Eskom in 1923 and also established Iscor, a precursor to ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA). He was honoured, among others, by having Vanderbijlpark, where Iscor’s major steelworks were built and from where AMSA still operates, named after him. (Iscor was acquired by Mittal Steel in 2001 through an equity partnership deal with Iscor.) The Vanderbijlpark plant is one of the world’s largest inland steel mills and the largest supplier of flat steel products in sub-Saharan Africa.

If Van der Bijl was alive in present-day South Africa, just imagine what his remuneration would be, considering that Eskom’s CEO received a remuneration package of R9.47-million in the 2015/16 financial year. Eskom is only one of the present-day SOEs that he was responsible for. Van der Bijl was both a leader and a manager; how many South Africans today adequately qualify as either?

If this was not impressive enough, he also had an equation named after him. Yes, he also had a great academic mind, as his doctorate, which was not an honorary one, attests to. He was the chancellor of the University of Pretoria from 1934 to 1948, the year of this death – he passed away on December 2. But I digress. His equation, the Van der Bijl equation, describes the relationship between the three ‘constants’ of a vacuum tube – the transconductance (gm), the gain (μ) and the plate resistance (rp). The equation defines their relationship as gm = μ/rp.

Just how many South Africans today are able to leave only a fraction of such a lasting legacy? It is an indictment on South African society today that the focus is not on the unselfish creation of benefits for South Africans, but rather the selfish pursuit of personal gain at the expense of South Africans. No longer is the motto ‘all for one, and one for all’, but rather ‘all for one, and none for all’. ‘One’ does not necessarily refer to a single person; it also applies to a group of ‘singular simple matter’ – known in nature as decomposition.

The Address to Have Had
If ever there was a town that you should have lived in, it had to be Cerezales del Condado, a small village in Spain. For, if you did, on November 24, you would have been the beneficiary of £2 000 000. The benefactor, 99-year-old Antonino Fernández, who passed away in August, left that amount to each of the town’s 80-odd residents. Though you might not have heard of Fernández, you might know the product that made him a billionaire and might even have savoured it; it is Corona beer. He was the founder of the Corona beer brewery, in Mexico. Just to remind you how small the world is, the majority shareholder of the brewery is Anheuser-Busch InBev, which is in the process of merging with SABMiller.

Let’s Put the Springbok Down
The end is near here for Springbok rugby. As I was putting the finishing touches to this column, South Africa (I simply cannot call the team the Springboks anymore, and commentators are seemingly not able to do so either) had just lost to Wales, making it eight losses out of 12 for the 2016 season – the team’s worse performance ever. South Africa broke a number of records in their 2016 campaign, but not any to find prominence on a respectable curriculum vitae.

This loss followed the previous week’s loss to the ‘powerhouse’ of European rugby, Italy, which, only hours before South Africa’s loss, lost to Tonga. (You might have missed it, but, following the loss, social media reacted by informing users of the South African Rugby Union’s toll-free helpline that despairing rugby supporters could phone – 0800 10 10 10. That is 0800 won nothing, won nothing, won nothing.)

With the recent loss, South Africa dropped to sixth position in the international standings, equalling their lowest-ever position since the rankings began in October 2003. With Scotland and France being only a point behind, their successful Six Nations campaigns could see South Africa dropping to eighth. Argentina is currently ninth, but, with a performance in The Rugby Championship 2017 that is on a par with their 2016 performance, one could see them moving into the eighth spot. If you were on a plane, you would by now have been advised to adopt the brace position.