The girls were carrying Fela’s records and singing in the minibuses while hanging head and shoulders out of the vehicles’ windows, banging on the side panels. In Frank Karefa-Smart’s Mercedes, following the convoy, we were shaking our heads in utter bafflement.
Posts published in “Books”
This week marked eight years since the passing of Hugh Masekela – a towering figure in Jazz music and a global symbol of artistic resistance.…
The lobolo tradition has existed since time immemorial and is viewed as a form of cultural heritage that does not seem likely to ever disappear from Indigenous African culture, since even the most high-profile members of society such as the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, practised the custom in his old age
"None of us was naturally living in a township. Townships were set up as labour reservoirs and we had nowhere else to go. We ended up in townships, but that's not where we belong. We did not even create them. We are kept in pockets of land, and the bigger portion was taken away."
“He went through the koma, and that’s it.” No explanation, no closure; just silence. Those boys who didn’t come back, the ones who died during the ordeal? Instead of being buried at home, these poor boys were dumped in the bush, far from their mothers, far from their families. No goodbye; just… gone. We were supposed to accept that.
Writers continue to be essential in the fight for social justice. We resist through words and stories. We write to build bridges in a fractured
society. We make our way through the dark. We find light. We have the opportunity to rewrite our prejudices, and when structures of oppression persist against us, we collectively have the power to change the narrative.
The monochrome head of a goat in the grey scale dominates the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, adding a layer of mystery and intrigue. Generally, goats in most African cultures invoke an awareness of ancestral mediation, productiveness and personal well-being.
As the leader of the most ‘successful’ ethnic homeland of the apartheid era, Bophuthatswana, Lucas Mangope was a controversial figure. His legacy still divides opinion…
On 19 June 1913 the Native Land Act passed by the minority white Union of South Africa regime became law. The Act limited African land…
The anguish of dispossession also manifested itself in the treatment we received at Mohlabaneng. Stripped off our land rights and bereft of both home and hope, residents of Ga-Monwana had to fend off the depredations of stigma, discrimination, and salacious gossip. We were shunned and loathed with such persistence that you would swear the settlement was cursed.