“Would you like some coffee?” {Never before has that one strand of mundane morning interrogative led to such an interesting conclusion.} “No thanks, I’m fasting.” {I go to make the coffee, and return with another question} “Oh. Okay. To which ibandla do you belong?” “ama-12 Apostles” “Okay.” {I’ve never heard of them – though the […]
Category: incwadinsuku / daily blog
In the dying hours of that day, with the moon rising orange and heavy into the winter sky, I met a man from eMtshezi. I greeted him at the gate, and his face changed. He smiled. He asked me my name. I replied and said that I was the new utisha wesiZulu at the school. […]
Discourse analysis is about asking two questions about word choice (diction) and sentence structure – “why?” and “why not?”. For example: “WHY did the ANC choose to use the word hlanganyela on their isiZulu election posters?” and “WHY did the ANC choose NOT to use other words for togetherness on their isiZulu election posters?” The […]
It’s been four months since our last lesson. I realise that as my brain sends the car down unconscious turns, around familiar doglegs and across cautious intersections, through the streets spattered unexpectedly ngomkhemezelo-nje, ngovivi lokusa. The radio plays in the background – Ezanamuhla on uKhozi FM, JGZ spouting promises of an end to corruption while union leaders […]
Waking up to the rain, on this morning of all mornings, this word is in my head. Usually, it’s accompanied – esikaNandi. In recorded Zulu memory, the greatest lamentation ever felt is idiomatically captured as “the lamentation of Nandi”. EsikaMadiba. Namuhlanje sikhala isililo sikaMadiba. isiLilo is the wailing, the lamentation, over the dead. It consumes […]
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umhlaba (k)awunoni
The earth does not grow fat. It eats and eats and eats, young and old, men and women, great and small. It has eaten brothers and fathers, sisters and friends and colleagues and mothers. It has eaten whole nations, and yet it does not grow fat. Just once, I wish that the earth would say: […]
It’s been a year. The paths are crowding over with the long grass, with puddles filling in potholes, with the imminent beachward flight of Jozi’s residents (and the inevitable binge of mall-cramming shopping preceding it) singing a cloying tension into the air. It’s been a year. A year of different tongues in different heads with […]
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KJAM
1946. The world is no longer at war. The avenue down which your father drives each day is still under construction, named after a man who is that very moment elsewhere, probably chatting to his friends in New York, forgetting about this homeland of his, mindful only of the need to leave something lasting. I […]
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Emahlukanandlela
Ahead of me lie two main paths. One leads one way, while the other leads off in a totally different direction. I have a feeling that these two paths will lead to two completely different existences. Parallel but altered realities. I look behind me, and see how the things I’ve decided in the past have […]
<<recording starts>> Post Mortem Recording 1a. November, 2012. Subject(s): 4 suspected victims of the ‘Blue House’ serial-killer Scene of Crime: Atholl-Oaklands Road, near Melrose Arch, Gauteng Presiding Doctors: Dr S’khovana and Dr S’khothane ———————- “Scalpel, Dr S’khothane” “Of course, Dr S’khovana” “I am now making the first vertical incision along the sternum. Note that there appears […]