I only have half an hour. After that, I’m running like a trail of fire following a line of gunpowder, running and teaching and tracing and retracing the steps of my little red car across Jozi. After that, I’m leading others down the rabbit-holes of isiZulu, guiding them through the vast subterranean architecture of my […]
Category: incwadinsuku / daily blog
This evening, on the last evening of this month of heritage, of amagugu or amafa, I cook amadumbi. They’ve been bubbling away on the stove for a good while, the dense smell of rye bread baking in the background, and I have tested them a few times. When I can feel the fork pierce them […]
Language is sacred. ulimi lusemsamo, lucwebile. Language is the warp and weft of our ancestors’ cultural DNA. ulimi lwalukanisiwe nolibofuzo lwamasiko amadlozi ethu. Our work as the general human population is always to add our own tendrils to the text of our species. umsebenzi ongapheli wethu njengoluntu wukuyalukelela imilitshwano yethu olwalukweni lwabakithi. We can […]
This is a moon with three names – uMandulo, uMpande & iSokanqangi. andula – the herald, the harbinger, the rituals to bring about fertility, the kites wheeling like whirlwinds in the sky. this name was adopted after the accession of uMpande to the throne, as an isihlonipho. Before Cetshwayo’s father, youngest son of uSenzangakhona, acceded […]
“I’ve been doing Zulu at school since Grade 6. I’m now in Grade 11 and I don’t understand what’s going on in class. The class is taught entirely in Zulu, and we mostly just listen as the teacher reads from the set-work, translating word for word. I know I’m going to fail next year.” – […]
Just to be safe, I’m stating this up front – this is not a blog about the US spying on everything we do (although the principle is almost exactly the same). This is a blog about one of my favourite occupations as an undercover polyglot in South Africa, and about the flip-side of it: eavesdropping […]
If you’re still willing to read more, there are three more branches to the isiZulu concept of ‘abuse’ (and possibly many more undocumented or as yet unfound, seeing as how abuse combines so many taboos, therefore having so much euphemism associated with it): potoza, cubhacubha & d(l)wengula Firstly, potoza. It has only one meaning: “press […]
Sad as it is to write about these things, they occur so commonly in SA society (and in the media) that NOT to write about them would be like praising the Emperor’s new clothes. So. Abuse. The English word is derived from Latin – abutor has two basic meanings: “to use up any thing, to […]
You know why I was prompted to look this word up. You know what’s recently been in the news. This word is mentioned once in Vilakazi & Doke’s dictionary, and it is prefaced by (Mod.), meaning that in 1958 it was a ‘Modern’ term. Here’s what the entry says: a private lover (of either sex); […]
Categories
Not blending in
I stand out. I’m over six feet tall, white, and I drive a bright red car. And 90% of my interactions during the average day here in Joburg are in isiZulu, not English. I gave up blending in long ago. Not blending in means that I’m asked a lot of questions. Some days the question […]
uMabhengwane 