uMabhengwane
When I get to this word, in that first explanation of the complex beauty of the izigaba zamabizo, I can barely contain my excitement. I’m sure that people I’ve taught can attest to this. I try my hardest to keep to the Socratic method, and to rely on the learner’s knowledge. This is important. It’s […]
The last time I looked at the election posters, I focused on a subtle difference in word choice. The ruling party chose a verb that signified a gang mentality, overpowering a submissive public into continuing to vote for them. The blue house chose something different, opting for using isiZulu’s penchant for reciprocity. This time round, […]
Since I haven’t yet written a proper post about izimpambosi, I must begin this one with an apology – although this will serve as a practical explication of the concept. Yesterday, I navigated the northern channels of the Jozi vascular system, charting a course once again along roads named after dead white men until I […]
I was 10. I remember that, because so many things happened that year. I remember you, in your first version – the A4 Interim Constitution of 1994. I still have it, sitting in my bookshelf – a pale blue cover, printed on the same paper as the last Apartheid laws. I wonder who was commissioned […]
As I sat in my car, mentally preparing myself for my journey to my new job (or rather my new position at my old job, down in the South), I contemplated doing what I used to do – switching on the radio, tuning in to uKhozi FM and listening to the news in isiZulu. But […]
Not much has changed. The air is still dense, though a little drier than it should be in December. The drivers still haven’t discovered the need for fourth gear. The roads still leave their signature on your car, every palsied scrawl from a pothole is an autograph from the red-brick city. I had an idea, […]
Today, the last in the month of uMandulo, there are people marching against corruption. They are marching in all the major centres of Mzansi. Elsewhere I have spoken about the connection between forgetting, deception and corruption. It is a complex dance of backward glances, envelopes under the table and vocal dissimulation, designed to perpetuate an […]
23 years ago, give or take a year, my father and brother and I are standing in the dust of KwaDukuza, watching the masses of humanity stream in to the inkundla. We merit some curious looks, and some interested comments, but for the most part everyone else is too busy sorting out their own imvunulo […]
I’ve been wanting to write about these for a very long while already. They have always fascinated me, and I believe that they are the heart of isiZulu. For all of you who don’t know what an ideophone is, I’ll explain here. For those of you that know already, proceed to the next paragraph. Let’s […]
WARNING / ISEXWAYISO – NSFW / AkuVunyelwe emSebenzini In teaching someone a language, there are those discussions which step directly into (or onto) taboos – words for different forms of sex, heinous insults involving mothers and their pudenda, and this one, about excrement. There is no way to avoid the taboos, and I think that […]