Imagine something with me. There is a country which, much like many in the world, has many speakers of many languages. This country is a part of one of the many places in Africa colonised by Europeans since the 15th century. Over the 500 years since colonies of Europeans first touched its shores, only a […]
Tag: south africa
It was with some surprise that I heard the news – uKhongolose is intending to charge Malema with treason. Surprise turned to curiosity (of course) about the linguistic aspects of the word. Treason. Firstly, the technical term for the charge (in Latin, of course) is maiestas. As a legal concept, it’s as old as the […]
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 […]
1994. Three things happened that year, in my life. I’ve been thinking of those three things a lot today, remembering that day 21 years ago when we watched the news at school and saw the snaking multicoloured lines of people casting the first free ballot ever. I knew what that meant, then. I was only […]
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isiKhwama
It seems strange to be writing an obituary for a set of inanimate objects, but it’s the only way I can make sense of this. I need to catalogue the loss, even if insurance doesn’t need to know. Even if the only response is catharsis. While we sit in the requiem mass for my wife’s […]
uMabhengwane 