uMabhengwane
Listening to the traffic report this morning on uKhozi FM: “…umgwaqo phakathi kukaKranskop neShowe, lapho kukhona iNtunjambili noKhomo…” It was like a snippet from a Sunday morning memory for me – we had woken early, when the horns of the otter are the only thing above the grey sky, and driven bumping along the dirt, […]
When you listen to uKhozi FM, it’s almost immediately clear which bank/business/government department/NGO is actually connecting with their audience. The ones that use idiom. The ones that account for and celebrate the variety of their audience. The ones that connect with culture and history, as well as economic indicators and market research. Take Telkom, for […]
Listening to Mr Magic, Linda Sibiya, this morning – he was making an appeal to people not to transport pots and packages and blankets inside the taxis, and that they should use trailers instead. He then began to describe what sort of things bring into taxis – the big pots, the blankets, squeezing in beside […]
It is on Saturday that the differences seem to be most stark. Driving to Wits University for a debating tournament, I am greeted by the amaZulu understanding of Saturdays – burial and wedding announcements, imingcwabo nemishado, followed by Maskandi and Gospel on UKhozi FM. Of the four teenagers in the car, only one is anywhere […]
The loss of language, and so the imperative to preserve language, is actually a fight about the basic metaphors that make up our world. Language is not just language. Language is also the impetus for culture, in that the metaphors and ways of seeing and being and doing, and even the very structure of each […]
uMabhengwane