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As we mark the end of Women’s Month in South Africa, MR SIBUSISO MNYANDA revisits the role some of the most powerful woman leaders in the history of the African continent. These warrior women, as with contemporary women, faced tremendous odds, yet were fierce in battle, astute in thought and influential in their varied leadership roles, changing…
European fascination with a submissive Africa and its people has led to centuries of misguided and misinformed details of the precolonial continent. Even in its attempts at telling the real story of Africa it has never been able to avoid falsehoods, hyperbole and the perpetuation of myth, as is the case with the legend of the…
Having opened “Intimate Justice in the Stolen Moment” – her latest exhibition at Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg – last week, Ms. Ayana V. Jackson, the American artist with global tentacles, shares some thoughts on her childhood, black womanhood, her work and more. In her own words, as told to MR SIPHIWE MPYE. I am a Black American…
In a recent issue of the Mail & Guardian’s excellent ‘Friday’ Arts supplement dedicated to the question of masculinity, our editor MR SIPHIWE MPYE contributed a deeply personal account of his path in being part of the solution to gender based violence. We publish here an updated version. “South African men are trash, that’s who we are. If we don’t…
Ms. Zukiswa Wanner is a Zambian-born, Kenyan-residing author with a South African father and a Zimbabwean mother. Her debut novel The Madams was shortlisted for South African Literary Award’s K.Sello Duiker Award in 2007 and she would go on to win the award for her fourth novel, London Cape Town Joburg. Her third novel, Men of the South, was shortlisted for…
On the 37th anniversary of Zimbabwean independence, MR SIBUSISO MNYANDA charts the history of the colonial capture and appropriation of the Mbira, arguably the Shona nation’s most spiritual musical instrument. Cultural performance, music and rhythm have always been vehicles that transport (even teleport) humanity through the highways of spiritual linkage. Whether it is travelling to the past, communicating…
Marikana activist Mr Napoleon Webster, otherwise known as Khoisan 6, has been languishing in jail for a hundred days without bail. His sin, the state charges, is the mob killing of an allegedly corrupt official in the volatile North West town. There is evidence to suggest however, that Webster was not even in the vicinity of…
MR CIKO THOMAS came of age in Port Elizabeth in the 80s, under the heat of the struggle for South Africa’s liberation. The leaders of the African National Congress and other organisations he knew and supported then, were of a rare breed. As we wake up to protests against the current leader of a once glorious organisation, he…
“South Africa is at a crossroads,” has become a quip many among us have pulled out of our disgruntlement backpacks in the two decades President Jacob Zuma has ridden roughshod over due process, our feelings and our shiny, resilient constitution. This phrase has once again resurfaced after Nxamalala from Nkandla set the cat among the pigeons with…
MS. ZUKISWA WANNER is a writer, mother, feminist and activist. Having contributed no less than nine books as a novelist, children’s author, non-fiction writer and book editor, she is as prolific as she is funny and incisive. She is also frank, evidenced this letter, speaking directly to men who feel that they are under siege, in the wake of…
