Since crèche started, bath time has been a nightmare. Every evening while I struggle through my daughter’s coarse hair with feeble attempts to get the sand and tiny stones out and off of her scalp I imagine what being a sandstone miner might be like. It was a long time coming, but after three days […]
Mlilo Mpondo
Mlilo Mpondo is a mother, writer and political science student. She hopes to rewrite the histories of the children we are yet to birth.
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Vagina politics
I found my daughter fiddling with her vagina in the bathtub. The said vagina will here forth be referred to as a pony, it is far too cute to be burdened with the responsibilities that come with having a vagina. She was in the bath and suspiciously quiet, bath time is always her opportunity to […]
Posted inEquality
Eureka!
I recently joined a new department at work and found myself at yet another empty desk begging to be adorned with baby pictures, perhaps plastic flowers and any other paraphernalia that attempts to bring a sense of belonging to a place that you would rather not be in. If not to only placate the nudity […]
Posted inEquality, General
Nolwazi, HIV and the people she left behind
My daughter’s nanny died today, 10pm on the 12th day of December. The day of her passing is 11 days after December 1, World Aids Day, and 10 days after December 2, the day I was born. We celebrated her birthday two weeks after she had tested positive for HIV. Because *Nolwazi lived thousands of […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Independent women
When I found out that I was pregnant I felt sorely close to falling into the trenches of a “black stereotype”. I already had no man and no job, all I needed was a Standard 8 qualification, a monthly government social grant, a mkhukhu (RDP house still pending), and I would have been well on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We drink, sing and pray the witchcraft away
By Mlilo Mpondo There is a witchcraft of sorts hovering in between the air we breathe, the dust roads we tread upon, in the pages of policy and the government it serves, the price of brown bread and the distorted reality between the rich and poor. This is of course a metaphor; witchcraft itself is […]