The avalanche of correspondence from disgruntled Silwane Files regulars wanting a word or eighteen hundred from the quintessential beer chucker and spear chugger has been a bit overwhelming. It was the type of experience that self-important, delusional megalomaniacs are made of. And it didn’t really matter what type of e-mail, telefax or letter I received, […]
Ndumiso Ngcobo
Once upon a time, Ndumiso Ngcobo used to be an intelligent, relevant man with a respectable (read: boring-as-crap) job which funded his extensive beer habit.
One day he woke up and discovered that he had lost his mind, quit his well-paying job, penned a collection of hallucinations. A bunch of racist white guys published the collection just to make him look more ridiculous and called it 'Some of my best friends are white'. (Two Dogs, ISBN 978-1-92013-718-2).
Nowadays he spends his days wandering the earth like Kwai Chang Caine, munching locusts, mumbling to himself like John the Baptist and searching for the meaning of life at the bottom of beer mugs.
The racist publishers have reared their ugly heads again and dangled money in his face to pen yet another collection of hallucinations entitled 'Is It Coz 'm Black'.
He will take cash, major credit cards and will perform a strip tease for contributions to his beer fund.
Posted inLifestyle
Let’s talk about sex — South African style
Dear Silwane Files reader, This post is an experiment designed to elicit information to be used in a non-scientific study. The following categories of people are strongly encouraged to sit this one out: 1. People who were last sexually active when ‘Saturday Night Fever’ was the coolest movie ever made. 2. Catholics who believe that […]
Posted inGeneral
Ignorance is not really the same as stupidity
This post is in the interest of stating the obvious that I think needs to be stated. I recently almost caused an international incident during an interview. The interviewer was a foreign national from a European country whose capital city’s name starts with the letter M. Another clue is that the citizens of her country […]
Posted inLifestyle
New study suggests that homosexuals are really just women with winkles
And in Duh News today, a new scientific study has provided irrefutable proof that the brains of gay men are different to straight men’s brains. By show of hands, who is surprised to learn that this groundbreaking scientific achievement was conducted in Stockholm, Sweden? This is just the type of endeavour that the bored Swedes […]
Posted inSport
Silwane trains for the Comrades
I have never run the Comrades Marathon. This is because I studied Human Physiology and Biochemistry and I am privy to simple concepts that the rest of the population seems unaware of. For instance, how many people know that muscles are constructed from proteins and that proteins have a propensity to denature under certain stresses, […]
Posted inGeneral
An inventory of my BS traps – part 1
I’ve reached that age in my development (or deterioration, as the case may be) when I’m starting to look back at my past with a fair degree of nostalgia. Because hindsight is like looking through one’s past through a pair of rose-tinted glasses, there is a certain age we all reach when everything from twenty […]
Posted inLifestyle
Are we starting to get it?
I have been on a bit of a hiatus from writing in recent times. I even went on a ‘driving nowhere slowly’ jaunt in the northern KwaZulu-Natal last week. I had meant to return with a piece about my experiences on the road. But that has to wait. In the past I have gone on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Xenophobic racism and other general idiocy
When I first heard that people of Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Malawian descent had been attacked in Alexandra, I did what I always do when I hear such news. Not to be callous or anything, but I shrugged and wondered out loud why people always seem amazed when these things happen. I have received a lot […]
Posted inMedia
Please sign up for the Free Witty Mapalane Campaign
A friend of mine sent me a link to a story about a man from Bushbuckridge who attempted suicide in protest over the state’s meddling in his private life. Ever since a young, sweaty, cross–eyed Afrikaner SAP constable caught up with me on the foyer of the EG Malherbe Library at the then University of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Conspiracy theories and the Zuma presidency
President Thabo Mbeki utilised state machinery to frame an innocent Jacob Zuma to get rid of the political threat posed by his (then) deputy. This is an assertion that has been whispered privately for years, with a few brave souls uttering it out loud in public. My brain is simplistic enough to believe that there […]
Posted inGeneral
The free-will delusion?
Imagine that you are in your favourite room at home. My personal favourite room in the house is my bedroom. I love my bedroom because; simply by being in there, I reduce the statistical probability of running into my three-year old and accidentally ripping out his Adam’s apple by a factor of three. I’m a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The chief with Taiwanese blood and politainment
One of the reasons I have steadfastly steered clear of writing about politics (if you ignore my alarming ignorance on politics) is because I find politics excruciatingly boring. I’d rather spend eighteen hours a day picking prickly pears without gloves than spend fifteen minutes watching that insomnia-busting nothingness called Parliament Live featuring a riveting debate […]