Life, what a joy and teacher of great lessons on how to live, what your limits are and how to behave as a man of stature. And life commonly finds it necessary to revise these lessons when you seem to be losing your way in blissful ignorance and excitement. It was so this past weekend […]
The Sumo
The Sumo is a strapping young man in his late 20s who considers himself the ultimate transitional South African. Born and raised in a KwaZulu-Natal township near Durban, he was part of the first group of black initiates into the "multiracial" education system. He was (and is) always in contrast to the norm, black in "white" schools, a blazer-wearing coconut in the township streets, and now fat in a sea of conventional thinness in the corporate world. This, and a lifetime of junk-food consumption and beer guzzling, has culminated in the man you will come to know as the Sumo. See life through this man's eyes; see life through lard.
Posted inGeneral
Dinner with Dandala
Last week Wednesday I had the happy accident of having dinner with the newly formed Congress of the (disgruntled, intellectual) People’s presidential candidate in a very nice restaurant called Ginger in the lobby of The Beach Hotel, Port Elizabeth. Having been in that sleepy hollow for two days already, I was hoping for a bit […]
Posted inLifestyle
Stretch and change
“Change? I guess change is good for any of us … I ain’t mad at you, got nothing but love for you. Do ya thang boy!” The late, great Tupac Shakur. People sometimes feel the need for change; well they don’t feel it so much as it makes itself necessary for the individual’s happiness and […]
Posted inLifestyle
The peeping Sumo – a moral dilemma
So wrong, yet so right! I bet most of you have these moments, but not as much as I do these days. You know? You see something that is horrendously wrong, but it gives you so much pleasure even though you know your mother would’ve slapped you three times from Sunday had she been close […]
Posted inGeneral
Polygamy revived, but to what end?
I attended a TV talk show recently where they debated the morality of polygamy. I was on the panel because I had written a piece on polygamy in January last year. The blog got tongues wagging. It was subsequently, and maybe more eloquently, covered by respected social commentators like the irrepressible Ndumiso Ngcobo, among others. […]
Posted inLifestyle
Chopsticks and impromptu slapstick
I always love watching an unfortunate situation sneak up on an unsuspecting victim if it is going to be for my pleasure and amusement, but often it is only in retrospect that you realise just how utterly terrified the unfortunate victim was during the sequence of events leading to his comedic demise; only at the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Pregnant & smoking – the Sumo’s moral dilemma of debt
Am I being unreasonable? Am I expecting too much from an expectant mother who is also a smoker? Should pregnant woman legally be allowed to smoke? I ask these questions because I am really at a loss. Where does one draw the line of between being a responsible citizen and condemning unethical behaviour and interfering […]
Posted inLifestyle
Love begins, friendship ends – the catch 22
Trying to cope with the debacle of Cope? Here is a respite from that political nothingness – a human piece for a change on Thought Leader; we all need a break from stories about the defenders of freedom with super-human power and squeaky voices. Love, why must it be this way? I have been inundated […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Kleurling takes it!
Call me NastroSumo, but didn’t I mention in my piece called Making beautiful Coloureds Together that the future of the world lies, with the Tik somewhere in Mitchell’s Plain, in the Kleurlinge? thoughtleader.co.za/thesumo/2008/02/12/making-beautiful-coloureds-together/ Yes, yours truly, The Sumo, has predicted this current state of affairs being of mixed race is the very way to go, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Invasion: Nam
I thought I could never breathe in actual heat short of a flame-blowing display gone smolderingly wrong, but Namibia quickly helps one re-evaluate what one holds as the physically impossible in nature, replacing your sentiments with an extended actual of what reality can be. At first glance one would not understand why a European superpower […]
Posted inLifestyle
The Friendly City – wine, women and calm
I can’t get over seeing amaXhosa do manual labour; I just cannot get over it. To the Sumo, a boitjie born and bred in the lush bosom of the KwaZulu-Natal’s North Coast and exposure to amaXhosa strictly limited to what I saw on TV (Government officials and celebrity personalities) and heard (through the folklore which […]
Posted inLifestyle
Floating dorpies
People are sure to be offended by this piece, people who refuse to see past their prejudices and make intellectual counters, if that may be, to my ideas expressed on this piece. Therefore, the disclaimer just below is probably null, but I feel strongly that people should know that I offer this piece in the […]