Thought Leader

By Zinhle Manzini In 2017 I will hopefully be registering for my PhD in philosophy. In thinking about this decision, I was charmed by the idea of doing my postgraduate degree abroad, hoping it would broaden my horizons as a scholar, an academic and as a person. Most academics that I have interacted with during…

“I hope to arrive at my death late, in love, and a little drunk.” Atticus. “I will arrive at my death late, and drunk with love.” Charlie Mathews. I never thought I’d fall in love. I am not talking about that delusion that’s a bit like a moulded jelly dessert – which, when left out…

I have written on nihilism here before, and am returning to it now in light of a striking analysis of its causes by Bernard Stiegler in What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology (Polity Press, 2013, Kindle edition). While not ignoring the diagnosis of nihilism in western culture by Nietzsche, Stiegler takes its roots back…

Antoinette put down her waiter’s tray filled with dirty plates from customer’s tables and softly murmured the words, “We will give tip when you return the land.” She stared at these words on the crumpled piece of paper in her hand and began to laugh. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the…

“Sorry, you can’t pick her up. She vomited up her feed so it’s better to leave her.” The nurse in the neonatal intensive-care unit is polite but firm. I nod numbly as I look at my daughter, lying in her incubator and waving her arms like a sea anemone in a tank. Three days before,…

As a little boy, I witnessed my first live sports encounter from the veranda of our humble home in Sada (Hewu). Across the road, and a further 50 or so metres from there, was the rugby field that was home to the Wallabies Rugby Club. The field was hard – pure ground – without a…

Being a vegetarian I never imagined that I would find myself (happily) plating 12 dishes of a braised sheep’s head and fried chicken feet. But these are the kinds of delicacies you end up serving if you’re ever tasked with showcasing South African food. “Smileys” and “walkie talkies” are what they’re called in Khayelitsha, where…

In Ridley Scott’s recent film, The Martian, there is a scene near the end that sums up the often ignored value of the earth. Astronaut and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is sitting on a bench in a park, shortly after having been rescued from a very lonely existence on the red planet, Mars. He…

I don’t like the idea of “nationalism”, it sounds divisive and exclusive, but on days like Freedom Day I secretly wish I could hold a more legitimate claim to this country, which has adopted me. In thinking about this, a poem I came across on Facebook recently comes to mind. It is entitled “Diaspora Blues”…

When watching Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, one cannot help but be reminded of the boldness and daring of one Michael Jackson’s Thriller. In 1983 the Thriller music video was received as a masterpiece in how to create a visual spectacle to narrate a soundtrack. That said, Lemonade and Thriller are different beasts. Lemonade is a…