I suppose it was always inevitable. Someone was bound to see my column in the Sunday Times, add one and one and get eleven.

Look, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a bunch of immature gits who find titillation in sordid tales about teenagers fornicating in public restrooms. But to nip the careering rumour mill in the bud, I thought I’d pop in and set the record straight.

1. No, I’m not dead yet.
2. As tempting as it was, I declined the offer to be the Swazi Reed Dance coordinator.
3. Yes, I am writing a regular column for the Sunday Times Lifestyle. Beer is expensive. But no, that’s not why I haven’t been updating this blog.

Yes, the M&G and the Sunday Times fish in the same ballpark waters. And while Mondli Makhanya is Zulu and all, I can assure you that he hasn’t challenged Nic Dawes to a mortal duel lately. Besides, this particular blog is the equivalent of a pimple inside a mosquito’s colon in the greater scheme of things. With that ridiculous rumour hopefully quelled, let’s move on.

The reality of a space such as Thought Leader is that the contributors will come and go. Sometimes they’ll come back and then disappear depending on their daily pressures. As a TL consumer myself, I must confess that I miss some of my favourite contributors when they haven’t written in a while — Kanthan Pillay, Tony Lancaster, Siyabonga Ntshingila, Jared Cinman, The Sumo etc come to mind. No one can really force them to write when they’re either just not inspired to write or are too busy. I hope that applies to me.

Here’s what’s going to happen. Until the managers of TL tell me to pack my bags and go hallucinate elsewhere or the forum’s relevance shrinks to the size of an amoeba’s kidney stone, The Silwane Files will remain alive. I will continue to update it in unpredictable spurts. Now and then I will manage to update it two, three or even four times a week. And then there will likely be spells such as the last three months where I’m so busy I become more elusive than a watermelon pit on a wet saucer.

Until I received literally hundreds of emails enquiring about my whereabouts, I didn’t realise so many people were starved of entertainment in this country, what with news content and Backstage re-runs alone. As a peace offering to all the pathetic hordes who’ve been clogging my inbox, I am submitting a piece on my favourite subject at the moment; Bible stories. We hope the overeager sub-editor types pass it. Otherwise, Silwane Files drought continua!

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  • 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.

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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...

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