Posted inNews/Politics

Calling out a koek

One supposes it’s nice to know we aren’t the only ones who dissolve into giggles whenever anyone mentions koek. Only this time, it really is a koek: red velvet sponge by the look of it. Meant to represent and symbolise … well, daai ander koek. Confectionary’s (nudge nudge, wink wink) still big news (or, as […]

Posted inGeneral

In pap we trust

I spent the last four months surrounded by tourists in the Transkei eating roughly 80kg of mielie pap at a rate of 1kg of pap per day. I ate the pap for breakfast. I ate the pap for lunch. I ate the pap for dinner. It was delicious. It was nutritious. I wouldn’t swop it […]

Posted inGeneral

A man who is not a man

By Fundile Majola There was a mixture of excitement and anxiety in the Port Elizabeth air on that sunny Monday morning of November 24. I was ready for my last matric examination paper, Geography. I was also ready to be made and declared a man – the initiation process was to start that evening. I […]

Posted inGeneral

The superficiality of our culture

This morning, re-reading Nietzsche’s early essay of genius about the strife between the ancient Greek gods, Dionysus and Apollo – The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music – I was struck anew by the utter superficiality of the (global) culture we live in. This superficiality was captured succinctly by Theodor Adorno in […]

Posted inGeneral

Fanon and resistance

Critical psychologist Desmond Painter, writing on the 50th commemoration of Frantz Fanon’s untimely death, says: “Fanon was interested in forging new categories of thought, new subjectivities and new modes of being and becoming. To this end, he challenged European thought [and the cultural and political category of ‘Europe’ as such] with a forceful refusal — […]