There is something about well-written childhood stories that can heal. They crackle with the marvel of being alive. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote about the magical act of writing: “The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible.” Children, and […]
Khaya Dlanga
Posted inGeneral, Media
Can a white man tell Khaya Dlanga how to write a memoir?
Writing a standard book review risks creating a vapid commercial about the new publication. This is different to the journey that serious reading is, and journaling about that reading. Reading frequently, and returning to books that move you, creates a “spiritual travelogue”, and begins to resemble a series of religious stations, reference points to look […]
Posted inEquality
Blackface, Khaya Dlanga and why we can’t disentangle sexism from racism
Speaking recently at Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism in Cape Town, iconic political activist and scholar Angela Davis in her talk “Anti-Racism: Transnational Solidarities” remarked that “black unity” is often a term that never fits the lived reality of many black people. She made an example of how in the “black power” movements in […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Khaya Dlanga…white South Africans are trying
By Jordan Griffiths In a recent article Khaya Dlanga looked at race relations in our country 20 years on and presented the argument that in his view black people have made more of an effort towards the process of integration. He cited how black South Africans move to white suburbs, learn English and Afrikaans and […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
‘Side-guys’ and ‘side-chicks’ in the time of Aids
I just read a very troubling article by Mail & Guardian columnist Khaya Dlanga titled “Why do side-chicks happen?” In this article Dlanga claims to investigate in the South African context the reasons why (American-focused) research suggests that multiple lovers have come to “become even more popular in the modern age”. He cites a study […]
Posted inNews/Politics
South Africa and that Time cover
Alex Perry’s story about Oscar Pistorius and South Africa’s culture of violence has inevitably attracted a great deal of attention from the Twittering classes. The general consensus is that the piece, which draws a link between Pistorius’s shooting of Reeva Steenkamp and the endemic violence that characterises our national culture, is poor journalism and full […]
Posted inGeneral
We need to get over apartheid
This past week I have been confronted once more with the debate as to whether we should ‘’talk’’ about apartheid and by extension race relations. First I tuned into Eusebius McKaiser’s talk show on 702 where a gentleman called in to ask whether ‘’we can stop talking about race every day’’ and McKaiser responded by […]