It is often said that experience yields wisdom and through suffering we learn to become better people.
Pain and loss, as Port Elizabeth born multi award winning author Mxolisi Nyezwa puts it, does not necessarily have to be a physical manifestation. Suffering is a highly personal journey of finding oneself.His recently launched book of poetry, Malikhanye, is a tribute to his only child who tragically passed away in 2007, still an infant. Nyezwa came home one day only to discover that...
Absa Vuka Festival Launch in East London 08/10/2011
The festival aims to inspire the development of creative industries through the Afro-fusion sounds of the continent, traditional culinary experiences and an outdoor gallery and exhibition of African...
Last Friday with Harry Owen 28/10/2011
The scent of ground coffee hangs in the air, oven fresh baked goods and the well coordinated colour scheme draw you in as you make your way through the four semi-detached sections of the cafe...
UMLE National Tour 16/10/2011
Umle is a well-composed collective; their sound is complemented by the vintage styling of checkered blazers and bowties, which makes them a sweet treat to the ear as well as the eye...
Good & Evil battle it out @ Olde's 65 29/10/2011
If there were any evil spirits lurking around they must have shoved their tails between their legs and made their way to the door when the bobo shante started chanting and dancing, as if possessed by...
Sandiso Ngxabani hails from Butterworth in the Eastern Cape. He was born to a
Christian mother and a father to whom culture was and is everything. "My father
may not be a religious person but he respects the bible immensely," says Sandiso
affectionately known in the circles as Saida.
My son is a story that begins at my own beginning. Through him, I became a mother. I joined the throng of other mothers around the world. Ogenrwot was born in 1999. I was in captivity then. My son was the ultimate proof that beauty, life, hope, and everything else good is possible, even when there is desolation around you. My labour was not remarkable to anyone but me. The learning curve I had to overcome, learning to suckle a child, bathing him in steaming hot water; massaging his limbs so that his legs would grow straight, the way we have always done — all became possible when he chose me to be his mother. It was a choice. I believe it was a choice. His. He could have chosen anyone else. His father had many children with other women, but he chose to be my son and I learned to be a mother from him.
It was not as if I had no knowledge of how to mother children. Growing up; I’d had to carry my younger cousins on my back, feed them, lull them to sleep in Acholi when we lived in Gulu, or in Lango, my mother tongue. I carried the children of my co-wives, taking care of them as my own. They were all our children. Children don’t ask to be born. They choose their mothers and then wait to make their entrance when the time is right. So the first time I sang Min Atin, it came from the back of my throat and quieted him as if he remembered it from before.
This non-fiction is from a work-in-progress by Bitek telling the stories of abducted women who returned from the captivity of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the guerillas that have terrorized Uganda, DRC, Central African Republic and Sudan since 1987. This piece is about Grace’s son, and her escape from rebels after six years in captivity.
In Deon’s first book, nothing is as it seems. Dreams aren’t dreams and the vivid happenings are as real as the ghosts that the six friends face.
The line between reality and fiction is as jaded as the start and end to each chapter. The reader is forced to read first person accounts from six points of view. At times you are confounded as
