We were nine, ten maybe eleven years old the day that word choked an entire parish into a macabre silence: AIDS! By their very nature churches tend to be solemn places but on that occasion the expressions on the congregants were exceptionally sullen; eyebrows creased, listless stares, uncomfortable shifting in the pews. No doubt this …
World AIDS Day; In Honour of the Community Health Workers Read More »
eParkeni had decided on an indefinite hiatus, what really ended up happening, though, is probably more worth telling. Nearing the restless festive season we’d figured it necessary to go back to the drawing board. At its conception, this idea of rural media was fueled by some audacious (read: ridiculous) ambitions. Skeleton-staffed with no funding, the …
When campaigns against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) are often shrugged off as nothing more than high-heeled talk shops, there was something to be said of the ingenuity of turning to the good old fashioned “arts” at the kicking off of this year’s 16 Days of Activism for no Violence against Women and Children on 25th November. …
The Colesberg Taxi Rank, virtually a white elephant standing inert and forlorn for a good 9 years seemed fated to symbolize yet another multi-million Rand tender gone horribly wrong. It would only be a matter of time before it deteriorated into a seedy haunt amongst the destitute, substance users and perhaps did duty as a …
Premier hands over taxi rank to Colesberg community Read More »
Monkishly patient demeanour aside, perhaps Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s noteworthy superpower is a penchant for delivering findings and judgements that leave the political principals ashen-faced whilst thrusting the proletariat into bucolic swoons. Like that quintessential Hollywood reel of the grateful masses cheering some superhero on as he bounds across skyscrapers amped to save the day. …
For transparency’s sake, this one owes you, Dear Reader, an admission: In 2012 or thereabout when I first met Melikhaya Mtshotwana, he wore an apron and a mock chef’s jacket by night and was a hustler during the rest. The name JaykhaZA was hardly a bleep on the local rap radar. At the time we …
In what one almost vaguely dismissed as a souped-up reflective jacket, Northern Cape Premier Dr Zamani Saul swiftly whisked himself away from the SABC’s cameras to welcome his national principal to the fifth Presidential Imbizo in Upington last month. This, a gathering that would invariably draw attention on a mixed marsala of challenges. Anything from …
Earlier this year, hankering through those unsteady motions that unemployment is prone to come with, rang a call from Maeder “Mr Oz” Osler. “PM,” (as he calls me) “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Jasper Cook by name…used to play for the African Jazz Pioneers.”
Over three decades ago, 3 July 1985, four youths perished under a fusillade of gunshots in Colesberg’s Kuyasa township. Known as The Colesberg Four; Funeka Siyonzana, Thozamile “Krakra” Maciki, December Morumo and Mongezi Juda were untimely casualties in the barbarism that was South Africa’s political past. On that day, a searing Karoo winter’s evening, an …
When interviewed, Mrs Thandiwe Bhuka speaks in tones reminiscent of a Devil Wears Prada-type corporate executive – all class and well-rounded vowels. Then she takes to the stage before an audience of boisterous schoolgirls and out comes the tongue in cheek and the moves – oh those moves – an unusual hybrid of the hip-thrusting …
