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 …
All her life, Martha Kerneels has had to hop over a fence and disappear behind a ditch to relieve herself. Whenever a family member had taken ill, Martha, gown swathed around her slight frame, would plod to the KFC across the road to place an emergency call. 35 years old, she has never owned a …
“No amount of alcohol is safe during pregnancy.” This quote from Foundation for Alcohol Related Research (FARR) CEO Leana Olivier was enough to jolt our collective attention from the reading material just handed to us. “Us” in this case being five (very articulate, by the way) ladies from Lebona Trust; a Grahamstown-based NPO, Estelle Jacobs; …
One would think that J.M. Coetzee’s critically-acclaimed novel, Disgrace , which garnered the author both a Booker Prize and a Nobel Prize In Literature would crescendo into a dynamic multicultural clinking of calabashes. But as fate would have it, in certain quarters the man’s otherwise extinguished work was considered so sacrilegious as to have a …
Packed to the rafters at the Lowryville community hall, Colesberg residents were eager to hear what was on the province’s first citizen, Dr Zamani Saul’s mind this Woman’s Day, 9 August. By 9am the premises were teeming, scores milling outside for seating they would not get, what with the hordes that had enthusiastically descended. In …
Perched on upturned beer crates, the revelers at this Colesberg shebeen (a kasi speakeasy) are nearly a dozen quarts into what is unravelling to be something of a bender. It’s around 10am; eyes are drooping, speeches slurred, and the landlady – a heavy-set woman with a screeching voice – is, in language best not repeated here, intent on scooting them off.
While the hideous, unnerving sentiments towards xenophobia echo out on the streets, my heart recoils back to my late grandmother’s house and a guy nicknamed Edo. Diminutive and soft-spoken, even in a small gathering, Edo is the sort of person you’d hardly know was ever even there. So short he’s easy to miss; nothing about …
As a former food ambassador – that’s waiter to you – who, on a busy Sunday morning shift, could be seen balancing up to four plates on his forearms, trayloads of drinks and grinning at the most undeserving patrons, being away from the big-city restaurant scene, I found myself brooding as to what comes in …
About us – the farmer, the wino and the hippie tech Read More »
Phakamisa Mayaba In inimitable polemics on a Newzroom Afrika panel discussion last week, SA Federation of Trade Unions Zwelinzima Vavi gave an uncanny take on what he termed “Ibhadi lomnt’ omnyama,” in response to growing calls for illegal immigrants to leave the country. “The black man’s sorry luck,” to paraphrase the unionist, sees swathes of …
Phakamisa Mayaba If you’re reading this, welcome, pull up a chair, you’ve arrived at eParkeni. Technically, it no longer exists; the swings are long gone, the merry go rounds uprooted, even the small trees patrons once found succour under have been sawn off, reduced to firewood. All that remains is the spirit and the fond …
