WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAMME TO BRING YOU AN ADVERTISEMENT
They say nothing tells an interesting story about a country's economic growth and overall psyche like the commercials on television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Forget the billboards. That is why internet sites like absolutelyandy attract so many visitors who want to know what's going on in the United Kingdom. Commercials, by their very nature are created to target a specific market with money to spend, otherwise it's broken down into what they call LSMs and niches within the LSMs. No wonder the buzzword these days is on-line advertising (the Google ads you see on this blog) which is projected to tremble in the next two years. Why? Because someone told media buyers and advertising executives that anyone who can flick a mouse and double click Internet Explorer has money to spend because the superhighway of information is not free access. With Telkom, it's a million times more expensive.
Speaking of commercials, one can not help but realise that adverts on South African television are slowly drifting away from our reality. We are left wondering who are the creatives and copyrighters thinking about when they conceptualise some of the flops on our television screens. A good ad shouldn't encourage a viewer to flick the remote controller to check what's on the other channel. Here are a few examples of good and bad ones;
Do you remember the old Sunlight bath soap ad where a woman in a bathtub was singing jovially only to be interrupted by her toddler daughter who laughs naughtily, drawing the same reaction from the mother? Now, rewind a little and remember the white version of it whereby a white woman is this time interrupted by her husband? Complaints compounded the ad since race consious critics implied that it simply smirked of racism and stereotyping of blacks and their family make-up. "It actually says black women are single parents while whites are all married, why can't we have a white kid interrupting the mother and a black man interrupting the woman if that was not the message told?", they asked. Okay, this here is South Afrika and such analysis should be expected because it actually means nothing apart from saying the country is made up of 45 million intellectuals.
However down the years such inflammatory issues have been addressed with good crisp adverts that reflect the mood in the country at any given time. Castle Lager has always managed to churn out excellent camaraderie ads that, even though they might be racial diversity wish-wash, still manage to maintain a level of intelligence. You can tell from the delivery that they are ads made by intelligent people for perceived intelligent viewers. The moral of all beer ads; beer is something you drink at the end of a hard working day, not a beverage you start the day with.
The one that works brilliantly without stereotyping is the Grand-Pa ad with the taxi driver. The dude surely looks like the drivers we meet everyday and the message works well there. Even though there are those who are critical of it saying the taxi driver says, 'I can't stop, I'm busy' but is seen on the ad having stopped. One can't help but guess that taxi operators must have felt well-represented and boosted Grand-Pa's bottom line since the ad talks to them. It is the same thing usually done with doctors and Panado. No one can tell if doctors really believe in the painkiller but we think so.
Whoever told the Maq washing powder marketers that innuendo sells has misled them. Who in their right mind will find humour in a bunch of people in a taxi driving along a typical township where a woman is doing washing with Maq, and who all have a set of sunglasses to shield them from the brightness of Maq? Whoever conceived the ad needs a shrink, the message is lost.
Another stereotyping ad is the Chinese/ Korean or Japanese in Mellow Wood brandy. What are they trying to say about Oriental culture and brandy? Why a slit-eyed old man and not a Yankee or Brit? I mean given the jokes about drunken Chinese people. And that Shield deodorant one which features a Chinese family and some karate. I find them not funny because the Chinese these days are busy building bridges, dams and stadia, not going to remote mountains to fight.
Do you still that other stupid one which also featured Chinese and the words, 'where's the formula? Tell me, where's the formula?'. Only for a woman on a gym bike to expose the formula after working up a sweat. I was Shield as well. Whatever they have against the Chinese.
Remember the Audi "beating the bends", which actually was innuendo for "beating the Benz"? (Quite interesting the Audi folks took their car to where the Benz failed to beat the bends). That was intelligent and provocative, something last seen with the Mercedes Benz that capsized at Chapman's Peak but remained intact because of its reinforced roof. (Yeah, that's the one Audi chopped to good use). Soon Armstrong shock absorbers was out using the same Chapman's Peak's rock falls to insinuate that any car with their shock absorbers would have made it past the bends. Castle Lager as well used Chapman's Peak about a bunch of men who were given a contract to stop a mountain from falling. Those men resembed the early days of Black Economic Empowerment, or what BEE was supposed to be if the greedy sods with party membership cards did not mess it up to convert in into Black Elite Elevated.
Thumbs down to the Frisco ad whereby the mother keeps on sending a young boy to ask for coffee from the neighbours. Someone needs to understand that black people will ask for sugar, tea bags, salt and mealie meal but not coffee. Coffee is a luxury, which suggests the copyrighters did not do much research about kasie living. It is the same thing with the boy who carries Sunlight liquid in a teaspoon from neighbours, not funny.
Same booing goes to the AVBOB ad where young children come to a funeral for a free bite. Where in hell's name could African children be encouraged to feast at such an event? Research is important to make sure that even if we take our ads overseas, they tell an accurate story about us.
4/29/07
4/25/07
PERSPECTIVE
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER - HOW IS ADOLESCENSE TREATING SOUTH AFRIKA?
ory filled with pain and trauma. A history filled with brothers and sisters who left home and never to be seen again. A history made up of old bones dug from unmarked graves all over the world to afford martyrs a decent burial. It will be a celebration of the final destination in a journey undertaken since 1652 when Dromedaries, Reiger and Goedehoop anchored at the Cape Point and robbed this Southern tip of Africa of its innocense. That is the year Africa was repeatedly raped and impregnated, and thus Afrika du Sud was born. April 27, 1994 marked the restoration of this country's dignity and the confirmation of its sanity. One wonders why is this country still holding on to a bastard name when it had a name before being christened Afrika du Sud or Suid Afrika.
Some people say tomorrow presents to every South African thirteen reasons to be happy and fly the multi-coloured flag high in memory of those who had to offer the ultimate sacrifice inorder to bring about a new dispensation. There are those who say the day ushered in a new form of oppression. Word on the streets is that oppression has not ended, it's just that the oppressor has changed and De la Rey is an Afrikaner gimmick.
Reasons are being given by different people that the boers offered jobs in their government based on race and affiliation to die Nasionale Party and Broederbond. Observers say that since 1994 the country is experiencing a serious 'Zanunisation' of the public sector. Almost all senior government and parastatal positions, and in some cases even juniour are only given to members of the African National Congress. The situation has resulted in people joining the ANC simply to access either government employment, tenders or immunity on the part of the authorities when they later practise corruption. No wonder some high ranking ANC officials were surprised that the Scorpions could arrest them as well if they squander public funds
Kasiekulture can not factually tell if allegations of patronage have base apart from that since 1994 it has become a political reality that the ANC has split into factions. And a closer study of those factions reveal that none of them is driven by the need to give A Better Life for All to 45 million South Africans but personal economic benefits.
Since 1994 comrades are given government work to build low-cost houses and roads but all that is seen is unfinished work while they continue to get away with it and secure more contracts.
Since 1994 male teachers have gone on the rampage having sex with female learners while the South African Democratic Union which was vocal pre-'94 has suddenly lost its voice against its own members.
Since 1994 we have seen a bourgeouning black middle class that relies on credit to finance their lifestyles.
Since 1994 we have seen massive unemployment and exodus of skilled labour to empower first world countries.
Since 1994 we have witnessed police becoming more and more incompetent with prisoners escaping and dockets exchanged for cash. We have also seen suspects killed in holding cells without anyone being called to account.
Since 1994 we have seen a six percent economic growth that is not translated into more people becoming wealthy but a small clique that has become billionaires while the majority starve.
Since 1994 we have seen Black Economic Empowerment and formerly good comrades being compromised by money
Also since 1994 we have seen clinics being built by government and free basic health care given to children up to the age of 14. We have seen schools built and education being offered for free to those who can not afford it.
We have seen more subsidised housing (RDP) being offered to families who have never owned a home all their lives.
We have seen a decentralisation of services like Home Affairs, police, tax services and even government itself.
Maybe there are reasons to celebrate. Those who are 13 years this year obviously should do so without questioning. That's because nobody promised them anything they couldn't deliver. However for those who are far too old, who have lived in the old apartheid four roomed houses since 1960 and who still live there, and who can't help but wonder what's wrong with RDP houses built post'94 that continue to crumble, they've cause for concern.
Today is that, a day to reflect on promises made and broken. It's a day that politicians, especially ANC comrades from all levels should sit back and ask themselves, 'what have I done for my community lately'.
Today marks the 13th year that South Africans will be celebrating a milestone in a hist
ory filled with pain and trauma. A history filled with brothers and sisters who left home and never to be seen again. A history made up of old bones dug from unmarked graves all over the world to afford martyrs a decent burial. It will be a celebration of the final destination in a journey undertaken since 1652 when Dromedaries, Reiger and Goedehoop anchored at the Cape Point and robbed this Southern tip of Africa of its innocense. That is the year Africa was repeatedly raped and impregnated, and thus Afrika du Sud was born. April 27, 1994 marked the restoration of this country's dignity and the confirmation of its sanity. One wonders why is this country still holding on to a bastard name when it had a name before being christened Afrika du Sud or Suid Afrika.Some people say tomorrow presents to every South African thirteen reasons to be happy and fly the multi-coloured flag high in memory of those who had to offer the ultimate sacrifice inorder to bring about a new dispensation. There are those who say the day ushered in a new form of oppression. Word on the streets is that oppression has not ended, it's just that the oppressor has changed and De la Rey is an Afrikaner gimmick.
Reasons are being given by different people that the boers offered jobs in their government based on race and affiliation to die Nasionale Party and Broederbond. Observers say that since 1994 the country is experiencing a serious 'Zanunisation' of the public sector. Almost all senior government and parastatal positions, and in some cases even juniour are only given to members of the African National Congress. The situation has resulted in people joining the ANC simply to access either government employment, tenders or immunity on the part of the authorities when they later practise corruption. No wonder some high ranking ANC officials were surprised that the Scorpions could arrest them as well if they squander public funds
Kasiekulture can not factually tell if allegations of patronage have base apart from that since 1994 it has become a political reality that the ANC has split into factions. And a closer study of those factions reveal that none of them is driven by the need to give A Better Life for All to 45 million South Africans but personal economic benefits.
Since 1994 comrades are given government work to build low-cost houses and roads but all that is seen is unfinished work while they continue to get away with it and secure more contracts.
Since 1994 male teachers have gone on the rampage having sex with female learners while the South African Democratic Union which was vocal pre-'94 has suddenly lost its voice against its own members.
Since 1994 we have seen a bourgeouning black middle class that relies on credit to finance their lifestyles.
Since 1994 we have seen massive unemployment and exodus of skilled labour to empower first world countries.
Since 1994 we have witnessed police becoming more and more incompetent with prisoners escaping and dockets exchanged for cash. We have also seen suspects killed in holding cells without anyone being called to account.
Since 1994 we have seen a six percent economic growth that is not translated into more people becoming wealthy but a small clique that has become billionaires while the majority starve.
Since 1994 we have seen Black Economic Empowerment and formerly good comrades being compromised by money
Also since 1994 we have seen clinics being built by government and free basic health care given to children up to the age of 14. We have seen schools built and education being offered for free to those who can not afford it.
We have seen more subsidised housing (RDP) being offered to families who have never owned a home all their lives.
We have seen a decentralisation of services like Home Affairs, police, tax services and even government itself.
Maybe there are reasons to celebrate. Those who are 13 years this year obviously should do so without questioning. That's because nobody promised them anything they couldn't deliver. However for those who are far too old, who have lived in the old apartheid four roomed houses since 1960 and who still live there, and who can't help but wonder what's wrong with RDP houses built post'94 that continue to crumble, they've cause for concern.
Today is that, a day to reflect on promises made and broken. It's a day that politicians, especially ANC comrades from all levels should sit back and ask themselves, 'what have I done for my community lately'.
4/24/07
LAST WORD
ONS VIR JOU SUID AFRIKA, HAPPY FREEDOM DAY
Last year Minister of Safety and Security Mr Charles Nqakula said something very disturbing about people being free to whinge until they turn blue or having an option of leaving these shores. That was bad because only whites turn blue when they whinge. It was wrong not because of that innuendo but because the biggest victims of crime are the people who will never turn blue and who have no option of leaving. Thus when I made an entry in Kasiekulture interrogating the SA Blog Awards I ended up feeling like Nqakula but decided to let sanity prevail. I wrote another letter to coincide with Freedom Day on Friday and I will once again title it 'Dear Blogger'.
A very talented blogger named Piet van der Walt sent me this cartoon above. I couldn't help but find the humour of it and so I decided to publish it. Copyright is held by Mnr van der Walt
Some weeks ago I was tempted to put together a profile of the people who visit kasiekulture so that I can prepare them custom-made gifts. I was half way there until I published that Bloggers of Mzansi, Abandon the Ossewa! entry. It was then that I became aware that Kasiekulture has got a crossover appeal, more like Freshlyground and Mandoza's Nkalakatha. I found that I'm more popular than the African National Congress and FF+ and thought fuck it, why can't I register as a candidate for the upcoming 2009 General Elections. I'm more popular than DJ Fresh was on his first day at 5FM when listeners questioned his accent and attitude.
For those who have been in Siberia since 1990 here's little information of what happened since then; There's a small piece of land called Orania, with a sizeable population, a leader and own currency called the Ora which is weaker than the Zimbabwean dollar. They are until now self-sustaining and have pursued their vision of racial purity all the way to a desolate part of this vast country. Theirs is limited separate development because they don't have airpots, soldiers, police and intelligence organisations. Their overall security strategy is still largely financed by the South Afrikan taxpayer, which is good because we don't kill disabled minds but legislate to protect them.
I've never been there but am reliably informed that they, when they go for their sixth glass of mampoer claim to be independent of South Afrika, which is also good because I also think we would all prosper if we started functioning like birds and only flocked based on the colour of our feathers. It only became inspirational stuff when they wanted to have their own radio station (Oops they still watch SABC and etv if not home videos of dancing contests and edited speeches of erstwhile Afrikaner leaders) and instead of putting together a makeshift studio and set up a transmitter they decided to apply from the country next door (ICASA) to award them a license. Imagine Swaziland applying to have a station from ICASA, that would be a joke. Orania people are still on MTN, Vodacom, Cell C and Telkom, but hey, they are not with the rest of us.
Now, the country next door (ICASA) says Orania doesn't deserve a license because the airwaves are saturated as their reasons for seeking a license are not convincing. They can't even get them a frequency on Short or Medium Wave. You need a certain number of signatures to justify your application for a community radio station and they can't gather those as well. Why? Because some of the people who aspire to live there tell themselves every night that they are in exile (South Afrika) and some put it more romantically that they are in the Orania Diaspora.
Okay, what's the point of this little information? First and foremost I'm a Afrikan - a black South Afrikan who is far from apologetic about being black because that means I've already been coloured (dyed). Which means I was once white. And this here blackness is the culmination of what went into my head to mould my perfection. See, along the way to blackness I have learnt to speak fluently so four South Afrikan languages including Afrikaans. That's why I write in English the same way I can write in some of the indigenous languages. I'm not a genius, because that would be denoting that all darkies are geniuses but I'm just too smart. I'm the culmination of God's creation - the ultimate human species destination.
I say this because I realised after my 'Abandon the Ossewa!' entry that in South Afrika there still are a lot of mentally disturbed white people. Disturbed because they read the wrong history and science books in primary school. Some disturbed because they grew up behind walls and never interacted with other civilised people all over the world and think that throwing racist innuendo equals being smart whereas it's barbarism because you breath the same air as me and drink the same water. I have lived behind a wall and discovered my claustrophobia. And I say from an informed position when I say that there are disturbed whites out there who need therapy. That Korean boy in Virginia Tech is not isolated to America but there are similar freaks in many of the towns which's names end with 'dorp', 'stad', 'burg' and 'fort'.
For me, there are four things I like about South Afrika. None of those things is government as I'm an anarchist. Triple distilled Scotch whisky (single malt), braaivleis, day-night cricket and white people. For me, this is my ideal South Afrika, you take away one and the puzzle remains incomplete. I'm not the type that says 'some of my best friends are white you know'. I don't have a white friend (unlike Steve Biko) but whites with whom we have common interests and who we relate to each other in a big way. I'm an artist and some of the whites I like are artists as well or are in the media which is where I ply my trade. We do for each other what we need to do at any given time and at the end of the day we both disappear to our comfort zones and communicate by email and SMS. I love my white comrades smitten because they are not colour-blind. They know the difference between blue and yellow, which is important if you are going to co-exist with me. They know that South Afrika hasn't changed since 1994 which is fine cuz I don't want to be told that the black leadership in this country has saved anyone from civil war when we all know that's not the truth. I don't want a whitey who will praise Nelson Mandela thinking that they are appeasing me when I think the man might have done more damage than repair. I can't handle a white who will tell me he wants to visit my neighbourhood only as a form of flattery to me. Actually I don't want a white who feels obligated to visit my neighbourhood because I don't feel obligated to visit his. I've lived in a Jewish suburb of Bramley for a year in 1994 and I never liked it.
This is my ideal South Afrika, where racist don't hide behind smiles while denying everyone who has different feathers an opportunity to shine. Comments on the entry I mentioned differed; some which I rejected and decided not to publish were blatant hate mail and I don't want the black visitors with two brain cells like the whites who commented barbaricly ending up boxing all whites as full of hatred. There's more to a white/black person than the colour of the skin. I've been called many things in my long journalism career and no amount of venom can subdue me. I've been called an anti-Semite (for saying Israel is keeping Palestinians in a prison called Gaza Strip), a misogynist (for calling some women bitches and whores in my poetry), a moffie (for playing volleyball and basketball) and recently a racist (for speaking my mind about SA Blog Awards). I've just never been called a 'kaffir' but I still wouldn't mind as long as it makes the name-caller happy. I'm all for happiness, especially since to me 'kaffir' (Keen At Fighting For Individual Rights) means nothing except small minds - which actually should worry the Creator than the creation. I will pray that bigger brains be given to the folks with low self-esteem in the future.
My point behind the SA Blog Awards was simple. Call them anything, call them the Orania, Vrystaat, Transvaal, Kaffirsdorp Blog Awards or anything else but don't call them South African when, contrary to what I've been recently told that an attempt was made to track down black bloggers, you are going to be exclusive. I'm sorry broer, no attempt was made to track anyone.
I took personal offence to this revelation about trying to track down black bloggers. What's this? Another BEE deal where whites co-opt darkies to create an Irish coffee effect? Don't go out looking for darkies, they are a majority in this country, just put your notice in the right media and darkies will come looking for you. Even if darkies were to put together a similar event there won't be any point in going out looking for whites when they can put a notice in Beeld, Cape Argus, Citizen, The Star, Pretoria News, Sunday Times, Die Son and many such media which is equally liked by lots of white people.
I also liked a point relayed to me that nobody was invited to enter the SA Blog Awards. I just lack the energy to engage some of the comments posted to kasiekulture but can somebody tell me how did they end up on that list? Is it like the National Orders maybe? For the life of me I can't comprehend how you'll have people entering a contest where there were no invitations, unless it's a very different world I'm living in. Maybe I'm in Baghdad's Sadr City and invitations are circulated in the Green Zone. How did those people know that it will be held at Fourways? Hunch, K9 instincts? Somebody please treat us like adults.
I protested about the location being exclusive and some hater who I should hook up Ku Klux Klan membership forms accused me of being a cry-baby and started fault-finding (the Irish and Canadian links not getting him to where they are supposed to). The poor sod acted as if he's a newcomer to search engines whereby stuff happens with links and you end up on some porn site you didn't know existed. He never even commented about the links that took him to where he wanted to go. The location issue; If I was going to stage the Suid-Afrikaanse Safer Neighbourhoods Awards at night and choose to take the event to Zola (Soweto), and ends up being won by Alexandra Township and I come out bragging about a token white (liberal) who came to 'represent' with a suburb called Vaderland and who got position two in all categories he entered- would that make any sense? In the head of someone stuck in a hole in Durban and called Capdog it would. Those are the people that Home Affairs should hurry the processing of their papers for a safe emigration to Down Under.
Many of the comments were fair, constructive and informative and will inform my interrogation of similar issues in the future - thank you. Special thanks to Dave and Rouvanne especially. However some people think we are all impressed by an occassional smile and fake hugs from a blue crane because we doves. No ways. Darkies are not homogenous my fellow white people, they are like you, you are not going to be judged by the fuck-ups of Hendriek Verwoed, John Vorster or even Eugene Terreblanche. So, never attribute an entry made by a lone darkie as the voice of blacks. And sarcasm is my gasoline, I thrive on it and the more sarcastic comments I get the further I'm gonna shoot my venom. So come forward with your fancy OR, JFK, PW, LKJ, FW, MLK blog names and expect me to shut up while the first thing on my mind when I see these initials are Oliver Reginald Tambo, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Piet Willem Botha, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Frederick Willem de Klerk and Martin Luther King. It might be guerilla marketing but it smirks of creativity deficiency. I hate hypocrisy my people and there's no way you can change me. I'm not surprised given that when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela wanted to register her website some years ago she discovered that some (white) man in Tshwane (not Pretoria) held ownership to the domain name (www.winniemandela.co.za) , so I'm far from surprised cuz my other name is Nando but I feel intellectual inferiority to set up a Nando's Blog.
Some of us are way past the stage of finding pretensions charming. I take younger Condi (Condoleeza Rice's) stance when I deal with issues of black and white (SA Blog Awards included), 'I'll rather be ignored than patronised'.
About those that thought they can flip a cry-baby gimmick and box my rant as 'so typical....whenever blacks are not # 1, the race card comes out', who told you that I'm black if not for the 'black and white' picture I deliberately put there to simplify your gutter analysis of my opinions suppose you finally decided to remove your blinds and rise to my colour-consious level. Welcome to the real world and Happy Freedom Day (whether you like it or not - otherwise the Dromedaries is leaving for Wellington in 24 hours)
Last year Minister of Safety and Security Mr Charles Nqakula said something very disturbing about people being free to whinge until they turn blue or having an option of leaving these shores. That was bad because only whites turn blue when they whinge. It was wrong not because of that innuendo but because the biggest victims of crime are the people who will never turn blue and who have no option of leaving. Thus when I made an entry in Kasiekulture interrogating the SA Blog Awards I ended up feeling like Nqakula but decided to let sanity prevail. I wrote another letter to coincide with Freedom Day on Friday and I will once again title it 'Dear Blogger'.
A very talented blogger named Piet van der Walt sent me this cartoon above. I couldn't help but find the humour of it and so I decided to publish it. Copyright is held by Mnr van der Walt Some weeks ago I was tempted to put together a profile of the people who visit kasiekulture so that I can prepare them custom-made gifts. I was half way there until I published that Bloggers of Mzansi, Abandon the Ossewa! entry. It was then that I became aware that Kasiekulture has got a crossover appeal, more like Freshlyground and Mandoza's Nkalakatha. I found that I'm more popular than the African National Congress and FF+ and thought fuck it, why can't I register as a candidate for the upcoming 2009 General Elections. I'm more popular than DJ Fresh was on his first day at 5FM when listeners questioned his accent and attitude.
For those who have been in Siberia since 1990 here's little information of what happened since then; There's a small piece of land called Orania, with a sizeable population, a leader and own currency called the Ora which is weaker than the Zimbabwean dollar. They are until now self-sustaining and have pursued their vision of racial purity all the way to a desolate part of this vast country. Theirs is limited separate development because they don't have airpots, soldiers, police and intelligence organisations. Their overall security strategy is still largely financed by the South Afrikan taxpayer, which is good because we don't kill disabled minds but legislate to protect them.
I've never been there but am reliably informed that they, when they go for their sixth glass of mampoer claim to be independent of South Afrika, which is also good because I also think we would all prosper if we started functioning like birds and only flocked based on the colour of our feathers. It only became inspirational stuff when they wanted to have their own radio station (Oops they still watch SABC and etv if not home videos of dancing contests and edited speeches of erstwhile Afrikaner leaders) and instead of putting together a makeshift studio and set up a transmitter they decided to apply from the country next door (ICASA) to award them a license. Imagine Swaziland applying to have a station from ICASA, that would be a joke. Orania people are still on MTN, Vodacom, Cell C and Telkom, but hey, they are not with the rest of us.
Now, the country next door (ICASA) says Orania doesn't deserve a license because the airwaves are saturated as their reasons for seeking a license are not convincing. They can't even get them a frequency on Short or Medium Wave. You need a certain number of signatures to justify your application for a community radio station and they can't gather those as well. Why? Because some of the people who aspire to live there tell themselves every night that they are in exile (South Afrika) and some put it more romantically that they are in the Orania Diaspora.
Okay, what's the point of this little information? First and foremost I'm a Afrikan - a black South Afrikan who is far from apologetic about being black because that means I've already been coloured (dyed). Which means I was once white. And this here blackness is the culmination of what went into my head to mould my perfection. See, along the way to blackness I have learnt to speak fluently so four South Afrikan languages including Afrikaans. That's why I write in English the same way I can write in some of the indigenous languages. I'm not a genius, because that would be denoting that all darkies are geniuses but I'm just too smart. I'm the culmination of God's creation - the ultimate human species destination.
I say this because I realised after my 'Abandon the Ossewa!' entry that in South Afrika there still are a lot of mentally disturbed white people. Disturbed because they read the wrong history and science books in primary school. Some disturbed because they grew up behind walls and never interacted with other civilised people all over the world and think that throwing racist innuendo equals being smart whereas it's barbarism because you breath the same air as me and drink the same water. I have lived behind a wall and discovered my claustrophobia. And I say from an informed position when I say that there are disturbed whites out there who need therapy. That Korean boy in Virginia Tech is not isolated to America but there are similar freaks in many of the towns which's names end with 'dorp', 'stad', 'burg' and 'fort'.
For me, there are four things I like about South Afrika. None of those things is government as I'm an anarchist. Triple distilled Scotch whisky (single malt), braaivleis, day-night cricket and white people. For me, this is my ideal South Afrika, you take away one and the puzzle remains incomplete. I'm not the type that says 'some of my best friends are white you know'. I don't have a white friend (unlike Steve Biko) but whites with whom we have common interests and who we relate to each other in a big way. I'm an artist and some of the whites I like are artists as well or are in the media which is where I ply my trade. We do for each other what we need to do at any given time and at the end of the day we both disappear to our comfort zones and communicate by email and SMS. I love my white comrades smitten because they are not colour-blind. They know the difference between blue and yellow, which is important if you are going to co-exist with me. They know that South Afrika hasn't changed since 1994 which is fine cuz I don't want to be told that the black leadership in this country has saved anyone from civil war when we all know that's not the truth. I don't want a whitey who will praise Nelson Mandela thinking that they are appeasing me when I think the man might have done more damage than repair. I can't handle a white who will tell me he wants to visit my neighbourhood only as a form of flattery to me. Actually I don't want a white who feels obligated to visit my neighbourhood because I don't feel obligated to visit his. I've lived in a Jewish suburb of Bramley for a year in 1994 and I never liked it.
This is my ideal South Afrika, where racist don't hide behind smiles while denying everyone who has different feathers an opportunity to shine. Comments on the entry I mentioned differed; some which I rejected and decided not to publish were blatant hate mail and I don't want the black visitors with two brain cells like the whites who commented barbaricly ending up boxing all whites as full of hatred. There's more to a white/black person than the colour of the skin. I've been called many things in my long journalism career and no amount of venom can subdue me. I've been called an anti-Semite (for saying Israel is keeping Palestinians in a prison called Gaza Strip), a misogynist (for calling some women bitches and whores in my poetry), a moffie (for playing volleyball and basketball) and recently a racist (for speaking my mind about SA Blog Awards). I've just never been called a 'kaffir' but I still wouldn't mind as long as it makes the name-caller happy. I'm all for happiness, especially since to me 'kaffir' (Keen At Fighting For Individual Rights) means nothing except small minds - which actually should worry the Creator than the creation. I will pray that bigger brains be given to the folks with low self-esteem in the future.
My point behind the SA Blog Awards was simple. Call them anything, call them the Orania, Vrystaat, Transvaal, Kaffirsdorp Blog Awards or anything else but don't call them South African when, contrary to what I've been recently told that an attempt was made to track down black bloggers, you are going to be exclusive. I'm sorry broer, no attempt was made to track anyone.
I took personal offence to this revelation about trying to track down black bloggers. What's this? Another BEE deal where whites co-opt darkies to create an Irish coffee effect? Don't go out looking for darkies, they are a majority in this country, just put your notice in the right media and darkies will come looking for you. Even if darkies were to put together a similar event there won't be any point in going out looking for whites when they can put a notice in Beeld, Cape Argus, Citizen, The Star, Pretoria News, Sunday Times, Die Son and many such media which is equally liked by lots of white people.
I also liked a point relayed to me that nobody was invited to enter the SA Blog Awards. I just lack the energy to engage some of the comments posted to kasiekulture but can somebody tell me how did they end up on that list? Is it like the National Orders maybe? For the life of me I can't comprehend how you'll have people entering a contest where there were no invitations, unless it's a very different world I'm living in. Maybe I'm in Baghdad's Sadr City and invitations are circulated in the Green Zone. How did those people know that it will be held at Fourways? Hunch, K9 instincts? Somebody please treat us like adults.
I protested about the location being exclusive and some hater who I should hook up Ku Klux Klan membership forms accused me of being a cry-baby and started fault-finding (the Irish and Canadian links not getting him to where they are supposed to). The poor sod acted as if he's a newcomer to search engines whereby stuff happens with links and you end up on some porn site you didn't know existed. He never even commented about the links that took him to where he wanted to go. The location issue; If I was going to stage the Suid-Afrikaanse Safer Neighbourhoods Awards at night and choose to take the event to Zola (Soweto), and ends up being won by Alexandra Township and I come out bragging about a token white (liberal) who came to 'represent' with a suburb called Vaderland and who got position two in all categories he entered- would that make any sense? In the head of someone stuck in a hole in Durban and called Capdog it would. Those are the people that Home Affairs should hurry the processing of their papers for a safe emigration to Down Under.
Many of the comments were fair, constructive and informative and will inform my interrogation of similar issues in the future - thank you. Special thanks to Dave and Rouvanne especially. However some people think we are all impressed by an occassional smile and fake hugs from a blue crane because we doves. No ways. Darkies are not homogenous my fellow white people, they are like you, you are not going to be judged by the fuck-ups of Hendriek Verwoed, John Vorster or even Eugene Terreblanche. So, never attribute an entry made by a lone darkie as the voice of blacks. And sarcasm is my gasoline, I thrive on it and the more sarcastic comments I get the further I'm gonna shoot my venom. So come forward with your fancy OR, JFK, PW, LKJ, FW, MLK blog names and expect me to shut up while the first thing on my mind when I see these initials are Oliver Reginald Tambo, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Piet Willem Botha, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Frederick Willem de Klerk and Martin Luther King. It might be guerilla marketing but it smirks of creativity deficiency. I hate hypocrisy my people and there's no way you can change me. I'm not surprised given that when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela wanted to register her website some years ago she discovered that some (white) man in Tshwane (not Pretoria) held ownership to the domain name (www.winniemandela.co.za) , so I'm far from surprised cuz my other name is Nando but I feel intellectual inferiority to set up a Nando's Blog.
Some of us are way past the stage of finding pretensions charming. I take younger Condi (Condoleeza Rice's) stance when I deal with issues of black and white (SA Blog Awards included), 'I'll rather be ignored than patronised'.
About those that thought they can flip a cry-baby gimmick and box my rant as 'so typical....whenever blacks are not # 1, the race card comes out', who told you that I'm black if not for the 'black and white' picture I deliberately put there to simplify your gutter analysis of my opinions suppose you finally decided to remove your blinds and rise to my colour-consious level. Welcome to the real world and Happy Freedom Day (whether you like it or not - otherwise the Dromedaries is leaving for Wellington in 24 hours)
4/23/07
NEWS
JUSTICE DELAYED AND LATER DENIED 
The entrance to Matikwana Hospital where the tainted blood specimen was supposedly stolen
It is a story that shocked the approximately one million population of Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga. People discuss it in taxis, in muted tones while some openly make their opinions known. In the same state of shock was the whole nation of 45 million. A 33-year-old nurse, Pinky Phindile Mabuza who was working at Matikwana Hospital in Mkhuhlu was arrested for allegedly injecting with HIV contaminated blood her four year old step-son. Mabuza's now 35 years old and her husband, who she's reportedly still married to is 32 years old.
"She was disrespectful from the moment she was introduced to the family as a makoti (sister-in-law). There was a situation of a family occassion planned many months earlier where she was not supposed to be part of even though her husband was party to that. She refused point blank to be excluded, insisting that she wanted to go as well. That's when we realised that she was not good for the family, let alone the husband", says a very close family source who will not be named. The family lived in Mkhuhlu, an affluent township next to Hazyview that's made up of largely xiTsonga and siSwatin speaking residents.
The source says that the family concluded that much of their in-law's arrogance came from the fact that she was two years older than her husband, who had a baby with another woman, before he met the nurse. "She never regarded anyone as senior, and had no respect for her parents in-law". It was surprising given that the nurse came from a sparsley populated rural area of Madjembeni between Acornhoek and Bushbuckridge.
The events preceding that fateful day in January 2004 are forever etched in the memory of the young boy's family. "It was a Friday afternoon somewhere in August 2003 when he wanted to visit his father who lives around the same area in Mkhuhlu. He had invited him to come even thought the four years old boy was complaining of flu. When he came back he told his mother that his stepmother has injected something into him. Even though the boy was ill she got worried because the boy never mentioned being taken to any doctor or hospital where the medicine was administered. That's when she wanted to know what it was", the source disclosed. The biological mother lives not very far from Mkhuhlu a the village of Songeni.
And that's where the suspision started. However the nurse, the fourth child in a family of seven was not the type that could hurt anyone. A close relative of the nurse says that, "She is a very sweet person, not that arrogant and down to earth. She loves encouraging people to focus on education and that's also why she was taking her siblings to nursing colleges to become nurses. She's actually warm and a free spirit". The nurse started her school at Madjembeni Primary School in Shatale and moved on to Sidlamakhosi High School. She and her close friend both went into nursing after their matric. "The one thing I can assure you about her is that she doesn't take anything lying down", the source added.
What might have worried the biological mother of the boy could be that the nurse had a child by a man who teaches at Madjembeni before she met her husband. She was not staying with her own child after she was married and her being concerned about the welfare and health of her husband's out of wedlock child was suspisious.
"The boy said that he had been injected more than once, probably when he went to visit his father, and we failed to trace the medication, that's when it was decided that it should be reported to the police", the source says. The biological mother immediately took her son to a doctor where he tested negative only for the virus to start showing itself three months later during another routine test. That's when it clicked.
"This was a very difficult case because what we had to establish first was whether the boy had indeed been injected or he was just lying, because he might not be fond of the stepmother", SAPS Mopani Policing Area spokesperson Captain Moatshe Ngoepe takes up the story. He says for them the case was similar to those seen on television's Medical Detectives, and lest his reluctance to disclose the name of the investigating officer and the exact methods used to crack the case. "After establishing that he had indeed been injected we had to find out with what? We were always privvy to the boy saying things out of hate for the stepmother. So we allocated the case to someone I'll call the best investigator in the country, providing him with regular supervision from the Mkhuhlu Police commandeering officer. When we took it to the prosecutor, he was convinced there was a case", Ngoepe adds. The police had to call experts to help build the case.
That certainty led to the nurse being arrested on 17 January 2004 for injecting her stepson with HIV-contaminated blood. "That came as a shock to us. We were all surprised. We knew she was a type that does not take things lying down but her doing that was impossible for us", says the family source, citing the nurse's love for the child she had with her ex-boyfriend. She was granted a bail of R1500 and her case postponed to February 24, 2004.
"We were not that surprised but disappointed. The man has always tagged along. First he lives on a plot owned by the woman who's older than him, who controls him and we were not even surprised when he seemed to take her side in the whole things against his own family", the source went on. The source says that they were not interested in finding out where she might have found the contaminated blood as there were many AIDS patients at Matikwana but why would she choose the young boy to inject.
In the meantime spokesperson for Limpopo Department of Health Mr Phuti Seloba promised that the nurse will be scrapped off the Nursing Council if she is found guilty. Meanwhile an internal Disciplinary Hearing at Matikwana Hospital where she is reported to have accessed the contaminated blood found her not guilty of any wrongdoing. "There were times when the case was nearly struck off the court roll since there were fears of malicious prosecution. It was difficult to proceed with prosecution while it was questioned why do it without any further evidence", Ngoepe says. He says that's when they engaged the Department of Health and the family thoroughly. "They were of assistance, we adopted a cluster approach. They assisted with technical details very aware that we are part of one government that is dedicated to fighting crime head on. The family was such a help in that they never lost faith and withdrew the case. We went to them time and again", he says. The boy testified on close circuit camera and helped the state case in that he told the court he was injected with 'red liquid'.
"Since the father was not much of a help they came to us to asking questions like how did the couple meet, how was their relationship and to their relationship to the family. I think they were professional in their approach", says the source who says since the judgment was given at the Mkhuhlu Magistrate Court finding the accused guilty of attempted murder, while it has driven a wedge between the family, it has however brought them together in their quest for justice.
Kasiekulture asked them what is their definition of justice when the nurse has been found guilty of attempted murder, a charge that carries a lighter sentence while the worse might happen while she is serving time of after she has served her sentence. "There is no amount of sentence that can heal the pain. After sentencing we will hold to the belief that things will turn out fine and we will look to God and leave everything in his hands". The source refused to be drawn into whether they will consider pursuing further charges in the event of the now six year old boy who is in Grade R dying.
Mpumalanga Department of Health spokesperson, under which Matikwana now falls Mr Mpho Gabashane said, "We'll await the sentencing and study all court material before we made our decision. We'll also check the legal provisions of the Nursing Council and how they express themselves into the matter. We will analyse all the evidence brought in the court of law, aware of what happened the last time the hospital tried to bring her to account". Gabashane did not rule out further charges pertaining from how she managed to get her hands on a contaminated blood.
"The South African Nursing Council is committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The South African Nursing Council pledges its commitment to the fight aginst HIV/AIDS. The Council is entrusted by Parliament with the responsibility of ensuring the protection of the public and will do everything in its power to make sure that HIV/AIDS patients get the care they deserve", this statement is part of the SANC HIV/AIDS Policy.
Both families are awaiting the judgment with abated breaths, for different reasons. "The investigation was technical and silent, it needed experts in the field of medicine to link the suspect to the evidence, maintaining the case on the roll which meant using the best detectives and consulting the family time and again. South Africa can rest assured that it has iron detectives", concluded Ngoepe, arguing that the full details will not be made public because "it will empower criminals to act wisely next time".
The Department of Health is waiting for evidence, while the people of Bushbuckridge and South Africa want to see justice done. And whether it will be justice enough, given the deteroriating health of the six year old boy - still has to be seen.
UPDATE: Phindile Mabuza, was early this month sentenced to a 5 years prison term with an option of a R10 000 fine. Maybe there was justice done. Or maybe don't. But us here at Kasiekulture would like to differ and come out to voice what we feel about the sentence. A serious miscarriage of justice and an unrewarding exercise for the young boy - who is waiting for his date with death.
The entrance to Matikwana Hospital where the tainted blood specimen was supposedly stolenIt is a story that shocked the approximately one million population of Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga. People discuss it in taxis, in muted tones while some openly make their opinions known. In the same state of shock was the whole nation of 45 million. A 33-year-old nurse, Pinky Phindile Mabuza who was working at Matikwana Hospital in Mkhuhlu was arrested for allegedly injecting with HIV contaminated blood her four year old step-son. Mabuza's now 35 years old and her husband, who she's reportedly still married to is 32 years old.
"She was disrespectful from the moment she was introduced to the family as a makoti (sister-in-law). There was a situation of a family occassion planned many months earlier where she was not supposed to be part of even though her husband was party to that. She refused point blank to be excluded, insisting that she wanted to go as well. That's when we realised that she was not good for the family, let alone the husband", says a very close family source who will not be named. The family lived in Mkhuhlu, an affluent township next to Hazyview that's made up of largely xiTsonga and siSwatin speaking residents.
The source says that the family concluded that much of their in-law's arrogance came from the fact that she was two years older than her husband, who had a baby with another woman, before he met the nurse. "She never regarded anyone as senior, and had no respect for her parents in-law". It was surprising given that the nurse came from a sparsley populated rural area of Madjembeni between Acornhoek and Bushbuckridge.
The events preceding that fateful day in January 2004 are forever etched in the memory of the young boy's family. "It was a Friday afternoon somewhere in August 2003 when he wanted to visit his father who lives around the same area in Mkhuhlu. He had invited him to come even thought the four years old boy was complaining of flu. When he came back he told his mother that his stepmother has injected something into him. Even though the boy was ill she got worried because the boy never mentioned being taken to any doctor or hospital where the medicine was administered. That's when she wanted to know what it was", the source disclosed. The biological mother lives not very far from Mkhuhlu a the village of Songeni.
And that's where the suspision started. However the nurse, the fourth child in a family of seven was not the type that could hurt anyone. A close relative of the nurse says that, "She is a very sweet person, not that arrogant and down to earth. She loves encouraging people to focus on education and that's also why she was taking her siblings to nursing colleges to become nurses. She's actually warm and a free spirit". The nurse started her school at Madjembeni Primary School in Shatale and moved on to Sidlamakhosi High School. She and her close friend both went into nursing after their matric. "The one thing I can assure you about her is that she doesn't take anything lying down", the source added.
What might have worried the biological mother of the boy could be that the nurse had a child by a man who teaches at Madjembeni before she met her husband. She was not staying with her own child after she was married and her being concerned about the welfare and health of her husband's out of wedlock child was suspisious.
"The boy said that he had been injected more than once, probably when he went to visit his father, and we failed to trace the medication, that's when it was decided that it should be reported to the police", the source says. The biological mother immediately took her son to a doctor where he tested negative only for the virus to start showing itself three months later during another routine test. That's when it clicked.
"This was a very difficult case because what we had to establish first was whether the boy had indeed been injected or he was just lying, because he might not be fond of the stepmother", SAPS Mopani Policing Area spokesperson Captain Moatshe Ngoepe takes up the story. He says for them the case was similar to those seen on television's Medical Detectives, and lest his reluctance to disclose the name of the investigating officer and the exact methods used to crack the case. "After establishing that he had indeed been injected we had to find out with what? We were always privvy to the boy saying things out of hate for the stepmother. So we allocated the case to someone I'll call the best investigator in the country, providing him with regular supervision from the Mkhuhlu Police commandeering officer. When we took it to the prosecutor, he was convinced there was a case", Ngoepe adds. The police had to call experts to help build the case.
That certainty led to the nurse being arrested on 17 January 2004 for injecting her stepson with HIV-contaminated blood. "That came as a shock to us. We were all surprised. We knew she was a type that does not take things lying down but her doing that was impossible for us", says the family source, citing the nurse's love for the child she had with her ex-boyfriend. She was granted a bail of R1500 and her case postponed to February 24, 2004.
"We were not that surprised but disappointed. The man has always tagged along. First he lives on a plot owned by the woman who's older than him, who controls him and we were not even surprised when he seemed to take her side in the whole things against his own family", the source went on. The source says that they were not interested in finding out where she might have found the contaminated blood as there were many AIDS patients at Matikwana but why would she choose the young boy to inject.
In the meantime spokesperson for Limpopo Department of Health Mr Phuti Seloba promised that the nurse will be scrapped off the Nursing Council if she is found guilty. Meanwhile an internal Disciplinary Hearing at Matikwana Hospital where she is reported to have accessed the contaminated blood found her not guilty of any wrongdoing. "There were times when the case was nearly struck off the court roll since there were fears of malicious prosecution. It was difficult to proceed with prosecution while it was questioned why do it without any further evidence", Ngoepe says. He says that's when they engaged the Department of Health and the family thoroughly. "They were of assistance, we adopted a cluster approach. They assisted with technical details very aware that we are part of one government that is dedicated to fighting crime head on. The family was such a help in that they never lost faith and withdrew the case. We went to them time and again", he says. The boy testified on close circuit camera and helped the state case in that he told the court he was injected with 'red liquid'.
"Since the father was not much of a help they came to us to asking questions like how did the couple meet, how was their relationship and to their relationship to the family. I think they were professional in their approach", says the source who says since the judgment was given at the Mkhuhlu Magistrate Court finding the accused guilty of attempted murder, while it has driven a wedge between the family, it has however brought them together in their quest for justice.
Kasiekulture asked them what is their definition of justice when the nurse has been found guilty of attempted murder, a charge that carries a lighter sentence while the worse might happen while she is serving time of after she has served her sentence. "There is no amount of sentence that can heal the pain. After sentencing we will hold to the belief that things will turn out fine and we will look to God and leave everything in his hands". The source refused to be drawn into whether they will consider pursuing further charges in the event of the now six year old boy who is in Grade R dying.
Mpumalanga Department of Health spokesperson, under which Matikwana now falls Mr Mpho Gabashane said, "We'll await the sentencing and study all court material before we made our decision. We'll also check the legal provisions of the Nursing Council and how they express themselves into the matter. We will analyse all the evidence brought in the court of law, aware of what happened the last time the hospital tried to bring her to account". Gabashane did not rule out further charges pertaining from how she managed to get her hands on a contaminated blood.
"The South African Nursing Council is committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The South African Nursing Council pledges its commitment to the fight aginst HIV/AIDS. The Council is entrusted by Parliament with the responsibility of ensuring the protection of the public and will do everything in its power to make sure that HIV/AIDS patients get the care they deserve", this statement is part of the SANC HIV/AIDS Policy.
Both families are awaiting the judgment with abated breaths, for different reasons. "The investigation was technical and silent, it needed experts in the field of medicine to link the suspect to the evidence, maintaining the case on the roll which meant using the best detectives and consulting the family time and again. South Africa can rest assured that it has iron detectives", concluded Ngoepe, arguing that the full details will not be made public because "it will empower criminals to act wisely next time".
The Department of Health is waiting for evidence, while the people of Bushbuckridge and South Africa want to see justice done. And whether it will be justice enough, given the deteroriating health of the six year old boy - still has to be seen.
UPDATE: Phindile Mabuza, was early this month sentenced to a 5 years prison term with an option of a R10 000 fine. Maybe there was justice done. Or maybe don't. But us here at Kasiekulture would like to differ and come out to voice what we feel about the sentence. A serious miscarriage of justice and an unrewarding exercise for the young boy - who is waiting for his date with death.
4/22/07
FEATURE
WORLD BOOK DAY (A RETROSPECTIVE REFLECTION)
This article was written years ago. Kasiekulture takes the pleasure of sourcing it from our vast archives to co-incide with today (World Book Day) Some talents are placed in the hands of people who cannot utilize them to the overall benefit of the world around them. Some are systematically suppressed and can never be expressed in writing, while some are caged from behind the ugly grey walls of prison cells. Such is that of an inmate at a Pietersburg Correctional Service facility where a Youth Writer’s Workshop was held, aimed at sensitizing, identifying and encouraging talented and aspirant young writers for purposes of exposure and possible mentorship.
The workshop, organized by the Limpopo Youth Commission in partnership with the Limpopo Provincial Department of Sports, Arts and Culture through its Provincial Language Board was meant to simplify my journey into finding a response to a question I was charged to answer. 'Where are Young Black Writers in a Post-Apartheid South Africa?' The workshop clearly exposed that youth writers are there and are facing tremendous odds to gain recognition in a world that underestimates any opinion expressed by them.
Through deliberations it surfaced that the same is the situation with the whole country today. A dire need has arisen for the guard to consider changing if young writers are going to be allowed their moment to shine. Obviously it will not be easy for a young novelist to write liberally about sexual foreplay and oral sex, knowing that their work will be evaluated by a panel that comes from an era where sex was only regarded as a baby making exercise and oral sex was unheard of. Even with an open mind on the part of the old guard, objectivity comes with a prize. The old school needs to conform.Professor N.A Milubi , who is the Chairperson of the Northern Province Provincial Language Council echoed that, "there is a pressing need to have the youth rediscover the spirit of youth writing. We want you to become masters of your own destiny. We are afraid that as soon as the elderly writers disappear into old age there will not be anyone to take over". But the truth is that every generation is indebted to the one that came before it and obviously it is going to be difficult for up and coming poets, novelist and dramatists whose works are not getting judged on their literary merit but using that of known academics like Prof Es'kia Mphahlele and Prof Njabulo Ndebele as a yardstick to shine. Encouraging enough is that the new breed of youth writers is struggling hard to create its own style far removed from what the Western media perceive as orthodox and what academics embrace as the norm.
In his address, poet and author Mr. H.M. Lentsoane used the example of known and celebrated Sepedi author, N.S. Puleng who published his first novel while he was still doing his Junior Certificate i
n the 1970s. He indicated Puleng as a typical example of pride in language and wisdom beyond its years. A need was stressed for the youth not only to focus in English writing but also to utilize indigenous languages. He also touched a lot on academic Prof Eskia Mphahlele’s passion for poetry and writing using him as a shining example for post-apartheid poets.Prof Milubi of the PLC later commented that, "As the watchdog of the language interests we believe that the youth in general can be redeemed. The disabled too must not be disregarded as we want every youth to be exposed to this creative spirit". He said that what they were doing was language development through activity. His words were crowned by the large number of prison inmates who were present and participated in the workshop.
When I earlier arrived at the Pietersburg Correctional Service facility to attend the ground breaking workshop I had my brief, which was to find an answer to a trivial question that hangs like a dark cloud in this country today. I found black writers struggling to express themselves in a foreign language, while some were in prison. At the end of the day I had a brutal admission to make which is an indictment on me too, I didn’t know where most where, but me and a small, disorientated starving bunch. This indicates what Prof Milubi said that the less there is a reading public, the lesser the youth will see writing as a lucrative thing to do and to be involved in.
At the end of the day as I left the facility, free like a bird, and the inmates got ready to be caged like animals, one consoling realisation filled my mind; which was that, these days they no longer make delinquents but writers in prison. I felt that if anything else failed for me as a w
riter outside the prison system, I might one day wake up, go out and commit a misdemeanor and relocate to lockdown where opportunities are in abundance. Maybe the next best thing to happen to young black writers, even a potential messiah will emerge from behind prison walls, in chains, with only his creative spirit being free.UPDATE: Since then there has been a flurry of young black writers like Niq Mhlongo (Dog eat Dog), Kgebetli Moele (Room 207), the late K Sello Duiker (The Quiet Violence of Dreams), Phaswane Mpe (Welcome to our Hillbrow), Mmatshilo Motsei (The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court), Nokuthula Mazibuko (Spring Offensive), Morabo Morojele (How we buried Puso), Eric Miyeni (O'Mandingo! The only black at the dinner party) and many others
* Polokwane Library Services in collaboration with the municipality are staging the province's first indigenous language Book Fair for two days.
* Cape Town based Kwela Books recently made this refreshing statement on a reply in Sunday times, 'However, in South Africa there are still publishers, like Nelleke de Jager at Kwela Books, who are committed to investing in developing new authors'
4/19/07
PROFILE
THE GOSPEL TRUTH III 
Nozipho with gospel queen Rebecca Malope.
A week later the results were out and she got 86%. She survived. Fourteen percent gave her a thumbs down. They obvioulsy must be fans of other music genres who were out to extinguish every little flame of gospel rejuvenation. But in democracies it's not only the majority who matter, it's only in mobocracies were the voices of the minority are suffocated by the mob. However, this singer says she's not about to quit, obviously she's encouraged. She traces her background to her religious ubringing and the chances she was given to sing in church and as a backing vocalist while she was still a teenager. "I sing to thank God that I'm alive, now that I can't walk around with a Bible and preach at this time, I'm doing it through my music", says the petite young muso.
After doing lots of backing sessions, Nozipho released her first album in 2005 titled "Sihamba Nayo (Inkosi)". She says, "it did good, I think it was well-received even though I was doing self-marketing. I was invited to places like the Eastern Cape, Polokwane and Giyani". To her advantage Nozipho sings in XiTsonga which she says it's mainly because 'there's a huge gap in XiTsonga Gospel music'. For sure, how many XiTsonga gospel groups has one person heard recently? The xiTsonga gospel market is not as saturated as the isiZulu and Setswana.
She urges young wannabe musicians to be patient, persistent no matter how hard the going gets. "Strive for the best, remember how long it took the children of Israel to get to Canaan, which means you must have courage", she says confidently.
It took the children of Israel 40 years and Nozipho is only 23 years old. She says all she needs now (not in 40 years time) is for public broadcaster radio stations to start pumping her music since the only airplay support she's received up to now is on Radio Bushbuckridge. She's got a case, public broadcasters answer to the public and Nozipho and her fans are also that public. Public broadcasters have a broad mandate to cater for all languages and often depend on taxpayer money.
She is praying that public broadcaster deejays see the light and offer her airplay like everyone else, especially on her upcoming album, which she hopes will be backed by a major company, given that she was given a thumbs up by gospel enthusiats on SABC2. Nozipho says her manager in negotiations with a few big companies.
While waiting for her dream to come true she aspires to have her own recording studio, a couple of internet cafes and a communications and management company. She currently owns one internet cafe.
Nozipho with gospel queen Rebecca Malope.Nozipho Ndzukula has a dream. Her dream is to be the best gospel singer in the country and use music to preach to the unrepentant. This 23-years old Thulamahashe (Bushbuckridge) based singer is so serious about her ambitions two months ago she went to SABC2's Gospel Time programme to expose her talent and subject herself to a national vote. This is where gospel dreams are made and broken. It's more like Survivor of gospel music.
A week later the results were out and she got 86%. She survived. Fourteen percent gave her a thumbs down. They obvioulsy must be fans of other music genres who were out to extinguish every little flame of gospel rejuvenation. But in democracies it's not only the majority who matter, it's only in mobocracies were the voices of the minority are suffocated by the mob. However, this singer says she's not about to quit, obviously she's encouraged. She traces her background to her religious ubringing and the chances she was given to sing in church and as a backing vocalist while she was still a teenager. "I sing to thank God that I'm alive, now that I can't walk around with a Bible and preach at this time, I'm doing it through my music", says the petite young muso.
After doing lots of backing sessions, Nozipho released her first album in 2005 titled "Sihamba Nayo (Inkosi)". She says, "it did good, I think it was well-received even though I was doing self-marketing. I was invited to places like the Eastern Cape, Polokwane and Giyani". To her advantage Nozipho sings in XiTsonga which she says it's mainly because 'there's a huge gap in XiTsonga Gospel music'. For sure, how many XiTsonga gospel groups has one person heard recently? The xiTsonga gospel market is not as saturated as the isiZulu and Setswana.
She urges young wannabe musicians to be patient, persistent no matter how hard the going gets. "Strive for the best, remember how long it took the children of Israel to get to Canaan, which means you must have courage", she says confidently.
It took the children of Israel 40 years and Nozipho is only 23 years old. She says all she needs now (not in 40 years time) is for public broadcaster radio stations to start pumping her music since the only airplay support she's received up to now is on Radio Bushbuckridge. She's got a case, public broadcasters answer to the public and Nozipho and her fans are also that public. Public broadcasters have a broad mandate to cater for all languages and often depend on taxpayer money.
She is praying that public broadcaster deejays see the light and offer her airplay like everyone else, especially on her upcoming album, which she hopes will be backed by a major company, given that she was given a thumbs up by gospel enthusiats on SABC2. Nozipho says her manager in negotiations with a few big companies.
While waiting for her dream to come true she aspires to have her own recording studio, a couple of internet cafes and a communications and management company. She currently owns one internet cafe.
4/18/07
FEATURE
THE PRICE OF MATURITY
Look how young I am, and picture me picking on a sugar-mummy. Hell no! You've probably heard this line so many times you don't even bother reading further whenever anybody tries to reason around the statement made years ago by the late United States R&B singer Aaliyah that, "age ain't nothing but a number". Of course it should bore you to death, especially when you already know the kind of arguments that usually get thrown around. Lame arguments like, younger men are more sexually active than their older types, they are stallions and can still go extr.JPG)
a laps while the old bones are already yawning and pitching for their second dream.
Today I'm going to dispute all you know. It's not true that the 16 valve studs who go out with sugar mummies really do so because they can hit the high note. And the sugar mummies, who are called grootsusters (big sisters) also do not go for the younger version of daddy dearest because he is any good. The younger you are the more excited you are and the more excited you are the most likely that you will be a two-minute-brother.
One of my colleagues at Polokwane (Limpopo) once commented about men in general. She said, "you know sometimes you find this man with this juicy looking tool and you are all excited thinking he knows the bends and the bumps and the next thing he slides it in there and comes before the referee can blow the whistle for the game to start. He is celebrating before you even finish lacing your boots". I protested and reasoned that early ejaculation is not a problem, the problem is when you can't sustain an erection after that, which can really be messy. She said, "there are some guys who will not even bump me once or twice before he comes". Then I wanted to know how old are those buggers. Now, my colleague is 27 years old and she swore that she is referring to people of her age and older.
I remembered a story I heard from one guy; "I once had a girlfriend who was six years my senior with a 13-year-old son. I remembered how ten minutes was still considered a curtain raiser game whenever her and me got intimate. I was young and immature but we complemented each other so much that even today, many years later we still manage to steal a minute or two to revisit the magic we used to make back in the days. To put it mildly, in a room where it's only the two of us, one minute equals a lifetime. What fascinated me was that my sugar mummy never even once tried to behave my age or younger. I can't say she behaved old either. The thing with younger women is that whenever they are doing somebody their own age they can't let themselves fall hopelessly to the point where they can scream your name. Expressing emotion is equated to weakness, while the sugar mummies have been down that road before and can scream while being extremely extroverted. Maybe they are taking it back to when they first lost their virginity, who knows. Her beauty drew me to her", he told Kasiekulture.
However one of the guys I used to play soccer with is 25 years old is doing it for all the wrong reasons. Say that I'm lying when I say he is going out (actually staying) with a woman who is 20 years his senior and who has a daughter who is 27 years old. Now this boy has been a taxi driver for a long while and heard his friends tell him about how women working in the public sector are so desperate to have men to the point that they would even buy kombis for them just to keep them. True, most taxi drivers go out with nurses, teachers and policewomen and do they flash the cash? Hell yeah.
I asked some guys who knew him too well about what is it that he might be taking into the deal and I was shocked when they said his main tool is the size of a golf ball when in full swing. "But I just do her so that she can buy me a (Toyota) Venture. It's not about the sex since I have my girlfriend," he once told me. Then one day I asked his girlfriend how big was the guy and she said he was real big.
In January this year his sugar mummy, who is a nurse at Mapulaneng Hospital finally bought him a panel van which they converted into a taxi. Now he is a pseudo-taxi-owner who had to pawn his own body to get it. The woman went out with him for sex, he went out with her for entrepreneurial reasons.
He is not alone. Do you still remember the late Brenda Fassie and her toyboy Nhlanhla Mbambo? The poor guy was so broke he only acted the role of a rich stud until he was arrested by police for a robbery and Brenda was allegedly accusing him of stealing from her. Brenda was following in the footsteps of her role models like Liz Taylor, who went out with Larry Fortensky, more than twenty years her juniour. Madonna and Guy Ritchie as well. Just last year the Premier of Free State Beatrice Marshoff was scolded for marrying a journalist young enough to be her son. Janet Jackson allegedly shagged Justin Timberlake.
Psychologists are quick to analyze the problem of men who go out with young girls but seem unwilling to do the same with women. They say that men will at some stage in their lives miss the things they did at twenty-two and eighteen and will look for a missus who will remind them of their long lost naughtiness.
However, with women as well it is safe to assume that that might also be the motivation. They miss the cuddling, the kissing of the nipples (most often the nipples are tired), the whispering in the ear and the cunnilingus. The reason being that once they find themselves a younger catch most of them will start behaving like young chicks, more make-up, pap smear, mini skirts, fishnet stockings, sporties and push-up bras.
Take a poet friend I met some time ago during a workshop. She was older than my mother, who was born in 1955. We spoke for some minutes over three days while sleeping on the same hotel floor without visiting each other. One day two other women and me were talking dirty. I was the one giving all the information about why us men are reluctant to say, "I love you" post-orgasmic and would rather sleep than act stupid. Little did I know that when I got home she would inundate me with calls, on-line poetry readings, e-mails and invitations to come to Johannesburg for a cup of coffee. Spend R200 for a R7, 50 caffeine session? Hell no!
One of my friends, with whom we talk dirty kept saying to me, "mfo' you just have to close your eyes and plunge down there. You might end up having access to her legion of younger friends". I kept saying, "but you don't understand, I can't get an erection for that woman". He pressed on, "if you really want an erection you will get an erection". I mean I have read Terry McMilian's How Stella Got Her Groove Back but I was not going to be giving a 60-years old woman her groove back. At the end of the day she realised that what she wanted from me was not going to happen and decided to apologise since, "this flurry of contact is because I've had a crush on you. Huge and consuming. Of course, I now realise its (sic) been a bit much and has put you in a very awkward position. So, I'm sorry for all the intensity and pushing. The attraction I felt was so unfamiliar and yet so strong I didn't quite know how to act, what to do. So…inappropriate behaviour! I've been giddy and silly, a teenage schoolgirl and not necessarily fair to you. Sorry."
This is the long and the short of it. She missed being young, felt young and wanted me to affirm it, not for a taxi nor for extra zeros in my bank account. What did I say after such a heartfelt apology, "don't feel bad, it's not about you but me. I have that effect on women". Maybe I was wrong, all men have that effect on older women, it's just that some of them choose to act on it, and that's when they get the sugar mummies acting like young girls, making fools of themselves.
Look how young I am, and picture me picking on a sugar-mummy. Hell no! You've probably heard this line so many times you don't even bother reading further whenever anybody tries to reason around the statement made years ago by the late United States R&B singer Aaliyah that, "age ain't nothing but a number". Of course it should bore you to death, especially when you already know the kind of arguments that usually get thrown around. Lame arguments like, younger men are more sexually active than their older types, they are stallions and can still go extr
.JPG)
a laps while the old bones are already yawning and pitching for their second dream.Today I'm going to dispute all you know. It's not true that the 16 valve studs who go out with sugar mummies really do so because they can hit the high note. And the sugar mummies, who are called grootsusters (big sisters) also do not go for the younger version of daddy dearest because he is any good. The younger you are the more excited you are and the more excited you are the most likely that you will be a two-minute-brother.
One of my colleagues at Polokwane (Limpopo) once commented about men in general. She said, "you know sometimes you find this man with this juicy looking tool and you are all excited thinking he knows the bends and the bumps and the next thing he slides it in there and comes before the referee can blow the whistle for the game to start. He is celebrating before you even finish lacing your boots". I protested and reasoned that early ejaculation is not a problem, the problem is when you can't sustain an erection after that, which can really be messy. She said, "there are some guys who will not even bump me once or twice before he comes". Then I wanted to know how old are those buggers. Now, my colleague is 27 years old and she swore that she is referring to people of her age and older.
I remembered a story I heard from one guy; "I once had a girlfriend who was six years my senior with a 13-year-old son. I remembered how ten minutes was still considered a curtain raiser game whenever her and me got intimate. I was young and immature but we complemented each other so much that even today, many years later we still manage to steal a minute or two to revisit the magic we used to make back in the days. To put it mildly, in a room where it's only the two of us, one minute equals a lifetime. What fascinated me was that my sugar mummy never even once tried to behave my age or younger. I can't say she behaved old either. The thing with younger women is that whenever they are doing somebody their own age they can't let themselves fall hopelessly to the point where they can scream your name. Expressing emotion is equated to weakness, while the sugar mummies have been down that road before and can scream while being extremely extroverted. Maybe they are taking it back to when they first lost their virginity, who knows. Her beauty drew me to her", he told Kasiekulture.
However one of the guys I used to play soccer with is 25 years old is doing it for all the wrong reasons. Say that I'm lying when I say he is going out (actually staying) with a woman who is 20 years his senior and who has a daughter who is 27 years old. Now this boy has been a taxi driver for a long while and heard his friends tell him about how women working in the public sector are so desperate to have men to the point that they would even buy kombis for them just to keep them. True, most taxi drivers go out with nurses, teachers and policewomen and do they flash the cash? Hell yeah.
I asked some guys who knew him too well about what is it that he might be taking into the deal and I was shocked when they said his main tool is the size of a golf ball when in full swing. "But I just do her so that she can buy me a (Toyota) Venture. It's not about the sex since I have my girlfriend," he once told me. Then one day I asked his girlfriend how big was the guy and she said he was real big.
In January this year his sugar mummy, who is a nurse at Mapulaneng Hospital finally bought him a panel van which they converted into a taxi. Now he is a pseudo-taxi-owner who had to pawn his own body to get it. The woman went out with him for sex, he went out with her for entrepreneurial reasons.
He is not alone. Do you still remember the late Brenda Fassie and her toyboy Nhlanhla Mbambo? The poor guy was so broke he only acted the role of a rich stud until he was arrested by police for a robbery and Brenda was allegedly accusing him of stealing from her. Brenda was following in the footsteps of her role models like Liz Taylor, who went out with Larry Fortensky, more than twenty years her juniour. Madonna and Guy Ritchie as well. Just last year the Premier of Free State Beatrice Marshoff was scolded for marrying a journalist young enough to be her son. Janet Jackson allegedly shagged Justin Timberlake.
Psychologists are quick to analyze the problem of men who go out with young girls but seem unwilling to do the same with women. They say that men will at some stage in their lives miss the things they did at twenty-two and eighteen and will look for a missus who will remind them of their long lost naughtiness.
However, with women as well it is safe to assume that that might also be the motivation. They miss the cuddling, the kissing of the nipples (most often the nipples are tired), the whispering in the ear and the cunnilingus. The reason being that once they find themselves a younger catch most of them will start behaving like young chicks, more make-up, pap smear, mini skirts, fishnet stockings, sporties and push-up bras.
Take a poet friend I met some time ago during a workshop. She was older than my mother, who was born in 1955. We spoke for some minutes over three days while sleeping on the same hotel floor without visiting each other. One day two other women and me were talking dirty. I was the one giving all the information about why us men are reluctant to say, "I love you" post-orgasmic and would rather sleep than act stupid. Little did I know that when I got home she would inundate me with calls, on-line poetry readings, e-mails and invitations to come to Johannesburg for a cup of coffee. Spend R200 for a R7, 50 caffeine session? Hell no!
One of my friends, with whom we talk dirty kept saying to me, "mfo' you just have to close your eyes and plunge down there. You might end up having access to her legion of younger friends". I kept saying, "but you don't understand, I can't get an erection for that woman". He pressed on, "if you really want an erection you will get an erection". I mean I have read Terry McMilian's How Stella Got Her Groove Back but I was not going to be giving a 60-years old woman her groove back. At the end of the day she realised that what she wanted from me was not going to happen and decided to apologise since, "this flurry of contact is because I've had a crush on you. Huge and consuming. Of course, I now realise its (sic) been a bit much and has put you in a very awkward position. So, I'm sorry for all the intensity and pushing. The attraction I felt was so unfamiliar and yet so strong I didn't quite know how to act, what to do. So…inappropriate behaviour! I've been giddy and silly, a teenage schoolgirl and not necessarily fair to you. Sorry."
This is the long and the short of it. She missed being young, felt young and wanted me to affirm it, not for a taxi nor for extra zeros in my bank account. What did I say after such a heartfelt apology, "don't feel bad, it's not about you but me. I have that effect on women". Maybe I was wrong, all men have that effect on older women, it's just that some of them choose to act on it, and that's when they get the sugar mummies acting like young girls, making fools of themselves.
4/16/07
DEAR BLOGGER
BLOGGERS OF MZANSI, ABANDON THE OSSEWA!
Recently I read in one of the weekend newspapers a point I have previously noted and argued that it needs serious scrutiny. It was a comment published by an observant journalist about the South African Blog Awards. Now ours is a diverse country with lots of different people who use different platforms to articulate issues but it has never crossed my mind that such issues can be articulated along racial lines. The killing of white farmers is not a white but a South African issue since these farmers provide livelihood for many black families. It's not about another De La Rey song either but blatant exclusion of people from an activity based on their race and physical location. The majority of darkies don't live in Fourways but townships which makes Sun City more central than a northern suburb.
Like the author of the article correctly articulated I was also puzzled a month ago to learn that there's a section of our community who have m
ade it a habit to build a new ossewas everytime their comfort zones are invaded, especially as a result of government transformation policy or pure co-existence needs. The SA Blog Awards are a case in point. I'm not saying white people should include blacks in everthing they do but if they are going to use a name like 'South Africa' they better make sure whatever they do is inclusive.
I actually wanted to intiate the start of these awards a few months ago at noticing that quite a number of people are into blogging and that only American bloggers get all the media attention at the expense of local bloggers, but to my surprise I discovered that 'the franchise' if I may call it already exists in the hands of a crowd whose commitment to moving the blogging sub-culture beyond its current level is questionable. I was not stressing since I figured in the line of the Canadian, Irish and British Blog Awards every blogger will be kept up to date about developments in this new sub-culture.
My first observation at visiting the SA Blog Awards website is that the current organisers seem not to be serious about creating a contest worthy of entering but simply out to trademark the brand so that suppose a serious entertainment or media entity wants to pursue them as an entertainment calendar contender like the South African Music Awards, Blue Cranes, Vunas, Sithengi etc, or any of the many awards and events on our social calendar they in the future can sell the name and brand at a price. What I saw on their website was a bunch of clowns out to patronize whoever had good intentions about blogging. I mean I reckon this 'thing' must move beyond a fad to a serious media tool like it's the case in other countries whereby freelance writers and columnists no longer send directly to editors but post on personal blogs where their rants get picked by newspapers as good content.
When United States of America Presidential hopeful Senator Barrack Obama's second name was accidentally misspelt by Cable News Network as 'Osama' recently it was bloggers who picked the mistake first and alerted the powers that be in Atlanta. South Africa should reach that level whereby the presidential imbizo in Soweto can be monitored from a blog belonging to a Sowetan and the 19h00 news can be found fresh on blogs from bloggers as far as Bisho, Cape Town, Khutsong and Timbaktu. I can easily believe a story about what's happenig in Khutsong from a blogger in the area than a journalist who was parachuted in with a list of sources. We can't wait for national newspapers that answer to shareholders to expose musical talents when locals can do that on their blogs which is where the newspapers can pick a good story and publish it - of course acknowledging the source and paying for the find.
The story in the newspaper was on point about something wrong with the racial make-up of the bloggers who met for the awards. I was not there but I reckon 13 years into democracy you can't have Broederbond mentality while you brand yourself using 'South African. There are hundreds of blogs by darkies which either by design or coincidence didn't make it to the ill-fated SA Blog Awards irrespective of the national South African Broadcasting Corporation having given the organisers a stint on Morning Live. And that exclusivity conduct has to stop. I personally have sent my link to many media entities and editors for reviews and possible syndication of material and all I got was a cold shoulder while every week I read about some 60- year blogger in Baghdad or some teen in New York. Our local journalists always have something to write about some American or European blogger and even pick stories from overseas while locals generate equal quality content which continues to bypass the editor's sight.
I can really be vocal because I am a freelance journalist blogger myself. I started Kasiekulture in December to fill a void that was there. Barely four months later it has more than 100 entries about anything, from politics, analysis, news, sports, entertainment, book, music and film reviews, humour, opinions, profiles and hundreds of good pictures. It's an arts and culture blog.
I can also cite blogs by ordinary professional darkies such as yodemo and lekgema (by journalist Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane), kgaitsedi (by PR practitioner Karabo Kgoleng), afrosliqdiva (by Events Co-ordinator Khensani Mathetha), kwaki (by Marketing Manager Lihwa Kwela) and scores by deejays and artists which I can not fill in this space but find interesting. These are blogs by South Africans for South Africans. And how the hell we'll have a laager community in South Africa honouring themselves without us begs for an investigation. Our media should expose hypocrisy where it raises its head. And the SA Blog Awards are one big ossewa that should be dismantled!
Like the author of the article correctly articulated I was also puzzled a month ago to learn that there's a section of our community who have m
ade it a habit to build a new ossewas everytime their comfort zones are invaded, especially as a result of government transformation policy or pure co-existence needs. The SA Blog Awards are a case in point. I'm not saying white people should include blacks in everthing they do but if they are going to use a name like 'South Africa' they better make sure whatever they do is inclusive.I actually wanted to intiate the start of these awards a few months ago at noticing that quite a number of people are into blogging and that only American bloggers get all the media attention at the expense of local bloggers, but to my surprise I discovered that 'the franchise' if I may call it already exists in the hands of a crowd whose commitment to moving the blogging sub-culture beyond its current level is questionable. I was not stressing since I figured in the line of the Canadian, Irish and British Blog Awards every blogger will be kept up to date about developments in this new sub-culture.
My first observation at visiting the SA Blog Awards website is that the current organisers seem not to be serious about creating a contest worthy of entering but simply out to trademark the brand so that suppose a serious entertainment or media entity wants to pursue them as an entertainment calendar contender like the South African Music Awards, Blue Cranes, Vunas, Sithengi etc, or any of the many awards and events on our social calendar they in the future can sell the name and brand at a price. What I saw on their website was a bunch of clowns out to patronize whoever had good intentions about blogging. I mean I reckon this 'thing' must move beyond a fad to a serious media tool like it's the case in other countries whereby freelance writers and columnists no longer send directly to editors but post on personal blogs where their rants get picked by newspapers as good content.
When United States of America Presidential hopeful Senator Barrack Obama's second name was accidentally misspelt by Cable News Network as 'Osama' recently it was bloggers who picked the mistake first and alerted the powers that be in Atlanta. South Africa should reach that level whereby the presidential imbizo in Soweto can be monitored from a blog belonging to a Sowetan and the 19h00 news can be found fresh on blogs from bloggers as far as Bisho, Cape Town, Khutsong and Timbaktu. I can easily believe a story about what's happenig in Khutsong from a blogger in the area than a journalist who was parachuted in with a list of sources. We can't wait for national newspapers that answer to shareholders to expose musical talents when locals can do that on their blogs which is where the newspapers can pick a good story and publish it - of course acknowledging the source and paying for the find.
The story in the newspaper was on point about something wrong with the racial make-up of the bloggers who met for the awards. I was not there but I reckon 13 years into democracy you can't have Broederbond mentality while you brand yourself using 'South African. There are hundreds of blogs by darkies which either by design or coincidence didn't make it to the ill-fated SA Blog Awards irrespective of the national South African Broadcasting Corporation having given the organisers a stint on Morning Live. And that exclusivity conduct has to stop. I personally have sent my link to many media entities and editors for reviews and possible syndication of material and all I got was a cold shoulder while every week I read about some 60- year blogger in Baghdad or some teen in New York. Our local journalists always have something to write about some American or European blogger and even pick stories from overseas while locals generate equal quality content which continues to bypass the editor's sight.
I can really be vocal because I am a freelance journalist blogger myself. I started Kasiekulture in December to fill a void that was there. Barely four months later it has more than 100 entries about anything, from politics, analysis, news, sports, entertainment, book, music and film reviews, humour, opinions, profiles and hundreds of good pictures. It's an arts and culture blog.
I can also cite blogs by ordinary professional darkies such as yodemo and lekgema (by journalist Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane), kgaitsedi (by PR practitioner Karabo Kgoleng), afrosliqdiva (by Events Co-ordinator Khensani Mathetha), kwaki (by Marketing Manager Lihwa Kwela) and scores by deejays and artists which I can not fill in this space but find interesting. These are blogs by South Africans for South Africans. And how the hell we'll have a laager community in South Africa honouring themselves without us begs for an investigation. Our media should expose hypocrisy where it raises its head. And the SA Blog Awards are one big ossewa that should be dismantled!
* This article has been sent to the letter's section of two Sunday newspapers and we pray that it gets published verbatim.
4/12/07
PERSPECTIVE
ANIMAL RIGHTS I
They are not really divorced from the folks who will oppose animal culling while not providing a solution to the control of the burgeouning numbers which destroy their own ecosystem apart from shouting translocation and sterilization as if they'll provide the moolah for those activities.
We've seen the same being done in Greece prior to the Olympics two years ago. Fresh stray dogs that have characterised the Athens landscape for years suddenly woke up dead on the streets. Yes, my point today is the hypocrisy that characterises organisations that claim to champion animal rights. The same ones that proposed that a moratorium be imposed against the killing and eating of dog-meat during the 1998 FIFA World Cup in Japan/Korea. They propose a moratorium on something that has prevailed for the past hundreds of years.
ANIMAL RIGHTS II
Def Jam Recordings label President Sean Carter, otherwise known to teenagers as Jay-Z once echoed a very rich line which advised my interrogation of this subject, 'standing back from situations gives you a perfect view'. Kasiekulture was no doubt tempted to comment when former African National Congress Chief Whip and convicted criminal Tony Yengeni was rebuked for having slaughtered a beast to cleanse himself of bad spirits. Tony slaughtered a beast and suddenly that affects the value of the rand in the vocabulary of some people?
Look, Africans have been slaughtering beasts since time immemorial. Exactly when we'll need to hook up a one on one with Kara Heritage Institute's Dr Mathole Motshega. The fact is, we've always been killers. When an infant is introduced to the ansestors they slaughter, when they move into a new house the same happens, when there's death, derobing, a wedding, cleansing, hell, Africans will always find reason to shed blood - the blood of a beast. They say they do it because the Bible says Jesus Christ shed His blood to mediate between creation and God and thus Bantus do the same to be brought closer to their ansestors. Remember that before Jesus Christ (in BC) that's how humans related to God, by slaughtering beasts and spilling the blood.
Do you remember Abraham about to slaughter his only son Isaac? Where was SPCA when he in turn slaughtered a sheep? No one, especially when they are not Africans should think they can teach darkies how to act. Remember that anyone who is not black is not an African until they embrace the continent, its people and culture. That's when a settler becomes a native. No matter how long you stay in China you'll never be Chinese until your eyes are slit and you lose height. In the meantime you can't dictate to the Chinese but do as the Romans do in Rome.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana retaliated in the Tony saga by inviting the SPCA to witness another slaughter instead of stressing over a criminal's redemption antics. They did not show up, coward sods.
Ask yourself if this people really feel for these poor animals or they just don't have causes to support. They are rebels without a cause. Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was hanged infront of cameras by cowards behind hoods. A Security Advisor Mowaffak Al-Rubaie even proudly testified about how he heard the neck snap. Did anyone hear any of the holier-than-thou animal rights activists condemning the act - hell no!
Then two years ago the US Army in Iraq was so excited that they have killed a man they fabricated and called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After what they called a direct aerial hit they showed to the media a nicely framed picture of a dead man only them knew as al Zarqawi. Is the killing and exposing of dead people worse than what Tony did to a beast?
In December I was deployed by DRUM magazine to cover the wedding of former Chiskop band member Sphiwe 'General' Msibi (above) and Pearl Masuku in Phababorwa. Now Phalaborwa is one of those small laager towns where the boers still find comfort in their miniature residence between the four wheels of an ossewa.
Obviously, when it's darkies marrying you should expect the spilling of blood. But now that the affluent Masuku family are patched in the eye of the storm, surrounded by boers who don't know how to act, who if it was in the Deep South and they were negroes would have been lynched for that alone, it became an issue.
Just as we are chilling over tea and cookies two young SPCA volunteers dressed in blue funny overalls and driving a battered Nissan 1400 arrive and make it clear that they 'came to confiscate the goat'. The father, the type that doesn't take shit asks them in Afrikaans who told them that there's goat?
Now, they've got these Bantus ganging up around them because we know how and before we could start toyi-toying the young girls says the call came from Anonymous. The father then informs them that there's no goat and that it's part of 'ons kultuur' and constitutional rights to practise it anywhere and anyhow in South Africa.
They demand to see the condition under which the beast is kept. 'Dis n skaap nie a bokkie nie', he enlightens them. While they are examining the beast I wonder if they would have shown the same enthusiasm had Anonymous called and informed them that Steve Scott-Crossley was about to throw a darkie in a lion enclosure. Would they have rushed if Anonymous told them that a boer had just shot a dog belonging to his gardener? This is not being racist but seeing things in black and white.
Now the father shows them the beast while the white neighbours are peeping through their security walls and the father comments loudly that it's the white neighbours who lack the backbone to use their own European names when they whinged to the SPCA. I see them embarassed and retreating to the confort of their ossewa.
They looked embarassed the same way the US State Department felt when a video tape of Samuel Doe (former Liberia's president) was aired showing him being mutilated and castrated by Charles Taylor's rebels. He died a day later.
I looked at the sheep, it will eventually be killed honourably by the Msibi family, not mutilated while being videod. Its pictures will not be framed and shown to the media. Its rights will not be violated.
For some time I have wondered if it's aware that Prince Charles has a habit of shooting foxes which should be classified endangered by Cites. Okay, I've never seen fox, which makes it extinct in my part of the world. Charles and his royal buddies call this barbaric activity fox hunting. We all know that you don't hunt that which you can not kill.
Here comes the double standards. If fox hunting was practised by an ethnic group called the Shangaan, Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Ndebele, Pulana, Sotho, Tsonga, Maori, Aboriginal, San or Shona you'll have had friends of Greenpeace and SPCA picketing the United Nations headquarters in New York calling for a ban. But now that it's a royal sport, it's okay, let the future King of England kill the beasts.
The Emperor of Japan wouldn't go sperm whaling without Greenpeace disrupting such a hobby. President Thabo Mbeki can't puff his pipe in peace without being accused of contributing to global warming.
Some few years ago US Vice president Dick Cheney was accused of accidentally shooting lawyer-friend Harry Whittington during a quail hunting outing at the Armstrong Ranch. Why is it so easy for them to go around shooting at birds without the SPCA and like-minded organisations causing ruckus? Poor Cheney is also rumoured not to have a firearm license but nobody quizzed him about that. It's like driving without a license.
And it very much reflects what Marshal Matthers (EMINEM to teenagers) yepped in one song that he couldn't smuggle a pellet gun past customs and wonders where all the Uzzis (Israeli made) and Kalashnikovs (Eastern model) in the US all come from. Ask Cheney.
Even in our sunny African shores, rich Westerners pay tens of thousands of dollars to hunt down a buck or lion, leopard, cheetah, tiger, elephant or rhinocerous just to shoot it and orgasm. And some of these lucrative hunts, like the white lion are endangered, but as long as you've got moolah, fuck the law, bribe the hypocrites who claim to protect animal rights.
Greenpeace, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other armchair hyprocrites have had a field day challenging age old practises and beliefs, some cultural, the world over. They have most often done so in total disregard of the diversity and cultures of other people within which they opeate.
They are not really divorced from the folks who will oppose animal culling while not providing a solution to the control of the burgeouning numbers which destroy their own ecosystem apart from shouting translocation and sterilization as if they'll provide the moolah for those activities.
A decade ago, in Brazil, there were allegations that the government approved the systematic cleansing of streetkids to curb rising vagabond numbers, control crime and boost tourism.
We've seen the same being done in Greece prior to the Olympics two years ago. Fresh stray dogs that have characterised the Athens landscape for years suddenly woke up dead on the streets. Yes, my point today is the hypocrisy that characterises organisations that claim to champion animal rights. The same ones that proposed that a moratorium be imposed against the killing and eating of dog-meat during the 1998 FIFA World Cup in Japan/Korea. They propose a moratorium on something that has prevailed for the past hundreds of years.
A 17-year-old consious rapper named Tupac Amaru Shakur once told a TV interviewer that there are many organisations advocating on behalf of animals but none for people. While he was not the most intelligent boy then or made sense all the time, his analysis of human relations was on point.
Reference from the reliable time tested history book informs that during the slave trade, when darkies were sharecroppers in the United States Deep South, lynching of rebellious Negroes was rampant. It was not a sight for sore eyes to wake up in the morning and be met by Fracis Brown hanging from a fig tree because the Massa (Simon Legree) felt he did not know how to act. Actually, all Brown did was to whip an arrogant horse.
The very same organisations which were there for the protection of horses were doing nothing to challenge the murder of human beings. Actually they were saying darkie life is cheaper than that of animals. The same Caucasians were laughing their bowels out when the Ku Klux Klan was continuing the tradition post-slave trade. And now they act like they know something about darkies, if not only that we often bleed the same.
ANIMAL RIGHTS II
Def Jam Recordings label President Sean Carter, otherwise known to teenagers as Jay-Z once echoed a very rich line which advised my interrogation of this subject, 'standing back from situations gives you a perfect view'. Kasiekulture was no doubt tempted to comment when former African National Congress Chief Whip and convicted criminal Tony Yengeni was rebuked for having slaughtered a beast to cleanse himself of bad spirits. Tony slaughtered a beast and suddenly that affects the value of the rand in the vocabulary of some people?
Look, Africans have been slaughtering beasts since time immemorial. Exactly when we'll need to hook up a one on one with Kara Heritage Institute's Dr Mathole Motshega. The fact is, we've always been killers. When an infant is introduced to the ansestors they slaughter, when they move into a new house the same happens, when there's death, derobing, a wedding, cleansing, hell, Africans will always find reason to shed blood - the blood of a beast. They say they do it because the Bible says Jesus Christ shed His blood to mediate between creation and God and thus Bantus do the same to be brought closer to their ansestors. Remember that before Jesus Christ (in BC) that's how humans related to God, by slaughtering beasts and spilling the blood.
Do you remember Abraham about to slaughter his only son Isaac? Where was SPCA when he in turn slaughtered a sheep? No one, especially when they are not Africans should think they can teach darkies how to act. Remember that anyone who is not black is not an African until they embrace the continent, its people and culture. That's when a settler becomes a native. No matter how long you stay in China you'll never be Chinese until your eyes are slit and you lose height. In the meantime you can't dictate to the Chinese but do as the Romans do in Rome.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana retaliated in the Tony saga by inviting the SPCA to witness another slaughter instead of stressing over a criminal's redemption antics. They did not show up, coward sods.
Ask yourself if this people really feel for these poor animals or they just don't have causes to support. They are rebels without a cause. Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was hanged infront of cameras by cowards behind hoods. A Security Advisor Mowaffak Al-Rubaie even proudly testified about how he heard the neck snap. Did anyone hear any of the holier-than-thou animal rights activists condemning the act - hell no!
Then two years ago the US Army in Iraq was so excited that they have killed a man they fabricated and called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After what they called a direct aerial hit they showed to the media a nicely framed picture of a dead man only them knew as al Zarqawi. Is the killing and exposing of dead people worse than what Tony did to a beast?
ANIMAL RIGHTS III
In December I was deployed by DRUM magazine to cover the wedding of former Chiskop band member Sphiwe 'General' Msibi (above) and Pearl Masuku in Phababorwa. Now Phalaborwa is one of those small laager towns where the boers still find comfort in their miniature residence between the four wheels of an ossewa.Obviously, when it's darkies marrying you should expect the spilling of blood. But now that the affluent Masuku family are patched in the eye of the storm, surrounded by boers who don't know how to act, who if it was in the Deep South and they were negroes would have been lynched for that alone, it became an issue.
Just as we are chilling over tea and cookies two young SPCA volunteers dressed in blue funny overalls and driving a battered Nissan 1400 arrive and make it clear that they 'came to confiscate the goat'. The father, the type that doesn't take shit asks them in Afrikaans who told them that there's goat?
Now, they've got these Bantus ganging up around them because we know how and before we could start toyi-toying the young girls says the call came from Anonymous. The father then informs them that there's no goat and that it's part of 'ons kultuur' and constitutional rights to practise it anywhere and anyhow in South Africa.
They demand to see the condition under which the beast is kept. 'Dis n skaap nie a bokkie nie', he enlightens them. While they are examining the beast I wonder if they would have shown the same enthusiasm had Anonymous called and informed them that Steve Scott-Crossley was about to throw a darkie in a lion enclosure. Would they have rushed if Anonymous told them that a boer had just shot a dog belonging to his gardener? This is not being racist but seeing things in black and white.
Now the father shows them the beast while the white neighbours are peeping through their security walls and the father comments loudly that it's the white neighbours who lack the backbone to use their own European names when they whinged to the SPCA. I see them embarassed and retreating to the confort of their ossewa.
They looked embarassed the same way the US State Department felt when a video tape of Samuel Doe (former Liberia's president) was aired showing him being mutilated and castrated by Charles Taylor's rebels. He died a day later.
I looked at the sheep, it will eventually be killed honourably by the Msibi family, not mutilated while being videod. Its pictures will not be framed and shown to the media. Its rights will not be violated.
ANIMAL RIGHTS IV
Now, in England, where adultrer Prince Charles Windsor is the makhulubaas there is a SPCA branch that deals ruthlessly with whoever slaughters a beast at a non-demarcated zone - a non-abattoir.
For some time I have wondered if it's aware that Prince Charles has a habit of shooting foxes which should be classified endangered by Cites. Okay, I've never seen fox, which makes it extinct in my part of the world. Charles and his royal buddies call this barbaric activity fox hunting. We all know that you don't hunt that which you can not kill.
Here comes the double standards. If fox hunting was practised by an ethnic group called the Shangaan, Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Ndebele, Pulana, Sotho, Tsonga, Maori, Aboriginal, San or Shona you'll have had friends of Greenpeace and SPCA picketing the United Nations headquarters in New York calling for a ban. But now that it's a royal sport, it's okay, let the future King of England kill the beasts.
The Emperor of Japan wouldn't go sperm whaling without Greenpeace disrupting such a hobby. President Thabo Mbeki can't puff his pipe in peace without being accused of contributing to global warming.
Some few years ago US Vice president Dick Cheney was accused of accidentally shooting lawyer-friend Harry Whittington during a quail hunting outing at the Armstrong Ranch. Why is it so easy for them to go around shooting at birds without the SPCA and like-minded organisations causing ruckus? Poor Cheney is also rumoured not to have a firearm license but nobody quizzed him about that. It's like driving without a license.
And it very much reflects what Marshal Matthers (EMINEM to teenagers) yepped in one song that he couldn't smuggle a pellet gun past customs and wonders where all the Uzzis (Israeli made) and Kalashnikovs (Eastern model) in the US all come from. Ask Cheney.
Even in our sunny African shores, rich Westerners pay tens of thousands of dollars to hunt down a buck or lion, leopard, cheetah, tiger, elephant or rhinocerous just to shoot it and orgasm. And some of these lucrative hunts, like the white lion are endangered, but as long as you've got moolah, fuck the law, bribe the hypocrites who claim to protect animal rights.
ANIMAL RIGHTS V
In Spain there's no way SPCA will instruct them to abandon the age old sport of bullfighting. Watching matadors wave a red flag to engage a raging bull is a national pastime. That the bull might end up fracturing its own neck is immaterial. It's all in the name of culture. If R.Kelly was to re-remix 'Happy People' he'll obviously yell, 'if they ask you why we did it/ tell them/ we did it for culture'.
Before convincing Spaniards that it's human error when a bull harms itself due to anger there's no way anyone will win a verbal contest against Bantus and their cultural rituals.
After making all the noise SPCA and Greenpeace activists/volunteers retreat to restaurants and enjoy sumptous chicken, steak or hake without asking questions. The chicken, sheep, cattle, swine, goats and fish we eat were not abbatoired while under local anaesthetic. They feel the whole nine yards of the pain and we chow them with pleasure.
The message; leave, not only convict Tony but all Africans alone. If you can't stand the fire (culture) stay the hell out of the kitchen (Africa). Last we checked there was a country called Australia where the Aboriginals are outnumbered, outgunned and outcultured.
UPDATE: Xhosa Chiefs have demanded that the SABC slaughter a beast and apologise for screening a drama that exposed their initiation.
Cultural experts argued that the Kennedy's woud have been spared death had they performed a simple ritual, which would have included the slaughtering of a beast.
4/11/07
PROFILES
THE GOSPEL TRUTH
After a long spiritual lull which meant going out in search of the true meaning of his life in different churches, Thulamahashe gospel singer Phindi Dzimba says he has finally found a spiritual retreat and haven in the million member strong Zion Christian Church. So comfortable is 24-year-old Dzimba that he has released his first gospel CD titled Rikona Kaya (There's a Home) which is ten tracks long and has intoxicating melodies. "I'm saying that there is a home for all of us in heaven. For me my music
is an extension of my preaching. Now that I'm not in a position to can stand infront of people and preach to them, my music does that for me", he opens our conversation.
He says he started to sing when he was barely six-years-old where he was leading Sunday School and a Family Boys Choir. "I used to get comments from people but because I was a little kid I didn't take anything into consideration as I was just singing for fun" he declares.
Later in life when he realised that he indeed had talent he went to Johannesburg where he says he collaborated with Pastor Francis Soprachi from Nigeria. "What I was doing was to translate his English songs to siSwati and then he would sing them and I would back him", Dzimba says. Right there you had a Nigerian singing in siSwati - clever huh.
His own CD has same sounding tunes and one track that stands out. Senzeni Na interplores the infamous Senzeni Na toyi-toyi but soon carves its own root with a harmonious gospel feel and talented backing voices. Oleseng Shuping's influence can be heard everywhere in the album and Dzimba admits that that's where he draws most if not all his inspiration. Some people allege that 'imitation is the best form of flattery'. We still beg to differ.
Overall Dzimba's album has songs for all occassions, especially for lovers of religious music. He sings in three languages (xiTsonga, Sesotho and siSwati) which should make his market easily available in Mpumalanga and beyond.
He's a talented young man who if he continues with the work he's doing is meant for greatness. There are funky gospel tunes like Ema o Tsamaye. Rikona Kaya is a good album worthy of a second listen.
After a long spiritual lull which meant going out in search of the true meaning of his life in different churches, Thulamahashe gospel singer Phindi Dzimba says he has finally found a spiritual retreat and haven in the million member strong Zion Christian Church. So comfortable is 24-year-old Dzimba that he has released his first gospel CD titled Rikona Kaya (There's a Home) which is ten tracks long and has intoxicating melodies. "I'm saying that there is a home for all of us in heaven. For me my music
is an extension of my preaching. Now that I'm not in a position to can stand infront of people and preach to them, my music does that for me", he opens our conversation.He says he started to sing when he was barely six-years-old where he was leading Sunday School and a Family Boys Choir. "I used to get comments from people but because I was a little kid I didn't take anything into consideration as I was just singing for fun" he declares.
Later in life when he realised that he indeed had talent he went to Johannesburg where he says he collaborated with Pastor Francis Soprachi from Nigeria. "What I was doing was to translate his English songs to siSwati and then he would sing them and I would back him", Dzimba says. Right there you had a Nigerian singing in siSwati - clever huh.
His own CD has same sounding tunes and one track that stands out. Senzeni Na interplores the infamous Senzeni Na toyi-toyi but soon carves its own root with a harmonious gospel feel and talented backing voices. Oleseng Shuping's influence can be heard everywhere in the album and Dzimba admits that that's where he draws most if not all his inspiration. Some people allege that 'imitation is the best form of flattery'. We still beg to differ.
Overall Dzimba's album has songs for all occassions, especially for lovers of religious music. He sings in three languages (xiTsonga, Sesotho and siSwati) which should make his market easily available in Mpumalanga and beyond.
He's a talented young man who if he continues with the work he's doing is meant for greatness. There are funky gospel tunes like Ema o Tsamaye. Rikona Kaya is a good album worthy of a second listen.
THE GOSPEL TRUTH II
Easter holidays are not for drinking beer and causing trouble but to remember the sacrifice that was made on the day. Gospel musician Thabisile Mnisi, known as Thabi urged South Africans just before the holidays that saw more than two hundred lives lost on the country's roads. Mnisi shared her message with Kasiekulture, immediately after the release of his first gospel album titled Bambelela, a 12 track album that fuses good keyboard programmed and synthesized music with intelligent well-t
hought lyrics.
The first track, Masibambaneni exposes the chocolate voice of this Thulamahashe native who was born 22-years ago and started seriously singing in 1999. Asked why she chose the genre of gospel in a country where youth culture is defined by groovy tunes and the club scene, Mnisi said, "I think because I am a born-again Christian and I don't find it difficult to write gospel songs as they just come to me and I just put them down"
She however admits to also finding R&B and house to be intoxicating genres that she likes as well, "but I rely on gospel because it's not only music to me but food to my soul"
A product of the famous Silk Voices choir, Mnisi ranks fellow gospel singer Kedibone as her inspiration. Her influence comes out in the title track Bambelela which comes across as a duet layered over funky keyboards and delivered with sincerity that should make the Devil blush in shame.
Mnisi is not only a singer but a community worker as well as she says, "I conduct singing and dancing classes for young people between the ages of eight and 22-years".
Her album was released this month and is being self-marketed by her. Owning a recording studio is one of her short term goals, she says, where she can make her other albums instead of going to Johannesburg to record as she did with this beautiful gem.
Easter holidays are not for drinking beer and causing trouble but to remember the sacrifice that was made on the day. Gospel musician Thabisile Mnisi, known as Thabi urged South Africans just before the holidays that saw more than two hundred lives lost on the country's roads. Mnisi shared her message with Kasiekulture, immediately after the release of his first gospel album titled Bambelela, a 12 track album that fuses good keyboard programmed and synthesized music with intelligent well-t
hought lyrics.The first track, Masibambaneni exposes the chocolate voice of this Thulamahashe native who was born 22-years ago and started seriously singing in 1999. Asked why she chose the genre of gospel in a country where youth culture is defined by groovy tunes and the club scene, Mnisi said, "I think because I am a born-again Christian and I don't find it difficult to write gospel songs as they just come to me and I just put them down"
She however admits to also finding R&B and house to be intoxicating genres that she likes as well, "but I rely on gospel because it's not only music to me but food to my soul"
A product of the famous Silk Voices choir, Mnisi ranks fellow gospel singer Kedibone as her inspiration. Her influence comes out in the title track Bambelela which comes across as a duet layered over funky keyboards and delivered with sincerity that should make the Devil blush in shame.
Mnisi is not only a singer but a community worker as well as she says, "I conduct singing and dancing classes for young people between the ages of eight and 22-years".
Her album was released this month and is being self-marketed by her. Owning a recording studio is one of her short term goals, she says, where she can make her other albums instead of going to Johannesburg to record as she did with this beautiful gem.
Bambelela is a beautiful album made by a truly humble gospel singer who deserves all the success gospel music can bring its practitioners. "I want to see myself reaching the nine South African provinces, including outside of South Africa", she says. It's an achievable ambition, given the talent she has and the music she is doing. Gospel means 'the word of God' and half the world is Christian, which should make it easy for Mnisi.
4/10/07
PROFILE
ONCE A DREAM BEGINS.... IT NEVER ENDS... They say it takes two people to tango. Of course they don't refer to the real tango which is part of dancing. That is in a figurative sense. However, it is the literal sense of it that two Mpumalanga youths intend to explore to the fullest with the establishment of their own production and event manage
ment company called Muffinstax Productions. 'Cute name', I hear you say. Careful, it's already copyrighted.
ment company called Muffinstax Productions. 'Cute name', I hear you say. Careful, it's already copyrighted.The name is partly derived from the stage names of the two multi-talented entertainers, Banele 'DJ Stax' Masina (21) and Emmanuelle 'DJ Heartattack' Marobela (21). Although they both might have met in Graskop, Marobela is adamant that he is a resident of Shatale - that sprawling township in Bushbuckridge that has produced icons like Shaft and many more. Muffinstax is one years old and still in diapers but they have already set up their own recording studio called 86 Studios and boast about it, "We have established a relationship with 999 Music. We are stepping on each and every step they have taken with advise and inspiration from them. Any production from sound engineering all the way to creating, recording, producing, mastering, dubbing, mix and etc for any of your requirements", Marobela says, adding that they have unlimited access to Arthur Mafokate who shares their passion for success.
Within a short space of time they have also managed to sign to the company sound engineering student Molatelo Molvecia Mashego whose stage name is DJ MMS, "We are delighted that her first house song will be included in Soul Candy Sessions 4". It is a song they hope will put their young company on the map. Marobela says that their intention is not only to venture into music production but they also do event management, publicity of events, fashion designing and road show management.
Currently Muffinstax has a roster of artists they have already scheduled for release later this year. "Apart from the song we will have in Soul Candy we have a kwaito album by Stikga Makarova on the pipeline and a house compilation CD which will be produced by 23:45, which is both me and DJ Stax" he says.
Marobe is hopeful about the glowing future of entertainment capital for them and the whole province. He says him and Stax are both bringing into the company their experience of having deejayed in Johannesburg, Sabie, Graskop and some promotions of liquor products in Thulamahashe. Banele is a graphics artist and has studied music. He is also one of a few local deejays to have played at the prestigious South African Music Conference in 2005.
"Muffinstax Productions is coming up with the most innovative advertising and promotional ideas and designs in the region, with maximum creative input from our dynamic team of designers. Every MUFFINSTAX production is guaranteed to meet client objectives. With out-of-the-box thinking and hard work the company has already rendered some of its services to clients as diverse as Soul Buddys (Gauteng), HIV/AIDS, Life Skills Organization and a number of schools. We are growing to unprecedented proportions at both a provincial and national level", a media release claims.
For his part Maroble is a seasoned events manager and has studied Marketing at the University of South Africa. They say Muffinstax should become the new 999, and beyond. Watch this space.
Within a short space of time they have also managed to sign to the company sound engineering student Molatelo Molvecia Mashego whose stage name is DJ MMS, "We are delighted that her first house song will be included in Soul Candy Sessions 4". It is a song they hope will put their young company on the map. Marobela says that their intention is not only to venture into music production but they also do event management, publicity of events, fashion designing and road show management.
Currently Muffinstax has a roster of artists they have already scheduled for release later this year. "Apart from the song we will have in Soul Candy we have a kwaito album by Stikga Makarova on the pipeline and a house compilation CD which will be produced by 23:45, which is both me and DJ Stax" he says.
Marobe is hopeful about the glowing future of entertainment capital for them and the whole province. He says him and Stax are both bringing into the company their experience of having deejayed in Johannesburg, Sabie, Graskop and some promotions of liquor products in Thulamahashe. Banele is a graphics artist and has studied music. He is also one of a few local deejays to have played at the prestigious South African Music Conference in 2005.
"Muffinstax Productions is coming up with the most innovative advertising and promotional ideas and designs in the region, with maximum creative input from our dynamic team of designers. Every MUFFINSTAX production is guaranteed to meet client objectives. With out-of-the-box thinking and hard work the company has already rendered some of its services to clients as diverse as Soul Buddys (Gauteng), HIV/AIDS, Life Skills Organization and a number of schools. We are growing to unprecedented proportions at both a provincial and national level", a media release claims.
For his part Maroble is a seasoned events manager and has studied Marketing at the University of South Africa. They say Muffinstax should become the new 999, and beyond. Watch this space.
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