11/30/07
11/28/07
REVIEW
Full Circle (unbrOken Review) 
The first time I came into contact with artist Kobus Moolman was when I sent my poem Valhalla and others to the publication he edits so brilliantly, FIDELITIES which I am indebted to mention that it usually is sponsored by highly progressive Umsunduzi Municipality. Valhalla is a hardcore poem. Check some of its lines, "I can finally down a pint never fear about tomorrow/ Pass out plus fuck a telephone they will call tomorrow..../ Today we celebrate our arrival to;/ A stage in life when we can smoke weed, get drunk & fuck". That would rather unsettle a few hypocrites who think the world is flat and the oxygen we involuntarily inhale is 100% safe and free of toxic emissions. Before I move along let me make an allegation I shall dare not substanciate that since 1913 the air we breath has lost 33.08% of its quality. That's why we're so asthmatic and we often sneeze blood. That's why non-smokers are no better than smokers these days. Speaking of good old bald-headed Moolman, my next contact with him was physical during the Poetry Africa festival in Durban a year ago. We shook hands, I introduced myself, he remembered bloody Valhalla, we hugged. It's nice when editors publish my stuff without thinking that I say a lot of fucks between metaphors. On the night Moolman was rather pre-occupied, having pep-talk with his poet-friend Mzi Mahola, poet 
Mpho Ramaano and antically (like an ant) building permanent bridges. I haven't seen him since then until... Until my ever-vigilant art detector spotted and read, in a rather deja vu fashion about his exploits as an award-winning playwright - which is stuff I did not know. The story was in Tonight (Tuesday November 6,2007) and I bumped on it while reading my own story (Poetry that hits you in the Gut). The story was about him being a finalist in the Performing Arts Network of South Africa's (PANSA) Festival of Contemporary Theatre Readings and New Writings competition. However the entry for this year is different from the one he won the award for three years ago, Full Circle. He told Tonight, 'I knew I needed to write another play coming out of Full Circle and follow up with something else'. Three years after Full Circle scooped the award, it has now been published in book form by that ironing soldier, Dye Hard Press of Gary Cummiskey. Because we are the K9 of arts blogs, the few who don't do gossip but initiatie, we sniffed the play and put it in acid for a proper cleansing. First points should go to the cover design that features a darkie looking through a set of binoculars which shows that what he sees is a white woman who's also looking at him through her own set of binoculars. Trivial? Wait. In times of war and absolute conflict they say that if an army commander looked through his binoculars and noticed that he was equally watched he's got a quarter of a second to avoid a sniper's slug piercing his dome. And for me that's what makes the 'trivial' cover interesting. Perusing through the pages one is struck by the simplicity that the story is told. The play has four characters who all complement the rainbow nation ideal of a 1994 newly democratic South Africa. This play is set at the time when Nelson Mandela was still president, flanked by FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki. This play is set when a few people had a hobby of target shooting. Interesting titbits is the relationship between Oom and Boetie which at times serves as a barometre of how generations have grown apart. Oom comes across as a vintage Afrikaner Oomie with family values, who feels he should be the custodian of the clan's treasures. While Boetie would like to reflect the modern jappie with a quitessential sense of purpose and grit, some of his antics suggest he's caught up in a time warp - dangerously. Meisie mitigates the morass because she's got a sense of humour and her language is not as freely profane as that of Oom and Boetie. It becomes very interesting when a land issue crops up between the Le Rouxs (Oom, Boetie and Meisie) and the Inspector. Boetie claims the land was given to them by God and an argument ensues about why would God give to others land that doesn't belong to Him but someone else. And those days of target shooting look less surreal and more real. It's such wit and humour that makes Full Circle a worthy play and what contributed to its success during its premiere at the Rhodes Box Theatre in Grahamstown during the National Arts Festival two years ago. This is undoubtedly a well-written story. Its flow and tenacity, exploration of religious dogma in a transitional state are what makes it an interesting read. * And in case you wanted to solve the trivia and find out who are the two folks on the cover ogling at each other over binoculars, just call them Meisie and Inspector (it will make you happy I swear) Like all other Dye Hard Press titles Full Circle is available at Bacchus Books in Johannesburg or you can order it directly. KOBUS MOOLMAN is a senior Education Officer at the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg. In 2000 his solo collection of poetry, Time like Stone was published by Gecko Poetry. This collection was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for 2001. In 2001 he was one of the five poets featured in a collection by Botsotso Publishers, entitled simply 5. Kobus is the editor of the poetry journal, Fidelities. Full Circle has also been staged at the Market Theatre and Oval House Theatre (London) in 2006 - additional information sourced from Timbila Poetry Project
The first time I came into contact with artist Kobus Moolman was when I sent my poem Valhalla and others to the publication he edits so brilliantly, FIDELITIES which I am indebted to mention that it usually is sponsored by highly progressive Umsunduzi Municipality. Valhalla is a hardcore poem. Check some of its lines, "I can finally down a pint never fear about tomorrow/ Pass out plus fuck a telephone they will call tomorrow..../ Today we celebrate our arrival to;/ A stage in life when we can smoke weed, get drunk & fuck". That would rather unsettle a few hypocrites who think the world is flat and the oxygen we involuntarily inhale is 100% safe and free of toxic emissions. Before I move along let me make an allegation I shall dare not substanciate that since 1913 the air we breath has lost 33.08% of its quality. That's why we're so asthmatic and we often sneeze blood. That's why non-smokers are no better than smokers these days. Speaking of good old bald-headed Moolman, my next contact with him was physical during the Poetry Africa festival in Durban a year ago. We shook hands, I introduced myself, he remembered bloody Valhalla, we hugged. It's nice when editors publish my stuff without thinking that I say a lot of fucks between metaphors. On the night Moolman was rather pre-occupied, having pep-talk with his poet-friend Mzi Mahola, poet 
Mpho Ramaano and antically (like an ant) building permanent bridges. I haven't seen him since then until... Until my ever-vigilant art detector spotted and read, in a rather deja vu fashion about his exploits as an award-winning playwright - which is stuff I did not know. The story was in Tonight (Tuesday November 6,2007) and I bumped on it while reading my own story (Poetry that hits you in the Gut). The story was about him being a finalist in the Performing Arts Network of South Africa's (PANSA) Festival of Contemporary Theatre Readings and New Writings competition. However the entry for this year is different from the one he won the award for three years ago, Full Circle. He told Tonight, 'I knew I needed to write another play coming out of Full Circle and follow up with something else'. Three years after Full Circle scooped the award, it has now been published in book form by that ironing soldier, Dye Hard Press of Gary Cummiskey. Because we are the K9 of arts blogs, the few who don't do gossip but initiatie, we sniffed the play and put it in acid for a proper cleansing. First points should go to the cover design that features a darkie looking through a set of binoculars which shows that what he sees is a white woman who's also looking at him through her own set of binoculars. Trivial? Wait. In times of war and absolute conflict they say that if an army commander looked through his binoculars and noticed that he was equally watched he's got a quarter of a second to avoid a sniper's slug piercing his dome. And for me that's what makes the 'trivial' cover interesting. Perusing through the pages one is struck by the simplicity that the story is told. The play has four characters who all complement the rainbow nation ideal of a 1994 newly democratic South Africa. This play is set at the time when Nelson Mandela was still president, flanked by FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki. This play is set when a few people had a hobby of target shooting. Interesting titbits is the relationship between Oom and Boetie which at times serves as a barometre of how generations have grown apart. Oom comes across as a vintage Afrikaner Oomie with family values, who feels he should be the custodian of the clan's treasures. While Boetie would like to reflect the modern jappie with a quitessential sense of purpose and grit, some of his antics suggest he's caught up in a time warp - dangerously. Meisie mitigates the morass because she's got a sense of humour and her language is not as freely profane as that of Oom and Boetie. It becomes very interesting when a land issue crops up between the Le Rouxs (Oom, Boetie and Meisie) and the Inspector. Boetie claims the land was given to them by God and an argument ensues about why would God give to others land that doesn't belong to Him but someone else. And those days of target shooting look less surreal and more real. It's such wit and humour that makes Full Circle a worthy play and what contributed to its success during its premiere at the Rhodes Box Theatre in Grahamstown during the National Arts Festival two years ago. This is undoubtedly a well-written story. Its flow and tenacity, exploration of religious dogma in a transitional state are what makes it an interesting read. * And in case you wanted to solve the trivia and find out who are the two folks on the cover ogling at each other over binoculars, just call them Meisie and Inspector (it will make you happy I swear) Like all other Dye Hard Press titles Full Circle is available at Bacchus Books in Johannesburg or you can order it directly. KOBUS MOOLMAN is a senior Education Officer at the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg. In 2000 his solo collection of poetry, Time like Stone was published by Gecko Poetry. This collection was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for 2001. In 2001 he was one of the five poets featured in a collection by Botsotso Publishers, entitled simply 5. Kobus is the editor of the poetry journal, Fidelities. Full Circle has also been staged at the Market Theatre and Oval House Theatre (London) in 2006 - additional information sourced from Timbila Poetry Project
11/26/07
PERSPECTIVE
PORTRAIT III
"I am whoever I say I am/ if I wasn't why would I say I am" - Eminem
Perhaps you can tell us, we are dying for answers too. However, why should a young black man live his life marketing only two lines of Eminem's song? He is today pre-occupied with enhancing a superficial image of himself instead of improving his daily reality. He's so obsessed with selling a macho idea of who he really is in happiness and in sadness to the point that he is losing touch of what made him from the moment he stopped being breastfed to the time he realised that his exterior marketed him as a defeated, naturally humble soul. Indeed, deep inside he is a humble soul, something rooted in humanity, though this is the truth that is better off defied than embraced.
Black boys are no different from black girls while they are still toddlers. When something hurts they both express it the way they know how, by crying and calling their mothers. Growing up they display the same excitement at being presented with a new toy on Christmas Day, the same edginess at submitting their homework to a strict abusive teacher and the same disappointment at being let down by people they love. The problem only arises when boys start expressing their anger by folding their fists and turning them into weapons. It is where the problem even escalates since it is that point of no return where they stop crying when something hurts because in a fight scene the person who cries is either a coward or has been defeated. They mostly fight to affirm their positions among their peers, not to impress girls. The animal instinct that tells them that the boss deserves the best female raises its ugly head later on in life, since sweat and armpit odour are reported to be an aphrodisiacs.
It is at this stage that he feels that he deserves the best female of his peer group, which then results in disappointment for in most cases same age teenagers hardly find common ground in the territory of romantic love. This is again in this way because adolescent girls have a tendency to be infatuated with father figures, older boys and pin-up models at the time that their agesakes expect them to go out with them. As a result the boy becomes frustrated by the rejection which scientifically he can not explain. Bored with parents who insists on still treating him like a boy at the time when his armpits already smell and he's got pubic hairs makes him try to find solace in the only avenue where he will be judged by the authority he commands - his boys. What he sees is a society that fails to get with his program. Incidentally, his boys will introduce him to cigarettes, alcohol, cheap sex and a new thinking that informs him that there are times when a "no" means a "yes". Especially when it comes from someone who can not follow the verb with a fist.
Girls suddenly become "whores" because the only thing he sees in girls is lack of assertiveness. The fact that she can't go out with 18-years-old him but does so with the 25-years-old who is a striker for Orlando Pirates makes his blood boil. The only time he feels he's man enough is when a girl cries because he called her a "whore". Suppose the girl says, "of course I'm a whore" he gets enraged and beats her. If the girl's brother comes to inquire about the assault and gets jumped (beaten by a gang) then for him it means he's got people who are ready to blindly back his distorted vision, no matter how short-sighted it is. What that says to him is that he can get away with misbehavior. At this stage he shies away from anything that resembles caving in or weakness. There's already something seriously wrong with him but he can't see it because he'd like to believe he is what he says he is.
He only wants to identity with real macho characters while he is far from it. Bill Cosby in Cosby Show was soft, Malcolm X was real, Tupac Shakur was hardcore, Quincy Jones is a baby boomer, Nelson Mandela, well, the jury's still out.
In his distorted image selling he fails to identify with real people who lead real lives. He starts to lead a plastic-silicone life. His role models become cartoon characters like DMX, Ja Rule, Jay Z, 50-Cent etcetera, unaware that theirs is a marketing gimmick. Once the music stops and they get into pyjamas, they are as humble as his father, whom he should emulate is. The media also exaggerates his misconception by presenting the same acts as people to be copied. If still in doubt about how the young black man fails to differentiate between reality and fiction look at those Cape Flats and Westbury fake thugs acting up then ask them who's their role model? They usually scream, "Tupac!" You'll be fooled if you thought they refer to Tupac Amaru Shakur. They don't mean the Tupac who starred in films, wrote beautiful poetry, started community projects and visited patients in hospitals but the characters that he played in films and music videos. They don't refer to the Tupac who wrote Nelson Mandela a poem but the studio act that liked to shout, "I don't give a fuck", while later consulting with accountants to make sure Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was not on his case.
Damn, young black man can't escape giving it (a fuck) because he's not a studio act and the world is not a movie set. He gotta give it because he's got everything to lose if he misses the South African Revenue Service (SARS) deadline. He is today filling prisons to capacity because of his inability to position himself correctly on the puzzle of life and act on reason than instinct. He just has to give a fuck because the world revolves around it.
It's not to say he should start crying at the dropping of a hat but expression of emotions usually frees the spirit and liberates the soul. Crying is an antidote for suicidal tendencies and homicidal fantasies. Most of the young men who refuse to cry often end up acting their anger out by harming other people, very much the ones they claim to love. An understanding needs to be reached that it is not a sign of weakness but a statement that someone is in touch with his inner self to cry, which is something only a real man is capable of.
While acknowledging that "men don't cry, and when they do, it really hurts", a lesson needs to be derived from something former TV Talk show host and former spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs Lesley Mashokwe said in one glossy magazine. He said that he only saw his father cry once, and he respected him more after that. Young black man, live your life. Cut.
"I am whoever I say I am/ if I wasn't why would I say I am" - Eminem
Perhaps you can tell us, we are dying for answers too. However, why should a young black man live his life marketing only two lines of Eminem's song? He is today pre-occupied with enhancing a superficial image of himself instead of improving his daily reality. He's so obsessed with selling a macho idea of who he really is in happiness and in sadness to the point that he is losing touch of what made him from the moment he stopped being breastfed to the time he realised that his exterior marketed him as a defeated, naturally humble soul. Indeed, deep inside he is a humble soul, something rooted in humanity, though this is the truth that is better off defied than embraced.
Black boys are no different from black girls while they are still toddlers. When something hurts they both express it the way they know how, by crying and calling their mothers. Growing up they display the same excitement at being presented with a new toy on Christmas Day, the same edginess at submitting their homework to a strict abusive teacher and the same disappointment at being let down by people they love. The problem only arises when boys start expressing their anger by folding their fists and turning them into weapons. It is where the problem even escalates since it is that point of no return where they stop crying when something hurts because in a fight scene the person who cries is either a coward or has been defeated. They mostly fight to affirm their positions among their peers, not to impress girls. The animal instinct that tells them that the boss deserves the best female raises its ugly head later on in life, since sweat and armpit odour are reported to be an aphrodisiacs.
It is at this stage that he feels that he deserves the best female of his peer group, which then results in disappointment for in most cases same age teenagers hardly find common ground in the territory of romantic love. This is again in this way because adolescent girls have a tendency to be infatuated with father figures, older boys and pin-up models at the time that their agesakes expect them to go out with them. As a result the boy becomes frustrated by the rejection which scientifically he can not explain. Bored with parents who insists on still treating him like a boy at the time when his armpits already smell and he's got pubic hairs makes him try to find solace in the only avenue where he will be judged by the authority he commands - his boys. What he sees is a society that fails to get with his program. Incidentally, his boys will introduce him to cigarettes, alcohol, cheap sex and a new thinking that informs him that there are times when a "no" means a "yes". Especially when it comes from someone who can not follow the verb with a fist.
Girls suddenly become "whores" because the only thing he sees in girls is lack of assertiveness. The fact that she can't go out with 18-years-old him but does so with the 25-years-old who is a striker for Orlando Pirates makes his blood boil. The only time he feels he's man enough is when a girl cries because he called her a "whore". Suppose the girl says, "of course I'm a whore" he gets enraged and beats her. If the girl's brother comes to inquire about the assault and gets jumped (beaten by a gang) then for him it means he's got people who are ready to blindly back his distorted vision, no matter how short-sighted it is. What that says to him is that he can get away with misbehavior. At this stage he shies away from anything that resembles caving in or weakness. There's already something seriously wrong with him but he can't see it because he'd like to believe he is what he says he is.
He only wants to identity with real macho characters while he is far from it. Bill Cosby in Cosby Show was soft, Malcolm X was real, Tupac Shakur was hardcore, Quincy Jones is a baby boomer, Nelson Mandela, well, the jury's still out.
In his distorted image selling he fails to identify with real people who lead real lives. He starts to lead a plastic-silicone life. His role models become cartoon characters like DMX, Ja Rule, Jay Z, 50-Cent etcetera, unaware that theirs is a marketing gimmick. Once the music stops and they get into pyjamas, they are as humble as his father, whom he should emulate is. The media also exaggerates his misconception by presenting the same acts as people to be copied. If still in doubt about how the young black man fails to differentiate between reality and fiction look at those Cape Flats and Westbury fake thugs acting up then ask them who's their role model? They usually scream, "Tupac!" You'll be fooled if you thought they refer to Tupac Amaru Shakur. They don't mean the Tupac who starred in films, wrote beautiful poetry, started community projects and visited patients in hospitals but the characters that he played in films and music videos. They don't refer to the Tupac who wrote Nelson Mandela a poem but the studio act that liked to shout, "I don't give a fuck", while later consulting with accountants to make sure Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was not on his case.
Damn, young black man can't escape giving it (a fuck) because he's not a studio act and the world is not a movie set. He gotta give it because he's got everything to lose if he misses the South African Revenue Service (SARS) deadline. He is today filling prisons to capacity because of his inability to position himself correctly on the puzzle of life and act on reason than instinct. He just has to give a fuck because the world revolves around it.
It's not to say he should start crying at the dropping of a hat but expression of emotions usually frees the spirit and liberates the soul. Crying is an antidote for suicidal tendencies and homicidal fantasies. Most of the young men who refuse to cry often end up acting their anger out by harming other people, very much the ones they claim to love. An understanding needs to be reached that it is not a sign of weakness but a statement that someone is in touch with his inner self to cry, which is something only a real man is capable of.
While acknowledging that "men don't cry, and when they do, it really hurts", a lesson needs to be derived from something former TV Talk show host and former spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs Lesley Mashokwe said in one glossy magazine. He said that he only saw his father cry once, and he respected him more after that. Young black man, live your life. Cut.
11/24/07
NEWS
Sixteen Days 2006 revisited Hordes of artists came together to observe last year's installment of 16 Days of Activism Against Women and Child Abuse which recently started this year. It was an occassion celebrated in song, dance and poetry which was also graced by local poets. Dwarsloop based not-really-slam poet Rootgirl Oscarine 
was one of the people who took the crowd by surprise with one of her heartfelt poems. Something she said she wrote after a man dumped her because she was broke. Hers was a poem to question the relationship between material possessions and true love. Kopano Dibakwane started off rapping one of the songs on his unreleased debut album, followed by his recital of One More Verse. Inspiring work came from veterans such as award winning short story writer 
June Madingwane, who recited a poem called I Wait, a naughty verse with a twist. "I wait as your crooked cock keeps missing the spot/ I wait and when you finally came/ you came too quick". Madingwane is a short story writer and an activist who worked for UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Education Fund) Makhosazana Xaba (These Hands), Vonani Bila (In The Name of Amandla, Magicstan Fires and Handsome Jita), Phomelelo Machika (Peu Tsa Tokologo), David wa Maahlamela (Moswarataukamariri) and many more delivered renditions worthy of awards. The shock was in Xaba's poem Shit Street, "why do i feel so much pain/ in my body, as if it is seated/ in the centre of the marrow/ of every single bone.../why do i smell s**t/ when i walk in the streets/ when i cannot smell the pots/ burn in my kitchen?" The following week saw the launch of author of Talks with the Sun, Mpho Ramaaano's first book of plays entitled Twilight; Four South African Tragedies, a book he co-authored with Tsakani Oupa Mongwe. On the day of the launch the crows were also entertained with a stellar performance of The Ultimate Disaster.
was one of the people who took the crowd by surprise with one of her heartfelt poems. Something she said she wrote after a man dumped her because she was broke. Hers was a poem to question the relationship between material possessions and true love. Kopano Dibakwane started off rapping one of the songs on his unreleased debut album, followed by his recital of One More Verse. Inspiring work came from veterans such as award winning short story writer 
June Madingwane, who recited a poem called I Wait, a naughty verse with a twist. "I wait as your crooked cock keeps missing the spot/ I wait and when you finally came/ you came too quick". Madingwane is a short story writer and an activist who worked for UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Education Fund) Makhosazana Xaba (These Hands), Vonani Bila (In The Name of Amandla, Magicstan Fires and Handsome Jita), Phomelelo Machika (Peu Tsa Tokologo), David wa Maahlamela (Moswarataukamariri) and many more delivered renditions worthy of awards. The shock was in Xaba's poem Shit Street, "why do i feel so much pain/ in my body, as if it is seated/ in the centre of the marrow/ of every single bone.../why do i smell s**t/ when i walk in the streets/ when i cannot smell the pots/ burn in my kitchen?" The following week saw the launch of author of Talks with the Sun, Mpho Ramaaano's first book of plays entitled Twilight; Four South African Tragedies, a book he co-authored with Tsakani Oupa Mongwe. On the day of the launch the crows were also entertained with a stellar performance of The Ultimate Disaster.
11/21/07
HOORAY
Hooray! 2two hundred not out! We are two hundred posts old and we would like to share some humour with you. Hey, I can be really funny if I want so don't discount me. My sense of humour isn't the point behind this 200th post. 200 posts later I'm seriously entertaining thoughts of becoming an advertising executive, another Victor Dlamini with regular artist podcasts. But me, imagine advert podcasts. My first account comes from a cellphone handset manufacturing company that wants to send a message that they are here for the long haul, they are the future. I've worked out the television and print campaigns and I will share them with you. _elvis.jpg)
On the TV commercial you'll be taken into a hospital maternity ward where a woman is giving birth while she's screaming to her husband on the other line of her cellphone - who's busy squeezing a computer mouse (instead of his wife's palm). He's at work but doing his best to be supportive to his wife in labour by continuosly comforting her on her cellphone. When the baby finally pops out something strange is noticed by the midwives. The baby's born holding an N-series cellphone handset that looks exactly like that of mommy and daddy. Pay-off line? 'FOKIA, WE ARE THE FUTURE' But on a serious note I hear it from my reliable sources that from 2009 the Creator is considering bringing babies with cellphones already on a heavenly network - blocked for all the other networks. To recharge airtime you pray and request the denomination. If you've been fucking around you get nothing and your line is suspended. Forget MTN's Botsotso, Cell C's Talk for Free on Weekend or Vodacom's comical gimmicks, O8HEAVEN is finally here.
_elvis.jpg)
On the TV commercial you'll be taken into a hospital maternity ward where a woman is giving birth while she's screaming to her husband on the other line of her cellphone - who's busy squeezing a computer mouse (instead of his wife's palm). He's at work but doing his best to be supportive to his wife in labour by continuosly comforting her on her cellphone. When the baby finally pops out something strange is noticed by the midwives. The baby's born holding an N-series cellphone handset that looks exactly like that of mommy and daddy. Pay-off line? 'FOKIA, WE ARE THE FUTURE' But on a serious note I hear it from my reliable sources that from 2009 the Creator is considering bringing babies with cellphones already on a heavenly network - blocked for all the other networks. To recharge airtime you pray and request the denomination. If you've been fucking around you get nothing and your line is suspended. Forget MTN's Botsotso, Cell C's Talk for Free on Weekend or Vodacom's comical gimmicks, O8HEAVEN is finally here.
HOORAY
Hooray! we are two hundred not out! PART TWO The second advertisement is for a new sports car targetted at highly virile and oversexed LSM 7-11 men between ages 19 to 55. Over 55s only when they are on Viagra or chigwana. It prides itself as the future measure of achievement. Here we won't do radio, television or radio but panty ads.
The way I'll run my campaign will be to buy advertising space on the billboards I know this group sees more than once a week when they want to burn petty cash. My billboards; surprise surprise, prostitutes' knickers (of course like online ads they'll be paid based on the number of hits or clicks, depending on what you like to call them). The approach; we dress all candidate whores in white knickers with the picture of the red sports car on the front and the pay-off line 'DRIVE ME LIKE YOU DRIVE HER'. As media planners we tell the whore to take her time stripping until the loaded pervert has seen the ad and enquired and probably asked questions which she'll answer like a call-centre whore. On a very serious note I've recently spotted some ads on stripteasers' knickers in one part of the country that I frequent.
The way I'll run my campaign will be to buy advertising space on the billboards I know this group sees more than once a week when they want to burn petty cash. My billboards; surprise surprise, prostitutes' knickers (of course like online ads they'll be paid based on the number of hits or clicks, depending on what you like to call them). The approach; we dress all candidate whores in white knickers with the picture of the red sports car on the front and the pay-off line 'DRIVE ME LIKE YOU DRIVE HER'. As media planners we tell the whore to take her time stripping until the loaded pervert has seen the ad and enquired and probably asked questions which she'll answer like a call-centre whore. On a very serious note I've recently spotted some ads on stripteasers' knickers in one part of the country that I frequent.
HOORAY
Hooray, we are two hundred posts old! PART THREE Speaking of whores I have recently realised that they are becoming more sophisticated. There was once a time when if you arrived in a city, especially Durban and you wanted your fix you had to struggle to know who to invite into your hotel room. You could prowl the Victoria Embankment like a stalker and still not find something that tickles your fancy. These days some sophisticated whores now carry business cards. 
Suppose the ride the fist time around resembled an M3 spin then next time you come to town you will know exactly who to call. The cards are funnily made with the whore's pseudonym. Example 'Maria Vuna - Professional Sex Worker' then there is her cellphone numbers and email address. Some have blogs where they will post their adventures with a customer if he was too outstanding or too limp. The part I like is the one where they mention the business they do, 'full-house, chocolate box on request with extra cash'. Then interesting enough these days they also accept credit and debit cards at the hoerhuis and have ultra-violet lights to verify that the crisp R200 note you transact with is not fake. If it's fake they don't beat you down but just send you packing. The sex industry has moved into another level - one day it will be bigger than us, for now we (the clients) are still in charge. WARNING: DON'T ACCEPT THEIR DRINKS. YOU MIGHT WAKE UP THE FOLLOWING DAY ON THE KERB WITHOUT A KIDNEY OR LIVER, THAT'S IF YOU'LL WAKE UP AT ALL.
Suppose the ride the fist time around resembled an M3 spin then next time you come to town you will know exactly who to call. The cards are funnily made with the whore's pseudonym. Example 'Maria Vuna - Professional Sex Worker' then there is her cellphone numbers and email address. Some have blogs where they will post their adventures with a customer if he was too outstanding or too limp. The part I like is the one where they mention the business they do, 'full-house, chocolate box on request with extra cash'. Then interesting enough these days they also accept credit and debit cards at the hoerhuis and have ultra-violet lights to verify that the crisp R200 note you transact with is not fake. If it's fake they don't beat you down but just send you packing. The sex industry has moved into another level - one day it will be bigger than us, for now we (the clients) are still in charge. WARNING: DON'T ACCEPT THEIR DRINKS. YOU MIGHT WAKE UP THE FOLLOWING DAY ON THE KERB WITHOUT A KIDNEY OR LIVER, THAT'S IF YOU'LL WAKE UP AT ALL.
11/18/07
FEATURE
Demystifying South Africa's President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
What will happen if President Thabo Mbeki released a hip-hop album? In some quarters this suggestion alone will be considered a million US Dollar question. Or most dangerously, a course for treason. It's not. I know exactly what the repercussions will be if His Excellency took time off his heavy schedule of lobbying for his seat in Limpopo and leading us and the continent, hit the studio and bruised his tonsils over a funky beat.
It's not a R388, 88-cent question, but the answers still don't come starchy-crisp or minted. The way to capture its source is to take few steps back and retrace the routes of Mbeki's mystic. During former United States of America President Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House the US's sleepy Southern city of New Orleans gained much prominence. Word on the streets was that New Orleans is where American jazz was born before being adopted by Los Angeles and abducted by New York then rescued by Afrika. I started loving jazz around that time and even thought that the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival was the best music event since Woodstock '69. That Clinton is an avid saxophonist suddenly made its sound hip. Not only did it degrade Clinton to a stature of a human being who engages in a little fellatio, lies through his teeth, plays jazz and sheds a tear, it made Clinton be like you and me. The Arkansas boy who grew up in a town famous for gangsters was reborn. All that dark aura of presidents in dark flannel suits and blue shirts who always tow an entourage of clean shaven bodyguards with cream white earpieces lodged in their equally dark suits was gone. Clinton was so much a man unlike the caricatures we endured in films like All The President's Men, Absolute Power and Armageddon. He was a president according to John Travolta, not Gene Hackman and Kirk Douglas.
What this suggests is that Mbeki also needs an image revamp. For most of us the last time Mbeki's mystic was partially unbundled was when he was "the mailman" just before the general elections three years ago. But still, one couldn't shake the feeling that even though he seemed to be walking alone there was some sniper hiding in the greenery of Tshwane with executive instructions to carry his orders to the letter. That's the Mbeki who's a quagmire, who even a horn-blower like Ronald Suresh Roberts fails to dissect into swallowable crumbs.
I think the starting point should be a national tongue in cheek debate about some of the old rumours. Let's feel free to speculate what we think he stuffs in his pipe. Television can invite health experts, clinical psychologists, tobacco executives, Rastafarians, the clergy (most notably fundamentalists), scholars and commentators like Dennis Beckett and Professor Cedric Gutto. SABC3's 3Talk and DStv's Reality TV should prioritize the subject.
Is His Excellency easy-skunking the holy herb or Boxer? One naughty US President confessed that he once smoked, but didn't inhale- funny heh Clinton. Let's quiz our own and learn more about him in the interrogation. No comments should be invited from his mouthpiece, Mukoni Ratshitanga, the African National Congress' Smuts Ngonyama, Government Communication and Information System's Themba Maseko or the South African Democratic Teachers' Union's Willie Madisha. We don't want to hear from any of the president's men. We want insinuations from comedians Mark Lottering, Kagiso Lediga, David Kau, Pieter Dirk Uys and Independent Democrats' Madame Patricia de Lille. (Okay, at your insistence we will include Madam Helen Zille) These are some of the guys who can blow their mouths like a horn and run their tongues like a VISA.
The next entry point should be his reported love for the Internet. There was once a time when some pundits referred to Mbeki as the Internet President. What will be fascinating to find out is what he does whenever those annoying spam pop-ups make their presence visible on his monitor while he's busy browsing the US State Department website to sniff the latest vomit from Condi? Does he find any humour in the skimpily dressed bimbos who violate his privacy or immediately puts out a contract for a high-tech spam blocking system, a firewall of sorts. Maybe he gets on the line and talks to Mark Shuttleworth in the event of strained relationships between himself and his former spy boss Billy Masetla. I find those pop-ups irritating, especially while I'm browsing ANC Today or the Orlando Pirates website and I figure out the whiskered one doesn't smile either.
What does a private jet trip with the President entail? It will be interesting to see a television documentary shot entirely inside Ingwazi (the Eagle Fish) over a term of six months and once again get to see what crisps does he bite and which internet service does he like the most while travelling 35000 feet at 800 kilometres per hour. What television programmes does he watch apart from SABC International, BBC, Sky News and CNN? What is his favourite Internet search engine? I'll put my head on the line and claim that he looks like a Google-man, I've seen his types at the Cafe. What does he think about Facebook, MySpace, blogging, does he have a blog which is only accessible to friends named The Third Term Blog?
A lot of dark stuff about the dark stature of President Mbeki is known. Funny that some sadists find trading gossip about his only missing son to be juicy, which we don't. They whisper that he hardly talks about him. He doesn't share his grief with you because it hurts, stupid. We know he's got reservations with the orthodox approach to interrogating HIV and AIDS. I don't find his views on AIDS interesting since there are millions of people who share them, including the Minister Of Health Mantobazana Msimang. Leave Mbeki's thoughts on HIV alone and talk about his poetry. Do you sense a ghostwriter behind those lines he likes to quote?
I know when Mbeki recites one of 'his poems' I'm inspired to write a poem as well. He' s a bard of serious note who the poetry fraternity would appreciate if he graced their Sunday afternoon readings in small venues once in a while. That would encourage every vagrant in Newtown and Nelspruit to find the poet in them as well. Imagine the financial spin-offs from book publishing, poetry festivals and performance fees. Poetry can even replace kwaito and SABC's Dali Mpofu can stop the payola scheme run by some members of his corporation - to accommodate the art of presidents.
When Mbeki tries for a drive at a golf course it makes me hate golf and informs me that I'll never get it right. I feel embarrassed as if I was the amateur with graying hair. He makes golf look like a visit to a dentist. I can't play a game with Mpofu under the guidance of Ernie "The Big Easy" Els at an 18 hole Gary Player designed course, which are some of the pecks Mbeki is afforded. He still uproots quite a lot of grass though.
What with all my primitive thoughts of a handicap being a physical disability and putting for birdie being a term borrowed from skin flicks?
Mbeki undoubtedly inspired my poetry book Journey With Me and Taste of my Vomit which are out pre-launch. Right now I'm hoping he can make time between his campaigning to grace the launch of Taste of My Vomit and "buy" autographed copies and quote my poetry during his opening of parliament next year. I want his inspiration on a musical recording titled The Ghetto Says as well. We've heard and seen ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma and Inkatha Freedom Party boss Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi tear their tonsils and sing. Yes, we have seen Mbeki boogy with recording artist Solly Moholo which came out comical. I've seen him be all too intelligent to my detriment at Dakar, Senegal and the United Nations General Assembly recently.
I wonder what will happen if I had him on a session with Bra Hugh Masekela, Colesky, Thandiswa Mazwai, Gabie le Roux and DJ Cleo. What will Zizi be doing? You guessed right, he'll be lacing rythmes as a rapper ala Hip Hop Pantsula. And his album, The Renaissance Man Volume I will help cut the crime rate by half as every street corner dweller will find reason to outsmart the president in the studio. Since the album won't be sold but free downloads from the government website and ANC Today will be encouraged, think of all the financial spin-offs from the sale of bootleg CDs and MP3s.
PS. And the title track can even be the theme song welcoming visitors to the Interpol website and on the phone while you wait to be transferred, ask Commissioner Jackie about the possibilities.
What will happen if President Thabo Mbeki released a hip-hop album? In some quarters this suggestion alone will be considered a million US Dollar question. Or most dangerously, a course for treason. It's not. I know exactly what the repercussions will be if His Excellency took time off his heavy schedule of lobbying for his seat in Limpopo and leading us and the continent, hit the studio and bruised his tonsils over a funky beat.
It's not a R388, 88-cent question, but the answers still don't come starchy-crisp or minted. The way to capture its source is to take few steps back and retrace the routes of Mbeki's mystic. During former United States of America President Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House the US's sleepy Southern city of New Orleans gained much prominence. Word on the streets was that New Orleans is where American jazz was born before being adopted by Los Angeles and abducted by New York then rescued by Afrika. I started loving jazz around that time and even thought that the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival was the best music event since Woodstock '69. That Clinton is an avid saxophonist suddenly made its sound hip. Not only did it degrade Clinton to a stature of a human being who engages in a little fellatio, lies through his teeth, plays jazz and sheds a tear, it made Clinton be like you and me. The Arkansas boy who grew up in a town famous for gangsters was reborn. All that dark aura of presidents in dark flannel suits and blue shirts who always tow an entourage of clean shaven bodyguards with cream white earpieces lodged in their equally dark suits was gone. Clinton was so much a man unlike the caricatures we endured in films like All The President's Men, Absolute Power and Armageddon. He was a president according to John Travolta, not Gene Hackman and Kirk Douglas.
What this suggests is that Mbeki also needs an image revamp. For most of us the last time Mbeki's mystic was partially unbundled was when he was "the mailman" just before the general elections three years ago. But still, one couldn't shake the feeling that even though he seemed to be walking alone there was some sniper hiding in the greenery of Tshwane with executive instructions to carry his orders to the letter. That's the Mbeki who's a quagmire, who even a horn-blower like Ronald Suresh Roberts fails to dissect into swallowable crumbs.
I think the starting point should be a national tongue in cheek debate about some of the old rumours. Let's feel free to speculate what we think he stuffs in his pipe. Television can invite health experts, clinical psychologists, tobacco executives, Rastafarians, the clergy (most notably fundamentalists), scholars and commentators like Dennis Beckett and Professor Cedric Gutto. SABC3's 3Talk and DStv's Reality TV should prioritize the subject.
Is His Excellency easy-skunking the holy herb or Boxer? One naughty US President confessed that he once smoked, but didn't inhale- funny heh Clinton. Let's quiz our own and learn more about him in the interrogation. No comments should be invited from his mouthpiece, Mukoni Ratshitanga, the African National Congress' Smuts Ngonyama, Government Communication and Information System's Themba Maseko or the South African Democratic Teachers' Union's Willie Madisha. We don't want to hear from any of the president's men. We want insinuations from comedians Mark Lottering, Kagiso Lediga, David Kau, Pieter Dirk Uys and Independent Democrats' Madame Patricia de Lille. (Okay, at your insistence we will include Madam Helen Zille) These are some of the guys who can blow their mouths like a horn and run their tongues like a VISA.
The next entry point should be his reported love for the Internet. There was once a time when some pundits referred to Mbeki as the Internet President. What will be fascinating to find out is what he does whenever those annoying spam pop-ups make their presence visible on his monitor while he's busy browsing the US State Department website to sniff the latest vomit from Condi? Does he find any humour in the skimpily dressed bimbos who violate his privacy or immediately puts out a contract for a high-tech spam blocking system, a firewall of sorts. Maybe he gets on the line and talks to Mark Shuttleworth in the event of strained relationships between himself and his former spy boss Billy Masetla. I find those pop-ups irritating, especially while I'm browsing ANC Today or the Orlando Pirates website and I figure out the whiskered one doesn't smile either.
What does a private jet trip with the President entail? It will be interesting to see a television documentary shot entirely inside Ingwazi (the Eagle Fish) over a term of six months and once again get to see what crisps does he bite and which internet service does he like the most while travelling 35000 feet at 800 kilometres per hour. What television programmes does he watch apart from SABC International, BBC, Sky News and CNN? What is his favourite Internet search engine? I'll put my head on the line and claim that he looks like a Google-man, I've seen his types at the Cafe. What does he think about Facebook, MySpace, blogging, does he have a blog which is only accessible to friends named The Third Term Blog?
A lot of dark stuff about the dark stature of President Mbeki is known. Funny that some sadists find trading gossip about his only missing son to be juicy, which we don't. They whisper that he hardly talks about him. He doesn't share his grief with you because it hurts, stupid. We know he's got reservations with the orthodox approach to interrogating HIV and AIDS. I don't find his views on AIDS interesting since there are millions of people who share them, including the Minister Of Health Mantobazana Msimang. Leave Mbeki's thoughts on HIV alone and talk about his poetry. Do you sense a ghostwriter behind those lines he likes to quote?
I know when Mbeki recites one of 'his poems' I'm inspired to write a poem as well. He' s a bard of serious note who the poetry fraternity would appreciate if he graced their Sunday afternoon readings in small venues once in a while. That would encourage every vagrant in Newtown and Nelspruit to find the poet in them as well. Imagine the financial spin-offs from book publishing, poetry festivals and performance fees. Poetry can even replace kwaito and SABC's Dali Mpofu can stop the payola scheme run by some members of his corporation - to accommodate the art of presidents.
When Mbeki tries for a drive at a golf course it makes me hate golf and informs me that I'll never get it right. I feel embarrassed as if I was the amateur with graying hair. He makes golf look like a visit to a dentist. I can't play a game with Mpofu under the guidance of Ernie "The Big Easy" Els at an 18 hole Gary Player designed course, which are some of the pecks Mbeki is afforded. He still uproots quite a lot of grass though.
What with all my primitive thoughts of a handicap being a physical disability and putting for birdie being a term borrowed from skin flicks?
Mbeki undoubtedly inspired my poetry book Journey With Me and Taste of my Vomit which are out pre-launch. Right now I'm hoping he can make time between his campaigning to grace the launch of Taste of My Vomit and "buy" autographed copies and quote my poetry during his opening of parliament next year. I want his inspiration on a musical recording titled The Ghetto Says as well. We've heard and seen ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma and Inkatha Freedom Party boss Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi tear their tonsils and sing. Yes, we have seen Mbeki boogy with recording artist Solly Moholo which came out comical. I've seen him be all too intelligent to my detriment at Dakar, Senegal and the United Nations General Assembly recently.
I wonder what will happen if I had him on a session with Bra Hugh Masekela, Colesky, Thandiswa Mazwai, Gabie le Roux and DJ Cleo. What will Zizi be doing? You guessed right, he'll be lacing rythmes as a rapper ala Hip Hop Pantsula. And his album, The Renaissance Man Volume I will help cut the crime rate by half as every street corner dweller will find reason to outsmart the president in the studio. Since the album won't be sold but free downloads from the government website and ANC Today will be encouraged, think of all the financial spin-offs from the sale of bootleg CDs and MP3s.
PS. And the title track can even be the theme song welcoming visitors to the Interpol website and on the phone while you wait to be transferred, ask Commissioner Jackie about the possibilities.
11/11/07
ART
inked indelible 'til the swine comes home to roost
Stories that interest me the most are those of trivial folks who want to pass off as normal beings. Some of them are my friends and I swear to you I keep real good company. Anybody who carries the 'friend of kasiekulture!' tag knows their story. I can without fear of contradiction announce that my friends are amongst the most intelligent people in South Afrika. So, when I say they are trivial I don't mean stupid but eccentric. How can the cream of the Afrikan intelligentsia be any dumb?
Well, for those who don't know me by now let me let you in for information that I am a tattoo fanatic and I carry six, if not seven or eight of them on different parts of my anatomy. I've been carrying them around for ages (since the '90s)and every year they multiply. Why do they multiply, I don't know and I've been searching for an answer between 50Cent (Curtis Jackson)'s lyrics since he came out trying to get rich or die trying. I've been using his albums like a search engine. With so many tats Fiddy makes my body look like that of a newborn.
And then there was 2Pac (Tupac Amaru Shakur) who an insensitive American journalist lamented about how an unsympathetic and little amused pathologist had to cut through his customary 'THUG LIFE' tat for an 'autopsy' after he was gunned down in Las Vegas by the same people who later gunned down Biggie in Los Angeles. When stupid-amused entertainment journalists used to ask Makaveli about the significance of his tats 'Pac would quip that they should read for themselves because if they can see that he's tattered up they can read. Oh, i forget, he was a walking billboard of ghetto survival.
Then there's that eccentric rocker named Tommy Lee Jones whose tats can pass off as deformation of the skin texture in the court of human morality. Lee Jones, a talented guitarist is known more for his tats than artistry. Oops, one of my intelligent trivial friends just called me now-now and reminded me that he's also famous for his bonking video with on-ff-on-again wife Pamela Lee Anderson.
On the homefront there's always 5FM's DJ Fresh with his Black Panther and tens others.
I hear someone saying he also has got a Che Guevara which Mike Tyson also has on his chest to go with the Maori one on his face. Mark Fish also spots a Che, including a lot of silicone wannabees like E'smile who's rumoured to have had a tat declaring 'Ghetto Ruff', his former record label. It is rumoured that when he fell out of favour with Lance Sterh he had more text added, 'the Ghetto is Ruff'. Quite intelligent heh?
Sure, but this is not the story I intended to post. The real post is about the funniest questions folks always ask everytime I go topless. Given that now I have one tat on my forearm that features my little angel it becomes too apparent that I sat through the 'torturous' mile and came out with a portrait so indelible I'll need laser surgery to divorce.
Some of the funny questions which will be answered by experts my friends usually ask are the following;
Q: Is it painful?
Whore: They pierce your skin and slice both the epi and inner-dermis. There's no way that can happen without a degree of pain, though it's only temporary. But that's not worse than when your hymen tore or when you lost your foreskin under local anaesthetic. If you sat or slept through that with only a flinch, then you can sit through 12 hours of tattooing.
Q: Is it 'really' permanent?
Cindy Crawford: As permanent as your birthmark or the mole on your friend's partner's ass.
Q: Is it true that it's addictive?
Olympic Committee: Think caffeine, nicotine, cocaine and steroids. (Narcotics Anonymous can even provide you with accurate stats)
Q: What if my perception of reality changes and the tat loses relevance?
Lil Bow Wow: It's been changing since you were twelve stupid, but that didn't stop you from making decisions then like your decision to start masturbating. So, be decisive now for now's sake.
Q: What if I go to prison and my tats offend other inmates?
Prisoner number 46664: Reason enough to think before they put that needle on your skin. Obviously any intelligent sod won't put prison gang numbers when they haven't earned that number from a prison gang. (use your commonsense)
Q: Won't the police arrest me?
Commissioner of Police: Now you are really sounding stupid. This artform is covered under the Bill of Rights' Freedom of Expression plus it's your damn body you can do as you please. On second thought my police are busy collecting bribes to be concerned with your self-mutilation. (If you scared befriend the commissioner of police, he's got a reputation for protecting his friends)
Q: What about the Bible?
Pope: Leviticus 19:28 (or argue that the Mosaic Law is archaic and the artform is as old as mountains)
Whatever you decide to do be informed about this artform. Insist on a Department of Health certificate to verify that the sterilization process and the operating conditions are above board. I am God's child and I am soon going for my additional tats, a script on my right forearm and a spider's web on my shoulder. Quote me Leviticus 19:28 like my parodised Pope and I can assure you that our Creator has forgiven me already. Now, let the games begin.
*Respondents to questions were parodised, but the questions and answers are as real as a tat on your torso.
Stories that interest me the most are those of trivial folks who want to pass off as normal beings. Some of them are my friends and I swear to you I keep real good company. Anybody who carries the 'friend of kasiekulture!' tag knows their story. I can without fear of contradiction announce that my friends are amongst the most intelligent people in South Afrika. So, when I say they are trivial I don't mean stupid but eccentric. How can the cream of the Afrikan intelligentsia be any dumb?Well, for those who don't know me by now let me let you in for information that I am a tattoo fanatic and I carry six, if not seven or eight of them on different parts of my anatomy. I've been carrying them around for ages (since the '90s)and every year they multiply. Why do they multiply, I don't know and I've been searching for an answer between 50Cent (Curtis Jackson)'s lyrics since he came out trying to get rich or die trying. I've been using his albums like a search engine. With so many tats Fiddy makes my body look like that of a newborn.
And then there was 2Pac (Tupac Amaru Shakur) who an insensitive American journalist lamented about how an unsympathetic and little amused pathologist had to cut through his customary 'THUG LIFE' tat for an 'autopsy' after he was gunned down in Las Vegas by the same people who later gunned down Biggie in Los Angeles. When stupid-amused entertainment journalists used to ask Makaveli about the significance of his tats 'Pac would quip that they should read for themselves because if they can see that he's tattered up they can read. Oh, i forget, he was a walking billboard of ghetto survival.
Then there's that eccentric rocker named Tommy Lee Jones whose tats can pass off as deformation of the skin texture in the court of human morality. Lee Jones, a talented guitarist is known more for his tats than artistry. Oops, one of my intelligent trivial friends just called me now-now and reminded me that he's also famous for his bonking video with on-ff-on-again wife Pamela Lee Anderson.
On the homefront there's always 5FM's DJ Fresh with his Black Panther and tens others.
I hear someone saying he also has got a Che Guevara which Mike Tyson also has on his chest to go with the Maori one on his face. Mark Fish also spots a Che, including a lot of silicone wannabees like E'smile who's rumoured to have had a tat declaring 'Ghetto Ruff', his former record label. It is rumoured that when he fell out of favour with Lance Sterh he had more text added, 'the Ghetto is Ruff'. Quite intelligent heh?Sure, but this is not the story I intended to post. The real post is about the funniest questions folks always ask everytime I go topless. Given that now I have one tat on my forearm that features my little angel it becomes too apparent that I sat through the 'torturous' mile and came out with a portrait so indelible I'll need laser surgery to divorce.
Some of the funny questions which will be answered by experts my friends usually ask are the following;
Q: Is it painful?
Whore: They pierce your skin and slice both the epi and inner-dermis. There's no way that can happen without a degree of pain, though it's only temporary. But that's not worse than when your hymen tore or when you lost your foreskin under local anaesthetic. If you sat or slept through that with only a flinch, then you can sit through 12 hours of tattooing.
Q: Is it 'really' permanent?
Cindy Crawford: As permanent as your birthmark or the mole on your friend's partner's ass.
Q: Is it true that it's addictive?
Olympic Committee: Think caffeine, nicotine, cocaine and steroids. (Narcotics Anonymous can even provide you with accurate stats)
Q: What if my perception of reality changes and the tat loses relevance?
Lil Bow Wow: It's been changing since you were twelve stupid, but that didn't stop you from making decisions then like your decision to start masturbating. So, be decisive now for now's sake.
Q: What if I go to prison and my tats offend other inmates?
Prisoner number 46664: Reason enough to think before they put that needle on your skin. Obviously any intelligent sod won't put prison gang numbers when they haven't earned that number from a prison gang. (use your commonsense)
Q: Won't the police arrest me?
Commissioner of Police: Now you are really sounding stupid. This artform is covered under the Bill of Rights' Freedom of Expression plus it's your damn body you can do as you please. On second thought my police are busy collecting bribes to be concerned with your self-mutilation. (If you scared befriend the commissioner of police, he's got a reputation for protecting his friends)
Q: What about the Bible?
Pope: Leviticus 19:28 (or argue that the Mosaic Law is archaic and the artform is as old as mountains)
Whatever you decide to do be informed about this artform. Insist on a Department of Health certificate to verify that the sterilization process and the operating conditions are above board. I am God's child and I am soon going for my additional tats, a script on my right forearm and a spider's web on my shoulder. Quote me Leviticus 19:28 like my parodised Pope and I can assure you that our Creator has forgiven me already. Now, let the games begin.
*Respondents to questions were parodised, but the questions and answers are as real as a tat on your torso.
11/8/07
FEATURE
Independents give a voice to the voiceless They are passionate about being able to make sure that strange, odd, misunderstood, peculiar, yet important, voices don’t get overlooked, writes Gary Cummiskey Since 1994, a number of independent publishing initiatives have started up in SA, often operating on small budgets but with immense dedication and energy from their founders. Technological advancements in digital publishing have also often helped them to produce quality books at lower cost, plus – as poet Karen Press pointed out in the literary journal New Coin - the feeling of freedom experienced after the first democratic elections also no doubt contributed to this burst of creativity. Independent publishers are, however often referred to and regarded as small publishers, though this is a label several of them, for good reasons, dislike. 
Vonani Bila, of Elim Hospital, Limpopo-based Timbila Poetry Project, says: “Independent, like the term ‘alternative’, should not suggest shoddy work. I go through all the necessary stages of publishing a quality book with the involvement of the author. I give voice to writers whose work wouldn’t necessarily be published by big, corporate and so-called mainstream and commercial publishers. These are the poets who are not afraid to challenge the rot they live or witness in society.” 
This view is echoed by Goodenough Mashego, from Shatale, Mpumalanga. Mashego recently started up Tenworkers Media and sees an independent publisher as one “who is independent of the market forces that determine who should be published instead of who deserves to be published…They are independent because they can afford to think without pressure from greedy shareholders but are instead driven by their commitment to literary development.” Robert Berold of Deep South in Grahamstown shares the same preference for literary quality over profit: “
It’s like independent record labels – small, not corporate, doing the publishing mainly for art’s sake. It’s more flexible, more risk-taking, more anarchistic. The term ‘small publisher’ is okay, though it has a dimension of insignificance.” Johannesburg-based Botsotso Publishing’s 
Allan Kolski Horwitz says “the term ‘independent’ connotes freedom from restraints, both ideological and commercial. We should reject the term small because it reflects on scale and, perhaps, ambition.” An exception to the preference for “independent” is Cape Town’s Modjaji Books, recently launched by Colleen Higgs, who says: “I prefer the term ‘small’. It is a matter of small staff – myself – and few books.” For Johannesburg’s Pineslopes Publications’ 
Aryan Kaganof, however, the labels are unimportant: “I’m concerned with publishing books that I believe in.” Over and above the commitment that these publishers have about the work that they produce, there are also clear views about their role, which sometimes has a wider socioeconomic and politically context as opposed to a more limited literary context. Bila says: “We must publish books that matter…We must not promote mediocrity, the stuff that is ceaselessly churned out by commercial publishers chasing cash, topical stories and often exploiting vulnerability. “We also need to promote writing and publishing in all South African languages, and give voice to excluded black, rural and women writers, as well as those writers and poets who says things that annoy those that wield power – be it government or business.” 
Mashego also takes a strong stance of giving a voice to the voiceless: “SA has got lots of stories that need to be told. They are hidden between the uncombed beards of street vagrants and the dreadlocks of Rastafarians…Our role as independent publishers is to go out into the villages, streets and prisons and unearth those stories that the mainstream finds too unattractive because the storytellers are unattractive members of our society.” Berold and Higgs take a somewhat cooler view of an independent publisher’s role, which is “to print work that has real literary value but little market potential because the writer is unknown or the work to challenging, either politically or intellectually,” says Berold. “In a cultural desert like SA, independent publishers have a huge role.” For Higgs it is a matter of “taking risks - publishing good work by writers who may not as yet have the recognition they deserve. It is also about publishing genres – such as poetry or drama – that the mainstream publishers may not want to tackle. To be at the cutting edge, seeking out new talent, creating more space for new voices”. Kaganof, however, is cynical about the role of independent publishers: “It is to allow us to pretend there is an audience for anything outside of the mainstream.” Considering that independent publishers are playing a marginal role in an overwhelmingly commercialised book market, it is not surprising that they sometimes view commercial publishers with ambivalence. 
“Independent publishers don’t have a huge voice in shaping SA’s publishing direction,” says Bila. “It is the big publishers who are represented in book-related councils set up by the state. Their participation through the Publishing Association of SA, or as individual big publishers, gives them more access to government opportunities, especially to supply schools.” To Mashego, “the situation is simple: book fairs, like the Cape Town one, are meant for commercial publishers have no space for independent publishers. Book retailers are not kind to independent publishers because we can’t provide them with the same benefits and perks that commercial publishers can. The attitude should be that the literary world created by commercial publishers is not the ultimate one…we have the right to create our own. We are entitled to our own book fair without the commercial publishers, we are entitled to our own awards where we don’t compete with writers whose publishers have the ability to befriend the judges. We need to establish our own distribution and marketing networks.” 
Kaganof views the work of commercial and independent publishers are different: “I don’t think they are concerned with us and I certainly don’t think we should be concerned with them.” Berold says he “doesn’t mind” commercial publishers “though it would be nice if they could acknowledge the importance of independent publishers”. For Higgs there is no conflict: “I don’t see us as incompatible. They are working in different parts of the same field. They are also doing important work and they do it professionally. We can learn much from engaging with them and taking advice.” Thus for independent publishers it is not simply a matter of publishing books – that is, being focused on making a profit – but rather of playing an active role in contributing to the ongoing development of South African writing and introducing that writing to local readers. As Bila says: “We make quality books. 
We are germinating ground for some of SA’s successful poets. Few big publishers run literary journals. It is often the independents who are prepared to create outlets for new and established authors. Independents also run writing workshops.” Mashego highlights that independent publishers “are addressing pertinent issues that need to be voiced. I think the contribution of independent publishers must be weighed against our own democracy that requires plurality of opinions. We have own mainstream writers who are praise singing and telling us about the intelligence of people in authority. We need a balanced picture… those that tell the other picture, the less rosy picture, are the independents.” 
“The work of the most lasting significance is published by the small publishers,” says Kaganof, and Berold points out that almost every new poet’s first book is published by an independent. “Fiction is a bit different, though, there seems to be a commercial market,” he adds. Independents can also play a role in niche publishing. “It can make sure that strange, odd, misunderstood, peculiar, yet important, voices don’t get overlooked,” says Higgs. But from a financial point of view, as well as in wider aspects of recognition, independent publishers face substantial challenges. Many independents, such as Botsotso, Deep South and Timbila, are reliant on public funding from bodies such as the National Arts Council or the Arts and Culture Trust. “Financial constraints are always the bane of producing art,” says Horwitz, “and dependence on public funding is not always a guarantee of quality or of intellectual vitality. Public funding can also cushion mediocrity and crudeness.” Berold stresses the need for more diversity of public funding, while Bila says the government needs to take independent publishers seriously:
“We constitute the core of authentic South African publishing. Unlike the multinational publishers, we are committed to what we produce, even though we do it in small quantities and with limited resources. The government must buy books from us, as they do with big publishers, and get those books into public spaces such as schools and libraries.” Apart from finances, however, another problem is reader apathy, says Mashego, and Horwitz points out that “the laziness of writers to support the literary journals that support them is peculiar but actually quite reflective of the egoism that much art making generates”. Media recognition, of lack thereof, is an issue for many independent publishers. While Berold feels Deep South does receive some attention in the media, it is “a little, not enough”. Bila says that most newspapers do not value book reviews and as a result “little is known about new South African writing”. Mashego is more direct: “The media are gunning for free review copies and champagne at book launches while very few or any of them can write a review. Especially black journalists - very few of them can write a review. The black media is obsessed with gossip journalism to that extent that book reviewing is not their forte.” 
Despite all the obstacles, though, independent publishers in SA remain committed to their work and, most importantly, believe in what they are doing. “You can publish what you like,” Higgs says, “what you are passionate about, what moves you, what interests you. You don’t have to publish things that are politically correct or you feel compelled to by external market forces.” For Kaganof a key benefit to authors involves “not having to deal with useless people who ‘staff’ the larger publishers”, while for Horwitz a benefit resides in the freedom to select, design and market in a manner which is “consistent with one’s world view and values”. Bila likewise values the freedom from being guided by the dictates of a commercial market, and Berold says a key benefit is being accountable to nobody but his authors and his instincts. “I can do as I please,” says Mashego, “and mingle with readers without the stigma of being a CEO or publisher. It also helps me to think out of the box…the opportunity to innovate is what I see as the ultimate benefit. I wouldn’t trade it for the mainstream.” First published in Business Day’s books and publishing supplement nov/6/2007. Also available at www.kaganof.com and Dyehard Press Blog
kasiekulture would like to thank gary cummiskey for permission to reproduce this piece
Vonani Bila, of Elim Hospital, Limpopo-based Timbila Poetry Project, says: “Independent, like the term ‘alternative’, should not suggest shoddy work. I go through all the necessary stages of publishing a quality book with the involvement of the author. I give voice to writers whose work wouldn’t necessarily be published by big, corporate and so-called mainstream and commercial publishers. These are the poets who are not afraid to challenge the rot they live or witness in society.” 
This view is echoed by Goodenough Mashego, from Shatale, Mpumalanga. Mashego recently started up Tenworkers Media and sees an independent publisher as one “who is independent of the market forces that determine who should be published instead of who deserves to be published…They are independent because they can afford to think without pressure from greedy shareholders but are instead driven by their commitment to literary development.” Robert Berold of Deep South in Grahamstown shares the same preference for literary quality over profit: “
It’s like independent record labels – small, not corporate, doing the publishing mainly for art’s sake. It’s more flexible, more risk-taking, more anarchistic. The term ‘small publisher’ is okay, though it has a dimension of insignificance.” Johannesburg-based Botsotso Publishing’s 
Allan Kolski Horwitz says “the term ‘independent’ connotes freedom from restraints, both ideological and commercial. We should reject the term small because it reflects on scale and, perhaps, ambition.” An exception to the preference for “independent” is Cape Town’s Modjaji Books, recently launched by Colleen Higgs, who says: “I prefer the term ‘small’. It is a matter of small staff – myself – and few books.” For Johannesburg’s Pineslopes Publications’ 
Aryan Kaganof, however, the labels are unimportant: “I’m concerned with publishing books that I believe in.” Over and above the commitment that these publishers have about the work that they produce, there are also clear views about their role, which sometimes has a wider socioeconomic and politically context as opposed to a more limited literary context. Bila says: “We must publish books that matter…We must not promote mediocrity, the stuff that is ceaselessly churned out by commercial publishers chasing cash, topical stories and often exploiting vulnerability. “We also need to promote writing and publishing in all South African languages, and give voice to excluded black, rural and women writers, as well as those writers and poets who says things that annoy those that wield power – be it government or business.” 
Mashego also takes a strong stance of giving a voice to the voiceless: “SA has got lots of stories that need to be told. They are hidden between the uncombed beards of street vagrants and the dreadlocks of Rastafarians…Our role as independent publishers is to go out into the villages, streets and prisons and unearth those stories that the mainstream finds too unattractive because the storytellers are unattractive members of our society.” Berold and Higgs take a somewhat cooler view of an independent publisher’s role, which is “to print work that has real literary value but little market potential because the writer is unknown or the work to challenging, either politically or intellectually,” says Berold. “In a cultural desert like SA, independent publishers have a huge role.” For Higgs it is a matter of “taking risks - publishing good work by writers who may not as yet have the recognition they deserve. It is also about publishing genres – such as poetry or drama – that the mainstream publishers may not want to tackle. To be at the cutting edge, seeking out new talent, creating more space for new voices”. Kaganof, however, is cynical about the role of independent publishers: “It is to allow us to pretend there is an audience for anything outside of the mainstream.” Considering that independent publishers are playing a marginal role in an overwhelmingly commercialised book market, it is not surprising that they sometimes view commercial publishers with ambivalence. 
“Independent publishers don’t have a huge voice in shaping SA’s publishing direction,” says Bila. “It is the big publishers who are represented in book-related councils set up by the state. Their participation through the Publishing Association of SA, or as individual big publishers, gives them more access to government opportunities, especially to supply schools.” To Mashego, “the situation is simple: book fairs, like the Cape Town one, are meant for commercial publishers have no space for independent publishers. Book retailers are not kind to independent publishers because we can’t provide them with the same benefits and perks that commercial publishers can. The attitude should be that the literary world created by commercial publishers is not the ultimate one…we have the right to create our own. We are entitled to our own book fair without the commercial publishers, we are entitled to our own awards where we don’t compete with writers whose publishers have the ability to befriend the judges. We need to establish our own distribution and marketing networks.” 
Kaganof views the work of commercial and independent publishers are different: “I don’t think they are concerned with us and I certainly don’t think we should be concerned with them.” Berold says he “doesn’t mind” commercial publishers “though it would be nice if they could acknowledge the importance of independent publishers”. For Higgs there is no conflict: “I don’t see us as incompatible. They are working in different parts of the same field. They are also doing important work and they do it professionally. We can learn much from engaging with them and taking advice.” Thus for independent publishers it is not simply a matter of publishing books – that is, being focused on making a profit – but rather of playing an active role in contributing to the ongoing development of South African writing and introducing that writing to local readers. As Bila says: “We make quality books. 
We are germinating ground for some of SA’s successful poets. Few big publishers run literary journals. It is often the independents who are prepared to create outlets for new and established authors. Independents also run writing workshops.” Mashego highlights that independent publishers “are addressing pertinent issues that need to be voiced. I think the contribution of independent publishers must be weighed against our own democracy that requires plurality of opinions. We have own mainstream writers who are praise singing and telling us about the intelligence of people in authority. We need a balanced picture… those that tell the other picture, the less rosy picture, are the independents.” 
“The work of the most lasting significance is published by the small publishers,” says Kaganof, and Berold points out that almost every new poet’s first book is published by an independent. “Fiction is a bit different, though, there seems to be a commercial market,” he adds. Independents can also play a role in niche publishing. “It can make sure that strange, odd, misunderstood, peculiar, yet important, voices don’t get overlooked,” says Higgs. But from a financial point of view, as well as in wider aspects of recognition, independent publishers face substantial challenges. Many independents, such as Botsotso, Deep South and Timbila, are reliant on public funding from bodies such as the National Arts Council or the Arts and Culture Trust. “Financial constraints are always the bane of producing art,” says Horwitz, “and dependence on public funding is not always a guarantee of quality or of intellectual vitality. Public funding can also cushion mediocrity and crudeness.” Berold stresses the need for more diversity of public funding, while Bila says the government needs to take independent publishers seriously:
“We constitute the core of authentic South African publishing. Unlike the multinational publishers, we are committed to what we produce, even though we do it in small quantities and with limited resources. The government must buy books from us, as they do with big publishers, and get those books into public spaces such as schools and libraries.” Apart from finances, however, another problem is reader apathy, says Mashego, and Horwitz points out that “the laziness of writers to support the literary journals that support them is peculiar but actually quite reflective of the egoism that much art making generates”. Media recognition, of lack thereof, is an issue for many independent publishers. While Berold feels Deep South does receive some attention in the media, it is “a little, not enough”. Bila says that most newspapers do not value book reviews and as a result “little is known about new South African writing”. Mashego is more direct: “The media are gunning for free review copies and champagne at book launches while very few or any of them can write a review. Especially black journalists - very few of them can write a review. The black media is obsessed with gossip journalism to that extent that book reviewing is not their forte.” 
Despite all the obstacles, though, independent publishers in SA remain committed to their work and, most importantly, believe in what they are doing. “You can publish what you like,” Higgs says, “what you are passionate about, what moves you, what interests you. You don’t have to publish things that are politically correct or you feel compelled to by external market forces.” For Kaganof a key benefit to authors involves “not having to deal with useless people who ‘staff’ the larger publishers”, while for Horwitz a benefit resides in the freedom to select, design and market in a manner which is “consistent with one’s world view and values”. Bila likewise values the freedom from being guided by the dictates of a commercial market, and Berold says a key benefit is being accountable to nobody but his authors and his instincts. “I can do as I please,” says Mashego, “and mingle with readers without the stigma of being a CEO or publisher. It also helps me to think out of the box…the opportunity to innovate is what I see as the ultimate benefit. I wouldn’t trade it for the mainstream.” First published in Business Day’s books and publishing supplement nov/6/2007. Also available at www.kaganof.com and Dyehard Press Blogkasiekulture would like to thank gary cummiskey for permission to reproduce this piece
11/6/07
BOOK REVIEW
take two - no free sleeping, in the name of amandla & magicstan fires 
There are a few things I know for sure about 35-years old poet Vonani Bila. Apart from him being rooted in politics of social delivery and an art (especially sculpting and pottery) enthusiast, Bila loves to write long epic poems that if they don't touch you in the first two stanzas will still do so on the last two ones. Poems in the tradition of the Afrikaans lament Die Toespraak van Gagool. The Afrikaaners were quite creative with their lies that's why so many years later Agriculture students still use In die Tuin as a readily-available clue to parts of their agrarian paper. These excludes the often-seem-lost Breyten Breytenbach whose muses come trapped in an eternal linguistic transition. The English, with their myriad of famous bards did try to be the poets laureates of the world, going to the extent of converting dialogues from William Shakespeare's plays into poems. Mark Anthony's eulogising of slain Emperor Julius Caesar became a poem worthy of memory. While everybody knows Shakespeare was a good playwright without being an influencial or brilliant poet. Then there was a Sepedi lament titled Mahloko ba Mokopane about a school bus accident that claimed a lot of lives of Bapedi children and the Spanish Sala Y Gomez about a ship sent by the King to distant seas that sunk with only one survivor names Gomez. Bila most often writes epics along those lines, storytelling that would have shamed T.S.Elliot and Emily Bronte to early retirement. Laments that would have made religious John Donne look like a serial killer instead of a death-defyier (sic). Bila's latest anthology Handsome Jita (Handsome Dude) is made up of all the anger, venom, the serum and the love he's been holding captive, spitting the anger and venom, and trying to alleviate the sudden-death with well-calculated serum since he conspired with Donald Parenzee and Alan Finlay to put together No Free Sleeping (Botsotso Publishing), his solo In the name of Amandla and little-known Magicstan Fires, both published by Timbila Poetry Project, an NGO he founded in 2000. To really do a review of Handsome Jita would be to revisit the two books Bila wrote alone, which would be a waste of ink and postspace (sic). I have done reviews of one of them before and therefore will spare some poems from there the rod without risking spoiling them. However there are few pointers worth noting; Mmbengwa, 
a poem about an extremely horny mad man about whom Bila writes, 'mmbengwa/ starts a fight when villagers laugh at him/ he calls himself;/ nkuzi malangeni/ nkalakatha/ he threatens to cut women's and children's throats with a sword/ but he digs a grave all alone/ everytime the police come to arrest him/ he swears, mouth full of shit/ he tells them to go to hell/ he threatens he will cut his dick/ with a minora razor blade/ squeeze his balls with pliers...' is included and stretches to six pages. Jo'burg based poet Kabelo Mofokeng confessed to love the poem so much that he once said it's one of those pieces of writing he dissects when chilling with buddies. A poem titled Horrors of Phalaborwa was written in the event of the murder of destitute fired farmworker Nelson Chisale 'allegedly' by a man who the High Court of Appeals now believes he didn't do it, Mark Scott-Crossly. Okay, a father died, children are today orphaned and the courts say the only white man who owned a farm and lions, which devoured poor Chisale when he was thrown into their enclosure did not 'kill him'. Scott-Crossly is due out of prison where he was serving a long term next year. Horrors of Phalaborwa profiles that story without anaesthetic to guarantee you feel every pinch and prick, 80% less pain than Chisale felt as the lions buried their teeth and sharp paws into his skinny frame. The epic poem covers five pages of the 117 paged book. Then there are socio-political commentaries like Mandela, Have You Wondered which questions the failure of every bureaucratic scheme conceived without love or consideration for the beneficiary. Mr President, let the babies Die was relevant when the Thabo Mbeki regime was denying pregnant mothers nevaripin and the most of often lack of much needed medical stocks in public clinics. It's still relevant because even the current HIV/AIDS Programme is as badly structured it resembles a pyramid scheme where the chief beneficiary is Dr Matthias Rath and his cronies. Handsome Jita is made up of 41 poems with enough venom to drive a black mamba to shame. Don't be misled by the innocent cover of a handsome jita standing infront of his corrugated iron shack - looks are deceiving - for real. The book is published by University of Kwazulu-Natal Press and it's poetry. This at the time when word on the streets is that poetry books don't sell. Handsome Jita is dedicated to Bila's father who passed away 18 years ago, his mother and the village I like to call Betlehem (Shirley Village in Limpopo Province). It retails for R150,00 (US$21,42) and orders can be placed at timbila@telkomsa.net It's a fine, well put together anthology so grab a copy for your own private library. Sadly if you have the three books that feed into it, you are better off with the originals. For the rest, you won't miss it - until it's sold out.
There are a few things I know for sure about 35-years old poet Vonani Bila. Apart from him being rooted in politics of social delivery and an art (especially sculpting and pottery) enthusiast, Bila loves to write long epic poems that if they don't touch you in the first two stanzas will still do so on the last two ones. Poems in the tradition of the Afrikaans lament Die Toespraak van Gagool. The Afrikaaners were quite creative with their lies that's why so many years later Agriculture students still use In die Tuin as a readily-available clue to parts of their agrarian paper. These excludes the often-seem-lost Breyten Breytenbach whose muses come trapped in an eternal linguistic transition. The English, with their myriad of famous bards did try to be the poets laureates of the world, going to the extent of converting dialogues from William Shakespeare's plays into poems. Mark Anthony's eulogising of slain Emperor Julius Caesar became a poem worthy of memory. While everybody knows Shakespeare was a good playwright without being an influencial or brilliant poet. Then there was a Sepedi lament titled Mahloko ba Mokopane about a school bus accident that claimed a lot of lives of Bapedi children and the Spanish Sala Y Gomez about a ship sent by the King to distant seas that sunk with only one survivor names Gomez. Bila most often writes epics along those lines, storytelling that would have shamed T.S.Elliot and Emily Bronte to early retirement. Laments that would have made religious John Donne look like a serial killer instead of a death-defyier (sic). Bila's latest anthology Handsome Jita (Handsome Dude) is made up of all the anger, venom, the serum and the love he's been holding captive, spitting the anger and venom, and trying to alleviate the sudden-death with well-calculated serum since he conspired with Donald Parenzee and Alan Finlay to put together No Free Sleeping (Botsotso Publishing), his solo In the name of Amandla and little-known Magicstan Fires, both published by Timbila Poetry Project, an NGO he founded in 2000. To really do a review of Handsome Jita would be to revisit the two books Bila wrote alone, which would be a waste of ink and postspace (sic). I have done reviews of one of them before and therefore will spare some poems from there the rod without risking spoiling them. However there are few pointers worth noting; Mmbengwa, 
a poem about an extremely horny mad man about whom Bila writes, 'mmbengwa/ starts a fight when villagers laugh at him/ he calls himself;/ nkuzi malangeni/ nkalakatha/ he threatens to cut women's and children's throats with a sword/ but he digs a grave all alone/ everytime the police come to arrest him/ he swears, mouth full of shit/ he tells them to go to hell/ he threatens he will cut his dick/ with a minora razor blade/ squeeze his balls with pliers...' is included and stretches to six pages. Jo'burg based poet Kabelo Mofokeng confessed to love the poem so much that he once said it's one of those pieces of writing he dissects when chilling with buddies. A poem titled Horrors of Phalaborwa was written in the event of the murder of destitute fired farmworker Nelson Chisale 'allegedly' by a man who the High Court of Appeals now believes he didn't do it, Mark Scott-Crossly. Okay, a father died, children are today orphaned and the courts say the only white man who owned a farm and lions, which devoured poor Chisale when he was thrown into their enclosure did not 'kill him'. Scott-Crossly is due out of prison where he was serving a long term next year. Horrors of Phalaborwa profiles that story without anaesthetic to guarantee you feel every pinch and prick, 80% less pain than Chisale felt as the lions buried their teeth and sharp paws into his skinny frame. The epic poem covers five pages of the 117 paged book. Then there are socio-political commentaries like Mandela, Have You Wondered which questions the failure of every bureaucratic scheme conceived without love or consideration for the beneficiary. Mr President, let the babies Die was relevant when the Thabo Mbeki regime was denying pregnant mothers nevaripin and the most of often lack of much needed medical stocks in public clinics. It's still relevant because even the current HIV/AIDS Programme is as badly structured it resembles a pyramid scheme where the chief beneficiary is Dr Matthias Rath and his cronies. Handsome Jita is made up of 41 poems with enough venom to drive a black mamba to shame. Don't be misled by the innocent cover of a handsome jita standing infront of his corrugated iron shack - looks are deceiving - for real. The book is published by University of Kwazulu-Natal Press and it's poetry. This at the time when word on the streets is that poetry books don't sell. Handsome Jita is dedicated to Bila's father who passed away 18 years ago, his mother and the village I like to call Betlehem (Shirley Village in Limpopo Province). It retails for R150,00 (US$21,42) and orders can be placed at timbila@telkomsa.net It's a fine, well put together anthology so grab a copy for your own private library. Sadly if you have the three books that feed into it, you are better off with the originals. For the rest, you won't miss it - until it's sold out.
11/4/07
FEATURE
Oriental Wisdom
Mpumalanga can be in a lucrative position to stage its own arts festival the size of Arts Alive (Gauteng) and Poetry Africa (Kwazulu-Natal) if artists from the province started believing in the capacity of the province's artistic landscape to grow and create opportunities for existing artists without them having to go to Johannesburg to seek what is known in this country as a better life. Further on that can help in eradicating the obsession with the bright lights of Jozi, usually harboured by people from the deep-rural areas of the gigantic province and boost in the development of future artists at grassroots, so believes Mpumalanga Performing Arts Laboratory administator Margareth Nontokozo Phiri whose organisation recently staged a funky poetry festival. The festival was staged at the Civic Theatre which is enclosed within the Mbombela Local Municipality's Civic Centre office precinct on the same two days that SABC's highly criticized for lacking depth Lentswe was in town as well. Some of the poets who participated in the festival, like Agatha Naledi Dlamini moved on to take part in Lentswe later that night. Word from those who graced the SABC event was that old stereotypes about folks outside of Jozi seem to be the psyche of the little-known unintelligent judges the public broadcaster sent for what was supposed tobe a glorious event for the bards of Mpumalanga. Not only are they saying one of the judges was rude they also claim she seemed to expect people in the province to own elephants as part of their domesticated livestock. Shame on empty-heads who don't travel the country but only between Soweto and Jo'burg city centre. The SABC should send people with a hollistic view than its empty-heads who have built a reputation for the broadcaster as a dinosaur haunt with a twist of niggerisation. Phiri's organisation is eight-years-old this year and its area of focus is largely performing arts, drama, dance, poetry and community theatre groups, both their management and advocacy. "The event on the weekend came about after we decided to have an event with the poets we have been working with and invite others to come aboard. We realised that there are lots of poets out there and we wanted to have something dedicated to them", she told Kasiekulture. On the day there were more than 50 poets from places as far as Mashishing, Bushbuckridge and other parts of the province. This regarless of MPAL being more active in Nkomazi, Mbombela and Mjindi and slightly in other areas only through delegation. She says their intention is to have a provincial reach, resources allowing. Phiri says they are currently funded by the National Arts Council of South Africa and that helps their mandate to extend beyond advocacy to capacity building in starting and managing arts groups. What they have observed in the past is that organisations start, exist for a few years and cease to exist without much fanfare. "We'll like to have a bigger institution in the future where we can be able to stage drama, dance and poetry festivals as part of an annual calendar. We want to strengthen clubs and not see them die", Phiri says, adding that local artists shouldn't aspire to go to Jozi to grow but should stick around to help uproot societal stereotype that artists are people who can't secure employment in the mainstream economy. They have a broader vision of making the arts a form of employment. "We seem not to believe in what we do. I want to thank all the people who participated at the event and people should know that we do organise workshops and disseminate information on funding and artist support", she says. Mpumalanga Performing Arts Laboratory can be contacted at mpal@mweb.co.za
Mpumalanga can be in a lucrative position to stage its own arts festival the size of Arts Alive (Gauteng) and Poetry Africa (Kwazulu-Natal) if artists from the province started believing in the capacity of the province's artistic landscape to grow and create opportunities for existing artists without them having to go to Johannesburg to seek what is known in this country as a better life. Further on that can help in eradicating the obsession with the bright lights of Jozi, usually harboured by people from the deep-rural areas of the gigantic province and boost in the development of future artists at grassroots, so believes Mpumalanga Performing Arts Laboratory administator Margareth Nontokozo Phiri whose organisation recently staged a funky poetry festival. The festival was staged at the Civic Theatre which is enclosed within the Mbombela Local Municipality's Civic Centre office precinct on the same two days that SABC's highly criticized for lacking depth Lentswe was in town as well. Some of the poets who participated in the festival, like Agatha Naledi Dlamini moved on to take part in Lentswe later that night. Word from those who graced the SABC event was that old stereotypes about folks outside of Jozi seem to be the psyche of the little-known unintelligent judges the public broadcaster sent for what was supposed tobe a glorious event for the bards of Mpumalanga. Not only are they saying one of the judges was rude they also claim she seemed to expect people in the province to own elephants as part of their domesticated livestock. Shame on empty-heads who don't travel the country but only between Soweto and Jo'burg city centre. The SABC should send people with a hollistic view than its empty-heads who have built a reputation for the broadcaster as a dinosaur haunt with a twist of niggerisation. Phiri's organisation is eight-years-old this year and its area of focus is largely performing arts, drama, dance, poetry and community theatre groups, both their management and advocacy. "The event on the weekend came about after we decided to have an event with the poets we have been working with and invite others to come aboard. We realised that there are lots of poets out there and we wanted to have something dedicated to them", she told Kasiekulture. On the day there were more than 50 poets from places as far as Mashishing, Bushbuckridge and other parts of the province. This regarless of MPAL being more active in Nkomazi, Mbombela and Mjindi and slightly in other areas only through delegation. She says their intention is to have a provincial reach, resources allowing. Phiri says they are currently funded by the National Arts Council of South Africa and that helps their mandate to extend beyond advocacy to capacity building in starting and managing arts groups. What they have observed in the past is that organisations start, exist for a few years and cease to exist without much fanfare. "We'll like to have a bigger institution in the future where we can be able to stage drama, dance and poetry festivals as part of an annual calendar. We want to strengthen clubs and not see them die", Phiri says, adding that local artists shouldn't aspire to go to Jozi to grow but should stick around to help uproot societal stereotype that artists are people who can't secure employment in the mainstream economy. They have a broader vision of making the arts a form of employment. "We seem not to believe in what we do. I want to thank all the people who participated at the event and people should know that we do organise workshops and disseminate information on funding and artist support", she says. Mpumalanga Performing Arts Laboratory can be contacted at mpal@mweb.co.za
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