12/28/07
12/27/07
OPINION
Quality vs Quantity vs Gabbage
There is a real danger that I see lurking in the functioning of our media today. Television, radio, print and online are all suddenly drifting away from the tradition of what news are supposed to be. 'News' I was told by my teachers means 'newthings', meaning 'things that you have not had access to before they were communicated to you'. 'New' means 'not old'. 'Old' means 'been here before'. 'Been here before' means 'seen and heard'. 'Seen and heard' means 'in your memory bank already'.
Okay, but the way the media has been going there's something very worrying about their definition of what is news. See, the Bible will not claim to be a newspaper because it's dealing in inspired history and it has nothing new.
It was disheartening to some of us who think the media is a
mirror of society when we realised that historically probing historypapers like Sowetan had succumbed to the temptations of yellow journalism in the wake of the entrance of Daily Sun in the market. Sowetan ceased to write credible articles, critical book, CD, films and art reviews as seasoned journalists left the junk to associate with newspapers worth their salt. The deteroriation in value of Sowetan saw the emergence of Star Tonight as a new medium of interrogating South African arts across the racial divide when for a long time it was associated with everything white like ballet, pop, rock and roll, one man shows at the Baxter Theatre and slapstick. It was even known to feature those big ensemble shows written and directed by white people and featuring an all-black cast and not those produced by darkies.
Tonight suddenly and rightfully occupied the space left by Sowetan when it embraced sleaze and hired models to write columns. Their attempt to resuscitate a brand as pioneering as The World saw them give it sleaze to be able to navigate the readership figure minefield. Audit Bureau of Circulations wasn't taking bribes. Daily Sun was kicking their ass like nobody's business and they couldn't see that the reason was the columns they were giving to politicians instead of journalists that were alienating LSM 1-6. Shwashwi was born and anybody who can write shit about other people was hired to chase on everyone doing something positive with their lives. Suddenly there was a cellphone picture of a man in a compromising moment on the front page and damning text. All of a sudden the celebrity took them to court and it was proven that they were wrong. Well, that was sub judice. Anyway who's such a dumb picture editor to allow cellphone produced images to pass off as credible newspaper copy?
For the life of me I can't even believe that some stupid and paranoid editor at Sundayworld once called me 'a plagiarist' because he couldn't handle the impending launch of my first poetry book (Journey with Me)
which I made a mistake of discussing with him. The dreadlocked boy aspired to be a poet and the fact that nobody in the fraternity took him seriously (or maybe he didn't write anything worth being taken seriously) made him publish millions of articles about himself as a poet, even bragging about winning silver awards which we know are extended to every poet out there - millions of them. They are for every wannabe poet whose work can not speak for them but think that silverware would.
He tried to dirty up my name in a big way. I moved my lawyers to code red (high alert). The editor muthafucka didn't have sizeable balls to explain his moment of failure in a court of law but rather sent the big company's legal brains to bark at me. All in the name of strengthening his Shwashwi brand. Well, you know me, I give a dog a rope (even a chihuahua like him), I withdrew the summons because I didn't want to spend hard-earned money repairing his dented brain. Today, people have forgotten about him but I'm still here, publishing Kasiekulture and having released my second poetry book, Taste of my Vomit.
That is not the point though. The point is the Shwashwi culture and its repurcussions to the storytelling aspect of the media and our communal Afrikan traditions. Its mirror effect or lack of it. Along the same lines Mail&Guardian has grown in leaps and bounds to occupy a vacumn that should belong to Daily Sun, Sowetan and other so-called darkie newspapers out to patronise every black. M&G speaks more to their LSM than they do, and there is no chance in hell that they will speak (with or without authority) to M&G, City Press, Sunday Independent, Star and Sunday Times' LSM.
M&G's Friday supplement is my favourite and the motherbody's analysis and style of newswriting is at par with the New York Times if not ahead. Sunday Time's Lifestyle supplement also kicks butt. Sunday Independent is mostly dedicated to quality journalism. City Press misses the point with PULSE, which has degenerated since Mapula Sibanda left. Citizen is doing what Tonight used to be, speaking in a voice foreign to most darkie readers.
The Swashwi culture has seen emergence of television programmes like the short lived SABC1's Real Goboza and etv's Ripped. When radio stations have shows named Cheaters - Uyajola you wonder where is this world going.
At the end of every Shwashwi-inspired defamation nobody wins as lawsuits are secretly settled out of court to avoid embarassment. Sometimes you wonder 'what embarrasment' since publishing the junk itself is embarassing enough. No wonder we hardly see any of their journalists scooping any credible award like Vodacom or Mondi Shanduka.
One celebrity has been so smeared with slime that he said it's so disheartening that it appears that these junk tabloids have a ready budget to counter any cashless celebrity's claim of defamation - no matter how founded. Not that you'll never win litigation against them as my lawyer shrewdly advised me, 'they will make the case drag on for years at the High Court until you don't have money to litigate, then they'll apply for the case to be struck off the roll. And for them, they have taught anyone they will later defame a lesson not to mess with them. If your case can not be dragged they will settle out of court and make you sign a non-disclosure contract'
And this is the story of Shwashwi and that page 3 on City Press. One wonders whether those are worth the trouble or they are feeding a society hungry of such cheap gossip that does not constitute news. What's the point of eating something but later not needing a liquid substance to quench your thirst?
There is a real danger that I see lurking in the functioning of our media today. Television, radio, print and online are all suddenly drifting away from the tradition of what news are supposed to be. 'News' I was told by my teachers means 'newthings', meaning 'things that you have not had access to before they were communicated to you'. 'New' means 'not old'. 'Old' means 'been here before'. 'Been here before' means 'seen and heard'. 'Seen and heard' means 'in your memory bank already'.
Okay, but the way the media has been going there's something very worrying about their definition of what is news. See, the Bible will not claim to be a newspaper because it's dealing in inspired history and it has nothing new.
It was disheartening to some of us who think the media is a
mirror of society when we realised that historically probing historypapers like Sowetan had succumbed to the temptations of yellow journalism in the wake of the entrance of Daily Sun in the market. Sowetan ceased to write credible articles, critical book, CD, films and art reviews as seasoned journalists left the junk to associate with newspapers worth their salt. The deteroriation in value of Sowetan saw the emergence of Star Tonight as a new medium of interrogating South African arts across the racial divide when for a long time it was associated with everything white like ballet, pop, rock and roll, one man shows at the Baxter Theatre and slapstick. It was even known to feature those big ensemble shows written and directed by white people and featuring an all-black cast and not those produced by darkies.Tonight suddenly and rightfully occupied the space left by Sowetan when it embraced sleaze and hired models to write columns. Their attempt to resuscitate a brand as pioneering as The World saw them give it sleaze to be able to navigate the readership figure minefield. Audit Bureau of Circulations wasn't taking bribes. Daily Sun was kicking their ass like nobody's business and they couldn't see that the reason was the columns they were giving to politicians instead of journalists that were alienating LSM 1-6. Shwashwi was born and anybody who can write shit about other people was hired to chase on everyone doing something positive with their lives. Suddenly there was a cellphone picture of a man in a compromising moment on the front page and damning text. All of a sudden the celebrity took them to court and it was proven that they were wrong. Well, that was sub judice. Anyway who's such a dumb picture editor to allow cellphone produced images to pass off as credible newspaper copy?
For the life of me I can't even believe that some stupid and paranoid editor at Sundayworld once called me 'a plagiarist' because he couldn't handle the impending launch of my first poetry book (Journey with Me)
which I made a mistake of discussing with him. The dreadlocked boy aspired to be a poet and the fact that nobody in the fraternity took him seriously (or maybe he didn't write anything worth being taken seriously) made him publish millions of articles about himself as a poet, even bragging about winning silver awards which we know are extended to every poet out there - millions of them. They are for every wannabe poet whose work can not speak for them but think that silverware would.He tried to dirty up my name in a big way. I moved my lawyers to code red (high alert). The editor muthafucka didn't have sizeable balls to explain his moment of failure in a court of law but rather sent the big company's legal brains to bark at me. All in the name of strengthening his Shwashwi brand. Well, you know me, I give a dog a rope (even a chihuahua like him), I withdrew the summons because I didn't want to spend hard-earned money repairing his dented brain. Today, people have forgotten about him but I'm still here, publishing Kasiekulture and having released my second poetry book, Taste of my Vomit.
That is not the point though. The point is the Shwashwi culture and its repurcussions to the storytelling aspect of the media and our communal Afrikan traditions. Its mirror effect or lack of it. Along the same lines Mail&Guardian has grown in leaps and bounds to occupy a vacumn that should belong to Daily Sun, Sowetan and other so-called darkie newspapers out to patronise every black. M&G speaks more to their LSM than they do, and there is no chance in hell that they will speak (with or without authority) to M&G, City Press, Sunday Independent, Star and Sunday Times' LSM.
M&G's Friday supplement is my favourite and the motherbody's analysis and style of newswriting is at par with the New York Times if not ahead. Sunday Time's Lifestyle supplement also kicks butt. Sunday Independent is mostly dedicated to quality journalism. City Press misses the point with PULSE, which has degenerated since Mapula Sibanda left. Citizen is doing what Tonight used to be, speaking in a voice foreign to most darkie readers.
The Swashwi culture has seen emergence of television programmes like the short lived SABC1's Real Goboza and etv's Ripped. When radio stations have shows named Cheaters - Uyajola you wonder where is this world going.
At the end of every Shwashwi-inspired defamation nobody wins as lawsuits are secretly settled out of court to avoid embarassment. Sometimes you wonder 'what embarrasment' since publishing the junk itself is embarassing enough. No wonder we hardly see any of their journalists scooping any credible award like Vodacom or Mondi Shanduka.One celebrity has been so smeared with slime that he said it's so disheartening that it appears that these junk tabloids have a ready budget to counter any cashless celebrity's claim of defamation - no matter how founded. Not that you'll never win litigation against them as my lawyer shrewdly advised me, 'they will make the case drag on for years at the High Court until you don't have money to litigate, then they'll apply for the case to be struck off the roll. And for them, they have taught anyone they will later defame a lesson not to mess with them. If your case can not be dragged they will settle out of court and make you sign a non-disclosure contract'
And this is the story of Shwashwi and that page 3 on City Press. One wonders whether those are worth the trouble or they are feeding a society hungry of such cheap gossip that does not constitute news. What's the point of eating something but later not needing a liquid substance to quench your thirst?
12/26/07
REVISIT
Animal Farm Part Two
One of my friends who died too soon and whose poem appears on page 112 of Taste of my Vomit titled Aluta Continua was a hardened communist. He so believed in an egalitarian society to the point that even when me and him were at some stage (though a little apart) seeing the same girl he never really took his beef to WWE Smackdown. He would just nicely greet the missus and indicate to me to fuck off.
Then at some stage, after his wish has been fulfilled of meeting South African Communist Party honcho Dr Blade Nzimande and then Willie Madisha he came to me in a political frenzy. He was mad because as he said it was a communist party gathering and they were all deliberating in the same hall about the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) and calling each other comrade and my commander without regard for age or race.
'But when it was time for refreshments there was more than one serving point. They told us that one was for the leadership and one for the delegates. I confronted this other comrade and asked him 'where's the classless society we are all yepping about? How can we change the world into an egalitarian society when we have classes amongst us communists?'
When he yepped that to me I was lost in thought. See, a few weeks' earlier I was chilling with our woman on the verandah when he passed by and greeted me - only me, which rather unsettled the woman to complain to me why.
Two days later was when I was chilling with the chap and before he could tell me his politics I posed the woman's question to him. He told me that he used to love the woman and that she was not cheating on him and she had a coupon (money) and she was intelligent (she's a laboratory technician) and that he doesn't know why he hurt her and that when he saw us together irrespective of knowing that we were no longer in love he felt a lump on his throat and he told himself 'Thabo, you fucked up - big time'
Well that's the prelude. So, when he told me about how he couldn't dish his lunch from the same service point as the leadership I told him he was making a big mistake to have expected more. See, 'classless society' is a two letter word. And that's all it is'
He passed away some few weeks later. I loved the muthafcuka with my whole heart.
One of my friends who died too soon and whose poem appears on page 112 of Taste of my Vomit titled Aluta Continua was a hardened communist. He so believed in an egalitarian society to the point that even when me and him were at some stage (though a little apart) seeing the same girl he never really took his beef to WWE Smackdown. He would just nicely greet the missus and indicate to me to fuck off.
Then at some stage, after his wish has been fulfilled of meeting South African Communist Party honcho Dr Blade Nzimande and then Willie Madisha he came to me in a political frenzy. He was mad because as he said it was a communist party gathering and they were all deliberating in the same hall about the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) and calling each other comrade and my commander without regard for age or race.
'But when it was time for refreshments there was more than one serving point. They told us that one was for the leadership and one for the delegates. I confronted this other comrade and asked him 'where's the classless society we are all yepping about? How can we change the world into an egalitarian society when we have classes amongst us communists?'
When he yepped that to me I was lost in thought. See, a few weeks' earlier I was chilling with our woman on the verandah when he passed by and greeted me - only me, which rather unsettled the woman to complain to me why.
Two days later was when I was chilling with the chap and before he could tell me his politics I posed the woman's question to him. He told me that he used to love the woman and that she was not cheating on him and she had a coupon (money) and she was intelligent (she's a laboratory technician) and that he doesn't know why he hurt her and that when he saw us together irrespective of knowing that we were no longer in love he felt a lump on his throat and he told himself 'Thabo, you fucked up - big time'
Well that's the prelude. So, when he told me about how he couldn't dish his lunch from the same service point as the leadership I told him he was making a big mistake to have expected more. See, 'classless society' is a two letter word. And that's all it is'
He passed away some few weeks later. I loved the muthafcuka with my whole heart.
12/20/07
SCIENCE
A Day with Dr Kasiekulture
I have been in a doctor-mood recently and have entertained thoughts of opening my very own practise at The Promenade (I know there's one in every well-planned city) and get a Chinese thug from Chinatown to fake me a license. Like I was robust in the last post my practise will deal only in alternative healing. Did you know that for every functionality of every organ of your body there actually is an energy centre? It's more like a fuse in the fuse box for every electrical functioning of a car. That when you have a headache there's a spot that when it's massaged the headache will dissipitate?
I know because I have been told that for a man to ejaculate in a few seconds all a woman needs to do is to slot her tallest finger into his anus and circulate it nicely until she feels a little rough patch called a g-spot. Sexologists claim that if she massages this spot nicely a man will dish his load in a jiffy. If you thought the tip of your penis was the most sensitive then you are a novice. Now you know why there are so many homosexuals in metropolitan areas. Well, I don't know much about that but I know for sure that there's an errogenous spot called a clitoris which swells when rubbed nicely or licked and which stimulates a woman to an explosive orgasm if she's recognise the sudden flush as an orgasm. And you should also understand why a woman stands a better chance of satisfying another woman better than a man. Well, I'm not trying to be clever but to make a point that there's always a spot connected to any part of our body that has the potential to have a problem and a solution.
The body is so well-made that it can heal itself if we know where the drivers are. Some guys I know don't even know where the clitoris is and that nipples are sensitive. Well, me, as you should have figured by now am actually quite smart and know of a few things which I will focus on at my Promenade practise. My area of focus will be alternative healing, acupuncture, reflexology etc.
There is a church whereby they have a tendency to pierce anyone complaining of headaches in the nostrils with a crotchet until blood oozes out. They claim that it's dirty blood and they are reducing it. Okay these stupid folks get healed because faith is stronger than heroin. My Biology teacher told me that an adult human being has five litres of blood in their system and 206 bones. That all the blood should have traveled through the heart in a minute to be cleaned and re-oxyginated, which means that the 120 average heartbeats you need to be cerfitied healthy actually pump several litres of blood through your heart and releases the carbon-dioxide extorted by your heart from your blood flow through your nostrils. That's why when your heart beats faster your breath faster as well. Which means that if you get infected with HIV now, directly in your bloodstream you stand no chance of claiming that ARVs saved you - I guess so.
However, a friend once came to me all rusty and angry the other day and sat down without uttering a single word. I looked at him and asked him what's up and he said 'nothing' and kept quiet. I reprimanded him and said, 'look joe, you don't leave your own place, come to my place only to bore me with your cold presence'. He said he was having a bad day and I thought here goes Dr Kasiekulture.
After brushing his forehead with an ostrich feather during which he was giggling like a whore having an orgasm I said to him, 'When you are having a bad day you need to drink lots of water, it might be that you are dehydrated and there's not enough water to nourish your mood'. After doing it he was all jovial telling me about Loyiso Gola for President, a show he watched over the weekend.
I have been in a doctor-mood recently and have entertained thoughts of opening my very own practise at The Promenade (I know there's one in every well-planned city) and get a Chinese thug from Chinatown to fake me a license. Like I was robust in the last post my practise will deal only in alternative healing. Did you know that for every functionality of every organ of your body there actually is an energy centre? It's more like a fuse in the fuse box for every electrical functioning of a car. That when you have a headache there's a spot that when it's massaged the headache will dissipitate?I know because I have been told that for a man to ejaculate in a few seconds all a woman needs to do is to slot her tallest finger into his anus and circulate it nicely until she feels a little rough patch called a g-spot. Sexologists claim that if she massages this spot nicely a man will dish his load in a jiffy. If you thought the tip of your penis was the most sensitive then you are a novice. Now you know why there are so many homosexuals in metropolitan areas. Well, I don't know much about that but I know for sure that there's an errogenous spot called a clitoris which swells when rubbed nicely or licked and which stimulates a woman to an explosive orgasm if she's recognise the sudden flush as an orgasm. And you should also understand why a woman stands a better chance of satisfying another woman better than a man. Well, I'm not trying to be clever but to make a point that there's always a spot connected to any part of our body that has the potential to have a problem and a solution.
The body is so well-made that it can heal itself if we know where the drivers are. Some guys I know don't even know where the clitoris is and that nipples are sensitive. Well, me, as you should have figured by now am actually quite smart and know of a few things which I will focus on at my Promenade practise. My area of focus will be alternative healing, acupuncture, reflexology etc.
There is a church whereby they have a tendency to pierce anyone complaining of headaches in the nostrils with a crotchet until blood oozes out. They claim that it's dirty blood and they are reducing it. Okay these stupid folks get healed because faith is stronger than heroin. My Biology teacher told me that an adult human being has five litres of blood in their system and 206 bones. That all the blood should have traveled through the heart in a minute to be cleaned and re-oxyginated, which means that the 120 average heartbeats you need to be cerfitied healthy actually pump several litres of blood through your heart and releases the carbon-dioxide extorted by your heart from your blood flow through your nostrils. That's why when your heart beats faster your breath faster as well. Which means that if you get infected with HIV now, directly in your bloodstream you stand no chance of claiming that ARVs saved you - I guess so.However, a friend once came to me all rusty and angry the other day and sat down without uttering a single word. I looked at him and asked him what's up and he said 'nothing' and kept quiet. I reprimanded him and said, 'look joe, you don't leave your own place, come to my place only to bore me with your cold presence'. He said he was having a bad day and I thought here goes Dr Kasiekulture.
After brushing his forehead with an ostrich feather during which he was giggling like a whore having an orgasm I said to him, 'When you are having a bad day you need to drink lots of water, it might be that you are dehydrated and there's not enough water to nourish your mood'. After doing it he was all jovial telling me about Loyiso Gola for President, a show he watched over the weekend.
12/19/07
STORY
Why Lions Don't Suffer Heart Attacks
There's something I have been meaning to write about since April but have always encountered a distraction whenever I put pen to paper. I have a cousin who passed away some few years ago at the age of 25 following a long illness. Those who have read Taste of my Vomit will recall a poem on page 91 titled ghetto heaven. Now, when my cousin was ill there was all these stories of which medication would help him better than the other. The question was between the Western (scientific) or the traditional (indigenous knowledge) which are both available in heavy doses. It's called the orthodox and the alternative (alternative as in Oriental like acupuncture and reflexology which target the energy centres in every person)
Now, depending on who you choose to engage and how indoctrinated is that one you are likely to get totally opposing views. Those who have misread the Bible and misunderstood the inspired text when they had an option of asking the parts they don't understand from those in the know will always shout that non-scientific medication is demonic and evil. They will argue that the fact that the herbalist does not put on a white coat and carry a stethoscope and a pair of scissors means that he can not accurately diagnose because diagnosis is done through studying the vital signs - pulse and temperature.
When you argue further that old people never put a stethoscope on a cow to see that it was suffering from foot-and-mouth they discount the wisdom of bones and human instinct to be as effective as a stethoscope and what they don't understand is that a stethoscope is a headphone while bones are wireless technology. Human beings have relinguished so much of their responsibility to a gadget that still needs them to listen to it and translate the rythmn to discharge effectiveness. So, religious doctrine and a misunderstanding that Apostle Luke, who contributed the book of Luke in the Bible was a medical doctor (read herbalist) means that he was not in a white coat but ordinary clothes but knew from experience how to diagnose and prognoses. The only time anybody with Jesus was in white was when an angel visited them.
Often my argument would be that given that these herbs are buried deep underground and possess such strong remedial qualities, why would the Creator provide humankind with such knowledge not to deploy in the field of medicine but to rather resort to chemicals from a periodic table masquerading as medication to survive? Why would the Creator store these powerful herbs from the heat and soil erosion only for them to be discredited by people who never read between the lines because they were busy looking through microscope or ogling a test tube? Why are these herbs part of our ecosystem if they are not meant to be used to treat diseases?
On another note, one wonders what's the point of having a marijuana plant when the purpose is not to use it for whatever remedial purpose. United States rapper Scarface once rapped, 'she from the block of only finer crops.../a true friend in my time of need - all i need/ you natural you come from seeds - i decree/make me happy when i'm feeling pain/...Mary Jane i love you Mary Jane - do your thang/ through the seasons you ain't never change - stayed the same/... once again makes me happy just to hear your name/ do your thang Mary Jane'.
Discredited AIDS dissident Dr Matthius Rath claims that lions will never die of heart attacks because when they are ill they go back to the ground for Vitamins based remedy which boosts the immune system and not some laboratory product patented to a pharmaceutical company which will dispense it with its side effects like nausea and dizziness which will trigger vomitting which was not there before you took their muti.
Let's go back and dig the ground, probably even the cure for AIDS is buried somewhere in our backyards or the Amazon, forever concealed by Western medicinal dogma while as humans we come from the ground and we should go there for our solutions. One of my friends once asked me where would I take a TOYOTA brand if it started giving me problems. I responded 'to a TOYOTA workshop'. He asked me why wouldn't I take it to a BMW workshop. I argued that 'because TOYOTA knows its cars better than BMW'. Then he asked me why would we take our bodies to a different workshop when we are illing even though we come from the ground and when we die we return back there to nourish the soil so that those still living can have more fresh herbs? I did not respond, he said, that's why we need all herbs today - all the African potatoes and the beetroots and the garlic and their hidden friends, cuz they are our kin.
There's something I have been meaning to write about since April but have always encountered a distraction whenever I put pen to paper. I have a cousin who passed away some few years ago at the age of 25 following a long illness. Those who have read Taste of my Vomit will recall a poem on page 91 titled ghetto heaven. Now, when my cousin was ill there was all these stories of which medication would help him better than the other. The question was between the Western (scientific) or the traditional (indigenous knowledge) which are both available in heavy doses. It's called the orthodox and the alternative (alternative as in Oriental like acupuncture and reflexology which target the energy centres in every person)Now, depending on who you choose to engage and how indoctrinated is that one you are likely to get totally opposing views. Those who have misread the Bible and misunderstood the inspired text when they had an option of asking the parts they don't understand from those in the know will always shout that non-scientific medication is demonic and evil. They will argue that the fact that the herbalist does not put on a white coat and carry a stethoscope and a pair of scissors means that he can not accurately diagnose because diagnosis is done through studying the vital signs - pulse and temperature.
When you argue further that old people never put a stethoscope on a cow to see that it was suffering from foot-and-mouth they discount the wisdom of bones and human instinct to be as effective as a stethoscope and what they don't understand is that a stethoscope is a headphone while bones are wireless technology. Human beings have relinguished so much of their responsibility to a gadget that still needs them to listen to it and translate the rythmn to discharge effectiveness. So, religious doctrine and a misunderstanding that Apostle Luke, who contributed the book of Luke in the Bible was a medical doctor (read herbalist) means that he was not in a white coat but ordinary clothes but knew from experience how to diagnose and prognoses. The only time anybody with Jesus was in white was when an angel visited them.Often my argument would be that given that these herbs are buried deep underground and possess such strong remedial qualities, why would the Creator provide humankind with such knowledge not to deploy in the field of medicine but to rather resort to chemicals from a periodic table masquerading as medication to survive? Why would the Creator store these powerful herbs from the heat and soil erosion only for them to be discredited by people who never read between the lines because they were busy looking through microscope or ogling a test tube? Why are these herbs part of our ecosystem if they are not meant to be used to treat diseases?
On another note, one wonders what's the point of having a marijuana plant when the purpose is not to use it for whatever remedial purpose. United States rapper Scarface once rapped, 'she from the block of only finer crops.../a true friend in my time of need - all i need/ you natural you come from seeds - i decree/make me happy when i'm feeling pain/...Mary Jane i love you Mary Jane - do your thang/ through the seasons you ain't never change - stayed the same/... once again makes me happy just to hear your name/ do your thang Mary Jane'. Discredited AIDS dissident Dr Matthius Rath claims that lions will never die of heart attacks because when they are ill they go back to the ground for Vitamins based remedy which boosts the immune system and not some laboratory product patented to a pharmaceutical company which will dispense it with its side effects like nausea and dizziness which will trigger vomitting which was not there before you took their muti.
Let's go back and dig the ground, probably even the cure for AIDS is buried somewhere in our backyards or the Amazon, forever concealed by Western medicinal dogma while as humans we come from the ground and we should go there for our solutions. One of my friends once asked me where would I take a TOYOTA brand if it started giving me problems. I responded 'to a TOYOTA workshop'. He asked me why wouldn't I take it to a BMW workshop. I argued that 'because TOYOTA knows its cars better than BMW'. Then he asked me why would we take our bodies to a different workshop when we are illing even though we come from the ground and when we die we return back there to nourish the soil so that those still living can have more fresh herbs? I did not respond, he said, that's why we need all herbs today - all the African potatoes and the beetroots and the garlic and their hidden friends, cuz they are our kin.
12/18/07
WOW!
The Good Life - Lost in Translation
Of course I guess some of you have been wondering why on my last post I sounded as if I was saying bantus should not enjoy the money they toil so much to make. For those who misunderstood me to mean that, I'm sorry folks 'cause that's not what I was saying. See, I've got a bunch of folks I consider my friends, some who I have met at conferences, some met on the blogosphere - and remember what I said about the friends of Kasiekulture, they are all very smart and are amongst the most intelligent folks in South Afrika. Some of them are bloggers and continue to churn out excellent text whenever they sit infront of that flickering monitor. They work and make good money, and most often indulge in a dozen or two green bottles with either imaginary or real sex partners or friends. Some of them love marijuana and can often identify a dealer barely minutes of arriving in a new town. My last point was simply that you can not work hard for that cash only to spend it on plastic when steel and iron are for sale. Let me give you the geist of my argument. Some few weeks ago I went with friends to this other wow golf estate in White River to drop the girlfriend of a friend. Look, I have been to seven star hotels, condomeniums, lofts, penthouses, mansions, villas, townhouse complexes and suites. I have seen beauty in all its ugliness but I have never seen a residence as tranquil and homely as that estate which is situated rougly five kilometres from the hustle and bustle of the R40. Merely driving in past the access control I saw this other white guy carrying his golf sticks on that little car they use (I don't know its name or license code 'cause I don't own it and did not subscribe to Golf Digest). A few paces down I saw these other two white kids on mountain bikes cycling from a house with a five metre speed boat and a caravan. The possie was so quiet, there was no picket fences or people lost in good life translation or anything that looked like a threat. There's no tar road but Harvey tile paving and it's surrounded by pine trees and occupies roughly fifteen to twenty hectares of fertile land. It resembled a place whereby I would love every dark child to grow in, where they can be children and play with Barbie doll, play on the swing and ride bicycles in peace. To top it all they have their own river and bridges and speed humps and road signs and big manors and eeevvvvrrrryyyttthhhiiinnnggg. Now a few days later over the holidays I'm back in my ghetto and what I realise are young men in 
VW Golfs who are playing Oskido's CD at full blast, they are wearing Truworths capris and Markhams' golf shirts and are sipping Heineken and macking every single whore we have since written off in the townships because she has been in more than two orgies with syphillic losers. I understand because the guys are not around for the better part of the year so they don't know what's in or out or who has HIV or TB. But funny enough the folks don't listen because in that moment they feel like they own the whole damn world. And I wonder, now ways, over China's one billion dead bodies will anyone in a VW Golf own the world. Interesting, these folks don't sleep. Late at night when me and my friends are chilling over 16-year old triple distilled single malt whisky while discussing how to brand MTN on the VW Golf above and how to make Blackberry prepaid and affordable to LSM 1-6 they are still playing house music or 50cent and driving at high speed along the streets while the whores in the back seat, who are sipping Sarita or 911 are yelling 'ho, ho, ho!'. Me and my guys we are going for our second bottle of whisky and already thinking on how to stage Miss ANC and make a killing, and these guys are driving around with a cooler box full of cheap liquor that does a Manto on your liver. Now, when I said people should make money to buy options I meant that. For the life of me I don't see Yodemo or Kwaki of Kliffo or Afro just stressing in communications and event management to end up in a 
VW Golf they didn't choose but which was chosen by the bank for them because the bank has so much money it can afford to choose for you poor darkie as well. No ways folks, there are Hummers (both Hs) and Range Rovers (both Vs) out there. There is even a Bentley with the number plate Terries MP and I'm told the guy sells property. The Bentley which is mostly parked infront of the Mozambican Consulate is lonely 'cause there should be another one in NST with the number plate MAKGEMA MP or SEKUNJALO MP or AFRO MP. Having money to drive a car of your choice and live in a house of your choice and wear the clothes of your choice and drink the liquor of your choice at the bar of your choice and go on holiday to the destination of your choice is the real catch - that's what you should buy with money not brag with a few cents hiding behind a credit card. Overall what these boys are doing is not the good life as it should be - I keep telling my friends that it is actually the screensaver to the good life, the good life is somewhere behind that, on the active-life-desktop - waiting for you reading this post now to click it and give it another translation.
Of course I guess some of you have been wondering why on my last post I sounded as if I was saying bantus should not enjoy the money they toil so much to make. For those who misunderstood me to mean that, I'm sorry folks 'cause that's not what I was saying. See, I've got a bunch of folks I consider my friends, some who I have met at conferences, some met on the blogosphere - and remember what I said about the friends of Kasiekulture, they are all very smart and are amongst the most intelligent folks in South Afrika. Some of them are bloggers and continue to churn out excellent text whenever they sit infront of that flickering monitor. They work and make good money, and most often indulge in a dozen or two green bottles with either imaginary or real sex partners or friends. Some of them love marijuana and can often identify a dealer barely minutes of arriving in a new town. My last point was simply that you can not work hard for that cash only to spend it on plastic when steel and iron are for sale. Let me give you the geist of my argument. Some few weeks ago I went with friends to this other wow golf estate in White River to drop the girlfriend of a friend. Look, I have been to seven star hotels, condomeniums, lofts, penthouses, mansions, villas, townhouse complexes and suites. I have seen beauty in all its ugliness but I have never seen a residence as tranquil and homely as that estate which is situated rougly five kilometres from the hustle and bustle of the R40. Merely driving in past the access control I saw this other white guy carrying his golf sticks on that little car they use (I don't know its name or license code 'cause I don't own it and did not subscribe to Golf Digest). A few paces down I saw these other two white kids on mountain bikes cycling from a house with a five metre speed boat and a caravan. The possie was so quiet, there was no picket fences or people lost in good life translation or anything that looked like a threat. There's no tar road but Harvey tile paving and it's surrounded by pine trees and occupies roughly fifteen to twenty hectares of fertile land. It resembled a place whereby I would love every dark child to grow in, where they can be children and play with Barbie doll, play on the swing and ride bicycles in peace. To top it all they have their own river and bridges and speed humps and road signs and big manors and eeevvvvrrrryyyttthhhiiinnnggg. Now a few days later over the holidays I'm back in my ghetto and what I realise are young men in 
VW Golfs who are playing Oskido's CD at full blast, they are wearing Truworths capris and Markhams' golf shirts and are sipping Heineken and macking every single whore we have since written off in the townships because she has been in more than two orgies with syphillic losers. I understand because the guys are not around for the better part of the year so they don't know what's in or out or who has HIV or TB. But funny enough the folks don't listen because in that moment they feel like they own the whole damn world. And I wonder, now ways, over China's one billion dead bodies will anyone in a VW Golf own the world. Interesting, these folks don't sleep. Late at night when me and my friends are chilling over 16-year old triple distilled single malt whisky while discussing how to brand MTN on the VW Golf above and how to make Blackberry prepaid and affordable to LSM 1-6 they are still playing house music or 50cent and driving at high speed along the streets while the whores in the back seat, who are sipping Sarita or 911 are yelling 'ho, ho, ho!'. Me and my guys we are going for our second bottle of whisky and already thinking on how to stage Miss ANC and make a killing, and these guys are driving around with a cooler box full of cheap liquor that does a Manto on your liver. Now, when I said people should make money to buy options I meant that. For the life of me I don't see Yodemo or Kwaki of Kliffo or Afro just stressing in communications and event management to end up in a 
VW Golf they didn't choose but which was chosen by the bank for them because the bank has so much money it can afford to choose for you poor darkie as well. No ways folks, there are Hummers (both Hs) and Range Rovers (both Vs) out there. There is even a Bentley with the number plate Terries MP and I'm told the guy sells property. The Bentley which is mostly parked infront of the Mozambican Consulate is lonely 'cause there should be another one in NST with the number plate MAKGEMA MP or SEKUNJALO MP or AFRO MP. Having money to drive a car of your choice and live in a house of your choice and wear the clothes of your choice and drink the liquor of your choice at the bar of your choice and go on holiday to the destination of your choice is the real catch - that's what you should buy with money not brag with a few cents hiding behind a credit card. Overall what these boys are doing is not the good life as it should be - I keep telling my friends that it is actually the screensaver to the good life, the good life is somewhere behind that, on the active-life-desktop - waiting for you reading this post now to click it and give it another translation.
12/14/07
WOW!
WHAT MONEY CAN'T BUY
Yodemo has been dangling a huge 50KZAR carrot, covered in Prada and Louis Vuitton for all the gold-diggers and the equally greedy juicy whores. Our phly sista who art at Oh Really Now! has been nibbling at the carrot like a pack of hungry sardines. I thought, let me give these two a lesson they can share during Eskom's load-shedding in Nelspruit.
Lesson number one; When I was little I had a piggy bank where I would stash a few coins when other kids bought ice cream with theirs. Six months down the line they didn't have enough to buy ice cream but I had R13,46c and could afford buying 26 ice creams and still save 46c. However I bought one vanilla ice cream which I shared with my friends and then my very first novel (book) titled Black Beauty for R7,50c, saving myself R5,96c.
Many years later I still have a piggy bank the size of an elephant. When folks around me bought sweeteners and happy pills some years ago I bought myself a shelf company, 10workers Media.
10workers makes books (Taste of My Vomit), and my decision to buy a shelf company was simply to finally own the means of (book) production. Since I love reading books, magazines and newspapers I now plan to buy the whole fucking Exclusive Books and sell the books I don't like to you, your friends, family and neighbours while I chill and drink strong black coffee from the store coffee-shop.
The point behind this short lecture; Never dwell into what you have to the point that it defines who you are. You are eternally bigger than whatever you can attain. We are greater than material people that's why there is no excuse why we should stress about it when it's out there for the taking.
Remember that the fact that you didn't have what you have yesterday simply means that you might not have it tomorrow. Thus, if you let material defines who you are and how you relate to people you'll lose yourself the minute it disappears from your sight.
And soon you'll be getting into our nerves with delusions of grandeur about deals which are not happening.
Make enough money to look at an H2, Bentley, Lamborghini, a penthouse next to Keg n Jock and a farm in St Lucia knowing too damn well that you can afford them all at once, but you choose not to buy any of them instead a 3 bedroom manor at the White River Golf Estate. Money is good because it buys you choice - and choice is expensive.
At the end of the day whatever survives you are not the losers who'll be enriching lawyers fighting for your estate but your reputation. In 2005 many people lived and died, some wearing Giorgio Armani and Gucci. Some died in condomeniums. Who are they? Attend civil cases and you'll know them plus the losers they left behind.
Last weekend I attended the South African Literary Awards where there was a category named K Sello Duiker. Who was Kabelo Sello Duiker? If you don't know him now you still have a lifetime to know him - or otherwise Google and see how he is survived.
That French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once said that we shouldn't leave this world without leaving traces that will remind posterity of us. I hope you two are listening. Class dismissed!
Yodemo has been dangling a huge 50KZAR carrot, covered in Prada and Louis Vuitton for all the gold-diggers and the equally greedy juicy whores. Our phly sista who art at Oh Really Now! has been nibbling at the carrot like a pack of hungry sardines. I thought, let me give these two a lesson they can share during Eskom's load-shedding in Nelspruit.
Lesson number one; When I was little I had a piggy bank where I would stash a few coins when other kids bought ice cream with theirs. Six months down the line they didn't have enough to buy ice cream but I had R13,46c and could afford buying 26 ice creams and still save 46c. However I bought one vanilla ice cream which I shared with my friends and then my very first novel (book) titled Black Beauty for R7,50c, saving myself R5,96c.
Many years later I still have a piggy bank the size of an elephant. When folks around me bought sweeteners and happy pills some years ago I bought myself a shelf company, 10workers Media.
10workers makes books (Taste of My Vomit), and my decision to buy a shelf company was simply to finally own the means of (book) production. Since I love reading books, magazines and newspapers I now plan to buy the whole fucking Exclusive Books and sell the books I don't like to you, your friends, family and neighbours while I chill and drink strong black coffee from the store coffee-shop.
The point behind this short lecture; Never dwell into what you have to the point that it defines who you are. You are eternally bigger than whatever you can attain. We are greater than material people that's why there is no excuse why we should stress about it when it's out there for the taking.
Remember that the fact that you didn't have what you have yesterday simply means that you might not have it tomorrow. Thus, if you let material defines who you are and how you relate to people you'll lose yourself the minute it disappears from your sight.
And soon you'll be getting into our nerves with delusions of grandeur about deals which are not happening.
Make enough money to look at an H2, Bentley, Lamborghini, a penthouse next to Keg n Jock and a farm in St Lucia knowing too damn well that you can afford them all at once, but you choose not to buy any of them instead a 3 bedroom manor at the White River Golf Estate. Money is good because it buys you choice - and choice is expensive.At the end of the day whatever survives you are not the losers who'll be enriching lawyers fighting for your estate but your reputation. In 2005 many people lived and died, some wearing Giorgio Armani and Gucci. Some died in condomeniums. Who are they? Attend civil cases and you'll know them plus the losers they left behind.
Last weekend I attended the South African Literary Awards where there was a category named K Sello Duiker. Who was Kabelo Sello Duiker? If you don't know him now you still have a lifetime to know him - or otherwise Google and see how he is survived.
That French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once said that we shouldn't leave this world without leaving traces that will remind posterity of us. I hope you two are listening. Class dismissed!
12/12/07
NEWS
Why Lions Will Never Win Confrontations With Humans?
Professor Nhlanhla Maake related a story of a father who was daily telling his children old African folk tales about the lions and their human hunters. "The father always told them about how the lions would have resilience, they would fight back but at the end of the story the lions were always conquered by humans. Then one day the children asked their father, 'dad, why is it that all the time the lions are the conquered and there's never a time that the hunters lose the fight?' The father looked at his children and said, 'my children, until lions learn how to write their own stories, they will never win a single confrontation with humans". That set the theme for the third installment of the South African Literary Award which took place at Vodaworld on December 8th.
Scores of South African authors, prominent and less known were honoured at this glittering event that was graced by South Africa's deputy Minister of Arts and Culture Mantobazana Botha who delivered the keynote and other distinguished guests of honour from the writing and political fraternity. There was Dr Gomolemo Mokae, Dr Malindisi from Kanyamazane, Mpumalanga Public Works MEC Madala Masuku, Timbila founder and poet Vonani Bila, Caron Communications' Busi Ziqubu, Finnish journalist and photographer Mark Waller, Department of Arts and Culture's and author Siphiwo Mahala, journalist and author Flaxman Qoopane and many other important people.
This year, contrary to two years ago when the awards were inaugurated in Polokwane and last year when they took place in Bloemfontein, there were three additional award categories. On its inaugural year there was only a lifetime achievement category that saw writers like Prof Es'kia Mphahlele, Miriam Tlali, James Matthews and many others honoured. This year a new category, the K Sello Duiker Memorial Award for Young Writers was introduced. It is in honour of the passed on author of 13Cents, The Quiet Violence of Dreams and another posthumous novel. Literary Journalism Award was also introduced and sponsored by Sowetan and the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award for Writing in African languages.
Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel Award laureate was honoured during the inaugural installment of the awards two years ago. She is now honoured through an award which only recognises writing in nine of South Africa's languages. Speaking during the awards Gordimer once again urged young writers today to ease a little bit on promoting a language that has thousands of authors scattered all over the world to promote but rather focus on their small languages which are threatened by globalisation. She does not recognise Afrikaans as an indigenous language and as such literature in it does not stand to scoop any of the awards that she dishes out.
Gordimer futher warned that it has become more imperative for Africans to embrace their own languages and to use them to express their reaction to the world around them. She said that those were called mother tongue because they are the first languages that every child heard at birth. She called for the affirmation of the official nine indigenous South African languages.
The Nadine Gordimer award went to Otty Nxumalo (69), a career educations and bureaucrat who has also published scores of novels, short stories and poetry, most notably being the authorised biography of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini. According to information supplied by writesAssociates, Nxumalo holds degrees from University of South Africa, University of Zululand and Havard University and has taught in various institutions including Governor's School in New Jersey, Lesley College, Havard University and UKZN.
Mikhomazi Ngobeni (35) took home the K. Sello Duiker award for his xiTsonga writings, most notably Ndzeko wa Rixaka. His other memorable works include Hakunene Tiko ri file, Timbangi ta vutomi, Xigwitsirisi xa malovisi, Xitlati xa Vatsonga, Swihundla xa Vutomi and Mbhombela. Ngobeni was nominated in this category alongside Madams author Zukiswa Wanner and Niq Mhlongo (Dog eat Dog). Prior to the award the Judah Duiker, the late Kabelo's father delivered a heartwarming 'belated eulogy' of his son and his achievements, including that he was the first one to learn how to swim in the Duiker household.
Notable contributors to the literary landscape were honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Amongst them were Tsotsi author Athol Fugard (65), Freedom Park CEO Mongane Wally Serote (63), prolific author of The Hajji Mr Ahmed Essop (76), Kubantwana Babantwana Bam' author Sindiwe Magona, veteran wordsmith Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali (67), Stephen Gray (66), Gladys Thomas who capped her winning by reciting a poem for all the women and a few others.
Three authors shared the Literary Posthomous Award, amongst them Welcome to Our Hillbrow author Phaswane Mpe and Sipho Sepamla (The Soweto I love) and Dalene Matthee (Fiela se Kind).
The highly contested turf was the new Literary Journalism Award which was jointly won by Victor Dlamini for his book club and podcasts and veteran writer Bongani Madondo who is reported to be the only journalist to have interviewed the late Brenda Fassie for over sixty hours. Now Dlamini is quite interesting because not only is he a book worm but a serious media player. He is director of Chillibush Advertising Agency and co-director of Dlamini-Weil Communications, the big firm with the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Award contract. Madondo is a feature writer for Sunday Times Lifestyle and is the author of Hot Type. Recently his works can be found in the new Empire magazine.
writesAssociates, which organises the award together with the Department of Arts and Culture and Sowetan and SABC as media sponsors announced that next year there will be another category for Television and Radio scriptwriting. While the language was not disclosed, it is only believed that the SABC mandate to the majority of the country's residency will be reflected through the criteria.
Executive Director of the awards Raks Morakabe said that he has ambitions that the awards should become as prestigious as the Nobel Award and every writer should aspire to win a South African Literary Award. Well if December 8th's event was anything to go by, they are getting there.
The programme was directed by Motsumi Makhene and entertainment provided by veteran Themba Mkhize and Friends, poetry by Mphela Makgoba, dance by African Theatre Dance Group, saxophone by Bongani Moloi and Drums by Lucas Bonoko. And the lions might be able to tell their stories of massive conquests over humans immediately humans stop writing. History is always written by the conquerers.
Professor Nhlanhla Maake related a story of a father who was daily telling his children old African folk tales about the lions and their human hunters. "The father always told them about how the lions would have resilience, they would fight back but at the end of the story the lions were always conquered by humans. Then one day the children asked their father, 'dad, why is it that all the time the lions are the conquered and there's never a time that the hunters lose the fight?' The father looked at his children and said, 'my children, until lions learn how to write their own stories, they will never win a single confrontation with humans". That set the theme for the third installment of the South African Literary Award which took place at Vodaworld on December 8th.
Scores of South African authors, prominent and less known were honoured at this glittering event that was graced by South Africa's deputy Minister of Arts and Culture Mantobazana Botha who delivered the keynote and other distinguished guests of honour from the writing and political fraternity. There was Dr Gomolemo Mokae, Dr Malindisi from Kanyamazane, Mpumalanga Public Works MEC Madala Masuku, Timbila founder and poet Vonani Bila, Caron Communications' Busi Ziqubu, Finnish journalist and photographer Mark Waller, Department of Arts and Culture's and author Siphiwo Mahala, journalist and author Flaxman Qoopane and many other important people.This year, contrary to two years ago when the awards were inaugurated in Polokwane and last year when they took place in Bloemfontein, there were three additional award categories. On its inaugural year there was only a lifetime achievement category that saw writers like Prof Es'kia Mphahlele, Miriam Tlali, James Matthews and many others honoured. This year a new category, the K Sello Duiker Memorial Award for Young Writers was introduced. It is in honour of the passed on author of 13Cents, The Quiet Violence of Dreams and another posthumous novel. Literary Journalism Award was also introduced and sponsored by Sowetan and the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award for Writing in African languages.
Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel Award laureate was honoured during the inaugural installment of the awards two years ago. She is now honoured through an award which only recognises writing in nine of South Africa's languages. Speaking during the awards Gordimer once again urged young writers today to ease a little bit on promoting a language that has thousands of authors scattered all over the world to promote but rather focus on their small languages which are threatened by globalisation. She does not recognise Afrikaans as an indigenous language and as such literature in it does not stand to scoop any of the awards that she dishes out.
Gordimer futher warned that it has become more imperative for Africans to embrace their own languages and to use them to express their reaction to the world around them. She said that those were called mother tongue because they are the first languages that every child heard at birth. She called for the affirmation of the official nine indigenous South African languages.
The Nadine Gordimer award went to Otty Nxumalo (69), a career educations and bureaucrat who has also published scores of novels, short stories and poetry, most notably being the authorised biography of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini. According to information supplied by writesAssociates, Nxumalo holds degrees from University of South Africa, University of Zululand and Havard University and has taught in various institutions including Governor's School in New Jersey, Lesley College, Havard University and UKZN.Mikhomazi Ngobeni (35) took home the K. Sello Duiker award for his xiTsonga writings, most notably Ndzeko wa Rixaka. His other memorable works include Hakunene Tiko ri file, Timbangi ta vutomi, Xigwitsirisi xa malovisi, Xitlati xa Vatsonga, Swihundla xa Vutomi and Mbhombela. Ngobeni was nominated in this category alongside Madams author Zukiswa Wanner and Niq Mhlongo (Dog eat Dog). Prior to the award the Judah Duiker, the late Kabelo's father delivered a heartwarming 'belated eulogy' of his son and his achievements, including that he was the first one to learn how to swim in the Duiker household.
Notable contributors to the literary landscape were honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Amongst them were Tsotsi author Athol Fugard (65), Freedom Park CEO Mongane Wally Serote (63), prolific author of The Hajji Mr Ahmed Essop (76), Kubantwana Babantwana Bam' author Sindiwe Magona, veteran wordsmith Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali (67), Stephen Gray (66), Gladys Thomas who capped her winning by reciting a poem for all the women and a few others.
Three authors shared the Literary Posthomous Award, amongst them Welcome to Our Hillbrow author Phaswane Mpe and Sipho Sepamla (The Soweto I love) and Dalene Matthee (Fiela se Kind).The highly contested turf was the new Literary Journalism Award which was jointly won by Victor Dlamini for his book club and podcasts and veteran writer Bongani Madondo who is reported to be the only journalist to have interviewed the late Brenda Fassie for over sixty hours. Now Dlamini is quite interesting because not only is he a book worm but a serious media player. He is director of Chillibush Advertising Agency and co-director of Dlamini-Weil Communications, the big firm with the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Award contract. Madondo is a feature writer for Sunday Times Lifestyle and is the author of Hot Type. Recently his works can be found in the new Empire magazine.
writesAssociates, which organises the award together with the Department of Arts and Culture and Sowetan and SABC as media sponsors announced that next year there will be another category for Television and Radio scriptwriting. While the language was not disclosed, it is only believed that the SABC mandate to the majority of the country's residency will be reflected through the criteria.
Executive Director of the awards Raks Morakabe said that he has ambitions that the awards should become as prestigious as the Nobel Award and every writer should aspire to win a South African Literary Award. Well if December 8th's event was anything to go by, they are getting there.
The programme was directed by Motsumi Makhene and entertainment provided by veteran Themba Mkhize and Friends, poetry by Mphela Makgoba, dance by African Theatre Dance Group, saxophone by Bongani Moloi and Drums by Lucas Bonoko. And the lions might be able to tell their stories of massive conquests over humans immediately humans stop writing. History is always written by the conquerers.
12/10/07
NEWS
The Night of the Long Knives. Fact or Fiction?
The last post I did about Antjie Krog and her book was a little tense, I am told. One commentator whose comment I rejected told me that I seem to be too edgy for democracy's liking. I asked what's the point of democracy if China is flourishing economically without national elections? Even if they tried to have them obviously the billion people would create a logistics nightmare for the Chinese Electoral Commission.
So, today I thought as it is towards the end of the year I might gloss over a few stories that made headlines in the mainstream media this year. However, the one I really liked was about the Night Of Long Knives conspiracy theory. A metaphor borrowed from Adolf Hitler's slaughter of the remnants of a regime he toppled in a bloodless coup.
A bunch of boers with nefarous motives, drunk from mampoer announced to one another through email and sms over a cold weekend that there was a collective darkie conspiracy to kill all boers in the event that old former president Nelson Mandela woke up dead due to old age or illness.
Paranoia gripped the thousands of farmers still on disputed land that is currently eyed by the Land Restitution Commission. Some stockpiled on canned food, powdered milk, cornflakes, bottled water, toilet paper, biltong, soap bars, toothpaste and airtime, causing the reserve bank to hike interest rates to meet the inflation. Some bought millions of rounds of ammunition and filled empty mielie meal bags with river sand preparing for the kaffir commandos while darkies were busy building stadia for 2010 and not even bothering to learn hand-to-hand combat.
That just went to show the shallowness of parts of the Afrikaner community of this country. It was puzzling to others but to some of us it was a repetition of the same stupidity that saw the whole volk being led by a white bearded Afrikaner armed with a Z88 pistol while other nations are led by people with university degrees. The whole volk that has produced academics, authors, poets, businesspeople and intellectuals subjecting itself to the leadership of a man who can not properly mount a horse.
After studying what I thought would really happen if Mandela died I came to a conclusion that whoever believed the rhetoric is as stupid as the people who created it on Microsoft Word. Remember that of all the Special Branch cops who killed, maimed, tortured and brutalised darkies only the deceased Gideon Niewoudt was assaulted by a black adolescent in a rage. All those ugly baboons that sat at the Amnesty Commission and lied while provided with lawyers paid for by the state never received a simple klap.
My conclusion; Such rhetoric should not even be taken seriously since it comes from schirzophrenic farmers with a cellphone and an email address whose cellphones' reception should be blocked and webserver blacklisted (finally 'black' will make sense).
In short, this is one of the stories I will continue to bring you until the end of the year.
The last post I did about Antjie Krog and her book was a little tense, I am told. One commentator whose comment I rejected told me that I seem to be too edgy for democracy's liking. I asked what's the point of democracy if China is flourishing economically without national elections? Even if they tried to have them obviously the billion people would create a logistics nightmare for the Chinese Electoral Commission.
So, today I thought as it is towards the end of the year I might gloss over a few stories that made headlines in the mainstream media this year. However, the one I really liked was about the Night Of Long Knives conspiracy theory. A metaphor borrowed from Adolf Hitler's slaughter of the remnants of a regime he toppled in a bloodless coup.
A bunch of boers with nefarous motives, drunk from mampoer announced to one another through email and sms over a cold weekend that there was a collective darkie conspiracy to kill all boers in the event that old former president Nelson Mandela woke up dead due to old age or illness.
Paranoia gripped the thousands of farmers still on disputed land that is currently eyed by the Land Restitution Commission. Some stockpiled on canned food, powdered milk, cornflakes, bottled water, toilet paper, biltong, soap bars, toothpaste and airtime, causing the reserve bank to hike interest rates to meet the inflation. Some bought millions of rounds of ammunition and filled empty mielie meal bags with river sand preparing for the kaffir commandos while darkies were busy building stadia for 2010 and not even bothering to learn hand-to-hand combat.
That just went to show the shallowness of parts of the Afrikaner community of this country. It was puzzling to others but to some of us it was a repetition of the same stupidity that saw the whole volk being led by a white bearded Afrikaner armed with a Z88 pistol while other nations are led by people with university degrees. The whole volk that has produced academics, authors, poets, businesspeople and intellectuals subjecting itself to the leadership of a man who can not properly mount a horse.
After studying what I thought would really happen if Mandela died I came to a conclusion that whoever believed the rhetoric is as stupid as the people who created it on Microsoft Word. Remember that of all the Special Branch cops who killed, maimed, tortured and brutalised darkies only the deceased Gideon Niewoudt was assaulted by a black adolescent in a rage. All those ugly baboons that sat at the Amnesty Commission and lied while provided with lawyers paid for by the state never received a simple klap.
My conclusion; Such rhetoric should not even be taken seriously since it comes from schirzophrenic farmers with a cellphone and an email address whose cellphones' reception should be blocked and webserver blacklisted (finally 'black' will make sense).
In short, this is one of the stories I will continue to bring you until the end of the year.
12/6/07
REVIEW
In My Country the whites have not yet apologised for their complicity in apartheid, its aftermaths and cruelty. They are rather pleading apathy and ignorace to what was on TV1 's Netwerk every night.
In the Country of My Skull the Afrikaners fail to understand why 13 years of freedom is not equal to 400 years of slavery and are marching against redressal policies.
Antjie Krog's book Country of My Skull attempts to understand. And today we give you the review.
It's quite easy to pile up awards on Antjie Krog's seminal tale of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy through the medium of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Amnestry Commission becau
se it is a story not solicited by the nation united in its racial and ethnic diversity but told anyway. It's equally easy to rate the book as the best South African (his)story every told by an Afrikaner author caught up in the guilt of her people and the role they collectively played in the oppression of natives for over 400 years. We, for the sake of this exercise take the context back to 1652. I read the thick 312 page book, not as a prelude to a review but as a research tool for the book that I'm currently working on about the shortcomings of the TRC titled SIBONGILE; THE NOKUTHULA SIMELANE STORY. I read it to learn how to structure a story of a tale solicited but never told by the boers who came before the commission with ready inflated lies.
Krog writes her thought-provoking book from a seldom objective, often guilty position at seeing how former president Frederick Willem de Klerk (representing the oppressive regime), who as head of state also headed the security apparatus of the regime pleaded ignorance and over-zealousness on the part of his police at the murders that took place on his guard. While Krog is successful at attributing one or two of her obviously own disgusts to one or two of the experts she refers to so many times in the book it risks making Country of my Skull to read like a history (herstory) thesis instead of a non-fiction novel.
It's her psycholanalysis of the overly-forgiving victims that exposes Krog as a self-serving Afrikaner writer out to seek the justification of what her ancestors did to innocent people, all in the name of Afrikaner nationalism. She often over-simplifies the pain of the victims and through her contacts raises questions of collective bantu sanity beyond comprehension or mental instability, bantu numbness or a forgiving god in the form of bantu victims. What comes across as fascinating about the book is Krog's success in telling the story of both the victim and the perpetrator with the sincerities they 'both' at times warrant. But one can ask why would a writer obsess with political correctness or seek sensible words to tell stories of white men who killed a black man who was a father, chopped off his palm and kept it in a bottle, often flaunting it to the family when bored at the police station while the poor Afrikans, indebted to their traditions wanted to bury a complete human being? Or one might seek to know why would anyone attempt to fathom words to humanise a group of men who killed then fried using diesel and dynamites another man while they also had their braai barely metres away? Why try to give the Devil a human face? Is it to be able to interrogate it face to face or to simplify its stealth disappearance within us once we are done archiving its lies as truth?
It is the strength and again the undoing of the style of narrative that Krog chose to vividly tell the gory stories. It undoubtedly is not easy to capture the atrocities of so many years and still maintain your level of journalistic sanity, which is something the author must be applauded for. It becomes worrying when a very tiny hypocrite surfaces at the point where she raises that one moment where Winnie Mandela, sitting with Limpho Hani said 'crazy mothefucker' at the testimony of Janusz Walusz and Clive Derby-Lewis as significant. Here the irony is temporarily lifted, since, here are two men who scored the biggest prize in the apartheid war confronting two women who lost the most. Men who managed to achieve the work the boers failed to accomplish when they invaded Lesotho in 1981 and Botswana soon later - to kill South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani. And instead of relishing the strength of the moment and the defeat of the Afrikaner vs Native dogma, Krog chooses to pick what Winnie says while later dedicating a whole lot of text to her as the feared and hated Hang Woman of Soweto to the point that her house was razed.
Krog's interpretation, through the eyes of her dodgy feelings experts, of the crimes of the Mandela Football Club leaves much to be desired or interrogated. Here, I feel that once again the author fails to carry the heavy mantle as dictated by her position when she was covering the commission's hearings.
She succeeds in portraying Winnie as the cold-goddess-statured-good-mama-turned-evil, which she indeed was, according to evidence led in different forums. But it's her attempt to understand where Winnie snapped that buries the truth about Stompie Seipei and others under the rubble of guilt. Somehow one is drawn to a defeatist approach whereby Krog was somehow doubting her credentials to psychoanalyse Winnie, lest she be told she comes from the land of the windmills.
Krog also successfully paints in black the post-27years in jail relationship of Winnie and Nelson, the Mandela duo who had become the torch and torchbearer of a nation cowed up under darkness of subjugation. The torchbearer fell, leaving the torch to risk dying out as the oil was gradually spilling. Then, she treats Mandela as a holy cow and doesn't want to delve much into his failures and weaknesses in the whole Winnie Madikizela-Mandela affair. At the end the saint remains while Winnie is left hanging in the court of community justice, a forum she knows too well and which has seen many victims of her reign end up at - often without a pulse.
Interesting enough, when Winnie was going to face the law in one of her felonies family lawyer George Bizos SC told etv's 3rd Degree that Nelson requested him to represent Winnie. This is after allegations that Winnie used to slap Nelson, Sunday newspaper reports that she had extra-marital affairs, notably with a young man we all so know about but will act as if we don't know to save our asses from what happened to those who dared challenge the dreadnought. He's up there with a title of a Group Chief Executive Officer of a parastatal while we opt for selective amnesia.
Nelson continued to support his failed socio-political experiment. However Country of my Skull is actually TRC and Amnesty Commission transcripts trancribed again and again by Krog. Most of the book is made up of what the victims and perpetrators tearfully said - verbatim. Krog, as Antjie Samuel was there as an SABC radio reporter and could add some flesh where the whole nation saw a skeleton and called it a ghost.
She had access to Commission Chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other important commissioners like Alex Boraine and Dumisa Ntsebeza. She fell in love with the commissioners and their work and later on in the book you realise that her objectivity falls by the wayside when dealing with the commission and its shortcomings. As an Afrikaner reporter who knew about how other political parties leisurely rhetorized about driving boers to the sea, it becomes obvious that Krog wanted the commission to succeed against all odds so that her children are not driven to the sea in the event that if failed.
One quality that can not be taken away from the book is that it is an important historic narrative that only fails by demonising the Azanian People's Liberation Army cadres who indiscriminately killed whites in bars and churches, for the benefit of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
This is while at the same time she fails to cover Robert McBride's Magoos Bar bombing as similar to that undertaken by the three APLA operatives and for which they appeared before the Amnesty Commission, and for which Krog focused on the stories of the white victims instead. Instead of understanding that their shortcomings where a direct result of lack of leadership at military level that saw them pick own targets and spray innocents with bullets, Krog tries hard to understand why the African National Congress had a problem with the TRC report and why it felt it deserved carpet amnesty, even though it equally tortured and killed people at Quatro, Zimbabwe, Maputo and Lusaka and had some necklaced in its name.
Somehow, going through the book one draws a conclusion that Krog was charmed by cold-hearted killing machine Joe Mamasela and intrigued by some victims who had an overdose of humour when relating their agony. Krog treats Mamasela with the kind of kiddy gloves not afforded other similar killers. As if playing to the patriotism stereotype of post'94 she deliberately fails to inform us why Dirk Coetzee's crimes were swiftly sweeped under the carpet, which has something to do with national security. She also fails to tell us about Wouter Basson and the reason why he was not pursued with gusto to testify before the commission, which also has something to do with national security.
Krog also makes her insecutiries shine through the book. Being an Afrikaner who benefited from apartheid through entitlement because opportunities were made available to them through job reservation, she makes the most not to moralise around that. She simplifies the current quagmire of middle-aged Afrikaner oomies and tannies who complain that affirmative action is segregating them while the truth is that they can't measure up in an environment that they need to compete as equals with five billion other people. They are used to being confined to the four corners of an ossewa. In a conversation she attributes to her black Free State friends Eddy and Mamogele, Krogs raises these dilemmas in her own subtle way, such as if darkies could, with Afrikaner Affirmartive Action manage to flourish and some become soccer club owners, tycoons, taxi operators without threatening to abandon the beloved country, what case do the bunch of whities screaming 'bloody murder!' have when they have been given a headstart by policies meant to keep the natives on their marks forever. Darkies built the taxi industry without a headstart, they started soccer teams without a headstart, they built civic movements without a headstart, they became butchery owners, tycoons, shebeen operators without a headstart. Then why should an Afrikaner be prioritised now when they had been given a headstart for 400 years? What incubation do boers want and from whom who is unaware of the unnecessary benefits they illegally enjoyed?
Overall, if you have never read the book I will advise you the same way reviewer Alistair Boddy-Evans noted,"If you want to understand modern South Africa you must understand the politics of the last century. There is no better place to start than with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Antjie Krog's masterwork places you in the mind of both oppressed black freedom fighters and entrenched white Afrikaner."
From our side we don't want to quote Krog's laid out thesis since we heard some Merafe (hip-hop group) saying, 'o sek' a rasa o tla e senya' (don't shout you'll mess it up). But we are tempted to give you these lines, before you go and buy the book for posterity sake,
"During the period looked into by the Truth Commission, 2500 people were hanged in the country - a hundred peopel each year. Ninety-five percent of those hanged were black - 100 percent of those who sentenced them were white. By 1989 there were 80 people on Death Row in Pretoria for politically related offenses. In that year, in what came to be known as "the Christmas Rush", 21 people were executed during the third week of December - seven on Tuesday, seven on Wednesday and seven on Thursday" (Paula McBride) - Page 198
And then the majority of whites dare say that they didn't know, never took part or never condoned the oppression of natives, please excuse the darkies' cynicism of your plastic remorse. 'Malcom X said that racism was like a Cadillac - ', Krog wrote, 'there's a new model every year. The latest model is the denial of whites'.
* In My Country (country of my skull take 2)
Antjie Krog's beautiful book was defeated by the attempt to make it a 105 minute film which's working title was first Truth before it was finally titled In My Country. Jim Corveddu wrote these lines in his review for PulpVideo, "I think the weakest elements of this film are in screenwriter Ann Peacock's dialogue and in the construction of the Anna Malan and brother Boetie characters. The first for taking on just a little too much burden of responsibility, especially in one somewhat uncharacteristic scene at one of the hearings with a particularly gory testimony, and the latter for being incomplete when a key development occurs that should have played more into the storyline and into Anna's reactions."
Now look, one author whose works has been adapted into screen once told me that the easiest way to be bored with your own creativity is to give it to the Americans and the British to write the screenplay. "You will not recognise your own creativity once they are done programming your free thoughts into their stereotype framework".
Well, I don't know if Krog was happy with the folks who played characters in the reeler emanating from her realer because for me what was strong about the book was not victims crying and some losing consiousness but Krog's exploration of her own community's understanding or lack of it, of why darkies were so overly-forgiving. Why darkies didn't demand that the countries that subsidised apartheid contribute billions into South Africa post-'94 the same way Germany built Israel. The book raised moral questions which were airbrushed by the surreality of secondary storytellers limited to less than two hours of reel.
I have always believed that scriptwriters must be creative people who can spark ideas without relying on authors to research books for them to adapt to screenplay. Write your own shit people. In My Country fails the beautiful work that gave Country of My Skull all the awards. No wonder In My Country didn't quite become the 1970s thriller All The President's Men the makers wanted it to become.
The book captured the army general's denials to co-operate, the police's top brass' sending of footsoldiers to take the Tutu bullet, PW Botha's aquatic circus, de Klerk's balding comedy, Thabo Mbeki's greying outburst, Mandela's undue diplomacy, Tutu's bastardized threats and prayers, Ntsebeza's near implication in an attack etc, and much more stuff the film failed to capture with the emotion the incidents deserved. Corveddu finally wrote, "From what I've heard about the book by Antje Krog, I can understand why anyone who had read it before seeing this movie might be disappointed, but it was certainly clear to me by the marketing that this was a romance and not a cinematic litany of the horrors of Apartheid.". Kasiekulture couldn't agree more.
In the Country of My Skull the Afrikaners fail to understand why 13 years of freedom is not equal to 400 years of slavery and are marching against redressal policies.
Antjie Krog's book Country of My Skull attempts to understand. And today we give you the review.
It's quite easy to pile up awards on Antjie Krog's seminal tale of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy through the medium of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Amnestry Commission becau
se it is a story not solicited by the nation united in its racial and ethnic diversity but told anyway. It's equally easy to rate the book as the best South African (his)story every told by an Afrikaner author caught up in the guilt of her people and the role they collectively played in the oppression of natives for over 400 years. We, for the sake of this exercise take the context back to 1652. I read the thick 312 page book, not as a prelude to a review but as a research tool for the book that I'm currently working on about the shortcomings of the TRC titled SIBONGILE; THE NOKUTHULA SIMELANE STORY. I read it to learn how to structure a story of a tale solicited but never told by the boers who came before the commission with ready inflated lies.Krog writes her thought-provoking book from a seldom objective, often guilty position at seeing how former president Frederick Willem de Klerk (representing the oppressive regime), who as head of state also headed the security apparatus of the regime pleaded ignorance and over-zealousness on the part of his police at the murders that took place on his guard. While Krog is successful at attributing one or two of her obviously own disgusts to one or two of the experts she refers to so many times in the book it risks making Country of my Skull to read like a history (herstory) thesis instead of a non-fiction novel.
It's her psycholanalysis of the overly-forgiving victims that exposes Krog as a self-serving Afrikaner writer out to seek the justification of what her ancestors did to innocent people, all in the name of Afrikaner nationalism. She often over-simplifies the pain of the victims and through her contacts raises questions of collective bantu sanity beyond comprehension or mental instability, bantu numbness or a forgiving god in the form of bantu victims. What comes across as fascinating about the book is Krog's success in telling the story of both the victim and the perpetrator with the sincerities they 'both' at times warrant. But one can ask why would a writer obsess with political correctness or seek sensible words to tell stories of white men who killed a black man who was a father, chopped off his palm and kept it in a bottle, often flaunting it to the family when bored at the police station while the poor Afrikans, indebted to their traditions wanted to bury a complete human being? Or one might seek to know why would anyone attempt to fathom words to humanise a group of men who killed then fried using diesel and dynamites another man while they also had their braai barely metres away? Why try to give the Devil a human face? Is it to be able to interrogate it face to face or to simplify its stealth disappearance within us once we are done archiving its lies as truth?
It is the strength and again the undoing of the style of narrative that Krog chose to vividly tell the gory stories. It undoubtedly is not easy to capture the atrocities of so many years and still maintain your level of journalistic sanity, which is something the author must be applauded for. It becomes worrying when a very tiny hypocrite surfaces at the point where she raises that one moment where Winnie Mandela, sitting with Limpho Hani said 'crazy mothefucker' at the testimony of Janusz Walusz and Clive Derby-Lewis as significant. Here the irony is temporarily lifted, since, here are two men who scored the biggest prize in the apartheid war confronting two women who lost the most. Men who managed to achieve the work the boers failed to accomplish when they invaded Lesotho in 1981 and Botswana soon later - to kill South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani. And instead of relishing the strength of the moment and the defeat of the Afrikaner vs Native dogma, Krog chooses to pick what Winnie says while later dedicating a whole lot of text to her as the feared and hated Hang Woman of Soweto to the point that her house was razed.
Krog's interpretation, through the eyes of her dodgy feelings experts, of the crimes of the Mandela Football Club leaves much to be desired or interrogated. Here, I feel that once again the author fails to carry the heavy mantle as dictated by her position when she was covering the commission's hearings.
She succeeds in portraying Winnie as the cold-goddess-statured-good-mama-turned-evil, which she indeed was, according to evidence led in different forums. But it's her attempt to understand where Winnie snapped that buries the truth about Stompie Seipei and others under the rubble of guilt. Somehow one is drawn to a defeatist approach whereby Krog was somehow doubting her credentials to psychoanalyse Winnie, lest she be told she comes from the land of the windmills.Krog also successfully paints in black the post-27years in jail relationship of Winnie and Nelson, the Mandela duo who had become the torch and torchbearer of a nation cowed up under darkness of subjugation. The torchbearer fell, leaving the torch to risk dying out as the oil was gradually spilling. Then, she treats Mandela as a holy cow and doesn't want to delve much into his failures and weaknesses in the whole Winnie Madikizela-Mandela affair. At the end the saint remains while Winnie is left hanging in the court of community justice, a forum she knows too well and which has seen many victims of her reign end up at - often without a pulse.
Interesting enough, when Winnie was going to face the law in one of her felonies family lawyer George Bizos SC told etv's 3rd Degree that Nelson requested him to represent Winnie. This is after allegations that Winnie used to slap Nelson, Sunday newspaper reports that she had extra-marital affairs, notably with a young man we all so know about but will act as if we don't know to save our asses from what happened to those who dared challenge the dreadnought. He's up there with a title of a Group Chief Executive Officer of a parastatal while we opt for selective amnesia.
Nelson continued to support his failed socio-political experiment. However Country of my Skull is actually TRC and Amnesty Commission transcripts trancribed again and again by Krog. Most of the book is made up of what the victims and perpetrators tearfully said - verbatim. Krog, as Antjie Samuel was there as an SABC radio reporter and could add some flesh where the whole nation saw a skeleton and called it a ghost.
She had access to Commission Chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other important commissioners like Alex Boraine and Dumisa Ntsebeza. She fell in love with the commissioners and their work and later on in the book you realise that her objectivity falls by the wayside when dealing with the commission and its shortcomings. As an Afrikaner reporter who knew about how other political parties leisurely rhetorized about driving boers to the sea, it becomes obvious that Krog wanted the commission to succeed against all odds so that her children are not driven to the sea in the event that if failed.
One quality that can not be taken away from the book is that it is an important historic narrative that only fails by demonising the Azanian People's Liberation Army cadres who indiscriminately killed whites in bars and churches, for the benefit of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
This is while at the same time she fails to cover Robert McBride's Magoos Bar bombing as similar to that undertaken by the three APLA operatives and for which they appeared before the Amnesty Commission, and for which Krog focused on the stories of the white victims instead. Instead of understanding that their shortcomings where a direct result of lack of leadership at military level that saw them pick own targets and spray innocents with bullets, Krog tries hard to understand why the African National Congress had a problem with the TRC report and why it felt it deserved carpet amnesty, even though it equally tortured and killed people at Quatro, Zimbabwe, Maputo and Lusaka and had some necklaced in its name.Somehow, going through the book one draws a conclusion that Krog was charmed by cold-hearted killing machine Joe Mamasela and intrigued by some victims who had an overdose of humour when relating their agony. Krog treats Mamasela with the kind of kiddy gloves not afforded other similar killers. As if playing to the patriotism stereotype of post'94 she deliberately fails to inform us why Dirk Coetzee's crimes were swiftly sweeped under the carpet, which has something to do with national security. She also fails to tell us about Wouter Basson and the reason why he was not pursued with gusto to testify before the commission, which also has something to do with national security.
Krog also makes her insecutiries shine through the book. Being an Afrikaner who benefited from apartheid through entitlement because opportunities were made available to them through job reservation, she makes the most not to moralise around that. She simplifies the current quagmire of middle-aged Afrikaner oomies and tannies who complain that affirmative action is segregating them while the truth is that they can't measure up in an environment that they need to compete as equals with five billion other people. They are used to being confined to the four corners of an ossewa. In a conversation she attributes to her black Free State friends Eddy and Mamogele, Krogs raises these dilemmas in her own subtle way, such as if darkies could, with Afrikaner Affirmartive Action manage to flourish and some become soccer club owners, tycoons, taxi operators without threatening to abandon the beloved country, what case do the bunch of whities screaming 'bloody murder!' have when they have been given a headstart by policies meant to keep the natives on their marks forever. Darkies built the taxi industry without a headstart, they started soccer teams without a headstart, they built civic movements without a headstart, they became butchery owners, tycoons, shebeen operators without a headstart. Then why should an Afrikaner be prioritised now when they had been given a headstart for 400 years? What incubation do boers want and from whom who is unaware of the unnecessary benefits they illegally enjoyed?Overall, if you have never read the book I will advise you the same way reviewer Alistair Boddy-Evans noted,"If you want to understand modern South Africa you must understand the politics of the last century. There is no better place to start than with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Antjie Krog's masterwork places you in the mind of both oppressed black freedom fighters and entrenched white Afrikaner."
From our side we don't want to quote Krog's laid out thesis since we heard some Merafe (hip-hop group) saying, 'o sek' a rasa o tla e senya' (don't shout you'll mess it up). But we are tempted to give you these lines, before you go and buy the book for posterity sake,
"During the period looked into by the Truth Commission, 2500 people were hanged in the country - a hundred peopel each year. Ninety-five percent of those hanged were black - 100 percent of those who sentenced them were white. By 1989 there were 80 people on Death Row in Pretoria for politically related offenses. In that year, in what came to be known as "the Christmas Rush", 21 people were executed during the third week of December - seven on Tuesday, seven on Wednesday and seven on Thursday" (Paula McBride) - Page 198And then the majority of whites dare say that they didn't know, never took part or never condoned the oppression of natives, please excuse the darkies' cynicism of your plastic remorse. 'Malcom X said that racism was like a Cadillac - ', Krog wrote, 'there's a new model every year. The latest model is the denial of whites'.
* In My Country (country of my skull take 2)
Antjie Krog's beautiful book was defeated by the attempt to make it a 105 minute film which's working title was first Truth before it was finally titled In My Country. Jim Corveddu wrote these lines in his review for PulpVideo, "I think the weakest elements of this film are in screenwriter Ann Peacock's dialogue and in the construction of the Anna Malan and brother Boetie characters. The first for taking on just a little too much burden of responsibility, especially in one somewhat uncharacteristic scene at one of the hearings with a particularly gory testimony, and the latter for being incomplete when a key development occurs that should have played more into the storyline and into Anna's reactions."
Now look, one author whose works has been adapted into screen once told me that the easiest way to be bored with your own creativity is to give it to the Americans and the British to write the screenplay. "You will not recognise your own creativity once they are done programming your free thoughts into their stereotype framework".Well, I don't know if Krog was happy with the folks who played characters in the reeler emanating from her realer because for me what was strong about the book was not victims crying and some losing consiousness but Krog's exploration of her own community's understanding or lack of it, of why darkies were so overly-forgiving. Why darkies didn't demand that the countries that subsidised apartheid contribute billions into South Africa post-'94 the same way Germany built Israel. The book raised moral questions which were airbrushed by the surreality of secondary storytellers limited to less than two hours of reel.
I have always believed that scriptwriters must be creative people who can spark ideas without relying on authors to research books for them to adapt to screenplay. Write your own shit people. In My Country fails the beautiful work that gave Country of My Skull all the awards. No wonder In My Country didn't quite become the 1970s thriller All The President's Men the makers wanted it to become.
The book captured the army general's denials to co-operate, the police's top brass' sending of footsoldiers to take the Tutu bullet, PW Botha's aquatic circus, de Klerk's balding comedy, Thabo Mbeki's greying outburst, Mandela's undue diplomacy, Tutu's bastardized threats and prayers, Ntsebeza's near implication in an attack etc, and much more stuff the film failed to capture with the emotion the incidents deserved. Corveddu finally wrote, "From what I've heard about the book by Antje Krog, I can understand why anyone who had read it before seeing this movie might be disappointed, but it was certainly clear to me by the marketing that this was a romance and not a cinematic litany of the horrors of Apartheid.". Kasiekulture couldn't agree more.
12/5/07
PROFILE
A TALE FROM BETLHEM He could easily be the voice of reason in a world that seems to have lost its moral compass and continues to slide into anarchy with every day passing. Victor Johannes Bayi is such a prolific poet that it is surprising that his biggest wish is still to recite at a regional radio station called Ligwalagwala's DJ Musa Nkosi's Poetry Session programme. He should be out there with Mos Def and Common conscientising the world. Reading his works and listening to him recite raises the question of what type of poets are invited to grace the public broadcaster's airwaves at the expense of gifted souls like Bayi? Surely, many mediocre souls have been heard defiling the ears of listerners while word soldiers are forever kept in trenches, beyond the mandate of the war. Victor lives at Tsakane Village (Marite) and confesses that he has been writing poetry since 2003, but his level of articulation defies such a confession. "I have written poetry with themes in line with SABC's Lentswe programme. I responded when they invited people to send their material last month (October 2007) but I haven't heard anything from them", he humbly grumbled. What he didn't know is that they had already filmed their show in Nelspruit, 'snubbing' his worthy contribution and those of other talented Mpumalanga poets. 
But Victor is philosophical about his chances of achieving prominence in literary circles in a country as divided according to class as South Afrika. "Tsakane is very rural and chances of someone making it are very slim. Even if you have talent you don't know who to turn to", he says. Talent is something he has in abundance, an opportunity seems to be the missing part in this large puzzle. He wanted to recite his HIV/AIDS poem during the December 01 World Aids Day celebrations at a bigger platform but seems to be at loss at how the people he sees doing so during government events ever get chosen. He lost out, it was actually the organisers' loss. His piece titled If is seminal and raises many moral questions that continue to dog society today. It's written from a defeated person's perspective which he says is a reflection of the attitude of the leadership towards all the moral morass. In Ooh Afrika he muses, "is it the thirst that makes you spill innocent blood Afrika". He has got poetry that cuts across and which can be relevant in Afrika, Europe and any part of the world with civil wars, AIDS, crime and suffering. His is indeed a voice of reason waiting to be discovered in a world full of chaos. Victor, who says he mostly bounces his new verses on his best friend Adelaide Mthiyane (21) also says that not everything he writes about happened to him but he observes and interpretes society's behavior while walking a mile in its shoes, no matter how big. And he has very harsh messages for young women who think that selling their bodies will bring them wealth. Victor sees opportunities and says everyone must seize their piece of the pie. As this 23-years old bard catches the early bus for his job at a laundry in Hazyview he's got only two wishes, to recite his Valentine poem at Ligwalagwala FM and his social commentaries at the station and public events as well. It's a wish that seems not too far given the talent of this young man who comes from a place synonymous with crime, which is reason enough why he should be given a chance to prove to other young people in Marite that 'not only crime is hip'. "The sweetest form of love/ dwells under my shadow/ I'll take you to the caravan of love/ I today pronouce myself your Romeo/ please be my Juliet", he writes in his Valentine's Day poem. Victor can be contacted at 0783741564.
But Victor is philosophical about his chances of achieving prominence in literary circles in a country as divided according to class as South Afrika. "Tsakane is very rural and chances of someone making it are very slim. Even if you have talent you don't know who to turn to", he says. Talent is something he has in abundance, an opportunity seems to be the missing part in this large puzzle. He wanted to recite his HIV/AIDS poem during the December 01 World Aids Day celebrations at a bigger platform but seems to be at loss at how the people he sees doing so during government events ever get chosen. He lost out, it was actually the organisers' loss. His piece titled If is seminal and raises many moral questions that continue to dog society today. It's written from a defeated person's perspective which he says is a reflection of the attitude of the leadership towards all the moral morass. In Ooh Afrika he muses, "is it the thirst that makes you spill innocent blood Afrika". He has got poetry that cuts across and which can be relevant in Afrika, Europe and any part of the world with civil wars, AIDS, crime and suffering. His is indeed a voice of reason waiting to be discovered in a world full of chaos. Victor, who says he mostly bounces his new verses on his best friend Adelaide Mthiyane (21) also says that not everything he writes about happened to him but he observes and interpretes society's behavior while walking a mile in its shoes, no matter how big. And he has very harsh messages for young women who think that selling their bodies will bring them wealth. Victor sees opportunities and says everyone must seize their piece of the pie. As this 23-years old bard catches the early bus for his job at a laundry in Hazyview he's got only two wishes, to recite his Valentine poem at Ligwalagwala FM and his social commentaries at the station and public events as well. It's a wish that seems not too far given the talent of this young man who comes from a place synonymous with crime, which is reason enough why he should be given a chance to prove to other young people in Marite that 'not only crime is hip'. "The sweetest form of love/ dwells under my shadow/ I'll take you to the caravan of love/ I today pronouce myself your Romeo/ please be my Juliet", he writes in his Valentine's Day poem. Victor can be contacted at 0783741564.
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