This is a pigment of my imagination
Looking like a ‘Negro’ in India and searching for a connection has provided Joshua Muyiwa with a language that is understood neither by those closest to him, nor those with whom he shares the texture of his hair. In college, all those stories I had meticulously filed away for 18 years finally had an ear. Abhishek, my femme-on-the-street-butch-in-the-sheets […]
XXYX Africa
by Nick Mwaluko On the subject of voicing that inner scream that is your song… LGBT Africa held two truths: you fuck, you die. Both truths were intimately interwoven, like tapestry spun by a wild heart against an overreaching national government bracketed from the world, answerable solely to itself and wielding unmolested corrupted powers. If you were caught, the government had every […]
Out of sight and out of mind in High Care
Mike Abrahams recently spent seven weeks as an involuntary patient at Valkenberg Hospital, a state psychiatric facility in Cape Town. The following is his account of time under observation in a secure unit. Sitting alone in the reception area of Valkenberg Hospital’s High Care Unit, I am trapped in silence. I am waiting, I don’t […]
Floyd Mayweather and Improvised Modalities of Rhythm
by Steve Coleman What makes boxing the sweet science is not two guys slugging it out in a ‘see who falls first’ scenario. It is seeing some real skill and artistry in the ring. The Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Phillip Ndou fight on November 1st 2003 was a joy to watch not just because Floyd won, but because […]
The Case of Sipho Mchunu
by Bongani Kona In her brilliant review of Didier Fassin’s book, When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of Aids in South Africa, Hilary Mantel quotes how the history of this country, steeped as it is in centuries of racial brutality, is not to be found at the Vootrekker Monument or at the Apartheid Museum but is warehoused in the body, in “words and […]