Boyhood and Transit
Reliving his personal journey to developing a passion for the game, Bongani Kona reflects on the rise and fall of three Zimbabweans in South African rugby. You ask me to tell you about rugby. These are the facts: the game is contested between two opposing teams, with fifteen players and seven substitutes in each team. […]
Queenstown
By Sandile Dikeni The grass in Queenstown was pink in 1996. Or, at least, so it seemed to Antjie Krog, one bright winter morning after days of dark skies when a feeble footed sun tried, in vain – to pierce obstinate clouds that shrouded the small Eastern Cape town. Queenstown was dark for most of […]
Lotus Magazine
[hr] By Nida Ghouse In the wake of Youssef El-Sebai’s death, the streets of Cairo swelled in protest. On 19 February 1978, as his body arrived from Cyprus to be wrapped up in a flag and readied for a state-sponsored service, the newspapers had spread a rumour that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was responsible and this, in turn, had […]
Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard
A Story About Cape Town’s Tanzanian Stowaways By Sean Christie Images by David Southwood 15 July 2011 Cape Town city gardener Karabo Moshoeshoe’s orders were that the grass embankments around the intersection of Oswald Pirow Street and Hertzog Boulevard were to be cut again, though the routine trim wasn’t supposed to happen for another week. All […]
I Think I’ll Call it Morning
by Bongani Kona Penumbra Songeziwe Mahlangu Kwela Books, 2013 Sometime in the winter of 2010 when, like the protagonist of his breakout novel, Penumbra, he was in his mid-20s and unemployed, Songeziwe Mahlangu had a nervous breakdown. The episode, and everything which led to it, is revisited and placed at the epicentre of his […]