“Mandela was not the only head of state taken in by Koagne. Le king kept snapshots of himself with many a man of power, among them Mobutu Sese Seko and Denis Sassou Nguesso […] He took Mobutu for 15 million dollars. Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso lost 40 million to him. Sassou, Etienne Eyadéma of Togo, several high officials of Gabon, Tanzania and Kenya, a member of the Spanish government and an ex-operative of the Israeli Mossad were bamboozled as well.” – Dominique Malaquais (Blood Money: A Douala Chronicle).
Bantu Serenade by Ntone Edjabe (featuring Nah-ee-lah) (read excerpt)
Santu Mofokeng: Trajectory of a street photographer (part1) (read excerpt)
Binyavanga Wainaina: Hell In Bed With Mrs Peprah (read excerpt)
Dominique Malaquais: Lindela (the winnie suite) (read excerpt)
Boubacar Boris Diop: Myriem (read excerpt)
Cover:
Neo Muyanga
I Lost a Poem by Mzwandile Matiwana (Deep South, 2005)
The poems in Mzwandile Matiwana's first book cover a range of subjects, including love, prison, poverty, and religion. Mzwandile Matiwana's poems are deeply felt lyrics, displaying surprising shifts of tone. Many of them were written from prison. They cover a range of experience - love, prison life, poverty, religious feeling - with rawness and delicacy.
Mzwandile Matiwana was born in 1967 in Port Elizabeth, and writes in both English and Xhosa. His poems have been published in Kotaz, New Coin, Timbila, Botsotso, Fidelities, donga, southernrain, Carapace and Sweet. He is a member of the UWA Writers Group in New Brighton and has run creative workshops with children at the St. Christophers Street Children Shelter and Ethembeni Enrichment Center.