 | The Armoury is a boxing gym which shares a complex with a gallery and one of those best kept secret bars you would be loath to order a Black Label at. Forget the Rocky Balboa like gym smells of sweat and blood and the men emitting them. This is a clean and gender friendly place, and the Upstart event they hosted last Saturday goes a long way in proving them as a champion of women’s rights. ...read more |
Boxing Clever
Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 by Setumo Mohlomi
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Bring Your Fire
Monday, June 17th, 2013 by Kimon de Greef, images by Sydelle Willow Smith/ Bushfire
 | Border control at Bushfire Festival is marked with yellow MTN flags. Our taxi ejects us at the entrance and we stagger inside. The lady in the media tent winks after every sentence and in my travel-worn state I am unsure how to respond. ...read more |
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Two Days in Istanbul
Saturday, June 15th, 2013 by Olivia Walton
 | Tuesday, 11th June. There is a lot of smoke over Taksim as I write this. Yes, again. The woman in the cafe says she will close early because she is going to join the protestors. “Gezi is very crowded,” she says. And the black smoke? “I don’t know, maybe burning plastic.” ...read more |
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To the City
Friday, June 14th, 2013
 | Liam Kruger is a 24-year-old writer and student living in Cape Town South Africa. This poem is about some time he spent in Istanbul, and it has a whole new resonance this week, with the protests of Taksim Square. Liam is also a regular Mahala contributor. ...read more |
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Bush Babies
Friday, June 14th, 2013 by Nicky Flake-Off, images by Kapula
 | I went to Bushfire as an antidote to AfrikaBurn. Not that AfrikaBurn wasn’t screamingly amazing; it’s just that I have a mild allergy to wide-eyed hippie rhetoric of the sort delivered on these illustrious pages by my dear friend Simon Davis. The Burn was spectacular and beautiful and weird and hedonistic, but come on folks, if there’s one thing we all should have learned from the ‘60s it’s that you don’t change the world by having a party. Not ...read more |
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Sex, Nudity, Violence
Friday, June 14th, 2013
 | “You can’t say I’m trying to provoke you by putting in a dead body, a dead body is there already!” declares Kudzanai Chiurai in his moderately-sized studio on Gwigwi Mrwebi Street in Newtown. I’ve just asked him about subtexts – does his work contain any? Is there even space for hidden messages in his framework? Does he feel that the themes he communicates through his paintings/photographs/films are ever received as intended? ...read more |
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Remember Dave Matthews?
Thursday, June 13th, 2013 by Stanley Zive
 | A post-millennium Bon Jovi. A John Frusciante-less Red Hot Chili Peppers. And now Dave Matthews. It seems despite our best efforts these bloated, obsolescent bands keep invading our shores to peddle their bloated, obsolescent wares. The Mahalaverse is full to bursting with vitriol for these “irrelevant” acts. ...read more |
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Men In Tights
Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 by Rob Scher, images by Bram Lammers
 | Muted applause drifts down the stairs – its decibels, deceptive of the crowd assembled. It’s cold back here. Just through the wall the sun beats down on thousands thronged around Jeremy Loops, clapping in time to his music. The amphitheatre, a backstage limbo, stands empty. Five tights-clad, painted faces pace the floor. ...read more |
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Missing Essentials
Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 by Don Pinnock, illustration by Rob Foote
 | It was the complaint about a missing rod on the toilet roll holder which sparked my memory. Mrs X and her husband were holidaying on Inhaca Island in Mozambique and couldn’t find the rod. The chalet also didn’t have oven gloves, or a tea pot or a mixing bowl—and the fridge was held closed with an elastic strap. Imagine! So they wrote to a travel magazine about it. ...read more |
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Dear Mr Griffin
Tuesday, June 11th, 2013 by Wian Van Den Berg
 | Howzit Nick, On Sunday afternoon I sat on my porch with my feet up, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper, while keeping a close eye on my cattle herding near the farmhouse. You see, we’ve got a huge problem over here with poaching at the moment. Those guys will shoot anything with a horn these days. But let me tell you, the moment I read what you said on twitter about President Mandela, I almost broke my bloody neck. ...read more |
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