 | The question of restitution and the redistribution of land in Southern Africa is emotive and divisive. It’s an issue that spawns online battles and verbal skirmishes from parliamentary benches to barstools, with opposing factions often brandishing abstraction and half remembered stories. The problem with these stories is that while they are often lost in a direct narrative sense, they are still threaded into the genetic memory of many people. This is in part what makes the land debate so fractious, ...read more |
The Last Stand of a South African Hero
Friday, October 14th, 2011 by Gary Mathews
Nanny Fest
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 by Roger Young, images by Sydelle Willow Smith
 | Finally, the moment where I no longer give a fuck happens. It happens during Mr Cat and the Jackal vs The Nomadic Orchestra set on the smallest stage at Rocking The Daisies. It’s been a weekend, so far, of minor irritations but here, fleetingly yet gorgeously, they dissolve. This is the reason I came here, this is the feeling I’ve been waiting for. ...read more |
Welcome to Racebook
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 by Rob Scher, illustration by Alastair Laird
 | Everyone has ‘that guy’ they went to school with; prone to bursts of aggression, antisocial behaviour in class, and a general disrespect for authority figures. They represent the very beacon of adolescent angst. Jonah Takalua, captured so vividly by the talented Australian comedian Chris Lilley in the show Summer Heights High is a perfect caricature of such an individual. Everyone went to school with a Jonah. Mine was Jack. ...read more |
Loliwe
Friday, October 7th, 2011 by Dave Durbach
 | Weekends at the Fox Den, a downtown tavern boasting Jozi’s loudest soundsystem and cheapest beer, usually mean droning ultra-bass until well after midnight, much to the irritation of the hundreds of people living within spitting distance of the place. Yet this Saturday, the DJ chose to play a melancholy, near-drumless groove, twice in succession. ...read more |
Viva Riva!
Thursday, October 6th, 2011 by Kavish Chetty
 | I have developed a taste for flesh and so here I cannibalise our young to make my point. In Mahala’s previous coverage of Viva Riva, Colin Macrae speaks of director Djo Tunda Wa Munga as “an African Tarantino“. Interestingly, not the African Tarantino, but an African Tarantino – marking him indefinitely as one amongst many potential Africans who might have that lusted-after medal pinned to their lapels (“good job, old chap”). I can hear the distant echoes of ...read more |
Another Tale Of Two Cities
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 by Montle Moorosi, images by Paul Ward
 | When I was young my favourite story in the Bible was the story of the Prodigal Son. I loved how he told his dad fuck you and went out and saw the world, how he drank all the wine in Rome and fucked all the whores in Persia and then came back home to his pappy and they still threw him a come back party. I was going back home and I felt like the prodigal son, ready for a ...read more |
Feed the Tree
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 by Brandon Edmonds
 | If there was a metaphor tree, you know, a tree where metaphors grow, South Africa would be it’s tap root system, water table and sunlight. You can’t glance at News24 without being bonked on the head, Newton’d, by a metaphor. Khanyi Mbau’s nude twitter candids? Metaphor = the erosion of traditional beliefs and culture-printed restraint amongst happening black women on the go. A Mandela family reality-TV show? Metaphor = the morphing of the Struggle into spectacle, the branding of noble ...read more |
Charlie and the Yeoville Sting
Thursday, September 29th, 2011 by Andy Davis
 | Before Tidal Waves, Zakes Wulana, Tebogo Shoai and Charlie Mathopa were in a reggae outfit called Da Ghetto, based in Yeoville Johannesburg. That band really laid the foundation for Tidal Waves’ unique hybrid reggae sound, infusing elements of maskandi, kwela and mbaqanga with punk, rock and those thick syrupy lashings of bass and rhythm from the islands. But being a professional musician in a rough neighbourhood like Yeoville, is not always easy. ...read more |
Mozambique: A Sporting Chance
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 by Dave Durbach
 | Part 3 Few believed that Mozambique could pull off hosting the continent’s biggest sporting showpiece in the short space of just two years. The country was awarded the All Africa Games in April 2009 after original host Zambia withdrew, citing the international recession. Without any prompting, the Mozambicans stepped up. In less than a year, construction was well underway on an athletes’ village to house more than 6000 participants and officials, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a 45 000 seater stadium, ...read more |
Mozambique: Ocupações Temporárias
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 by Dave Durbach
 | Part 2 Beyond Boetjan and the South African connection, occupation of one form or another has always been part of the collective psyche of Mozambique. Attempts to explore this, however, are far more recent. A new mixed media exhibition, Ocupações Temporárias (temporary occupations), sees five young Mozambican artists attempt to do just that. ...read more |
