 | Ferial Haffajee looks like she’s about to bitchslap Jackson Mthembu! The media finally meets the ANC national spokesperson over the proposed Protection of Information Bill. This is the SABC’s attempt at an unbiased current affairs debate. But what it turns into is an opportunity for Mthembu to blatantly lie about the biggest threat to media and public freedom in South Africa. He swears the proposed bill won’t lead to censorship or the arrest of journalists. Even Zuma recently said ...read more |
Classified and Pacified
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 by Lynsey Chutel, illustration by Jason Bronkhorst
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Chips!
Monday, August 30th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
 | We like our chips. Almost R2 billion of the almost R5 billion South African snack industry falls to those salty little heart-stoppers. This is certainly beer, convenience and absent health-literacy related. Quick and cheap is the real ubuntu. The commonest common denominator. But that kind of out-sized market share is a throbbing red dot on the multi-national scanner. So it’s no surprise that Pepsico, the colossus bested by Coke in the great cola wars of the 80s, bought half ...read more |
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The Mau Mau Bejeebies
Friday, August 27th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
 | You know those strip malls that began appearing when we swan dived back into the ‘international community’ around the mid-90’s: chain outlets, nail places, shoes paralleling bigger (more branded) brands, bulk buys, generic hardware and software vendors, and a lone coffee spot nursing dreams of morphing into global ubiquity? You do. ...read more |
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Personal Mandelas
Thursday, August 26th, 2010 by Phumlani Pikoli, illustration by Jason Bronkhorst
 | Smuts Ngonyama once infamously, symptomatically said: “I didn’t join the struggle to be poor”. We know all about that now! Shit Julius wasn’t even a part of the Struggle – and he’s definitely not struggling being poor. As erroneous and conceited as that statement is though – I get it. Smuts and many others like him heroically “faced the evils of an oppressive system” put in place long before their parents even made eye contact. They deserve acknowledgement, fuck ...read more |
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White Tendencies
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 by Vuyo Seripe
 | “It’s my prediction that in the near future the politics of ‘race & identity’ will be left to uncreative scholars trying to remain relevant in a more logical world.” – Samuel Munene, Nairobi poet, short story writer, and contributor to Kwani? I’ve been accused of having white tendencies many times in my life. A white friend of mine often jokes about us swapping places because she admires black people: especially our kinky, easy-to-dread hair. This makes me feel there’s ...read more |
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Premature Detonation
Monday, August 23rd, 2010 by Max Sleaze, images by Jurie Senekal
 | I suppose there is no better way to get over that World Cup “come down” than “blowing some shit up”, as my editor so eloquently put it. And by the look of De Waal drive backed up and the crowds that came out on this typically grey, miserable morning, a large part of Cape Town agrees. Maybe a scheduled demolition once a month, at least until summer, will protect the city from the winter blues and keep the newspaper ...read more |
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Student Poor
Saturday, August 21st, 2010 by Tamlin Wightman
 | I’m poor. Relatively poor. Poor enough to have to sell treasured hardbacks – my Bukowski, my Hunter S and Heart of Darkness. Even my YDE gear had to go for money to buy milk. I considered the Mr Price stuff once. That was a low. Assistants pity me at used book stores -Folio on Claremont Main Road and The Book Shoppe in Retreat. They shake their heads. Oh God, here she is again! Tossing me a twenty for a ...read more |
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Face it Boet
Friday, August 20th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds, illustration by Jason Bronkhorst
 | The horror of Facebook, the deepest one, the most lastingly wounding, lies in how it turns our intimates into information. We’re all confessional blurts to be processed. Rather than rounded selves full of complexity and difference. The closest people in our lives increasingly become the sum of their wall posts. We’ve turned into a proliferating scroll of bulletins. A metastasizing network of confessors. ...read more |
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A Crutch called a Comma
Thursday, August 19th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
 | Sometimes, although not all that frequently, I find myself wondering, which is, perhaps, in the context of Mahala, a better word to use here than ruminating – more modern, less UCT English Honours – why it is that contributors to this online publication (or possibly ‘zine, but you can call it a blog too) all seem to write in perpetual fear of the comma, that standard issue punctuation mark which, when I last checked, is not endangered, threatened or ...read more |
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Demolition Day
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by Max Sleaze, images by Jurie Senekal
 | They are really doing it, they are taking down Cape Town’s Twin Towers. The sentinels that guard our cosy urban salad bowl from the upcountry carnivores, the tangible barriers that separate the city from the flats that extend beyond. Symbols, reminders, threats; intimidating all newcomers with the full might of what we have achieved, a link to our past and reassurance in our future. ...read more |
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