 | If you look past the funky graphic interjections, mostly green, pink and orange dots, you’ll see that photographer Jason DeMarte’s work is situated in familiar territory. Like Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jo Ractliffe or Lien Botha before him, DeMarte, a US photographer currently showing at Cape Town’s Wessel Snyman Creative, likes taking photos of diorama scenes. ...read more |
As Good As Real
Friday, September 3rd, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
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Classified and Pacified
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 by Lynsey Chutel, illustration by Jason Bronkhorst
 | 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 |
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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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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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Kulture Noir
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 by Dave Durbach
 | If ever there was a woman who marched to her own beat, it’s this one. With her regal sense of style, genre-defying music and steady refusal to bow to trends, Simphiwe Dana has balanced sales, SAMAs and street cred to rise above her many contemporaries in a relatively short space of time. ...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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The Ninja Skool of Hip Hop
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 by Andy Davis and Waddy Jones
 | Once upon a time, in a galaxy before Zef, Die Antwoord, Yolandi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, before Max Normal.TV and Constructus even, there was a talented Jozi-based rapper by the name of Watkin Tudor Jones Jr. Back then, in the winter of 2002, I asked the young MC to write a series of reviews of his favourite hip hop albums. It’s been a year since Watkin Tudor Jones was euthanised, in his memory we wanted to publish some of ...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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Captain Dud
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by Ryan Govender
 | The moment approximately 49 million people, us, mentally stormed the opening game at Soccer City willing the ball into the net for a second goal against Mexico – Dale Steyn was standing in the Jamaican sun. Playing Test cricket. ...read more |
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