Archive for January, 2012
by Adele on Jan 30th, 2012
Forthcoming from UKZN Press, Inheriting the Earth by Jill Nudelman:
This perceptive first novel speaks to the quest for personal identity amid the dilemmas of a white tribe ‘lost in transition’ between the imperatives of old and new social order.
Rose, the sensitive young protagonist, has been orphaned while still an infant and left with no clues to her ancestry. When the foster mother who raised her dies suddenly, Rose finds herself unexpectedly heir to a fortune – and in possession of a box containing artefacts that present baffling links to her heritage. This marks for Rose the beginning of a journey of self-discovery in search of her true identity – an identity beyond ‘whiteness’ and towards a greater sense of belonging and rootedness in African soil.
About the author
Jill Nudelman has a Master’s degree in English and in Creative Writing from the University of the Witwatersrand.
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by Adele on Jan 27th, 2012
In Nobody Will Ever Kill Me Mbu Maloni relates his experiences as a neglected and abused homeless child, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and how he eventually turned his life around after being taken in by one of the Homes for Kids in South Africa (HOKISA).
Maloni told Munyaradzi Makoni of The Big Issue that education is a recurring theme in his book, because “if you are poor, that’s the only way to get out of the trouble, out of poverty”.
The Big Issue: Why did you choose to tell you story?
Mbu Maloni: This is a story that I wanted to share because I wanted people to know what I went through as a child. I wanted to tell the truth about my real life. I wanted the pain and anger that I felt to go away; I wanted to be at peace with myself. I wanted to make people who view street kids as criminals change that image of us and realise that we are not. It is also a tribute to my best friend, Atie, who was there for me many times and who was killed on October 23, 2010.
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by Adele on Jan 24th, 2012
This novel collection by first-time author Perfect Hlongwane offers a biting portrait of inner-city Jo’burg, “a place where dreams come to die”.
Written as a series of interlinked stories centring around an eclectic ensemble of characters, Jozi conjures for readers a city both familiar and surprising.
With its vein of painful self-examination, evocative sense of place and unflinching exploration of the rawer aspects of Jo’burg living, it brings to mind the impact of cult literary figures like Dambudzo Marechere and Phaswane Mpe.
About the author
Perfect Hlongwane has lectured English at the University of the Witwatersrand and currently works as an independent editing consultant in Johannesburg and Lecturer in Communication at Varsity College.
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by Adele on Jan 23rd, 2012
The Siyazama Project is currently exhibiting their collection of tiny, handmade beaded dolls at the A.R.T Show at the Tatham Art Gallery.
The project founder, Kate Wells, explained the project’s aims to the Witness: “Siyazama craftswomen have produced hundreds of small, beautifully beaded child-figure dolls, that collectively make a strong statement about the statistics with regard to the AIDS orphans in South Africa.” The project has also resulted in the publication of the book, Siyazama: Art, AIDS and Education, edited by Kate Wells, Marsha Macdowell, Kurt Dewhurst, and Marit Dewhurst.
The Witness‘ Estelle Simpkins describes the current exhibition as “striking and moving” and provides an insight into the making of the dolls:
ONE of the most striking and moving works in The A.R.T. Show at the Tatham Art Gallery is the tower of tiny beaded dolls, made by the crafters of the Siyazama Project.
The work aims to make a statement about the huge numbers of Aids orphans in South Africa, and the impact those numbers have on the communities where the children live. At last count, South Africa is believed to have 3,7 million Aids orphans — a number the project founder, professor Kate Wells, describes as “terrifying”.
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by Adele on Jan 17th, 2012
The Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) invites you to read an excerpt from Adekeye Adebajo’s The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War, a book which examines how the 1884-1885 Conference of Berlin established rules for the partitioning of Africa and the consequences of their decision:
It is one of the ironies of the great German leader otto von Bismarck that he helped to unify Germany in the nineteenth century and initiated the division of Africa soon after. The unification of Germany led to the emergence of one of the most powerful Western countries in the twentieth century. The partition of Africa, on the other hand, resulted in some of the most vulnerable societies in modern world history.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Germany was divided again—but this time ideologically between communist east Germany and the capitalist federal republic of Germany.
German unification at the end of the twentieth century was almost a celebration of the centenary of Bismarck’s final years as effective leader of the German empire. Three european wars in the nineteenth century had helped unify the empire: Germany’s war with denmark in 1864, with Austria in 1866, and with france in 1871. Bismarck led the Germans in war and peace in this period—and he was made prince on 21 March 1871. he was appointed chancellor of the German empire also in 1871—and proceeded to govern the Germans from that year until 1890. he became the most influential Western
statesman of his day (see chapter 1).
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by Adele on Jan 16th, 2012
In an article for Pambazuka News, Patrick Bond, author of Politics of Climate Justice, weighs in on the nine-year reign of Durban’s former mayor, Michael Sutcliffe. Bond says that the “neoliberal nationalism” of Sutcliffe’s rule “terrorized many poor and working people”:
January opened as the South African city of Durban’s first time since 2002 without City Manager Michael Sutcliffe. He became well known across the world as a target of community and environmental activism, for catalyzing a $400 million stadium for the soccer World Cup in 2010, and for hosting the COP17 climate summit last month, in a city of 3.5 million of whom a third are dirt-poor and another third struggle as underpaid workers.
Why did they put up with Sutcliffe’s mainly malevolent rule? Alongside constituencies of fisherfolk, streetchildren and informal traders, many grassroots groups like the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, the Chatsworth Westcliff Flatdwellers, Abahlali base Mjondolo shackdwellers and Clairwood Ratepayers and Residents Association have long condemned race-and class-biased municipal policy and Sutcliffe’s viciousness. But the prestige of the African National Congress (ANC) liberation movement means the ruling party has been comfortably re-elected since the days of Mandela (1994-99). Until the leading trade unions break their alliance with the ANC, that won’t change, and ruthless men like Sutcliffe will stay at the top of government.
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by Adele on Jan 13th, 2012
In an analysis of the pathetic prevarications that plagued COP17, Patrick Bond spoke to Paul Jay of The Real News about the lack of urgency around discussions on climate change. As Jay notes in his introduction, the world has forgotten about climate change – Barack Obama hasn’t mentioned the word in a year and the media has tired of the debate.
Watch a video of the interview or read the transript below:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. So the climate change conference in Durban is over. And what happened to the urgency about dealing with climate change? You sure wouldn’t have seen it, given what came out of Durban, and you certainly don’t see it when you look at the public policy coming out of North America, certainly out of Russia, Japan, more or less out of Europe. If you look at the media just only two, three years ago, we were being told things were almost apocalyptic. The media itself has lost almost complete interest in the climate change debate. And certainly in Washington there is no debate about what to do about climate change, certainly not in Congress or to do with the White House. Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have mentioned the words climate change in at least a year, if not more. Now joining us to talk about why all this might be happening is Patrick Bond. Patrick is the director of the Centre for Civil Society in South Africa. He’s a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. And he’s also the author of the recently released books The Politics of Climate Change and Durban’s Climate Gamble. Thanks for joining us, Patrick.
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by Adele on Jan 3rd, 2012
Nigel Gibson, author of Fanonian Practices in South Africa, says that the questions posed by Frantz Fanon continue to echo across the postcolonial world. Reflecting on the 50 years that have passed since Fanon’s death in an article for Pamazuka News, Gibson explains why Fanon is still relevant today:
When I was asked by Dr. Keithley Woolward to address the question of Fanon’s contemporary relevance, I was reminded of a blurb on the back of my recent book Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo which reads, ‘This is not another meditation on Fanon’s continued relevance. Instead, it is an inquiry into how Fanon, the revolutionary, might think and act in the face of contemporary social crisis.’ My comments today should be considered in that spirit.
‘Relevance’ — from a Latin word ‘relevare’, to lift, from ‘lavare’, to raise, levitate — to levitate a living Fanon who died in the USA nearly 50 years ago this coming Tuesday in cognizance of his own injunction articulated in the opening sentence from his essay ‘On national culture’: ‘Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it’ (1968 206). The challenge was laid down at the opening of this year of Fanon’s 50th (as well as the 50th anniversary of his ‘The Wretched of the Earth’) which began with revolution — or at least a series of revolts and resistance across the region, known as the Arab Spring.
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