Mzoo Spot

Many years ago Rio only existed in the realm of imagination. I recall those days vividly, because I owned a Barry White's Beware cassette, with the catchy song - Rio de Janeiro.  It's a happy and upbeat song describing the character of Brazilians. This past week I got to see Brazilians live in their own space.  Rio and Brazil are the most recognisable places in the world. Rio is associated with the carnival (a week of partying really), characterised by great colour and sexiness. Rio's Copacabana and Ipanema beaches are canvasses on which Brazilian humanity plays itself out. For many these beaches are associated with busty well toned ladies traipsing about in the slinkiest bikinis.  Brazil as a whole is known for its love and pedigree in football. I was on a four day working visit to Brazil, and surely never enough to capture the essence of that vibrant country. Firstly, I had to endure a 10 hour long daylight flight from OR Tambo to Sao Paolo. Flying for that lon...

The annual National Arts Festival held in Grahamstown is huge and goes by the tagline - 10 days of amazing! I have been an irregular visitor to this festival since about 1999. There is always a belwildering array of things to see. I don't usually find art exhibitions and dance that interesting and so I limited my interests to mostly drama, discussion sessions (at the Thinkfest) and music.  I wanted to kick off my viewing pleasure with Marikana, a musical drama about the plight of mineworkers in that fateful Lonmin mine. Unfortunately it did not open on the day (I don't know why). We were just told that it was postponed. I ended up at the Thinkfest where local government issues were discussed. Of course the issues there were familiar: corruption, lack of accountability, cadre deployment, blah blah blah. No doubt it was a serious session chaired by Eusebius McKaiser. Panelists included Dr Nomalanga Mkhize (Rhodes scholar) and Lechesa Tsenoli Deputy speaker of the National Assem...

Last Saturday, 17 May, we buried our uncle.  A very talkative man, another uncle quipped that he was a teller of stories - real and unreal. He went by many names, but was popularly known as Sgidla. My mother explained that he was born a big child, and therefore was given the nickname "Sgidla". In the early 1990s, he worked at a hair factory in Uitenhage where he "accidentally" lost one of his fingers. I say accidentally, because one of his colleagues, whom we met in Port Elizabeth in the early 1990s, who was surprised to learn that Sgidla was our uncle, told us that in fact the man deliberately caused the so called accident. He told us that our uncle was such a feisty character, who gave "amabhulu" a very hard time. They had given him another name - Magib'sela! This injury led to his retrenchment. He told everyone who cared to listen that he was disabled and therefore was entitled to disability grant. Indeed he got his disability grant.  We have kno...

I voted in 1994. That makes me very old. So old in fact that I have a combined 30-year recollection of life during and post-apartheid. I have a vivid memory of a Monday sometime in October of 1984 when students from Mtyobo primary school in Port Alfred abandoned classes and launched a march towards a nearby Nomzamo High School. Nearby is relative here, because Nomzamo High was a good 10 km away. When the students arrived at Nomzamo High a feisty principal, one Mr Mzizi, standing at the gate with huge dogs, met them. These students were intent on disrupting classes here too. It soon became clear to the students inside that the classes were to be disrupted. After all the whole exercise was planned. But principal Mzizi had apparently called the police. When the police finally arrived, the proverbial horse had already bolted. The students had left and were to be seen all over running in the open veld to the north of the township. The police in the meantime were firing tear gas. This day...