Mzoo Spot

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...