THE SILENT DECLINE OF OUR NATIVE LANGUAGES
Now that the festive season has passed, I find myself reflecting on an unsettling reality I encountered in rural communities: many young people cannot speak their native languages, and in some cases, this inability is celebrated rather than questioned. For some parents, their children’s fluency in English, often acquired through private schooling is treated as […]
“FLUENT IN EVERYTHING BUT OURSELVES” – THE SILENT EXTINCTION OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES
Every year, hundreds of African languages move closer to extinction, not because they are forgotten, but because they are systematically erased. Across our continent, languages that once carried our wisdom, history, humour, and heritages are disappearing. They are being replaced — not by natural evolution, but by a system that rewards foreign tongues and punishes […]
KIPPIE MOEKETSI AT 100: THE SPIRIT OF SOUTH AFRICAN JAZZ LIVES ON
On the 27th of July 2025, South Africa commemorates the centenary of one of its most compelling cultural figures. Kippie Moeketsi. Affectionately known as “South Africa’s Charlie Parker.” Yet Kippie was far more than a local imitation of an American great. He was a revolution in tone, mood, and being. He was the soul of […]
THE WORLD IS A LIBRARY: LEARNING TO READ LIFE’S PAGES
She said it lightly, as though commenting on the weather. We were standing in the doorway, hugging and kissing goodbyes and time pressing forward, when her eyes lit with that old fire that comes from a life fully lived. Her words slipped between the goodbyes like a bookmark placed at just the right place in […]
SPIRITUAL MATHEMATICS: THE UNSPOKEN LOGIC OF AFRICA’S SACRED SCIENCE
There is a mathematics that cannot be taught in any classroom. A precise arithmetic of the soul, the body, the past, and the future. One I have witnessed unfold countless times in the fireside shadows of our homesteads, in the subtle gestures of old women in rural villages, and in the haunting, rhythmic chants of […]
THE PRESERVATION OF WHITE PRIVILEGE IS ANTITHESIS TO THE NATION’S DREAM TO BE FREE
This year marks the 49th anniversary of June 16, 1976. It is almost half a century of memory with which we are dealing. Through the dialogue held in Soweto this week, we engaged in a struggle against forgetting. In South Africa, June 16, 1976 was the bravest action undertaken, only 16 years after the Sharpeville Massacre […]
JUNE 16, 1976: THE DAY THE CHILDREN ROARED
“History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.” Each year, as June 16 approaches, our nation stirs with memory, pain, and a yearning to understand. The date, etched in blood and fire, is more than a memorial. It is a mirror—of what was, what is, and what still must […]
THE USNESS OF US: A TRIBUTE TO SOUTH AFRICA’S FOREMOST STRUGGLE POETS
There are verses that do more than speak. They breathe. They march. They bleed. They return across generations like incantations passed from mouth to ear, from prison cell to refugee camp, from jazz club to the guerrilla front. For those of us who came of age in exile, navigating the uncertainties of borders, belonging, and […]