Items by Rethabile

Black Looks

• Still Life

  Posted: January 23, 2011, 1:15 am by Rethabile

  
  
  

  When Van Gogh’s lobe fell pinna up
  on the tiles, its face a shrivelled funnel
  like a floor’s ear listening to the universe,
  and deftly he traded razor for brush,
  he painted potato-eaters. Which gave him
  ideas for the outline of two cut sunflowers
  on a blue table in the moonlight, the pain
  suddenly abated, the whirring heart mute.
  That’s how artists are, pondering one thing
  and birthing another. He splashed colour
  and painted the afternoon away, knowing
  without question the direction to take.
  How could he not, when he was planning
  such a starry night over the Rhone?
  Besides, answers now grew in him, tubers
  of earth reaching into his fingertips
  as he painted: blood-soaked oaks to forest,
  to meerkats waiting for the end, to August
  when dust rises to meet the newly dead.
  If one answer is to be given, why did god
  promise my father the kingdom of heaven,
  then imprison him and give me his amulet
  to wear on my neck? No spirit ought to dim,
  for neither heaven nor hell can contain him.

  For Namanyana, 1931-2010

• Happy Birthday, Derek Walcott

  Posted: January 23, 2011, 11:27 am by Rethabile

  
  
  

  
  The poet and playwright Derek Walcott was born and raised in St Lucia. His work has been described as an evolving conversation with his birthplace.

  In Omeros, his adaptation of the Illiad, he centres on the rivalry between Achilles and Hector, who are portrayed as two St Lucian fishermen.

  He maintains a presence on the island, though he lives in America, where he has been a visiting professor at Boston University since 1985.

  He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and will be in Trinidad this summer to collect another award. Derek Walcott is 79 today.
  [source...]

• Happy Birthday, Muhammad Ali!

  Posted: January 17, 2011, 2:15 am by Rethabile

  
  
  

  Muhammad Ali was born on 17 January 1942. Happy Birthday to him.
  © and photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org

• The Bridge Between

  Posted: January 16, 2011, 2:01 pm by Rethabile

  
  
  

  Some of us think the strong will not leave
  And that Armageddon will never come;
  That is what we think. When we get home
  And you are not there we start to disbelieve
  The story we imagined, how if no one may see
  These souls on their freeway out of here, which
  Einstein predicted, that they don’t go. The bridge
  Between worlds. A figure on the solitary quay.
  Either way, there’s a hole where your body was.
  Then of course there are rituals: eyelids to close
  After the season; dogs to feed and find homes for;
  A single tomb to dig or a room to build with four
  Greek pillars at the corners. Coming from the crypt,
  Your granddaughter nestled in my arms, and slept.

• Palafrugell

  Posted: January 11, 2011, 8:25 pm by Rethabile

  
  
  

  (for Ordibehesht)

  Now that we’re in Spain and we sit
  at the cantina of our Catalonia Plaça
  drinking pink margaritas and cerveza,
  the light is right for watching boats
  that bring in fresh fish loads heaped
  on wet decks, men in yellow garments
  and gumboots yelling around them,
  the sun that hits their clothes halved
  by the cauldron’s rim, like a peach in
  a sea-blue bowl. This Mediterranean is
  where we sip cocktails. Half-lit trawlers
  glow like flies in the dark, and tables
  are prepared for shrimp, or mullet,
  or mussels that came in nets like coal,
  dropped from deck onto sodden dock,
  the smell of brine in our nostrils. Girls
  here wear red, paint nails and lips red.
  And when the moon increases,
  we leave the crowd and go to where
  on the sea-lipped edge all night long
  water likes the shore with its tongue.

• Sitting on a Stoep

  Posted: November 5, 2010, 3:23 am by Rethabile

  The first time we sat on this stoep at night a moon (Japanese lamp with moth-coloured cloth tightly around it) stopped over her shoulder & looked at what was happening in her lap. Which was nothing more than our hands entwined. It has since come every night to listen with us for cries of life from bushes and trees, where people we [...]

• Maseru Men

  Posted: October 28, 2010, 5:40 am by Rethabile

  Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and a mockery ~Hart Crane Between lamp and moon tonight you come striding in, and watch me pull out maps, books we lived on and which I am now discarding for good, photos in envelopes shut against the weary heart. So long have our seeds been the sin of life that at [...]

• If it is true

  Posted: October 20, 2010, 9:19 am by Rethabile

  It’s at home in the hollow of my hand– I’m at peace with it and with myself, ready to shoot the hoop on a count of three, my arm-muscle the taproot that feeds the movement you will see, as you follow the arc into the air with your life. From eggs that break out in tomorrow’s nests will sprout arms, genitals, legs. If [...]

• Mountain at Night

  Posted: October 7, 2010, 2:44 pm by Rethabile

  (for Lineo, ‘Masekoja and ‘Makananelo) Everyone needs something. A dime a day. After Swallowing me my mother needed to empty me, And among tracks left by ancestral feet she had me. Thaba Bosiu, the mountain at night. We needed Its plateau at the top to help us crush enemy skulls Into chalk, with stone and brick, for the king had Built his [...]

• The writer as a man

  Posted: October 2, 2010, 12:46 pm by Rethabile

  (for Geoffrey Philp) Go into the jungle of my mind, god, and send forth from a temple there just like during a storm the force you’ll find, the dark sound of slaves in a hold where a black, no-longer-dormant sea builds to a swirl, hurting with rage: send it with a south-to-north angle, please, this grudge of ages. Grant freedom to those [...]

• “First Love,” by Geoffrey Philp

  Posted: August 28, 2010, 8:21 am by Rethabile

  Mark watched Patrick as he entered the showers and wondered how it would feel to have Patrick’s arm around his waist and the ripple of his thighs against his buttocks. For two weeks now that was all he could think about every time they took the long walk from Manning Cup football [...]

• James Baldwin quote

  Posted: August 20, 2010, 8:46 am by Rethabile

  The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. ~James Baldwin

• The Spine

  Posted: August 16, 2010, 7:25 pm by Rethabile

  To a rock that towers above it and whose shadow it loves, thread is what spine is to brain, what tail squirts into sperm-head, how or why a tee braces a golf ball for that final, thwacking blow, what a child means to a parent, never caring how words come out as we didn’t the colour of rope used to pull us up the [...]

• A Shape, a Rose

  Posted: July 24, 2010, 10:45 am by Rethabile

  March, sixty. Sharpeville. Earth trembling. Then this shape: a Mediterranean handgrip, the central barrel going down between two sights, and you taking up arms as one grabs tools from a shed to till a garden, and with that gun creeping up north to learn how to hold it like the hand of a friend you haven’t seen in years. Then back [...]

• I’m looking for a title for this poem. Will you help? Here it is:

  Posted: July 23, 2010, 2:00 am by Rethabile

  You took up arms as one grabs tools from a shed to till the garden up, and with that gun went north to learn how to grip it like the hand of a friend you haven’t seen in years. Then back south you came, with Somalia’s hammer falling in the early east, already, past the magazine catch, then the Nigerian trigger & its religion [...]

• Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela!

  Posted: July 18, 2010, 9:47 am by Rethabile

  NB: The following is only part of what Nelson Mandela said in his defense in 1964, when he was being tried for treason in South-Africa, and going to be, as everyone had thought, sentenced to death. It is only the last bit of that speech. Read all of it at this site. The rest is [...]

• The Day it Rained

  Posted: July 10, 2010, 11:57 am by Rethabile

  On a stoep outside we wait for the sound of crickets from the world around us, quiet and pressing. We wait… for the sound of these means life in dark bushes and trees, men and women we do not know who rise, eat, and go to work, and war like us and fuck good, and who in turn await our signal that bears a truth [...]

• The San’s promise

  Posted: July 5, 2010, 10:22 pm by Rethabile

  The San came from the south holding the sun in their right hand like an object of worship, they crossed our river into the mountains, leather bags full of ochre and painting sticks, venom in small phials, dried meat conserved in leaves. They stayed long enough to paint the fat of the land: hunt scenes, children hopping in playful circles round a fire. An [...]

• Human folly laced with humour

  Posted: July 4, 2010, 9:36 am by Rethabile

  Saturday, 03 July 2010 15:06 Title: Not Another Day Author: Julius Chingono Reviewer: Phillip Chidavaenzi 2006: (pp: 124) 206 x 136 mm ISBN 13: 9781779220486 ISBN 10: 1779220480 When I first heard of Julius Chingono, I didn’t think much about him and what he did, as I’d never come across his literary works. So, what was the big deal? If he was [...]

• A 2001 post on football

  Posted: June 28, 2010, 9:04 pm by Rethabile

  One of the best football players I’ve ever watched, in the flesh or on the telly, is Mochini Matete. A short, stocky, fast, dribbling and left-footed goal-scorer, Mochini played left wing for Matlama FC, the capital’s team. The only thing he probably couldn’t do was score with his head. I’ve never seen him get a [...]

• The Spine

  Posted: June 20, 2010, 10:51 am by Rethabile

  To a rock that towers above it and whose shadow it loves, thread is what the spine is to the head, what a child is to a parent, not caring what words come out as one doesn’t care the colour of rope that knots peoples and their gods. The world sits on one man’s shoulders. In order to know, as a nest knows the [...]

• Workshop poem I was inspired to share now

  Posted: June 4, 2010, 12:13 pm by Rethabile

  The beginning of trees (for Geoffrey Philp) The fluttering butterfly is love’s last stand, as news of Baghdad sinks in like rain into sand, and gold settles on the width of its wings and smears fingertips with love’s smudge, and kings fall to make things budge. All of it belongs to the poet, who keeps his brushes in a pencil-case and above an orchestra [...]

• Happy birthday, Malcolm X!

  Posted: May 19, 2010, 8:40 am by Rethabile

  For Malcolm X All you violated ones with gentle hearts; You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak; Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers, And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes. All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie, Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns, Gather round this coffin and [...]

• At Labour’s End

  Posted: May 16, 2010, 9:54 am by Rethabile

  The era of creation has come to be our travelling matte, blue on a backdrop at the beginning of us, trees piled, rock-shells cracked and spilling yolk onto the sand, the darkness of our father cover from light, overwhelming with welcome, colouring morning, evening, night with negritude. When our eyes meet we break clear of everything, like a child at labour’s end. It is [...]

• The Viewing

  Posted: May 1, 2010, 4:58 pm by Rethabile

  We all think they never leave, the strong ones, you may be thinking it even now. But we are wrong. They go, too, as surely as the weak. You just don’t see them on the motorway angels ride out of this world, you’re blinded by their light breaking through photons, which Einstein did predict because he wasn’t blinded by it at the atom [...]

• Calabash 2010

  Posted: April 23, 2010, 3:02 am by Rethabile

  Get the goods at Geoffrey’s place.

• Canopic Jar N°24

  Posted: April 10, 2010, 10:24 am by Rethabile

  Canopic Jar #24 is out, ladies and gentlemen, and the editors are proud to have such a diverse population of writers. The issue features: p o e t r y charles.ghigna christine.reilly ciretta.carroll curt.eriksen elisabeth.serafimovski grace.andreacchi greg.kosmicki joyce.ellen.davis liesl.jobson mathew.staunton rethabile.masilo tammy.ho.lai-ming & reid.mitchell tim.pfau p r o s e jeff.bumpus nelson.l.eshleman roger.real.drouin will.d.campbell william.alexander v i s u a l a r t allison.acree.hunt césar.biojo dale short We are already accepting submissions for Canopic Jar #25, yes, twenty-five. [...]

• Happy Birthday, Marvin Gaye!

  Posted: April 2, 2010, 2:59 pm by Rethabile

  Marvin Gaye was born on 2 April 1939. Happy Birthday to him. © and photo credit: http://photo.sing365.com Stephen calls him a silky soul singer, which I think is a darn good description. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay, but stuck an “E” to his surname to avoid misunderstandings. Remember I heard it through the grapevine? He followed [...]

• The beginning of trees

  Posted: March 25, 2010, 8:33 pm by Rethabile

  (for Geoffrey Philp) Love is the butterfly’s last stand. Made of sand from heaven, they wait for a saviour, before sleep gives them the poet, wish after wish of them snowing over Baghdad when love is least, as men make war the world, doing it to remember me, child of exile along the banks of the Nile. Poets think children are planned such that no [...]

• sharpeville

  Posted: March 21, 2010, 10:27 am by Rethabile

  the day king walked from selma to montgomery, the tops of trees shook as in a forest, and shivered for this man who had crossed a line of centuries in the south, but even more south, we worried for our lot, resolved as we were to break you, but you to put us with our ancestors. of course there have never been questions: why shoot [...]

• Religion and Sexuality

  Posted: March 18, 2010, 3:57 am by Rethabile

  Bishop Tutu was born on 7 October 1931. “Jesus did not say, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw some’.” Jesus said, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw all, all, all, all, all. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful. It’s one of the most radical [...]

• Happy Birthday, Geoffrey!

  Posted: March 14, 2010, 3:24 pm by Rethabile

  Geoffrey Philp has written a children’s book, Grandpa Sydney’s Anancy Stories, a novel, called Benjamin, My Son, books of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien as well as the more recent Who’s Your Daddy, and five poetry collections, among them Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, hurricane center, xango music, and Twelve Poems and [...]

• Of Autumn and Winter

  Posted: March 9, 2010, 2:31 am by Rethabile

  Ask why it is that everyone hopes they’re gonna go one day into the sky of heaven, ignoring the stars above them, why many of us end up in gaol. Ask van Gogh why he cut his ear and painted potato-eaters without light, and sunflowers with sunlight. Ask and the answer will be given to you; knock, and the shit will be knocked [...]

• Dear Mr. President, I Thought You Should Know

  Posted: March 5, 2010, 8:49 pm by Rethabile

  It’s February and the wind’s so bitter my toddler, in the front pack, slides his hands under my armpits and buries his face in my scarf. I’m sorry to report that some people are still nasty on the number 1 subway and my son’s teacher has acute leukemia. I don’t expect you to change everything or for everything to change. But [...]

• Happy Birthday, Miriam Makeba!

  Posted: March 4, 2010, 9:44 am by Rethabile

  Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of [...]

• Interview with Geoffrey Philp

  Posted: March 3, 2010, 5:15 pm by Rethabile

  CLS: Mr. Philp, you have been blogging enthusiastically since 2005. What made you start doing it and how has it rewarded you? Geoffrey Philp: I began blogging at the suggestion of my daughter and the rewards have been tremendous. I am not only doing something that I love, but it has served as a viable platform [...]

• Clifton, honored poet from Buffalo, dies

  Posted: February 15, 2010, 11:46 am by Rethabile

  By Jay Rey NEWS STAFF REPORTER Updated: February 14, 2010, 12:14 Lucille Clifton, born and raised in the Buffalo area before going on to achieve some of the literary world’s highest honors as a major American poet, died Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore at age 73, her sister told The Buffalo News. Clifton [...]

• Comments: Why Africa is poor

  Posted: February 13, 2010, 8:06 pm by Rethabile

  25 Comments http://sotho.blogsome.com/2006/06/20/why-is-africa-poor/trackback/ (This link leads to the original blog post generating the buzz below) 1. I most heartily agree with all of that, only I missed the point about the number of African countries: surely with all the European-encouraged tribalism a finer division could (not necessarily, of course!) end up in a lot of poorer countries [...]

• Howls of protest at Dennis Brutus concert

  Posted: February 9, 2010, 12:34 pm by Rethabile

  Written by John Chimunhu, Monday, 08 February 2010 10:53 HARARE – A memorial concert for the late Zimbabwe-born South African poet, academic and social activist, Dennis Brutus, turned into a howl of protest against President Robert Mugabe’s social policies. The event on January 29 was organised by Zimcodd, Magamba Cultural Activist Network and SAPSN at the Book [...]

• Poem for Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

  Posted: February 2, 2010, 7:17 pm by Rethabile

  The Weapon for Nelson Mandela As you took up arms, ntate, we stood by and admired your guns and your uniform, while you prepared to mount the country to kill railways and post-offices, we nodded agreement, we acknowledged how the continent was a pistol facing earthward, with the trigger right at Nigeria’s oily wars of religion between once-peaceful regions, the left hand now hacking and being [...]

• Prophet seekers

  Posted: January 12, 2010, 7:53 pm by Rethabile

  Today I know we’re going to unbury the dead to just get this over with before it engulfs us. We’ll wake Motuba up, Fischer, rouse Biko and Lumumba, Hani, put their hands on a stack of bibles and make the questioning begin. To hell, then, if we can’t bring the child to the tree on which their bodies were hanged, arcs stopped dead, [...]

• Timbuktu

  Posted: January 5, 2010, 1:05 am by Rethabile

  “At its height, from the 11th to the 15th centuries, [Timbuktu] was a university town with vast libraries. Scientists here were postulating that the earth was round at a time when many European sailors were terrified of sailing off the edge of an earth that they thought was flat.” [continue there...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• Recurring dream

  Posted: December 17, 2009, 12:04 am by Rethabile

  He crosses the faux marbling adapted to the silence of such rooms, thumbs her eyelids shut, turns to look at us, the kids whose mother is a primary-school teacher, and whose life of chalk and blackboard says good morning on it in scribbly writing. Often, when the dream comes back, my mouth dry completely with the light, my heart a tight drum, the hymnal singer sprinkles powder on our souls, before leaving by the secondary door.

• The Rock

  Posted: December 15, 2009, 4:58 am by Rethabile

  A stone is the centre of my skull, my head is a tumour. Sprouting from the top: a crop of moss the !Kung left as art, dyed with dry wood-pulp, also used to poison tips for hunting kudu and other game. The crude formation is my nose. The rock is a piano, the hours of my head. Here are my arms, my [...]

• Minaret questions

  Posted: December 11, 2009, 2:01 am by Rethabile

  “The peoples of Europe are welcoming and tolerant: it’s in their nature and in their culture. But they don’t want their way of life, their mode of thinking and their social relations distorted.” French President NICOLAS SARKOZY, defending Switzerland’s ban on building minarets [source...] That’s what president Nicolas Sarkozy said. I say: But the European will distort the [...]

• Happy birthday ntate Sobukwe!

  Posted: December 5, 2009, 3:21 pm by Rethabile

  Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born on 5 December 1924

• Poéfrika interview with January O’Neil

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 8:14 am by Rethabile

  1. What’s your relation to poetry? How do you interact with it? Poetry is my vocation. There’s nothing I enjoy more than finding the right words, or finding a series of “wrong” words and making them right. ———- 2. Do you work on just one poem at a time, or do you work on several at the same [...]

• Tongues of Clout (for Geoffrey Philp)

  Posted: November 14, 2009, 10:38 pm by Rethabile

  These images our sleep has given to the poets. Images the mouth turns round and spits out, clean as pits sucked off, the raw tongue finding the texture awright. Poets are always talkin’ about heaven, the pain of the four seasons, countless lucky stars at night, winking; some poets write even hell though none can pave the way back: what happens when a child loses its soul, [...]

• New Year, 2009

  Posted: November 11, 2009, 9:42 am by Rethabile

  A poem by the National Poet of Wales to honour the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America on 20th January 2009 Venus in the arc of the young moon is a boat the arms of a bay, the sky clear to infinity but for the trailing gossamer of a transatlantic plane. The [...]

• The Banjo Lesson (1893)

  Posted: October 27, 2009, 4:25 pm by Rethabile

• Maseru Man

  Posted: October 26, 2009, 3:21 am by Rethabile

  I’ll be your life when spring arrives. And I’ll want to touch your black face again, see your arms hoist work onto the belt like a behemoth tossing things to outer space. Our thoughts will meet in the middle, melt. We shall drift to Kingsway where men smell soap and honey, and mothers sell fruit, a spring in our heel and [...]

• Philp reading from “Who’s Your Daddy?”

  Posted: October 24, 2009, 2:13 pm by Rethabile

• Quote: Emile Griffith

  Posted: October 17, 2009, 8:16 pm by Rethabile

  “I like men and women both. But I don’t like that word: homosexual, gay or faggot. I don’t know what I am. I love men and women the same, but if you ask me which is better … I like women. I keep thinking how strange it is … I kill a man and most [...]

• Interview with Mike Cope

  Posted: August 21, 2009, 3:44 pm by Rethabile

  1. What’s your relationship to poetry? How do you interact with it? I talk to my pet rabbit in rhymed couplets. Apart from that, I read it and think about it a fair bit. I make up songs in my head, to borrowed tunes. ———- 2. Do you work on just one poem at a time, or do [...]

• Literary Award: Penguin

  Posted: July 13, 2009, 3:50 am by Rethabile

  PENGUIN BOOKS SOUTH AFRICA ANNOUNCES A NEW LITERARY AWARD 21 April 2009 Penguin Books announced today a new literary award for writers from the African continent. The Penguin Prize for African Writing has two categories: a previously unpublished full-length work of adult fiction and one of non-fiction. The prize in each category will be R50 000 and [...]

• Niyi Osundare’s “Not my business”

  Posted: July 6, 2009, 9:25 pm by Rethabile

  NOT MY BUSINESS They picked Akanni up one morning Beat him soft like clay And stuffed him down the belly Of a waiting jeep. What business of mine is it So long they don’t take the yam From my savouring mouth? They came one night Booted the whole house awake And dragged Danladi out, Then off to a lengthy absence. What business of mine is it So long [...]

• “Dis-Leur”, by Ernest Pépin

  Posted: June 26, 2009, 10:27 am by Rethabile

  Un oiseau passe éclair de plumes dans le courrier du crépuscule VA VOLE ET DIS-LEUR Dis-leur que tu viens d’un pays formé dans une poignée de main un pays simple comme bonjour où les nuits chantent pour conjurer la peur des lendemains dis-leur que nous sommes une bouchée répartie sur sept îles comme les sept couleurs de la semaine mais que jamais ne vient le dimanche de nous-mêmes VA VOLE ET DIS-LEUR Dis-leur que les [...]

• Maseru by night

  Posted: June 15, 2009, 2:34 pm by Rethabile

  When time has come, and I’m alive still, after toil has dripped the glycerine of my black face, pocket-happy now with pay on this week’s last day, braai-vleis fires giving incense, I wonder what to do with thoughts that bloom in me from love’s innocence. At night, when I walk down Kingsway lined with men smelling of soap, the same blood that [...]

• US Stimulus plan

  Posted: February 19, 2009, 12:02 pm by Rethabile

  "This isn't racism," says the cartoonist (CNN) — President Obama earned kudos from the media when he said he screwed up in nominating Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services despite his problem with paying taxes. Too bad the leadership of the New York Post didn’t follow the lead of the president in admitting [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "US Stimulus plan", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/02/us_stimulus_plan.html" });

• Toxic waste dumped in Africa

  Posted: February 18, 2009, 12:03 am by Rethabile

  “Tonnes of toxic waste from municipal dumps in the West are being dumped illegally in countries like Nigeria and Ghana, an investigation has found. Hundreds of thousands of broken items like TVs and computers are being sold to dealers on the pretext of re-use. Under EU law, such household appliances must be dismantled or recycled. But they are [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Toxic waste dumped in Africa", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/02/toxic_waste_dumped_in_africa.html" });

• The Best African Poetry, 2009

  Posted: February 6, 2009, 1:00 pm by Rethabile

  the best african poetry 2009 It’s about time that there was something akin to The Best American Poetry Series for the Continent. I can’t make any claim to this being the proper vehicle for such an endeavor, but I think it’s high time someone tried. So we’re going to give it a go. With your help! So here [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Best African Poetry, 2009", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/02/2637.html" });

• Tsonga in Soweto

  Posted: February 6, 2009, 11:50 am by Rethabile

  In a Soweto tennis centre paid for by Arthur Ashe, a smiling Jo-Wilfried Tsonga took time out this week to help coach children who dream of being South Africa’s new generation of champions. “I have African blood, so… I am happy to help sport in Africa and especially to improve the tennis,” the Frenchman, top seed [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Tsonga in Soweto", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/02/tsonga_in_soweto.html" });

• Sprinkling confetti all over my head

  Posted: January 30, 2009, 1:31 pm by Rethabile

  I’m on my knees before the cross, and this is me, my last pirouette to the world, the close of it: my curtain-dropping whirl. I’m the secret to death at the altar and dying, I tell you, is an art. You’re going to be seeing me now, dead boy, for sure, my head a waxen screamer of joy. I’m not here to [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Sprinkling confetti all over my head", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/01/sprinkling_confetti_all_over_my_head.html" });

• Poem for Barack Obama

  Posted: January 20, 2009, 6:29 pm by Rethabile

  RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN VAIN for Barack Obama The world has been cut into pieces with the knife of greed: this new one lives in all worlds with his skin, and has been sent to turn us into one separate thing, fit the colours into the prism once again, so that there’s light; this new one knows folks in a mansion, knows others in prison, oboe or [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Poem for Barack Obama", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/01/poem_for_barack_obama.html" });

• Bush cleans his hands after greeting Obama

  Posted: November 10, 2008, 9:11 pm by Rethabile

  “Obama!”Bush exclaimed… “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours — that’s one impressive lady.” The two men shook hands and then, according to Obama, Bush turned to an aide, “who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Bush cleans his hands after greeting Obama", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/11/bush_cleans_his_hands_after_greeting_obama.html" });

• RIP Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 - 10 November 2008)

  Posted: November 10, 2008, 12:38 pm by Rethabile

  Miriam Makeba, the world-renowned South African singer, has died at the age of 76 after being taken ill near the southern Italian town of Caserta. Makeba died on Monday after taking part in a concert for Roberto Saviano, a writer threatened with death by the mafia, an Italian news agency said. “I’m not yet absolutely certain of [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "RIP Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 - 10 November 2008)", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/11/rip_miriam_makeba_4_march_1932_-_10_november_2008.html" });

• The Message: A Poem for Troy Davis

  Posted: October 25, 2008, 10:16 pm by Rethabile

  “The Troy Davis case involves Troy Anthony Davis, an American sports coach, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a Savannah, Georgia police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony.[1] Seven of nine witnesses later recanted their testimony, but he has been unable to get a [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Message: A Poem for Troy Davis", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/10/the_message_a_poem_for_troy_davis.html" });

• Poverty Pauvreté Bofutsana

  Posted: October 15, 2008, 12:01 pm by Rethabile

  Whatever you call it, it’s the same and it is devastating whole populations the world over. The Occident hasn’t been spared. I live in Europe and I run into begging hands wherever I go. The developing world is experiencing the full brunt of it. I have decided to list five blogposts taking part in today’s [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Poverty Pauvreté Bofutsana", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/10/poverty_pauvret_bofutsana.html" });

• An American Sentence (for Troy Davis)

  Posted: September 23, 2008, 11:53 am by Rethabile

  With no evidence blacks don’t walk on a technicality blacks die. Links: + Why Am I Not Surprised? + Stuff White People Do + Troy Anthony Davis + A Hundred Death Penalty Mistakes, And Counting If you can, write an American Sentence for Troy, or about the failure of the justice system in the United States, and post it today on [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "An American Sentence (for Troy Davis)", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/09/an_american_sentence_for_troy_davis.html" });

• Three Spoons

  Posted: September 12, 2008, 5:03 pm by Rethabile

  After she swallowed me, my mother, swollen with me, looked for the proper place to empty me, the pain of carrying me harsh on her body, a weight in a child’s hand. So she had me among wild poppies at the foot of her bed, flowers with faces opening, and cactuses arranged in a range of well-wishing brightness smiling to welcome me. [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Three Spoons", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/09/three_spoons.html" });

• The Arrest After The Declaration Of Qomatsi

  Posted: August 29, 2008, 3:57 am by Rethabile

  They drove into the sun! Quite sure that watching a hill for health, and sawing wood against its grain strengthens one, gilds the furniture, they entered the village and parked bakkies near our home, spilling out to disappear inside. We stayed still, waiting for a sign from the sun. I remarked that dad was shaking and asked why, why we stood there in that [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Arrest After The Declaration Of Qomatsi", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/08/the_arrest_after_the_declaration_of_qomatsi.html" });

• Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela!

  Posted: July 18, 2008, 12:13 pm by Rethabile

  Today ntate Mandela is 63 years old, if you consider the fact that he spent 27 years in jail for wanting to live like a human, and wanting the same thing for his people. But he’s really 90 years old, if you consider the fact that he used those 27 years to change South Africa [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela!", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/07/mandela_birthday_rethabile.html" });

• TROUBLEMAKER for ntate Madiba, with respect When ...

  Posted: July 16, 2008, 12:23 pm by Rethabile

  TROUBLEMAKER for ntate Madiba, with respect When his voice hit the audience, breaking to pieces the only peace we knew and were sharing among barbed houses on a hill, it sent birds off to where startled shards go, his voice the thing we’d sought to shake our poetry, make sense of the world the way a bullet never will. A shipment of negroes leaves the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/07/troublemaker_by_rethabile.html" });

• Lesotho PM backs Mugabe

  Posted: July 10, 2008, 1:39 am by Rethabile

  The Prime Minister of Lesotho, Pakalitha Mosisili, is said to have thrown his weight behind Robert Mugabe. For a while I had started whining about the lack of a position on the part of the Lesotho government. Now, here it is. I’m sorry that it doesn’t please me. Mr Mosisili “told foreign powers on Wednesday [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Lesotho PM backs Mugabe", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/07/lesotho_pm_backs_mugabe.html" });

• Let’s kill the baby

  Posted: June 30, 2008, 10:11 am by Rethabile

  A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe. Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her. [timesonline.co.uk] Technorati: [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Let's kill the baby", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/lets_kill_the_baby.html" });

• Speaking of Africa

  Posted: June 28, 2008, 9:08 am by Rethabile

  Changeseeker, of Why Am I Not Surprised, says, “Yesterday, surfing the web for the first time since I moved last week, I decided to stalk my favorite website builder’s work and came across a call for applications for the Focus Features Africa First Short Film Program. The application period opened May 12th and closes July [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Speaking of Africa", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/speaking_of_africa.html" });

• For Matyaka

  Posted: June 27, 2008, 6:38 pm by Rethabile

  Unable to move, she watch them drag him from the house into a donga and beat him, one goon opening his body to pour blood into the off-colour ditch, like wine seeking the whiteness of cloth that cover the brains of boys and redden their eyes with joy. Everyone try not to look but go their way into the dim June dusk to their [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "For Charity and Francis Matyaka", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/for_matyaka_by_rethabile.html" });

• End-of-June Zimbabwe links

  Posted: June 27, 2008, 7:54 am by Rethabile

  news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe (Obama speaks out): US presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday the international community must do more to try to help resolve Zimbabwe’s political crisis, and to put pressure on Robert Mugabe, who is clinging to power. He singled out South Africa as one country that needs to apply more pressure on Mugabe, 84, [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "End-of-June Zimbabwe links", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/end-of-june_zimbabwe_links.html" });

• مرداد [ to اردیبهشت ] The face ...

  Posted: June 21, 2008, 1:59 am by Rethabile

  مرداد [ to اردیبهشت ] The face of your father comes through flung windows into the bedroom of this sweltering August. In a bid to keep us from needing the dead, he floats toward the bed where the four of us are golliwogs sprawled in heat. I indulge in the visionmy father-in-law holding my hand the night of his visit. Overcome by decayed [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/1979.html" });

• Two Poems

  Posted: June 14, 2008, 8:42 am by Rethabile

  THE STONES OF MOHOKARE We picked flint for its flatness and curled thumb and forefinger round it, then bent at the waist to almost touch the yellow carpet of shoeshoe blossom covering most of the moist turf with colouring, and flicked from the wrist. The trick was to send the stone flying on the water’s surface at some angle from nought to forty-five, like [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Two Poems ", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/two_poems_.html" });

• What’s a keyhole garden?

  Posted: June 5, 2008, 3:00 am by Rethabile

  “Lesotho cannot wait for the UN food summit in Rome to come up with ideas, so it has developed some of its own. Mahaha Mphou does not know much about global economics, but she does know how to grow vegetables. She and the rest of her family of 10 have become some of the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "What's a keyhole garden?", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/06/whats_a_keyhole_garden.html" });

• Umoja in Paris

  Posted: May 31, 2008, 1:26 am by Rethabile

  “Du 4 au 8 juin 2008 pour une série limitée de représentations, nous vous présentons ce spectacle événement ! Fabuleux, éclatant, irrésistible, ce spectacle musical sud-africain venu tout droit de Johannesburg est un pur bonheur. UMOJA, en zoulou, signifie « ensemble ». Ensemble, chaque soir, sur les scènes du monde entier, 35 artistes retracent l’histoire artistique, [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Umoja in Paris", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/umoja_in_paris.html" });

• REFUGEE(by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers)

  Posted: May 26, 2008, 11:55 am by Rethabile

  People ask me: where is home? Last time I saw my village it was burning in the night. My house, a screaming mouth of firehot fear in the mask of darkness. My only thought was flight. Nobody here understands my language, so I speak the tongue of compromise. The grateful grammar of being alive. This is my certainty, my identity. People ask me, where is home? I say home is where the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "REFUGEE(by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers)", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/refugee_poem_xenophobia.html" });

• We helped South Africans. Why won’t they help us?

  Posted: May 25, 2008, 1:53 am by Rethabile

  South Africa has a long history of movement of labour within the country and within the region. Have we forgotten that workers from Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland risked their lives to mine the minerals that built our country’s economy? [more…] To that I would like to add the fact that when our brothers in South [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "We helped South Africans. Why won’t they help us?", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/we_helped_south_africans_why_wont_they_help_us.html" });

• for Jamyang Kyi

  Posted: May 19, 2008, 2:53 am by Rethabile

  So many years, like a lens over papyrus when the sun sends rays through it and it bends them to a point that burns the surface, scribes have etched knowledge into books; a thrust of brush and a master has detailed a sketch. Reality paints itself into the picture, settles at the centre like a lump— in her eyes, Kyi the woman has a twin water-colour [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "for Jamyang Kyi", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/for_jamyang_kyi_rethabile.html" });

• Happy birthday, Mazisi Kunene!

  Posted: May 12, 2008, 2:08 am by Rethabile

  Mazisi Raymond Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1930 [12th of May]. He graduated from the University of Natal with a paper on traditional and modern Zulu poetry. In 1959 he obtained a grant to complete his doctoral dissertation in London. From this point on Kunene dedicated himself to the struggle [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Happy birthday, Mazisi Kunene!", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/happy_birthday_mazisi_kunene.html" });

• Blood river train

  Posted: May 8, 2008, 9:59 am by Rethabile

  When time works against us and weighs at the heart somewhere in a foreign land, night turns to day, and the fashion in shop windows I pass on my way from work into djellabas, the smell of restaurants into kuskus on a market day, hands all out, stretched to acknowledge this gift, walking in the shadow of African women, men, with their fear of anchored boats on coastal fronts. [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Blood river train", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/blood-river-train-rethabile.html" });

• Happy birthday, Bram Fischer!

  Posted: April 23, 2008, 9:07 am by Rethabile

  Bram Fischer was born on 23 April 1908. Happy Birthday to him. Lawyer, born into a prominent Afrikaans family. He studied law in South Africa and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He became an active member of the Communist Party, while also reaching the heights of the legal profession. He defended those charged in the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Happy birthday, Bram Fischer!", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/04/happy-birthday-bram-fischer.html" });

• R.I.P. Aimé Césaire

  Posted: April 17, 2008, 1:33 am by Rethabile

  Prophecy There, where adventure keeps a clean eye there where women shimmer with language there where death is beautiful in the hand like a milk season bird there where on bended knee the underground gathers a wealth of sloes more violent than caterpillars there where for nimble wonder anything goes there where vigorous night bleeds the speed of true vegetables there where bees [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "R.I.P. Aimé Césaire", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/04/rip_aim_csaire.html" });

• Reply to Tim’s comment

  Posted: April 3, 2008, 12:25 pm by Rethabile

  Here is a comment to one of my posts. I decided to turn it into a full-blown post because of its length. So here it is. Khotso to all. Reply: ‘Dear Tim, “We” can’t freely move anywhere, to Darfur or elsewhere, if any survival attempt on the African’s part is clouded with taunts and suspicions of incompetence and [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Reply to Tim's comment", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/04/reply_to_tims_comment.html" });

• Happy birthday, Marvin!

  Posted: April 2, 2008, 8:37 am by Rethabile

  Marvin Gaye was born on 2 April 1939. Happy Birthday to him. © and photo credit: http://photo.sing365.com Stephen calls him a silky soul singer, which I think is a darn good description. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay, but stuck an “E” to his surname to avoid misunderstandings. Remember I heard it through the grapevine? He followed [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Happy birthday, Marvin!", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/04/happy_birthday_marvin.html" });

• Really, now, why is Africa poor?

  Posted: March 31, 2008, 3:21 am by Rethabile

  Nice excuses do you have more concocted for the next 100 years or so? I mean its been over 50 years and using the same excuse does not attract pity anymore. I mean take the case of India for example, their population alone is greater than that of the African continent, colonized for more than [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Really, now, why is Africa poor?", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/03/really_now_why_is_africa_poor.html" });

• Remember Sharpeville!

  Posted: March 21, 2008, 6:55 pm by Rethabile

  21 March 1960 La 21 Hlakubele 1960, batho ba batšo ba 69 ba bolailoe ka lithunya, ba 180 ba ntšoa likotsi If when this township was placed under siege You were present, you would have seen Life lamented, people wailing, the quick Holding their heads in the sky to speak Incantations to disconsolate gods, The dead still, stacked against the guards, Body upon body, [...]

• Protesting with poetry

  Posted: March 16, 2008, 7:05 am by Rethabile

  Facebook | Message: Satire Poems - Prompt Writing SPEED WRITING Call for Satire: deadline March 15th! Let your talent speak for many. We urge you to write a satirical poem—poke fun at the leader of your choice to flaunt your freedom of speech and your own government’s respect for that human right! [...]

• Happy birthday, Miriam Makeba!

  Posted: March 4, 2008, 9:47 am by Rethabile

  Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of [...]

• Racist Obama cartoon

  Posted: February 21, 2008, 5:35 pm by Rethabile

  Obama caricature: The presidential candidate is shown painting the White House black. Now, isn’t that just plain stupid! The text is in Hebrew so I haven’t the faintest idea of what is being said, but the cartoon is unambiguous enough. http://www.notes.co.il/karny/40487.asp Share This:

• Both of you

  Posted: February 18, 2008, 2:47 pm by Rethabile

  An oak guards where they buried you on the hill, one leg sawed at the hip, life on its last leg, its witch’s hand creeping in your box and finding nothing; it shrivels and dies since they, when they took your body away, left only your soul. You own the hill where children play, at peace now as you ever were; their fucking laughter rises into a [...]

• Missionary healers in Lesotho

  Posted: February 18, 2008, 11:55 am by Rethabile

  The LaunchPad: Where Is Lesotho? Lesotho is a small nation that is surrounded by the country of South Africa. The King and Queen of Lesotho have invited Johannes Amritzer and Mission SOS to do a Festival for their people. The first Festival was held there in October of 07 and 17 new churches were [...]

• Tough love for Africa

  Posted: February 8, 2008, 3:54 am by Rethabile

  The Atlanticist : Africa needs tough love, not more aid poured down a rat hole: There is not a single state on the African continent that would not today be better off administered under a colonial regime, as Hong Kong was by Britain. If the West genuinely cared about Africa and wanted to make a difference [...]

• Happy birthday, Bob!

  Posted: February 6, 2008, 8:53 am by Rethabile

  “Robert ‘Bob’ Nesta Marley OM (February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, guitarist, and activist. He is the most widely known performer of reggae music. Marley is regarded by many as a prophet of the Rastafari movement. Marley is best known for his reggae songs, which include the hits ‘I Shot [...]

• The pantry

  Posted: February 3, 2008, 9:28 am by Rethabile

  Everything’s done now. Cake is in the oven… the table set. Nothing to do but undo my lace-wear now, let it gain the floor to silk the base of my statue. I turn and hold a shelf, itself holding jars of fruit we bottled last summer when the kids were at camp and we had the house to ourselves, unlike [...]

• Calling Maya Angelou a “ho”

  Posted: February 2, 2008, 12:14 am by Rethabile

  Someone apparently thinks Dr. Maya Angelou is a “ho” because she supports Mrs Clinton and not Mr. Obama. Hmmm. I know this will generate hits for them, but who knows, maybe you can scold them, or tell someone else to scold them, your congressman, for example, could turn into an effective scolder, or blog shutter. [...]

• The first black person to…

  Posted: February 1, 2008, 3:12 am by Rethabile

  Sowetan: A few years ago we had a young kwaito sensation aptly named Lekgoa [sic] because he was white and lekgoa [sic] is Sesotho for white person. But never have I read anywhere that this young musician was the first white artist to choose kwaito. Neither were many eyebrows raised when Johnny Clegg and [...]

• Anti-Chinese Feelings in Lesotho

  Posted: January 25, 2008, 11:03 pm by Rethabile

  Lesotho — Anti-Chinese Resentment Flares: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks 24 January 2008 Posted to the web 24 January 2008 Maseru For 14 years, Mathabo Mabekhla was one of Lesotho’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her ladies’ clothing boutique sold dresses, blouses and slacks imported from neighbouring South Africa, and boasted a client base that included cabinet ministers and [...]

• Books for children

  Posted: January 5, 2008, 11:24 am by Rethabile

  Chatoyance: Books will fly through the air for children (Tag, you’re it!):  In honor of all those folks who’ve tagged me with memes (or are memes now all called “hooplas”?) this year and had to listen to me grumble, I’ve got a twist on the theme of meme. I read Doris Lessing’s Nobel speech through [...]

• Europe twists Africa’s arm

  Posted: January 4, 2008, 2:02 pm by Rethabile

  World Development Movement comment on Bali roadmap: The EU [says] it will increase taxes on imports from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries on 1 January 2008 if agreements are not signed. At the same time, the EU has suggested that the existence (or not) of an Economic Partnership Agreement will influence EU decisions on which countries [...]

• Melanocytes are why Africa is poor

  Posted: December 30, 2007, 6:48 am by Rethabile

  “I keep hearing from white africans [sic] that they know blacks (Africans) since they are from Africa and that they have the mentality of teen agers [sic]. They insist that they are difficult to educate and have hard time [sic] understanding basic procedures. They also claim that blacks are irresponsible and won’t do what is [...]

• The viewing

  Posted: December 29, 2007, 10:30 pm by Rethabile

  When a giver of life gives hers to the world, we should listen for, and trace, the ingredient in her that carries forward — it’s in the way she lasts like a river, even at this late hour past life and its impediments, past frail moments and grand ones, a child’s death there, a grandchild’s [...]

• Our road

  Posted: December 25, 2007, 11:08 am by Rethabile

  How deep’s deep, how dark’s dark? What depth will keep secrets and, will some shady dim- ness suffice to turn a secret grim, leaving it in the dark? It is this that I’ve carried like a prayer mat all my life; it enters me from nowhere, as we set off from home for my kids’ school. From where we live to where school is there is a five minute walk that often-times turns to a nightmare. I [...]

• More time to help feed children…

  Posted: December 23, 2007, 11:51 pm by Rethabile

  Yay! We’ve got more time… We’ve just gotten word that the deadline to make donations to Menu For Hope food blogger charity campaign has been extended through the weekend. So if you missed out in entering the raffle for our fantastic prize package, or any of the dozens of other prizes that are up for grabs, [...]

• Only a little time left!

  Posted: December 21, 2007, 12:58 pm by Rethabile

  37 hours left to help feed Lesotho kids — and win great prizes: by Bonnie P. @ 2:45 pm on 20 December 2007. As just about every food blog has publicized already, Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim is once again spearheading the epic online fund-raiser Menu for Hope to benefit the U.N. World [...]

• Dealing with HIV/AIDS in Africa

  Posted: December 19, 2007, 2:15 pm by Rethabile

  I was attracted enough by the title of an AllAfrica.com article to resolve to read it. The title read: “Uganda: Africans Can Overcome HIV/Aids.” I wanted to know how we could do so. If Uganda can do it, then Lesotho can, also, I reasoned. Lesotho has one of the highest rates in the world. I [...]

• Menu for Hope IV - spotlight on Lesotho

  Posted: December 6, 2007, 2:35 pm by Rethabile

  Cook sister!: Menu for Hope IV - spotlight on Lesotho: I’m sure you have all heard of the wonderful Menu for Hope event that is the brainchild of Pim and takes place once a year around Christmas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the campaign involves food bloggers (and others) [...]

• Watson of double-helix fame is “mortified”

  Posted: October 19, 2007, 2:23 pm by Rethabile

  “The American scientist at the center of a media storm over comments suggesting that black people were not as intelligent as whites said Thursday he never meant to imply that the African continent was genetically inferior, adding that he was mortified over the attention his words had drawn.” [source] Mr Watson, who should be whacked on the [...]

• Tutu barred from speaking at school

  Posted: October 8, 2007, 12:24 pm by Rethabile

  “I am Jewish, and stifling debate and dissent [and] criticism of Israel is a disservice to all Jews, the state of Israel and the American people,” [Marv Davidov] said. [source] Mr Davidov was referring to the decision by St Thomas University in Minnesota not to invite Desmond Tutu. The reason the school gave was that Bishop Tutu [...]

• the run from qoaling to grootvlei by ...

  Posted: October 6, 2007, 9:20 am by Rethabile

  the run from qoaling to grootvlei by lantern light we snuffed out when sound leapt at us (or seemed to leap as it does when the wind heaves forth) we left, travelling the terrain wintered with contempt, ears tuned for the sound of foot, boot, the snap of dog on our tail. beasts are oblivious to this, to things that knot us, questing always for [...]

• We need maloti!

  Posted: September 26, 2007, 11:44 am by Rethabile

• Thetsane blues

  Posted: September 11, 2007, 12:16 pm by Rethabile

  I want to see you dance among blue-pale wisps at night, when shebeens are dense with the factory worker, and bone-shaking mbaqanga* fills the shack. I want to see you dance with your body that quakes as you slide aside to let a rhythm by, only to pick up some other tones heading away against the force of shriller, more common notes, trembling to this sound [...]

• Call for poetry…

  Posted: September 4, 2007, 2:51 pm by Rethabile

  AGENDA #74 – Rape Poems will be considered for publication in Agenda 74, which will be published in the beginning of December 2007. Poetry can be but does not have to be on the theme of rape. Length of contributions: Poems have to fit a full page of Agenda (slightly bigger than A5) Submission deadline: 14 September 2007 Submission requirements: All [...]

• Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 5:50 am by Rethabile

  AND I WATCH IT IN MANDELA (by John Matshikiza) It is not for the safety of silence That this man has opened his arms to lead. The strength of his words hangs in the air As the strength in his eyes remains on the sky; And the years of impatient waiting draw on While this man burns to clear the smoke [...]

• THE CHILDREN OF THE REAL LESOTHO (by Pavo Real)

  Posted: July 16, 2007, 2:01 pm by Rethabile

  The children far from urban Maseru, the children of the real Lesotho, (A country of mountains, anchored in the sky with the stones of Africa, a land of beauty, death and love, Of corn and useless flowers, cattle and Aloe, Of wild skies and serene earth, And women stooped to sweep the dirt and weep, Without tears or fear that will [...]

• Sunrise

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 3:01 pm by Rethabile

  I saw in the distance a god sucking life through a straw, sucking the silence; then she darted in a blur to where, behind a bush, pygmies pumped air into a beach-ball, chuckling and slapping smeared hands on it, till it took the redness of Basotho dye used by graduates at mountain schools; they released it, watched it go up, up, giggling in fields [...]

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes