Litnet

"So, thanks for the laughs, Donald. May all our dreams also come true."

"Noting my insights and emotions is not merely a tool for making sense of the past and sinking into the present. It’s also a way of starting a conversation with the future."

"Earlier this year, LitNet reported on a young woman who had taken the Department of Education to court, as she was unable to matriculate due to harassment. Nare Mphela was murdered. She is one of 350 trans people who have met violent deaths in the past year."

"I share this story as our story – all of us who stayed behind – the story of how we made a life and home with our students during the COVID-19 pandemic."

"My father and I go for months without speaking to each other. This ongoing cycle usually starts after he says something crude and vulgar, mixed with colourful language, and I’m left thinking about why I forgave him for his prior transgression."

"If Trump loses, it will be a stolen election in full view of the public."

"I will never understand the support for someone who has shown no respect for this democracy or for others’ lives. Trump’s made it clear that rules don’t apply to him, and I guess half of the country truly doesn’t care."

"What differed here from previous talks about multilingualism was the insistence on a fresh reframing of the South African language situation, as well as the acknowledgement that language isn’t merely a matter of heritage, but is indeed an integral part of the greater infrastructure of the democratic state."

"But the English language’s South African origins obviously have emphatic historical roots, with the language arriving via historical processes and people with a culture manifested in innumerable forms, most long shared across communities from origins other than British. Like Hermann Giliomee has explained in his magisterial Die Afrikaners, people are entitled to their historical story, warts and all."

"I am deeply worried about the current status quo, and how we will answer in the face of COVID. The justice inequality stands to be aggravated by the aftershock of the epidemic."

"As with us, and those who preceded us, the time will come to face those perennial and large historical questions – who and what are we as a country and a nation? What have we been? Where are we heading?"

"This three-letter plague is also responsible for a few strange symptoms. It causes blindness in its followers."

"On 18 May, I had the opportunity of participating in an insightful FB discussion on a topic we are all obsessed with – COVID-19. Our discussion focused on the much celebrated 'Swedish way' of dealing with the virus. At the time, South Africa was under a strict level four lockdown, while Swedes seemed to be going about business as usual. Towards the end of May, most countries in the world were easing their lockdown regulations – it seemed that we were now all becoming Swedes."

"How your writer then gets to the conclusion, as voiced in the title – that the [Afrikaans] language may be under threat of extinction – is wholly unclear. If the language is under threat, then so are all other South African languages."

"Paper and ink are not going away just yet." As mass extinction threatens South Africa’s traditional magazines (fifteen titles closed down earlier this month), Catherine Knox recalls a time when the industry was on a roll.

"We need another 30 days of a hard lockdown, at the very minimum. But then, the state must supply food for the masses of hungry citizens, and do it now."

"In a post-apartheid South Africa bedevilled by a paucity and deficit of value-based and selfless leadership, with leadership that uses its struggle credentials for self-enrichment, one wonders how Biko would have reacted."

"COVID-19 is touching every conceivable facet of life, reflected in the data being generated as a result. Be it virus test results, traffic flows, shopper behaviour or what is spoken about on public social networks, the data flow can appear to be a torrent. Beneath all those public flows lies an iceberg of hidden data, a seemingly endless list of 'known unknowns', and we can only wait for the 'unknown unknowns' to come to light."

"If you are white and Afrikaans, feelings of shame and defeat will never help build a new, dynamic and nonracial future for the Afrikaans language."

"If you do not put your skills into constant practice, you will lose your flair and soon become obsolete."