Litnet

"It’s apparent that the appeal board has missed out on the other important aspects of the film, which include same-sex relationships, safe sex, love, the challenges of patriarchal societies, finding the balance between modernity and tradition, negotiating the rural and urban landscapes, as well as the beauty that is embedded within the isiXhosa culture and the traditional rite of passage into manhood."

"In fact, Nama is, for all practical purposes, the only extant Khoekhoe variety (and, indeed, the only Khoisan language of any kind) still spoken in South Africa today. Most of the remaining Nama speakers in South Africa (perhaps around 2 000 of them) are aged at least 50 or upwards, however, although attempts are now being made to reintroduce the language as an additional subject at schools in the Northern Cape." 

"In the end, like in the book, it boils down to helping one another. There is great blessing in giving a glass of water to a poor and thirsty person. It is a form of healing."

"[I]n the mid-70s as he [Raymond] was putting together his collection of 20th-century English poetry ... From this initial stage, today the final product amounts to what is now known as the Danowski Poetry Library – a 75 000-volume collection of rare and first editions of modern and contemporary poetry at Emory University. It includes every poetry volume in English published world-wide in the 20th century."

"The motivation for the play is clear, and this can be a very important piece of theatre: the refugee crisis is, sadly, an ongoing one, and in some wealthy parts of the world, like Trump’s America, refugees – or people fleeing to have better lives – are not welcome." 

"The postponement of SONA is a metaphor for where we are as a country. We are a country in waiting. The dreams of 1994 and our hopes as citizens have been deferred. Again."

"It has been long coming that as a country we follow in the footsteps of countries like Zimbabwe, Germany, Cuba and Libya, which provide free education. We can find the money, whether through belt-tightening, fighting corruption and illicit siphoning of funds from the country, and/or through increasing corporate tax."

"You walked stride by stride with giants. And, when the time came, you returned to us, held our hands and helped us take baby steps."

"For now it’s business as usual for the captured state. Ramaphosa will have to tread softly at least until the 2019 elections."

"South Africans need to get more involved in their public affairs and need to evaluate leaders more robustly."

"The tools that you use are as important as the problems we are trying to solve. And if you use the wrong conceptual apparatus for making sense of problems like racism, like decoloniality, then, of course, I think you will be less effective than if you, for example, use critical race theory."

"Whereas mother nature caused the failing French wheat harvests, father Mugabe was responsible for the shortage in Zim through chasing away those who produced the wheat."

On 6 November, the launch of Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa took place in Cape Town. Christi van der Westhuizen, author of Sitting Pretty, was in conversation with Adam Haupt. Read a broad overview of the main discussion points and also listen to the entire discussion.

"This is big. In a sense it means that Durban becomes the literary capital of Africa, the literary gateway to Africa. Everything that the city plans from now, literature must be at its heart."

"Using Kwaito as an entry point, Nou Die Las is an exercise in recollecting, defining and reclaiming Afrikaans and associated dialects, such as Tsotsitaal, as part and parcel of township culture."

"Ryk Hattingh was fearless and melancholy and caring and mad and good and contrary and generous, and had more originality in his little finger than most people have in a lifetime."

"The language also bears the imprint of a fierce tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, of an all-embracing humanism and anti-apartheid activism."

"My pen is my machine gun. My words are my bullets. I committed myself a long time ago that I shall use my words to fight injustice wherever it shows up."

"Both Wally Serote and Njabulo Ndebele are literary aficionados who initially cut their political teeth in the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, whose tenets entailed self-love, self-reliance and cultural affirmation."

"Hughes was no ivory tower type of intellectual. He was a true cultural revolutionary who celebrated the beauty of ordinary people, whose experiences he sought to centre."