Litnet

The second installment of last year’s hugely popular Purple Mountain Heritage Festival (PMHF), which seeks to "open hearts, minds, and the doors to the humanity in each of us", takes place in the rural Western Cape town of Porterville on 23 and 24 September 2025. Entry to all events and the food offerings are free.

This conference invites historians, archivists, anthropologists, musicologists, artists, environmental scientists, natural scientists, information systems professionals, scholars and practitioners from a wide range of other disciplines, activists, and publishers, media practitioners and content creators to explore the evolving role of the archive in shaping collective memory, public trust, and historical knowledge in the post-truth era.

Lisba Vosloo’s biopic In search of Olive Schreiner will be screened at the Amazwi Auditorium on Wednesday 24 September at 14:00.

"In this time in which we see about us so many brutal forms of power, crushing everything in their path like a juggernaut, the 'recreated world' Tally strives for is a countervailing force which draws its power precisely from the fact that it refuses the wider, dystopian pattern and its ostensibly remorseless logic."

"It’s where love is captured
Where dreams come true
Create many memories
They’ll bring happiness to you"

"I approach this space through the work of counter-narration, driven by my interest in critical heritage and its possibilities for restitutional justice and reparations. For me, the most meaningful form of reparation is truth-telling."

"What bugged me most about the book was Stewart’s interpretive framework. It is shaped by an uncritical acceptance of imperial ideology, even as he softly mocks it sometimes."

"Should a student be expelled from a college, a page is torn from that book. That page loses its place, but the entire book loses part of its story. It was a wonderful metaphor that needs to be explored even more."

"We live attention-deficient lives. Reading a short-story-sized narrative is often the most enjoyable 15 minutes of my daily routine. The twist in a tale can make your day."

"The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city reaffirms Tanya Zack’s talent for telling a compelling real-life story."

"Today, oral history is no longer a mere preliminary to written records; it is a paradigmatic epistemology capable of conveying grief, contradiction, cosmology and lived memory. It preserves what empire seeks to forget, affirming that memory and voice remain more enduring than ink."

"When I phoned Thobeka after the ceremony, I could feel her joy radiating across the entire continent, and I cannot wait until we can meet again and celebrate together. I hope that it can happen at Woman Zone Cape Town, because that is where our journey began."

"I have to admit it was really easy. The name Wordfest is such an iconic brand, and there exists so much goodwill towards the festival."

Karavan Press was recognised for its book In silence my heart speaks by Thobeka Yose, winning the $20,000 top prize. The Prize was presented by Algeria’s Minister of Culture and Arts Azzedine Mihoubi.

"To make sense of things for yourself and then for others is a joyous burden, the purpose of many of these writers’ professional lives. They write for collective repair. We owe these diplomats a debt we cannot repay, except by buying their books. Reading their books. Talking about them. One audience member who attended every panel she could, commented quietly to me, 'Note to self: be like them.'"

"Art is the place I go to process emotion. Literature, reading and also writing are like flashing a light in the dark."

"Their dynamic was hugely entertaining. Both actresses pulled off their character arcs in a way that made the fast-paced drama feel as though it had months’ worth of emotions and events packed into minutes on stage."

"The reader as medereisiger, as fellow traveller, is encouraged to page on and on to fulfil the almost breathless expectation created by the thematically arranged geographical sections."

Wordfest 2025 will take place in Makhanda from 19 to 20 September 2025.

"'Standing still' was first inspired by an image that existed in real life: a vehicle broken down on the side of the M3 in Cape Town with a horse box attached to it. As I drove past, I noticed the horses peeking out at the traffic passing by and I couldn’t help wondering what the story was."