Litnet

"For all our pain unseen
for all that could have been
the weeping willow cries
as the day slowly dies"

Join us for the launch of The wildest beauty by Michiel Heyns on 24 February at the Welgevallen Community Psychology Clinic in Stellenbosch.

"For formerly colonised peoples, restoring indigenous names is not nostalgia; it is epistemic independence. It declares: We are not what conquest called us."

"I think identity and especially cultural identity has a lot to do with language – in my case, English and Afrikaans as formative tongues. At bottom, I remain thoroughly South African – rooted, emotionally attached at the hip. But I also find myself very much at home in Wales, original home of my mother."

"South Africa’s 2026 municipal elections are likely to take place in the last quarter of the year. Much will still be written, said and – annoyingly – also warped, over the course of the year. Let us then reflect briefly on what South Africans might expect and want to consider as the elections loom – especially on service delivery, fiscal sustainability, broader political change, and governance and accountability, or the lack thereof."

"He never wanted to hear the same phrase played the same way. It always had to be different, sometimes even shockingly different, but never boring."

"On 6 February 2026 Gayton McKenzie, minister of sport, arts and culture, published a declaration indicating that more towns in the Eastern Cape would be renamed. We have created a link to an online portal for people to object to the changes."

During the week in which World Read Aloud Day took place for the year, Salamino Mosese read from her children's book Neo’s invisible blanket - in Sepedi.

The Endler Concert Series opens its first season of 2026 with an ambitious February to March programme in Stellenbosch that combines international star power with some of South Africa’s most compelling performers and ensembles.

"What you can and should read him for are the myriad ways in which he reminds us of our responsibility and duty to question what we think we know."

"History likes its villains tidy and its violence abstract. Karen Jennings refuses both. Swaartbooij and Titus opens a wound in the Cape’s colonial past and rubs salt into it, asking not who was right, but who was wronged, who was left to carry the memory when the smoke cleared."

"Intermezzo’s quieter wisdom feels unforced and unhurried – and all the more real and tangible for it."

"Diana was more than a poet. She was a moral compass, a voice for the silenced, and a healer who transformed pain into purpose through language. Her work carried the power to restore dignity, to confront injustice, and to inspire healing across generations."

"Roger Lucey’s How to build a house in the mountains is a book about constructing a legacy from your own ruins."

As a young man in a close-knit Muslim community in Woodstock, Muhammad used to feel trapped between who he was and who he was expected to be. But then he met Riyaaz, and his world shifted in unexpected ways. Haram is an unflinching tale alive with hidden and unspoken desires.

Under the theme "Local Government Elections 2026 – Chances & Challenges for Municipalities to Fulfil their Constitutional Mandate" the event will explore key institutional, administrative and political dimensions of local governance ahead of the 2026 local elections.

Get ready to share the magic and celebrate the joy of reading aloud.  World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) is celebrated internationally on Wednesday, 4th February 2026, and we want you to be a part of the celebration.

"The poetry whisperer’s workshop is the takeaway from a project inspired by Alison Gwynne Evans, head of the Western Cape Branch of SACEE (the South African Council for English Education). ... Central to the workshop is the idea that the future of poetry should be affirmed, even in times where AI is set to challenge all areas of human endeavour."

"The main point is that it is exactly the sort of potential crisis that may explode, as the impression gains ground that the rules-based system under the UN and other bodies is impotent and toothless."

"Here we are, thirty-two years into our so-called non-racial, non-sexist democracy premised on human rights that are enshrined in our Constitution, and we have the minister responsible for arts and culture essentially banning an artist from participating in the Venice Biennial, because in his view, her work does not contribute to social cohesion in the country."