Blog
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A Fistful of Seed
I took this photo of a sorghum panicle (seed head) during a visit with 30 children to a vegetable garden on a homestead in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. There was no sound but the their twinkling voices and scattered birdsong. Small children followed the farmer along narrow paths of soft, dark soil. On either side, raised beds of verdant spinach, intercropped with onions, mint, imbuya (green herbs), marigold and chilli. A boy pointed to the single sorghum plant and asked ‘Doesn’t that belong in the field?’ The farmer smiled. ‘Yes!’ she answered. ‘It’s there for the birds – something sweet to keep them away from my vegetables.’ Later, we gathered…
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Knowing our names
Margaret Mncadi Avenue is the six-lane road beside the harbour in Durban, its north and south carriageways separated by tall coconut palms. It used to be called Victoria Embankment. Naming and renaming has the potential to be part of a process of decolonisation. Names of public spaces can be celebratory, educational, affirming and unifying. There was virtually no public education about the 'new' names when the process started. Here is the little I found about Margaret Mncadi...
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Lament for the wall that kept no one out
Cities are networks of crossed lines and parallel lives. How we travel - on foot, by train, by ship, taxi or car - determines who we meet. The Parallel Lives blog reflects on how lives intersect around the harbour, the railway line, the inner city and the beachfront of Durban. Read more here
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Love in the time of Corona – picture us
Unframed Picture us Unframed, reframed See us in all the places that we could not be Prohibited, inhibited Shapes connecting dying breath to life through plastic, steel, sweat, despair Hearts and faces with hidden bruises Shadows around a grave. Remember us In queues, on lines Recall us in all the ways we could not be Separated. Resegregated. Dimly distant in each other’s eyes and our own minds Footprints washed away before they could be followed. Trust and truth erased. Watch us Sinking. Rising Deeply hungering to hold and heal Hunkering with blame and rage Drunk on defiance and compliance Passing bucks. Creating decoys. Excuses to deploy. Imagine us Unmasked.…
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Love in the time of Corona – looking out
Between When I look up, I see infinite iterations. And then my heart is free to fill the sky. When I look down, I see a world made small and mean by hate and fear, where I cannot move or touch. I will not share a photo of down. Down is your windowless bedroom and bathroom, beside the railway and the endless earthquake of trucks. There is a world between us but we both may hear the birds. Song of the Birds What a paradox, to feel connected and belonging to the sky and cut off so completely from the earth. I have a home and must cover my face…
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Love in the time of Corona – locked down
Love in the time of Corona – locked down It is a time of suffocation. Under boots and knees In blood and water Behind masks and machines By speaking and silencing Deaths through which we cannot accompany each other Beyond virtual spaces, bought from billionaires Who rent us the freedom to be sold. Suffocation of the spirit Where we teach our children How not to die by touching My children might learn more from me By the embracing and letting go of love Than by this clinging to a singular fear And the flinging away of imagination. The world on my phone and out of my window imagines ways to…
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Love – and death – in the time of Corona
The process to establish the protocol for allowing a packet to leave the building involved six people. They sprayed me, the packet, and each other, passing the item through three doors, standing it on a table, then on a shelf and taking it outside. I appreciated the precautions but I think someone slipped into the building unsprayed while we were dancing.
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Love in the time of Corona – early days
The weekend after the first case of Coronavirus was confirmed in KwaZulu-Natal, I travelled to Zimbabwe, not knowing it would be the last time we were allowed to leave the country for nearly two years. Harare was ahead of Durban with news and sanitiser. 'Where are you from?' they asked at the airport. Durban. 'Spray her again' yelled a fellow passenger...
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At War With Ourselves
South Africa appears to be at war with itself. To rape and murder a woman or a child, to attack, rob and chase away one’s neighbour is to kill something in ourselves. We talk of ‘Toxic masculinity’ – of a way of being a man that is poisonous, corrosive and fatal to anyone who threatens a perverse notion of ‘manhood’. This toxic masculinity is not only personal. It is global. We see individual men rape, impregnate, infect, terrorise and kill babies, children and women – and men who do not conform. We see governments enact legislation and policy to control the bodies of girls and women – including forcing children…
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Seeds of the Heart
You were born quietly, from water into water. Your mother moaned and breathed out. You breathed in as we rose together into candlelight. The cord that connected us gave up its pulse. Your life filled my heart. Your father’s laughter filled the room. The cord filled a small space between dark soil and the fragile roots of a coral tree. The tree grew silently, slowly, slenderly, out of your thought and sight. You came to know it was your tree but it was too small to climb, too sparse for birds to nest, too young to dazzle with the fiery-fingered flowers from which it took its name. As you…
