Ja. Edition 12

#ed12

09 Jan 2017

Isabel Rawlins

Lipstick Kissed Dunhill

Lights

Matt Hazell

Of oil paints, storytelling and dreamscapes

Lonwabo Zimela The introvert’s lens

Well then, let’s try and make sense of it all, shall we?

2016 was a year of loss, both locally and abroad. It was a year of profound grief, anger and disappointment.

There was death live-streaming out of Aleppo, adaptable and unfamiliar viruses swarming through Brazil, and one of the the most powerful (for the worse) nations squashed by the grip of a vehement bigot — in a time where black folk continue to be murdered, simply for being black.

So how do we begin to make sense of it all?

We tell stories. Now more than ever, new writing, art, reporting, and innovative ways of relaying varying perspectives are at the heart of understanding the world and our places in it. We’re lucky enough to be able to publish just a few of those stories, and while we’re just as tired and broke and perplexed as we were at the beginning of last year, we won’t be stopping anytime soon.

Closer to home we saw the ongoing militarisation of campuses, the loss of queer lives in the fight against LGBTQI+ hatred, everyday instances of racism, ongoing corruption and the violent erasure of poor people. Most of us don’t have enough money. Those of us who have jobs or degrees are still trying to make it work, and none of us really seem to know when any of it will get any better.

So, here’s to another year of brilliant storytelling across as many mediums as possible. We hope you enjoy the read.

ja. team

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PROFILE

Of oil paints, storytelling and dreamscapes words by Dave Mann Art by Matt Hazell, photography by Cullan Maclear

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att Hazell is a dreamer. Not so much in the overwrought and conventional sense of the word, but more in the literal, and arguably, tangible sense: He dreams, and then he paints.

I’d end up telling a pretty good story. I often conflate my dreams and thoughts, which sometimes overcomplicates and stifles the painting process. But, every now and then, I have a moment that just works out.”

A Johannesburg-based artist, Matthew Hazell is a painter who works primarily in the realm of oils. Considered, whimsical, and perhaps even nonsensical oils that, more often than not, find their way onto a canvas by way of endless storytelling from a sleepless mind.

One such moment is A Room With A View Too, a recent painting of Hazell’s that declares itself in long and languorous weepy-eyed strokes, (deceptive compositional tools, here) sharp lines, and a heady mix of colour. In the painting there is a man outside of a house. He is watering the garden and he is doing it in the nude. Hazell considers it to be one of his favourite works.

“I think I’m a firm believer,” begins Hazell.

“My dreams have always been very vivid and clear – to the point that, whenever I regale someone with the previous night’s dreams,

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PROFILE

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“I laboured over the images in my mind and struggled to come to a coherent decision and then finally I just said ‘fuck it’ and painted a house and a naked man watering his garden, which was a series of images I had gathered from my dreams and subconscious,” explains the artist. “Paint is a difficult medium but it allows me to extract the thoughts from my mind and articulate them within this reality.”

Similarly, the artist’s practice hasn’t always been a linear one. To circle back to Hazell’s artistic origins would find you in the back garden of a Gauteng house where a small boy divides his time between catching bugs and immersing himself in crudely-fashioned Lego worlds. Later, Hazell would attend the University Currently Known as Rhodes where he’d throw himself into a fine arts degree studying under the guidance of Diane Victor and Tanya Poole, and surrounding himself with likeminded artists – Anthony Morton, Chemu Ng’ok, Callan Grecia and Nigel Mullins to name a few.

Dreams then, become an even more fitting metaphor for the artist. Think, for a moment, about the process of recalling a dream: You awaken from a deep slumber, the memory of a fresh and full-bodied story alive in your mind, but later, upon recounting the dream to a friend or a lover or even a notebook, it’s grown hazy. It’s shifted and twisted and you find yourself making light changes to it – omitting bits here, and enhancing bits there.

Painting, says Hazell, is much the same.

“Until my first year at university, I had never painted with oils. To avoid looking like an idiot, I jumped straight into it and trusted in my ability to create,” he says. “The act of making comes quite naturally to me and so I think it’s worked out pretty well.”

Even viewing Chronology in comparison to his newer works shows a marked difference in both technique and direction. A series of recreated images, Chronology served as Hazell’s final-year body of work, exhibited in Grahamstown.

“I use oil paint as my main medium of choice because it’s slow-drying. This facilitates a conversation because I can make a mark, step back and contemplate it, and then decide to either change it, keep it as it is, remove it or develop it. These are all available options with oil paint, but with any other tactile medium you don’t really have this freedom of choice.

This entire process is a reflection of how my mind works – disjointed, non-linear, and a continuous back-and-forth.”

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PROFILE

“Paint is a difficult medium but it allows me to extract the thoughts from my mind and articulate them within this reality.�

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PROFILE

“I really enjoyed making the work and it taught me a lot about honesty, imagery, criticality, technique and where I wanted to take my practice,” explains Hazell. “I was grappling with concepts of space, time, and the human condition – but this was rather broad and overambitious. Ultimately, I became a bit disconnected from my practice, so now I am back to being the boy making worlds of Lego

Again, Matt Hazell is a dreamer. And in a sociopolitical (and indeed, artistic) climate such as South Africa’s it’s often the case that we look towards art as a medium of explanation and solution. But as it goes, when the discernible line between the nightmarish dreamscapes and the daily realities begins to waver, and the very questions we seek answers to begin to grow hazy, we should look towards art such

and collecting bugs. Well, sort of. Now I am dealing with a narrative that’s closer to home.

And perhaps this will allow me to look at socalled grander concerns and issues in life.”

as this to help us make sense of it all.

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PHOTO FEATURE

The introvert’s lens words by Niamh Walsh-Vorster Photography by Lonwabo Zimela

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If you search for ‘@king_zimela’, you’ll find an eclectic archive of contemporary portraits of Durban residents.

It’s a mixed bag of fashion and faces presented like a lepidopterist’s collection of butterflies pinned in a glass case. Zimela’s collection is just presented in the more contemporary and millennial platform of Instagram.

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PHOTO FEATURE

Lonwabo Zimela, the self-identified ‘shy guy’, pushes his pushes his own boundaries to make portaits and relationships with acquitances, strangers and friends.

often gives access to spaces that one would not usually be able to be in (backstage or among a crowd of strangers).

Zimela gets his consent by engaging with people he wants to photograph. Reflecting on the start of his portrait-making journey, Zimela tells us that he would simply step up to a person, ask them to make a portrait, and then photograph them. “After the fourth portrait or so I started having a bit of fun. By the time the party was over I’d fallen in love with making portraits.”

The project of documenting faces started early last year when Zimela attended the afterparty of one of Durban’s hottest additions to the live music scene, Zakifo Musik Festival.

“I was exhausted, a bit hungry and quite irritable. It was my good friend and fellow photographer, Llwellyn ‘Juice’, that asked me to show up. Around midnight he gave me his 50mm and challenged me to take 10 portraits.”

Who he sees as photo-worthy is a reflection of the power he (and other photographers) wield with the camera. He is attracted to the physical features of his subjects which strike him as intriguing. “A facial feauture or expression that stands out”, says Zimela, is what he recognises first.

After this initial night, his portfolio and signature style has grown to get him recognised in magazines like GQ and South African Creatives Network.

“Being an introvert, portrait photography pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to communicate with my subjects much more than I would normally do.” These ‘subjects’ become friends, admirers, or just memories that collect in his Instagram feed.

For many photographers, cameras are a source of comfort and security because they give one a sense of purpose at social events, or in transit.

Photography is also a great door to opportunity. Having a DSLR in hand 15

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PHOTO FEATURE

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Being an introvert, portrait photography pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to

�

communicate with my subjects much more than I would normally do.

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Home

- A written series illustrations by Hannah Shone

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WRITING

Home and its many conflicts and contradictions I’ve lived in Johannesburg all my life.

Johannesburg is the only home I know. I was born in Johanneburg – Joburg Gen Hospital to be specific – and I’ve spent my whole life here.

All 23 years of it. I’ve moved around quite a lot too. Soweto was my childhood home, but I’ve also lived in Diepkloof, Rockville, Pimville and later Yeoville, Melville and now Kensington (which I can finally call my most permanent home).

At the start of 2016 I moved out of the ‘burbs in an effort to discover if I could survive this city on my own. I mean how hard could it be, right? Wrong. Most of the time I felt as if I’ve been faking it. Pretending like I know what I’m doing and where I’m going. I’d often find myself in a daze walking home from work, wondering how I’m going to pay rent and questioning what I’m even doing in this godawful place.

With all this moving around, I pride myself in knowing my way around the city. I walk with confidence. I walk with a purpose, I think that’s how you survive in the city: you’ve gotta be mean and fast and at least pretend like you know what the fuck you’re doing and where the fuck you’re going, because the city has no time or patience for those who don’t.

Because to be honest, this city is trash. It smells and it’s deafeningly loud. It’s cruel and unforgiving.

Never let anyone sell you dreams about Joburg, it’ll swallow you whole and spit you right back out again.

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WRITING

I hate this place, but it’s the only home I know, so in that way, I also love it. I’ll defend it to death if an outsider dare pass judgement on it. But, I don’t know if I choose to feel this way or if I’m predisposed to feeling so conflicted, torn between disdain and adoration for this place. I guess you could say this inner conflict reflects the many contradictions that pave this city, the chaos and the beauty, the official and the unofficial.

I’ve tried for years to make sense of my relationship with Joburg, hoping that it’d make the process of staying or moving easier.

I may not know where on earth I want to move to and I don’t know if there’ll ever be a place (more) worthy of being my home but I do know that I don’t want to be stuck here forever.

I guess that’s why I initially decided to move out of home, away from my mom. And certainly, if home were a person, it’d be my mother. But still, I had to go. At least at that point of my life I did. It’s been a year now and as much as I think I understand and appreciate home more, I’m still just as conflicted.

So I’m moving back home and I can’t really tell if it’s by choice or if I’m simply inclined to be rooted in ‘home’. I can’t even say how long I’ll be home for, but at least I’ve got the rest of my life to make sense of it all.

words by Afrika Bogatsu 20

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WRITING

What the Government Cheese Taught Me “Run, run, run/ mama said come home before the street lights do” — Noname Gypsy, Diddy Bop

In Junot Diaz’s short story, How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girls, White Girl, or Halfie), the narrator gives a string of dating instructions to a Dominican teenager living in urban New Jersey. Once the young man has successfully lied his way into staying home while his family goes out, he must “clear the government cheese from the refrigerator” so that the girl does not know his family eats government cheese; but the narrator adds: “leave yourself a reminder to get it out before morning or your moms will kick your ass.” At the end of the manual – date successful or otherwise – another prompt: “Put the government cheese back in its place before your mother kills you.” [home] /hōm/ [sound uncertain, like white sugar on a white floor] noun the place where one lives permanently

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WRITING

Among other things, Diaz’s story is diaspora fiction, consistently oscillating between home(s) in its storytelling, so it’s only natural that I learned to articulate my discomforts about home through that government cheese. As a non-southern African citizen living in South Africa, [home] is often a prescription from a surprised stranger whenever they find out what passport I hold, or from friends whenever a holiday approaches: they would like to know when I am going back [home], or how often I go back [home].

Just like the language of repatriation, the government cheese serves as a reminder that this home to which I must make a return, no matter how begrudgingly, is precisely a space of putting back, of returning everything (and everyone) to its original place, of leaving everything looking like Ma expects it to when she checks. And may your foremothers help you if you are not back in the house by bath-time… [home] /hōm/ [sound like you’re stripping nostalgia for parts] stationary noun anything can happen inside square parentheses, but the square parentheses do not move There are no cracks and breaks I know as intimately as the ones I find at [home]; like that time I fucked up and broke my father’s favourite mug the day after he told me not to use it (and of course I was using it); it is precisely because chunks of life detach themselves and shatter, or because any number of body fluids have spilled here, or because the tight-lipped corners of the house only get an occasional cleaning; it is precisely because our bones break and turn to the dust on the bookshelves with the burdens of [home] that everything must be returned to its original place in order for it to be

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(return full circle to) [home] /hōm/ [sound like you have placed your finger on it, even though you have not] noun

the opposite of unhome With this articulation came the fear of their discovery of my ‘unhomely things’, many of which have caused the fractures and spillages that have happened before. Yet it gets harder each time to unlearn myself every time I have to relearn [home] because I no longer know how to re-fit myself.

Double lives can be crippling; in some places, I have lost the neat borders I drew, and I can taste the beginning of estrangement, of a complete drifting.

I am scared, yes.

I have stopped saying ‘no’ when people ask me if I miss [home]. I never say ‘yes’. I shrug one shoulder and change the subject because whatever answer I give is untenable; it still befuddles me that I can long for and loathe a place at the same time. But shortly after I get off the plane each time, I am reminded that [home] and me, we work out best with long, long distances between us.

words by Wairimũ Murĩithi

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Exploration of a fallacy

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WRITING

Joburg will make you cling to every single one of your gods. Every one of your spiritual guides, your ancestors, your vices. You’ll create rigid rituals for security and not even realise you’re doing it – but by then it’s too late. Routine has destroyed your delight. *** There was a time – imaginary – when the air was clean, the streets were empty and you were content in flowers blooming and the stillness of nature. The church was a sanctuary, even for a Hindu like you. You go to your place for two seconds too long, and you realise that that place was never your home because it never existed — not outside your head at least. *** “So, how is Jo’burg treating you? How’s the city?”

“Well, I’m new here.” *** My bouts of spirituality come like a yawn or a sneeze – a bodily reaction to my environment.

And when the environment is concrete and piss and “hey mami” and shouting and endless amounts of work that could make even Kafka cry – only your ancestors can help. And like any unhappy home, the elders know how to provide a safe space and protection. Because they’ve been through worse. ***

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WRITING

Home is not...

A person A place Comfortable Fixed In this realm *** Don’t get me wrong. There’s no shame in feebly grasping at the idea of home as a form of comfort and nostalgia. The world is frightening, confusing and a little too dystopic these days. When it all becomes too much for me, I visit my aiya. I smell her baby-powdered body and smile as she turns salt for me at the doorway. She’s a quiet, heavy presence. She’s making cabbage curry and rotis with just a pinch of sugar. It’s a windy day. The dust specks fly around the house and as they settle, I walk around. She’s burned temple incense and I know it’s time for prayer. We go to the room: light the lamp, kneel, pray. We leave with ash on our foreheads. She shouts at the cat (she thinks it’s evil but loves it nonetheless) and then we eat. She runs me a bath as I put the dishes away. As we get ready for bed, we gossip. I try on all her jewels and perfumes and play dress up. She says I look like her mother when she was younger. I massage her hard, bony hands and paint her nails. “Thank you,” I say. “You never need to thank me. You are enough thanks as you are,” she replies. *** Home is a borderland, a conflicting zone. It’s where we learn things to unlearn. Don’t worry if home is painful. Make another one.

words by Youlendree Appasamy 28

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RANTS

Black Girl Weird words by Busang Senne collage by Niamh Walsh-Vorster “They want our narratives to be digestible but I wonder: how much of us is left after we are finished being consumed?” – Alok Vaid-Menon

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lack girl magic has become the language of resistance, re-affirmation, and reimagining in pop culture lexicon. It’s a movement geared towards dismantling the layers of stolen stories and stereotypes, it’s us re-shaping the social fabric, and creating a culture where we matter in a world designed to keep us contained. Black girl magic is a coined, shared consciousness reminding us of our worth; that secret language Solange spoke about. But what happens when you’re not magic, you’re just fucking weird?

be easily slotted in the 21st century zeitgeist.

Black girl magic, whilst re-affirming so much, also interrogates so much: what exactly defines magic and who is entitled to practice it? It’s defined a way of loving ourselves in a world where black women and women of colour are silenced, erased, and excluded, but the term makes me wonder what happens when your voice is valuable and uniquely your own, but it’s simultaneously lost to the noise of what black girls are expected to be.

There’s a paradigm of only seeing black women and women of colour when we’re categorised as magical, ethereal creatures of

The categorisation of black women and women of colour in this same one-size fits all formula of sugar, spice, and everything nice, erases our nuance and our complexity.

the soil. We’re only heard when our voices are digestible, packaged narratives that can

My blackness is not an aesthetic, my politics are not for consumption, and my magic is

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complex and contradictory — it is romantic and reactionary. Magic is a medium with magnetic possibilities, but it seems too finite to contain the myriad of galaxies within us.

I want a break from the expectation of strength and surety; of magic when it’s only whole, complete, and curated. There is no room for black women and women of colour to be awkward, insecure, vulnerable, and eccentric when we are more often than not, all of those things. Only recently have shows like Insecure been deconstructing tropes of black women. On a deeper level, the movement excludes those who are placed further on the margins, and magic is only distributed to the able-bodied, palatable handful of those with structural access.

“It’s hard to love those parts of yourself you don’t see on blogs bleeding Helvetica Neue.”

When you focus the lens, you’ll find that whilst advocates for black girl magic are elevating the voices of black women and women of colour in the most visible, innovative way, it still puts the weight of a social responsibility on black girls to be relevant when everyone else is afforded the luxury of being mediocre, and still given a platform.

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RANTS

This narrow definition of magic is equated and reserved to a specific kind of black girl.

She’s not weird, she’s “quirky.” A voice designed to be consumed that can easily be seen on Superbalist right next to the inaccessible content dubbed inextricably cool, and further celebrations of recycled culture. Us other womxn possess our own brand of magic, but because of its supposed incompatibility with the rules of a media saturated and defined by white, supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy the same visibility is not afforded to us.

We dwindle different versions of magic in our dissonance and forget to include the magnitude of gender non-conforming and fluid identities on the black spectrum of experience. Black femme bodies who are beyond the lexicon, the black womxn and womxn of colour placed on the periphery, and the poetic, powerful resistance to a status quo of being that remains on the sidelines of the mainstream narrative. I’ve been grappling with the idea of what it means to be a creator in these spaces where expectations are already assigned to my black, queer body.

You are either hyper-visible or invisible, sanctioned according to how your own story is told, either existing in a dichotomy where you are magic or you are not — and other versions of blackness are erased.

I’ve been grappling with this economy of magic. It’s a dual consciousness felt mostly due to the fact that my position in this system of the capitalist cosmos means I have the access and language to say all of this from my MacBook screen in the central ivory towers of the Cape Colony, whilst yearning for my textured experience to be recognized as a multi-layered mess-of-a-thing – its own brand of magic not defined by my marketability.

It’s hard to love those parts of yourself you don’t see on blogs bleeding Helvetica Neue.

It’s hard to recognise your beauty in spaces that are supposedly made to celebrate you but end up strangely alienating you.

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“My blackness is not an aesthetic, my politics are not for consumption, and my magic is complex and contradictory, it is romantic and reactionary.�

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RANTS

The problem with TEFL words by Anonymous collage by Niamh Walsh-Vorster

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’ve stopped going to the farewells now. The “You’ll do great!”s and the “I’ll miss you!”s all became too much for me. In fact, it was not so long ago that I finally snapped.

The process involves an English-speaking person completing a short online course to test their proficiency in English and its laws of grammar, and how to teach it to English second language or non-English speakers.

You sign up with an agency of sorts, complete the course and get assigned a destination – usually Korea, Vietnam, or Hong Kong – and from there you’ll hop on a plane and spend the next six months to a year teaching English to Asian schoolchildren for an impressive pay check.

It was the start of 2016 and the event was this fancy farewell in a wealthy home in Cape Town. The evening was lovely: a lush mountainside venue (the house of the host’s parents) with tables decked out and buffetstyle-good-eating, a hired sound system, and bottles on bottles of booze. It felt like an evening dreamed up by Fitzgerald himself.

During this period you’ll stay in a residence with other TEFL teachers or by yourself.

Sometimes you don’t even pay for your own accommodation. You’ll work five to six days a week and the rest of the time you’ll spend sightseeing, getting drunk with the other TEFL teachers and maybe starting a relationship with an English-speaking local or another ‘expat’. It’s a temporary job, but it sees you returning home with a whole lot of cash.

All in attendance that night were there to say goodbye to a friend. There were speeches, tears, and many promises to Skype.

For about three to four years now (probably longer), there’s been a recent boom in TEFL. TEFL is the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language – usually in an East Asian country, and almost always by a financially stable white person.

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RANTS

My issue with TEFL is that it’s fundamentally discriminatory. It’s based on a system that rewards the privileged and reinforces colonial systems of power. Where else can you expect to be paid large sums of money to teach your first language to a group of non-English speaking children who want to get into Eurocentric international schools? And if you’re a black or working class South African hoping to get accepted into a TEFL programme, your chances are slim. Yes, there are black and working class individuals who successfully end up teaching English as a foreign language, but it really is a rare occurrence.

the thought of living unemployed with their parents any longer and so decided to cash in on their financial, social and racial privilege and skip the country.

And look, I get it. Unemployment rates are at dizzying heights in SA with far too many qualified graduates unable to find work. I’m one of these graduates and so are many of my friends. Unfortunately, a large number of my friends are also enrolled in TEFL courses at the moment.

I guess I’m writing this because I fail to understand how white South Africans can stand in solidarity with movements like #FeesMustFall and say they’re opposed to issues such as institutionalised racism, but fail to see how it manifests in TEFL schemes.

I’m writing this because I’m angry at the fact that I’ll have engaging discussions with these people about white privilege the one day, then see them Instagramming their grade three English students in Korea a few months later.

You know how you have that friend who keeps emailing about that flat they want to rent or that thing they want to buy off of Gumtree, but never get a response because their name sounds “too black”, or they just “don’t have the right background”? It’s kinda like that.

It gets worse. The people I see signing up for these TEFL courses and travelling across the world on a working holiday are the same people who will post lengthy statuses calling out institutionalised racism, or sharing humorous memes about privilege. Then there’s the fact that the majority of these jetsetting white kids come from pretty well-off homes and have just received degrees from prestigious universities, but couldn’t stand

And I’m writing this anonymously because I know that if they read this, they’ll sooner block me or send me hate mail than stop to interrogate their own understandings of privilege.

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I guess at the end of it all, if you do happen to be reading this and you’re planning on teaching your first language in a country that’s not your own, or you’re currently doing just that and you’re thinking about extending your contract, just take a moment to think about yourself and your place in the world. And perhaps look for more local or continental ways of making money as a white person.

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My Lily-White Hands Concept and Art by Georgina Graaff Makhubele Photographs by Kyle Prinsloo

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ART

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My Lily-White Hands is a two-part series exploring notions of identity, specifically mixed-race or ambiguous identity. I myself am mixed-race, my father being Tsonga and my mother white European/ Afrikaans. I was raised by my mother.

’ve always thought of art-making as an emotional and physical outlet. I love to use it as a platform for exploration of the issues that are unresolved in my mind.

Things that aren’t quite clear. Art is not created to provide answers, but it does provide me with a sense of catharsis.

Ignorance is Bliss deals with the issue of colour-blindness and to a larger degree this ‘rainbow nation’ rhetoric that South Africa has coined. On a more personal level I was looking at my innocence as a young child, being born into a post-apartheid space never fully aware of the weight that my complexion held. My physical difference was never really apparent to me until I grew older and began to look at myself through the eyes of others.

Painting is such an expressive medium.

The manipulation of colour and texture is why I love creating with it. Then what’s so interesting about photography, is how the space within the frame of the lens can be manipulated in so many different ways that there is never one truth in an image.

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ART

Lily-White is looking at that same childhood innocence referred to in Ignorance Is Bliss, but also the irony of the phrase in relation to myself, being the only one on my mother’s side of the family without lily-white hands.

I used calamine lotion to make my hands and body white. As a child my mother would always put this lotion on my mosquito bites to stop them from itching.

The colour of the lotion is meant to blend in with your skin, but being a brown person, this was never the case.

I really enjoy making work that has the space to be interpreted in many different ways. I find it a lot more interesting and engaging; forcing the viewer to think about and reflect on what they are looking at.

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Ignorance is Bliss by Georgina Graaff Makhubele , 2016

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ART

Sweat

words and performance by Akissi Beukman photographs by Evan Ferreira

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ART

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hat does it mean to feel suffocated by whiteness?

Institutionally. Socially. Personally.

The current sociopolitical climate in South Africa is vibrant with change and action, what is holding us back?

Why are we still suffocated?

My piece “Sweat� is a performance dedicated to young women of colour in South Africa who have been fetishized, exoticized and sidelined based on a personal experience where a young white man tried to literally eat my hair and managed to lick it.

The whiteness continues to fill our pores and asphyxiates us constantly with institutions failing to recognise and accommodate the struggles of the marginalised people in South Africa.

I walk through, between, in and onto whiteness. I drown in it. I was told to be like it. Whiteness allows people to think it is okay to try and eat a part of me. To consume me. Because I am Other. It allows me to be, uncontrollably, a victim of psychological violence.

I walk to empower myself because I am still standing even though I am covered in a sticky, clingy and astringent substance.

As women we stand together and work daily to stay strong. We sweat at the harsh reality we live in. We sweat because it is the only way to release our pain.

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ILLUSTRATION

The Mental Squad

by Nosipho Nxele

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“

When we are mentally ill, we lose ourselves and become the mirror of all that is happening around us, there is no specific definition of how mental illness looks, being a victim of depression, this is my perspective.Â

�

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ILLUSTRATION

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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PROTESTORS WITH NO BANNERS:

THE FASHION REBEL

BY ABIGAIL ZIKHALI 53

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hese kids have no name or inherited glory to shelter them from the harshness of

society. They do, however, possess spirit and fire. They are rebels with a cause.

Every single day they protest against the church, against the school rules, they protest against their parents, siblings and main stream media.

You will not see them in large groups with banners in their hands. They simply go about their lives in all the glory of their weirdness.

Their spice girl shoes and Mickey Mouse head pieces are the only banners they need. You know what they’re saying without them having to say a single word.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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PHOTOGRAPHY

PASSION PROJECT CONCEPT BY ABONGWE QOKELA PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMBAKUOMBERA

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his series is based on the notion of growth and change.

Change is the only constant although many a times it

throws us into a space of uncertainty. This series is indicative of the Transition into that space. A space of mutation and reclamation. Beautiful as it is, change is painful. Growth can hurt . This is a story of permanence where light colludes with darkness.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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PHOTOGRAPHY

FOR US, BY US. [FUBU] CONCEPT BY WATERMAISE PHOTOGRAPHS BY SIZE MBIZA

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he series is heavily inspired by Solange Knowles’ new production titled ‘A Seat At The Table’, a modern

rebellion against structural and social injustice through groovy symphonies, cadences and well-composed imagery.

FUBU is for the everyday South African that lives beyond the magazine centrefolds. A narrative that the mass can effortlessly relate to. The series explores the chronicles the mass media has omitted. Giving back style stories by the people, back to the people. *The photograph on the right inspired this edition’s front page

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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POETRY

SOWE PHOTOGRAPHS BY

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ETO ANDILE BHALA

After Jodi Bieber chrysanthemum in a fanta can magazine-spread gospel (their communal museum) punk band biker snake shows carnival (his locks shorn proudly) swimming decoration defying dead men (her dress checks healthy) town more torn by tropes than any crime or compass (you see it now you see it) -

Caitlin Stobie

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POETRY

market words by Michelle NaudĂŠ photograph by Niamh Walsh-Vorster

Every pretty woman knows the hot lick of eyes on her ass and lips and breasts, even when she hasn’t put on make-up or washed her hair, and knows the tingling clarity when she learns, again, how easy they are how little they need how powerful she is how this power is what makes women powerless And every pretty woman knows the hard burn of vanity, disgust, pleasure, shame at the lesson.

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LIPSTICK KISSED DUNHILL LIGHTS

words by Isabel Rawlins collages by Niamh Walsh-Vorster

for Lina 68

SHORT STORY

T

he walk to work has just enough green plants and trees to remind you: you are part of the world. Never mind the concrete or brick, trees have edged their way in to be quiet marshals of the streets.

Lighting up a smoke, I see another of those lipstick-kissed Dunhill lights stubbed out on the tar.

Fifth one this week, and it’s only Wednesday. Past the church and there are dog-walkers and baby-walkers enjoying the unusual winter light. For a minute, I too smile in the sun. But those lipsticked ciggies are still on my mind.

At work, the owner of the knife shop leers at me as I walk past. He leans against the Pikachu machine with one hand supporting his belly. His shirt is striped thick with black and blue. I could swear I saw that same shirt parked in a peeling Ford Cortina yesterday at the beach.

Greek Anthony next door has a new perfume in his store and a strange mix of jasmine and citrus filters through into the shop. It’s like biting into an orange that had shared a packet with some spilt washing powder.

At lunchtime I go outside for a smoke in the parking lot, on the far side, and wave to the patrons in the King’s Court Hotel. They’re no bigger than beetles on their balconies, sipping cocktails on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon. Don’t they know it’s not the weekend?

Another shop closed yesterday. There are only a handful of us left and the coffee shop moved upstairs to join the butchery. The upstairs rumours are that the butcher has left his wife again. She’s a shrill woman but not bad for pushing fifty. Her fingers would glint heavily on the till with gold rings. I know Skinny Clive from House of Carpets has had his eye on her. Especially since Shirley from House of Curries hooked up with Steve from Specsavers, something about a discount on frames. Steve drives a Volkswagen Passat and wears the same sad navy tie every day.

The coffee shop has stopped giving a trader discount. Well, to those not on the ‘list’, and I didn’t make the list, or maybe it’s the shop. No one around here liked Mel, who worked here before me.

I never met her but she didn’t last long in King’s Court.

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I can hear the couple at the earring shop bickering again, something about losing the smokes.

They’re a regular old Jack Sprat and missus. The man is rake thin and his wife wears billowing floral dresses to shield her paunch. She chain smokes and at work there just aren’t enough cigarette breaks to get through the day. She spends the rest of the day making angry signs to scare off customers: “Look with your eyes not your fingers!”

“You break you buy!”

Everything is marked down.

The radio on the PA system is blaring brainworm music – you know the kind that worms its way into your subconscious and gets stuck there wriggling and writhing and repeating on itself? I turn the reggae louder and nod at the one or two customers who venture into the shop. They ask for advice and I am only too happy to oblige. There are never rude customers in Lil’ Jamaica.

It’s already three and Anthony says he’s going home. He’s heard it’s raining outside, though in here you’d never know. Little basement cubicles of shops all arranged in a circle. Fake palm trees don’t do much to remind you there actually is an outside.

‘Tima for soma heavy lifting?’ he says, and I help him carry the perfume table back inside his shop.

I wonder who helps him bring it out; he’s always here before me.

I get some popcorn from the ice-cream shop and laugh a little when I remember how Sam and I asked to use their microwave to pop our own popcorn. The woman agreed with a scowling nod.

She wouldn’t let us touch the microwave and we had to watch in silence as the tarred smell of burnt popcorn filled the shop.

It’s even quieter than usual without the coffee shop downstairs. The man from the knife shop is gaining territory. From his spot by the Pikachu machine he can see right into Jessica, the young designer’s shop. She painted the tiles and walls inside with black and white stripes so it’s like stepping into a vortex that transports you out of King’s Court and into some retro art-house.

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Her clothes are a little overpriced and though the rail outside her store is shuffled often, not much leaves her shop. Lately she only opens for a few hours every couple of days, spending more time selling at markets.

The earring-shop couple are arguing on their way out and she already has a cigarette tight between her lipstick-stained lips. Her husband follows behind. She’s telling him off again, something about losing the smokes. His hand reaches into his back pocket and he pulls out a pack of Dunhill lights and throws them in the bin. The man from the knife shop’s eyes swell but he says nothing.

I pull down the aluminium door and lock it.

If I take it easy I’ll be home before 4.30. In the parking lot I see another lipsticked stub of a cigarette. It was raining, but it’s stopped now. I take the shortcut behind the Builder’s Warehouse and the woman from the earring shop is getting into the knife-shop man’s car.

Her top nearly catches in the door. It is a Ford Cortina, pale blue paint rusted and flaking.

The earring man is sitting alone on the pavement, quietly splashing his feet in a puddle.

He watches them leave together, then lights up a Marlboro. With his other hand he trails his fingers through the smoke, like a spider might. ____________________________________ 71

WE WON A THING! A

wards are strange things, really. We do a lot of thinking over at Ja. mag about the concept of awards and lists and other such things that seem to insinuate that you’ve ‘made it’ or that you’re worth ‘looking out for’. We won’t get into any of that here.

Instead, we’ll choose to see this award for its purer and perhaps more genuine meaning – that we’ve been actively dedicating ourselves to furthering the local burgeoning arts scene in all of its highs and lows, and that someone out there thinks we’re doing a good job at it.

to inspire us and whose kind words helped us put out another edition at a time when we felt like calling it quits (which, in the interests of transparency, happens rather often). Thank you to the National Arts Festival and to Business and Arts South Africa for taking the time to read through our pages. And thank you to all the other local publications like us who don’t have nearly enough spare change, time or energy to do the work they do, but continue to do it anyway. We’re an online publication that draws inspiration from a collectively rich well of SA publications, both on and offline, and we’re incredibly lucky to be able to do so.

And that means a hell of a lot to us.

And of course, thank you to our vast and ever-expanding network of creators, contributors and friends. Your work, your support, and your kind words mean the world. We’ve cemented ourselves in a family of wildly passionate writers, photographers, artists, poets, filmmakers and all-round incredible thinkers, and you’ve kept us going throughout it all.

Of course Ja. mag is what it is, because of the people and organisations who help make it up. So a huge and teary-eyed thank you to the incredible team over at The Journalist who chose to work with us when we were still a bit hard on the eyes and considerably more scatterbrained. Thank you to the talented bunch over at the Mail & Guardian Friday section who continue 72

EDITORIAL

___________________________________________________________________________________ Dave Mann Writer, co-editor Niamh Walsh-Vorster Photographer, design, co-editor Youlendree Appasamy Sub-editor, writer Lumumba Mthembu Sub-editor, writer

EDITION 12 CONTRIBUTORS

___________________________________________________________________________________ Cullan Maclear Photographer

Evan Ferreria Photographer

Caitlin Stobie Poet

Lonwabo Zimela Photographer

Nosipho Nxele Illustrator

Isabel Rawlins Writer

Hannah Shone Illustrator

Abigail Zikhali Photographer

Andile Bhala Photographer

Afrika Bogatsu Writer

Abongwe Qokela Content creator

Michelle Naudé Poet

Wairimũ Murĩithi Writer

Damabakuombera Photographer

Busang Senne Writer

Watermaise Content creator

Georgina Graaff Makhubele Artist

Size Mbiza Photographer

Akissi Beukman Artist

Kyle Prinsloo Photographer 73

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