Ja. Edition 4

16 Aug 2015 Edition 4

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You’ve met the Ja. team at a very strange time in our lives. One half of us currently teeters on the edges of the deceptively comfortable cliff that is a final university year, soon to be cast onto the cold, pointed rocks of unemployment below, while the other half has been nursing their wounds on those same rocks for nearly a year now.

Our parents wanted us to write children’s books or go into teaching. We’re not sure how to feel about that, but we’re grateful for their support. The truth is, we’re fortunate enough, in our early 20s, to know the kind of work we’d like to do for the rest of our lives, but we have no idea how to make any money doing those things. For now, we feed ourselves creatively by putting out this magazine- a vaguely incoherent cry of confusion, creativity, art, politics, opinion, and as always, everything cool and kak.

Seeing as though a large amount of our creators and contributors suffered through the recent National Arts Festival with us, we thought it fitting to dedicate a fair portion of this edition’s pages to the event. How much more art can we take right? We’ll let you know when the medication wears off.

Creators and contributors: Dave Mann, Niamh WalshVorster, Hannah McDonald, Werner Goss-Ross, Yoraya Nydoo, Zanta Nkumane, Tshiamo Maremela, Lumumba Mthembu, Charles Mackenzie, Sarah Rose de Villiers, Michelle Avenant, Pralini Naidoo, Sikhumbuzo Makandula and Sthenjwa Luthuli.

Poster credits: Hunger choreographed and directed by Acty Tang featuring Kamogelo Molobye, Smangaliso Ngwenya, and Ameera Mills (cover). Stand Up and Smell the Funny NatCaf improvised comedy troupe and stand-up comedians Tyson Ngubeni, Sne Dladla, Prins, and Ily. Rabbit Hole Written by David LindsayAbaire. Directed by Maude Sandham. Ms Cosmo, Mobi Dixon supported by RS & Ms Jones at Prime Nightclub. Six Inches directed by Kristy Stride, written

by Kristy Stride and Diaan Lawrenson. The Treatment written by Martin Crimp and directed by Liz Mills poster design by Martha Soteriades. Barongwa by Mohau Modisakeng in Blind Spot curated by Ruth Simbao. Sabine synth pop/New Wave artist Matthew Sabine. Check out page 12 to see why credits and copyright matter.

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CONTENTS 4 Janine Holloway 8

The People of Long Table

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Wie Sien Ons?

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Thursday I bought a cheese

roll, Friday I had lawsuit threats

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Breaking my own rules: Decolonising photography and discovering jazz.

20 Books 25 Umculo 26 Short Story 30 Poetry

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Photography, words and art by Werner Goss-Ross Although a talented artist with extensive knowledge of a variety of mediums and their physical attributes, Janine’s favourite medium is acrylic paint because she enjoys the speed at which it dries. Her emotional and physical bond with her paintings is evident in the ways she uses layering. This bond has been shaped for years.

“I’ve always wanted to be a painter since I was very young. My grandma painted, so I saw all those tubes of paint and she never allowed me to touch them. It was oil paint”. After childhood urges to paint; Janine took up fine art in school. She then dabbled in fashion but didn’t enjoy it and did nursing for three years. Eventually, she found herself in fine art.

Janine enjoys the mystery of

art and therefore she works intuitively.

“I surprise or shock myself with what comes out because I deviate from my plan quite often, but that’s good. The hardest part is to decide when to stop, because sometimes you over-do it because layers gets blocked out which is not good for my painting style.

I need the beginning stages of paint to show through some places”. Janine sees a

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lot of advantages in buying handmade items. She feels that “you are buying something authentic that is made by someone gifted in their area whilst getting something real and personal at the end; whereas mass-production is very generic because it’s just one idea that gets produced a million times.”

The acrylic painter finds that the internet is useful as she can get references faster than back in the day when you had to go to the library and “that went much slower because you had to find the right book.” Janine only needs to go onto sites such as ‘Pinterest’ or ‘Artstack’ to get inspiration and ideas immediately. Other

artists and painters have always influenced her to try new things.

Today Janine’s art is being exhibited and sold all over South Africa. With her family and friends having always supported her as an artist, she’s been provided with much of the confidence you need in the craft.

Besides the pure enjoyment her art gives her, Janine considers it a saving grace, saying she finally knows what she wants to do for the rest of her life.

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ILLUSTRATION BY TSHIAMO MAREMELA LONG TABLE is a fascinating and altogether

disgusting space. The expansive community hall becomes a cesspool during the National Arts Festival and is always a Festival must for rich folk. Like most things that rich folk enjoy en masse, it’s unbearable at best. But I still went there. A lot.

In previous years I’ve been lucky enough to arrive early, eat, drink, and be adequately sedated before the artists and standard Cape Townian cretin rolled in. This year however, I was on graveyard shift in the newsroom, arriving at Long Table around 1am. Bleary eyed and gacked on coffee, I was painfully vulnerable to the various people of Long Table. So I played a little game and started documenting them.

THE STRUGGLING ARTISTS Gaunt faces, cold eyes, and silver tongues. They’re the reason the venue is also called ‘SlangTafel’. After a long day spent curled up inside dark theatres, the struggling artists slither out at night to hunt for good press. The more inexperienced journalists who wear their press passes out to Long Table are easy targets, caught in the coils of these shifty creatures. They know what to say to win you over– “Oh yesss I read one of your piecesss today, I love how you captured the compleksss nature…” Before you know it, you’ve got a business card, six flyers, a coffee date, a reserved seat for tomorrow’s show, and you’re a few cigarettes lighter.

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THE ESTABLISHED ARTISTS

You’ll know who they are. You’ve seen their faces on the garish posters and banners around town, gracing the covers or double page spreads of the Cue Newspaper, or on some of the more revered stages at the National Arts Festival. At Long Table, they become deities. One evening I saw Jazz drummer Kesivan Naidoo stroll up to the packed bar, part the crowd, buy two whole bottles of wine and promptly fuck off, all in about 30 seconds. After playing so many gigs where people line up to see them, they may believe they’re exempt from queuing.

THE VETERAN ART LOVERS

Good god, The Veteran Art Lovers. They’re older and so they’re far more experienced than you are in the world of the arts. They lived through South Africa’s resistance art heydays and even though they made no effort to see any of it back then, no subsequent art from this country matters anymore. They sip dry red wine to re enforce those crusty, pursed lips that still seem to let slip the occasional racial slur. They’re normally in with the early crowd so they can make an evening out of bitching about the food, but some of the drunker ones hang around to berate The Struggling Artists. If you time it just right, you can play The Veteran Art Lovers off of The Struggling Artists and catch a terrific display of oratory combat. Don’t stick around for too long though, the pretence is thick and choking, and can ruin one’s night – certainly it can spoil one’s beer.

THE KIDS

They’re rare. If the combination of restaurant and pub doesn’t scare them off, the drink prices normally do. These are the kids fresh out of high school or still in matric who come down for 10 days of getting cross-eyed on mom and dad’s money with no intention whatsoever of seeing any art. On occasion, a few of The Kids grow tired of the Grahamstown nightclubs and drift into Long Table looking for a party. They’re perhaps the only people there who seem more uncomfortable than I do, and it’s a comforting experience to watch them flailing in the crowds of stuck up art aficionados and haggard journalists. It’s the equivalent of an annual family gathering for them, except every person there is that one drunk aunt or uncle. The Kids never last long.

THE JOURNALISTS

How can you miss The Journalists? They’re unkempt, rancorous creatures, strung out on crap coffee and sugary vending machine food. They always look pissed off, but really they’re just adjusting to the moonlight after spending one half of the day inside a dark theatre hall and the other half in front of a computer screen. The Journalists fall prey to all of the aforementioned Long Table types, but they secretly love it. Events like the National Arts Festival glorify the journalistic trade. “Oh wow, you’re an arts writer? The arts are so difficult to write on, I don’t know how you do it.” The Journalists don’t know either. They’re just here for a beer or two and some validation for their writing. They also love complaining about journalism. Almost every night I was at the Long Table, I saw Steve Kretzmann slumped up against a wall outside, smoking and drinking a beer whilst mumbling on about how shit the state of South African arts journalism is.

I approached him one night. “I follow a lot of your writing, man,” I tell him.

“Hmph, at least someone does,” he replies.

arts test

By Sikhumbuzo Makandula

So much happens at the National Arts Festival, and everyone’s experience is unique to what they do.

Fine Arts Student, Sikhumbuzo Makandula, had four stand outs and tells Ja. what he rated. Lucky for us he even had his recorder with him.

ILLUSTRATION BY TSHIAMO MAREMELA

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Apart from the Standard Bank Young Artist winners for 2015 exhibition and performances, two exhibitions stood out for me. One was

by Themba Shibase’s Slightly Off Centre, and Durban-based artist Sthenjwa Luthuli, who was part of a group exhibition, Ababhemu at Steve Bantu Biko Building. Shibase once mentored Luthuli at Durban University of Technology, and although both exhibited at different spaces, their works dealt with issues of masculinity, spirituality, and politics of how black male bodies are portrayed in a post democratic state.

Slightly off Centre was a body of 22 paintings focused on politicians, business tycoons, captains of industry,

and professional trouble makers exhibited at the Rhodes School of Fine Art’s Side Gallery. Shibase’s preocupation with masculinity emerges forcefully from Loverboy (2012/13).

Emphasising blatant sexuality, Loverboy is framed by three rectangles which meet just below his genitalia.

The painting reeks of jock-straps and the sweaty bodies of men’s locker rooms where dudes stand statuesque in all their naked, dickswinging physicality.

Luthuli’s wood block prints employ time and repetitive mark making through various uses of mediums to map out and trace constant negotiation of space and place. He states, “My work is to tell stories using human figure silhouettes and

arts motifs to create work that is both beautiful and compelling, yet alluding to the complexities of the world, based on how I view the world”.

Two book launches by Lesego Rampolokeng and Vonani Bila put forward the questions of what language exists and where one starts to quantify it, as the writers and poets spoke of silence and intimate moments which culminated in their latest offering.

The book launches took place at St. Peters Building as part of the Live Writing Series, and I could have easily missed these brilliant artist’s works if I did not take time to decipher the festival programme. What struck me was the lack of attendance for both book launches which could have been a lack of marketing, or the obscure venue that is St. Peters building. It used to accommodate missionary nuns and its façade still

resembles architectural features such as stained linear windows with an upright engraved red brick cross.

Listen to Lesego Rampolokenwma on soundcloud Listen to Vonani Bila’s book launch

The Bokani Dyer Swiss Quintet was the opening show of the Standard Bank Jazz Festival. Setting the tone with the unofficial album launch at the opening of this year’s jazz programme, the 12 track album is the follow up to Emancipate the Story released in 2011. The sound of this album is more of an expression, embracing all musical heritages and claiming the ambiguous term ‘World music’. It is a colourful musical exploration of instrumental music which is as historically aware as it is currently conscious – a true celebration of all music with no borders. After

the festival, the Bokani Dyer Swiss Quintet’s timeless music took the music to Maputo, Mozambique, Guga Sithebe Cultural Centre KwaLanga, and Johannesburg as part of the group’s tour.

Listen to Bokani Dyer on soundcloud

Wie Sien Ons? references terminology relating to afterburial gatherings that are a popular youth culture in postapartheid townships.

These exhibitions and performances experienced during The National Arts Festival become a fitting frame of projects that explored commemoration, and more specifically, cultural performances that celebrate our humanity as the bones of this country are still laid bare, fragile and broken.

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By Charles Harry Mackenzie

I feel quite uncomfortable defending myself like this. While my brothers and sisters are fighting for racial and gender equality, here I am- Canon 5D M2 over my neck, and a MacBook pro Renata 15” averaging about R50,000- complaining about money.

Well actually, let’s get something straight: 1. I don’t want money. In most instances I can do without it, in others I really need it.

2. I, for all intents and purposes go out of my way to work for free. I publish the majority of my photos, words, and videos online [for free]. There is a marketing incentive inherent in this action, but I also aim to simply reach as many people as I can.

3. I have never received money for a photo outside of employment, and in most instances of employment, I never actually get paid despite my work being conditional on payment.

4. I make more money from dying people’s hair fun colours.

5. Whenever I have money to spare, I print out as many photos as I can afford and give them away to friends and subjects (for free).

The transaction of money for work, in my eyes, is less about the actual money and more about the idea of: I respect you and your craft, and you deserve to get money as a reward.

Generally, when I work with artists and people in media and I waive my fee (particularly in the cases of independent artists), I don’t get an ounce of respect.

I fucking hate that.

I don’t want to have to demand respect, it should be inherent in the success of my work. Furthermore I don’t want to have to even fucking mention money, but it seems just about the only way that I can see my art and integrity being respected.

I used to get hideous chills whenever a friend or collaborator used an image I took of them or for them, on

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rants social media of elsewhere, without a single mention of my name. Especially considering that the majority of the photos were taken on my own time and my own dime. In one instance my photo was used for an album cover, the designer popped a gross filter on the image and then claimed credit.Frankly, I don’t care anymore, and I respect myself too much to message friends saying, “hi, hello, sorry, um, please credit me for my photo...thanks” My latest tale of exploitation involves being told, that an original image and design of my creation, is not mine. I signed no contracts. I wasn’t paid either.

I’m going to avoid being as bureaucratic as possible in the events leading up to my copyright case, and instead will just practice art as freely and satirically as possible:

On Federer and Tennis Biscuits

By Exploited Artist

I wonder what the entertainment world is like on mars?

Do they also have glory holes in the cinema bathrooms?

Do they also exploit voiceless artists, by making them wear shiny latex and mouth gags, crawling all over the ground, eating scraps of celebrity and agency tennis biscuits (sometimes we don’t even get any tennis biscuits).

The past few weeks have been a blur, due to me being exploited and all, but I do

remember catching Federer’s horrible defeat at the hands of Djokovic from the corner of an exterior window while I was sharing an intimate moment with a media executive on his large and expansive porch: “Tell me I own you!”

“You own me!”

“Tell me I get to have all publishing privileges of your work!”

“No. You don’t, sorry” “Yes...lie to me....LIIIIIIIIE TO MEE *Ejactulation.

Poor Federer!

The funny thing is, the creative transaction works exactly like this. I don’t sign anything, for neither the publication, nor the client, but I don’t own the image. This is South African copyright. I don’t get paid for the image itself, by anybody. I’m ignorant to the inner workings of this machine, but I still feel exploited. I rage out. They rage out. Now I’m not allowed to use the image for my personal portfolio – or threat of legal action. I rage out more.

Apparently I’m now a danger to society?

Apparently my tweets are threatening?

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photography

Words and photographs by Niamh Walsh-Vorster There is something effortlessly cool and nonchalant about jazz, be it the artists themselves or the music they create. Photographing it can only be done with a bit of magic, and at this year’s National Arts Festival (NAF) and the Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF), there was magic. Just as jazz musicians put a lot of work into blowing air into a trumpet and making it seem like merely a whistle, quite a bit of thought does actually go into the images photographers make (news to some). I thought I’d share with Ja. and its readers, some things I learnt a while back, and continue to learn as I make photographs.

It all started with changing how we think when making photographs.

I was part of a weeklong jazz photography workshop in Cape Town in March, hosted and mentored by Peter McKenzie.

We had morning discussions about critically thinking of ways to re-conceptualise a new means of representation with the focus being on jazz.

The first step was to decolonise our own mindsets and language, starting by no longer using words such as “shoot, take, capture” when speaking of the act of photographing. Rather we “make” photographs and moments.

This brings about a new way of allowing for connection between

subject and photographer, one that is inclusive and breaks power dynamics that was often very prominent amongst colonial and old-anthropological photography.

My concept that week was to ‘break my own rules’. I consciously tried to leave old habits and preconceptions of what a “good” photograph is, and allowed myself a freedom that I thought resonated with the ethos of jazz.

I aimed to make photographs by breaking away from my own classical routine and style. My norm is to usually photograph faces, as a whole – ‘the classic portrait’. Trying something new became an exciting challenge. A bit

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By the end of the workshop, my final narrative included stand alones of pieces of an artist. A foot, sweat, glamorous nails, a pout with glossy lipstick, fingers snapping to rhythms, jazz hands, spirit fingers, lips, nose reflections, even a nipple.

At NAF I looked to continue making photos, but included the idea of movement and blurred motion – a romance I felt existed in jazz. Here are the results of that experimentation.

photography

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books A Book of Rooms: Kobus Moolman

By Pralini Naidoo Book cover Illustration by Michelle Avenant Enter Kobus Moolman’s ‘A Book of Rooms’ with courage. This, Moolman’s seventh collection of poems is not for the faint hearted. The book follows the shadowy narrative of character with ‘a hole in his heart’ and a broken body which houses a spirit which seems to clutch at life.

The various rooms, each with its own light and smells and furniture, are dark memories, fragments of childhood at once time-blurred yet described with excruciating detail.

The smell of brown Nugget shoe polish, the rustiness of a drawing pin embedded in parquet flooring, the Croxley JD6235 exercise books with 128 lined pages; these details bring the narrative to life by placing the reader right at the centre of this familiar yet strange poem.

I could personally relate to the locale and period. The book is set in Pietermaritzburg, my home town and Moolman’s words brought a tangilibility to my own flashbacks.

I was transported to the municipal library which was my favourite haunt and Alexander Park, where young lovers misted up the windscreens with their passion. In many ways I felt as though I knew this character.

He may have been someone I had played with as a child, someone I could talk to about radio theatre

and comic books and marbles. Or perhaps he was the boy I chose not to associate with.

This is no sunny trip down memory lane, however. The poems make up a journey through the narrator’s life as a child, then teenager, then adult with themes of shame and repressed sexuality and violence following the character like a recurring nightmare.

As he travels from room to room, the rooms become claustrophobic with ghosts from the past, the ghosts he hasn’t yet come to terms with.

Images such as “claws” and “long wet feelers” are repeated throughout the book.

Moolman writes without the use of fullstops with sentences merging into each other. The style of the poem is a repetition of a long first line and a second shorter line. The structure of the poem forces the reader to make sense of the rambling thoughts for themselves. There are no neat paragraphs and clusters of thought. There are thoughts within thoughts within memories and yet a thread of coherence exists. ‘A Book of Rooms’ is a compelling read, masterfully written, with surprising imagery and associations.

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test books

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“Weekending”: “The fact of blackness according to the 207s

By Lumumba Mthembu Book cover Illustration by Michelle Avenant

This review is based on parts of an essay written by Mthembu who is writing his thesis on South African contemporary literature based on Kwela Books authors. Sometimes academia is cool, and Ja. is keen to present thoughts from all perspectives and forms. The following makes reference to Frantz Fanon’s chapter “The Fact of Blackness” in Black Skins, White Masks in relation to South African author Kgebetli Moele’s Room 207.

The meaning of which I speak is a meaning that had become lost to me as I made my way up the snowwhite peaks of Rhodes University which get colder and whiter still as one ascends to the dizzy heights of postgraduate study. Room 207 roped me into a conspiracy that required that I be “responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors”. As unwilling a participant as I was, my credentials qualified me for the role: I am black and educated, a product of Johannesburg, frequent visitor to Hillbrow, deeply intimate with its ways and its people.

Kgebetli Moele’s depiction of blackness as it is embodied by the

young Hillbrow male at the turn of the millennium, is so heartwrenchingly honest that it leaves the black reader, or at least this black reader, profoundly disturbed by the exhibitionistic candour with which life in Hillbrow is portrayed. It had the internalised white reader in my head saying “[l]ook, a Negro!” but by the end of the novel, so disgusted was this white reader by the shenanigans of ‘the 207s’ that the damning words which came forth were “[d]irty nigger!”. A simple selfdiagnosis is enough to reveal that I have internalised the white gaze that enables me to nod my head in the seminar room as a white female student concisely characterises ‘the 207s’ as lowlifes who inexplicably

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books have women throwing themselves at their feet. But, a disquieting fit of passion follows close on the heels of my ‘white’ assent as I realise that “I [am] haunted by a galaxy of erosive stereotypes” due to the fact that “I am given no chance. I am over determined from without. I am the slave not [of] the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own appearance”.

‘The 207s’ and I wear the same ugly “uniform” of which Fanon speaks, and our heart and minds carry similar war stories amassed on a battleground common to us all: Hillbrow. This ‘bitter brotherhood’ is rooted in the shared experience of what it means to be a young black man in post-apartheid South Africa, and I find correlations too numerous to ignore between the world Moele presents and the world in which I live.

To Molamo, Hillbrow’s squalid streets are an external reflection of the steady purification of the black man’s internal state. This state of degeneracy boggles the mind and troubles the conscience of even the most hardened of Hillbrowan stalwarts, the Zuluboy: “’Ja! I can understand why Hillbrow

is rotting, we live here, we don’t own anything here and we are on our way out, but I don’t understand how a grown man can rape a three-monthold baby.’ The Zulu-boy is not playing any more. There are tears of anger in his eyes... ‘We just don’t have any respect for ourselves as individuals, as people, as a nation. Even if we have all the money in the world, we will never be happy.’

As Fanon prescribes, “what matters now is no longer playing the game of the world but subjugating it with integers and atoms”. The world has not seen the Negro, his identity has been fragmented and reassembled and fragmented again, and the world will never see the Negro because he will always be the part of the sum.

The world would like to see the Negro, would like to get the updated model and slap a big white label on it with the word ‘Negro’ before placing it neatly in the display case, but that will not happen, because much like D’Nice, the Negro was once in a system – in the system – but the Negro cannot and will not continue to “live in the system”, at least not this Negro.

music

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UMCUIn case you’re like us and you get lonely while you read, check out Ja. Magazine’s curated mixes of authentic local beats.

This is a combination of the tunes we play far too loudly when we’re putting the magazine together, the acts we see in overcrowded nightclubs and dingy bars across South Africa, and even some of our own contributor’s work. Most importantly, it’s the music we think you should be listening to. Check out JaMix1 and 2 here: ja. soundcloud

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short story

illustrations and words by Sarah Rose de Villiers In a flickering frame of neon lights, a broken man holds wrists wrapped in reddened ribbons. Blue snakes crawl up his bleached arms and a single tear traces a wrinkled path. In the next room, shadows stalk the light and a scream fractures the air. A chair collapses to the floor and two brown shoes dangle, but do not dance.

The crescent moon whispers from behind an ink black cloud – this night has taken day, and life.

Nelson had woken, that bleak Wednesday in May, to the dull tick of a dripping tap and a particularly dry throat. In the sky, the sun hung like a wet cotton shirt on a wash line. Nelson avoided confrontation with an itchy face in the looking glass, and staggered out of his front door, into the street.

“Todd’s Grocery-Store” was a red flash in a washed-out sky as glass doors swung open, gliding frames and reflections. From across the road, a man with a prickly beard frowned at his striding feet.

It is known in that town, that on that Wednesday, the grocery store had opened at approximately 9.30 am and the line of oak trees in the main street had shed the last of Autumn’s golden coats.

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It is known by a scattering of lives, that on that day, a father held the crumpled figure of his daughter whilst his wife twisted a tissue and whispered ‘Amen’.

It is known by the barren trees that the girl’s ballet shoes were buried in a graveyard of leaves.

And it is known by the lovers that dying is not lonely.

A woman and man walked handin-hand behind a little girl who stretched out her arms for balance as she practiced dancing along the pavement. Pink silk twirled in her thoughts and a fluttering of pearly ribbon dangled from her backpack.

The jingle of lunch money was her mind’s symphony as one foot followed the next. The fallen leaves sang praise from the gutters. With one last skip and a final twirl, the little girl would imagine herself in centre stage. Above her lively figure, the pedestrians crossing sign flashed green with envy.

Nelson rubbed at his throat and scratched at the sleep in his eyes.

His breath still carried the smell of last night’s Scotch and sin. Kneading his temples, he followed the shadow of a dancing child across the street.

A gust of wind sent shivers through the fallen leaves as suddenly, the

roar of a car’s engine shook the air. The leaves scattered in terror as the Sedan skidded through the changing traffic lights. A ballerina was painting the air with pirouettes.

A child was lost in imagination when a rusted blue car rushed along the road and a man saw eternity in an instant.

Nelson blinked blindly as the reflection of a windscreen caught his eye. Then he saw the car; the imminent dark shadow and the dancing child. Without a thought, he grabbed at the blur of the backpacked ballerina; his hands pulled at the jingling bag and his fingers wrapped around ribbon.

Car brakes shrieked in vain regret.

A mother’s heart froze in terror as her husband choked on his breath.

Nelson tugged at the backpack and the little girl’s figure flew towards him.

Time was suspended. Each object and colour hung in the air as if placed precisely there by an omniscient artist. The grey prickling in Nelson’s throat. The damp white sky. The streak of pink ribbon that wrote an ancient word in the air.

The neglected blue of the smoking car. The red glow of letters on the wall. The absolute silence of chaos.

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short story

Suddenly, colour, noise and movement reset the scene. Satin ballet shoes burst into the air, and coins clattered to the street. A little girl stumbled onto the pavement; a torn backpack was in the hands of a man with an itchy beard. A mother’s hands clung to a tissue as prayers swam in her mind. A father lunged forward; he caught the falling child as her legs buckled and her balance failed. The leaves in the gutter breathed relief and a car ripped around a corner.

The roar of the Sedan’s engine continued down the street and eventually came to a sputtering stop outside a tired apartment building.

A pair of leather shoes stepped out of the car. The crunching gravel replied to a rustling plastic packet.

Razors and rope clung to each other; and a grocery store receipt lingered to judge the affair. A key twisted in a lock and a groaning wooden door opened. Brown shoes leaped towards leather shoes and lovers shared a kiss. The door closed and Time was, once again, nothing more than a flash of blue.

The clouds collected the sins of the city, drawing in all the grey bitterness and the desperate prayers of the day. The sky was folded into the horizon and the heavens hung empty and bare.

Somewhere, a mother was reading a bedtime story to a ballerina who had lost her shoes and a father was packing a lunchbox into a broken backpack. Somewhere, Nelson was searching for his reflection in the shattered crystal of a whisky glass.

Somewhere, the neon lights of a grocery store flickered and glass doors silently closed.

In a bleak apartment building, a man stands in an empty room.

A bloodied army of razors lies around him like the fallen leaves of a great oak tree. Red branches trace themselves on his skin and the streetlight stains his pale figure blue.

He looks through the doorway.

There, two brown shoes step onto a chair. A ring of rope makes a final promise. A fallen chair watches two brown shoes and, in the other room, sees the fate of a single tear.

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About Sarah Rose de Villiers Addicted to drawing, hooked on writing and constantly craves adventures. She spends her time wandering and wondering; doodling and describing; seeking knowledge and finding wisdom; breathlessly chasing the infinite imagination as life flies past and the earth spins in circles. One day, she wants to find the words to heal the world, and learn to draw the sound of silence.

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poetry BLACK MAGIC They continue to feed us liquid fire for being an “undesirable” colour A colour of gods and conquerors A plethora of shades: Rich coffee, decadent chocolate, golden caramel They made us forget our power, that we are the mothers and fathers of civilization That we are of stars and moons Conditioned to believe we’re less than, My kin being hunted and exterminated every day like vermin Justice remains out of sight Yet our ancestry proves of our innate resilience Our DNA is that of Luther, Biko and Nkrumah Our history deleted, our identities dictated to us by enemies Our culture only celebrated when it’s appropriated, commodified and sold back to us Our words only respected when uttered through the lips of those who would rather see us extinct Our songs only honoured when sung by those who would rather have us seen and not heard So how dare you tell me to get over it?

When our beauty has been stolen from us, Masticated and spat right back in our faces Forced to consume the same stereotypes There’s more to us than sassy, loud women and angry men We are writers, artists, doctors, intellectuals, and lovers We hurt, we laugh and we love like you (If not more) We have dreams we want to fulfil in a society that is seemingly designed for nothing but our demise, Our collective creative spirit is that of Basquiat, Achebe & Shakur We must lay siege to the empire, climb its walls Hammer away at its stone and mortar with a ferocious intent Until it collapses to the ground, so we can stomp on its Inequality, discrimination and down-right disregard of our daily struggles We are of an indomitable Ashe, that courses through our veins

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To you my brethren I say, Embody greatness in your everyday, be belligerent in this regard Don’t be distracted from your rightful place in this world Never let the colour of your skin hold you back from shining the way The Creator intended, For you are just as godly. – Zanta Nkumane

artwork: Sthenjwa Luthuli

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poetry

I Partly-cloudy mornings, Partly opened eyes, Tungsten smiles.

Skies mourning, Comforting yawning, Warm thighs.

Old blissful smells arise, From our crooked sheets.

II Body-guards of darkness, Shield Her burning aura.

She yield’s the power, To burn through the pathos, Shining.

– Yoraya Nydoo

test

– Werner Goss-Ross

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Ja. @JaMagSA jamagsa@gmail. com