News from Zimbabwe

KIF. Here’s a spot of nostalgia for you. Collecting and growing micro-larvae as pets was a particularly South African prep school fad back in the 80s. Sea Monkeys were conceived in the 1960s as a “biological novelty” and are really nothing more than a unique species of brine shrimp. They can supposedly live for up to two years in their little plastic prisons, but most kids tend to drink, destroy or torture them long before they expire of “natural

Smuts Ngonyama once infamously, symptomatically said: “I didn’t join the struggle to be poor”. We know all about that now! Shit Julius wasn’t even a part of the Struggle – and he’s definitely not struggling being poor. As erroneous and conceited as that statement is though – I get it. Smuts and many others like him heroically “faced the evils of an oppressive system” put in place long before their parents even made eye contact. They deserve acknowledgement, fuck

At first look, and by most standards, Bad Lieutenant is a batshit crazy film. However in the context of it being a Werner Herzog remake of an Abel Ferrara film starring Nicholas Cage it ends up feeling lazy; a series of easy and crudely handled jokes. This, being a Herzog film, may be the point, a great nihilistic shrug at random cruelties of existence. Or it may just be a dark comedy that pokes fun at the bad cop

Talk about failed expectations and let-down hopes. There is a girl, she has a sailor hat on and a fake moustache and she is, perhaps, the hottest thing I’ve seen at the Assembly, ever. I want to fight her boyfriend and hold her hand and tell her beautiful things and dance with her in a magical world. Then the Great Apes take the stage, she takes off her moustache and all dreams crumble. She’s just another non-descript indie girl

While the world, (or is it just The Fader?) goes mad for Spoek Mathambo, he's doing his nut over OK Malumkoolkat. With beats and moves like these we know he won't be working at the Gallery forever.

KAK. Where I come from “dodge” refers to something fundamentally sketchy, dishonest, unreliable and of a low quality. I don’t think of American muscle cars. I think of filthy kitchens serving horse burgers bristling with pubic hair. Just sayin’.

If ever there was a woman who marched to her own beat, it’s this one. With her regal sense of style, genre-defying music and steady refusal to bow to trends, Simphiwe Dana has balanced sales, SAMAs and street cred to rise above her many contemporaries in a relatively short space of time. Her long-awaited third album has just hit the shelves. While most singers would be content to resort to drum machines and studio gimmicks, Dana’s talent as a

Goth fans of country pop bands fascinate me. Not that there are any country pop bands other than Wrestlerish, that I know of, that have cute goth girls down front chanting the lyrics; verse and chorus. Wrestlerish have been touring hard and at the Saturday Mercury gig with the Jack Mantis Band and Tidal Waves that much is obvious from the tightness of their set. If anything, it’s a little too rehearsed, they’re hitting every note and beat and

An experimental video by artist Katharina Rohde about the real heroes of the South African economy, informal street traders. Part of the Happy Hawker Project.

Okay [insert witty insult here] we got ONE DOUBLE TICKET ONLY to Saturday’s gig. And the next Saturday. And the next Saturday. Until the end of the year. Yes! You could have a plus one on the guest list for every Saturday at The Assembly until the end of the year. And all you have to do is tell us why Max Bareshenkov should be fired! [Hint: It's a New Holland gig]. Here on the comments thread! Let the

“It’s my prediction that in the near future the politics of ‘race & identity’ will be left to uncreative scholars trying to remain relevant in a more logical world.” – Samuel Munene, Nairobi poet, short story writer, and contributor to Kwani? I’ve been accused of having white tendencies many times in my life. A white friend of mine often jokes about us swapping places because she admires black people: especially our kinky, easy-to-dread hair. This makes me feel there’s

Once upon a time, in a galaxy before Zef, Die Antwoord, Yolandi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, before Max Normal.TV and Constructus even, there was a talented Jozi-based rapper by the name of Watkin Tudor Jones Jr. Back then, in the winter of 2002, I asked the young MC to write a series of reviews of his favourite hip hop albums. It’s been a year since Watkin Tudor Jones was euthanised, in his memory we wanted to publish some of

Kak. He’s got a one speed. He’s on an eco-author tour. He has stonewashed skinny jeans and a fucking chest tattoo! Do you still want us to lay off hipsters?

Behind the boerewors curtain disciples sit steadfast, silent in support of the green and gold. The service is about to start, the air heavy and devout. The barmaid, double chinned and bulldog jowled, pours and skulks, skulks and pours. A T-shirt bearing the slogan “Come have a few beers with us” is tented tight between her sagging boobs and a belly even Buddha wouldn’t rub. She sucks the expanse of her bottom lip against tobacco stained teeth, a hard

Hola cheapskates! We're dishing out free exclusive limited edition K'naan CDs to celebrate the

I suppose there is no better way to get over that World Cup “come down” than “blowing some shit up”, as my editor so eloquently put it. And by the look of De Waal drive backed up and the crowds that came out on this typically grey, miserable morning, a large part of Cape Town agrees. Maybe a scheduled demolition once a month, at least until summer, will protect the city from the winter blues and keep the newspaper

I’m poor. Relatively poor. Poor enough to have to sell treasured hardbacks – my Bukowski, my Hunter S and Heart of Darkness. Even my YDE gear had to go for money to buy milk. I considered the Mr Price stuff once. That was a low. Assistants pity me at used book stores -Folio on Claremont Main Road and The Book Shoppe in Retreat. They shake their heads. Oh God, here she is again! Tossing me a twenty for a

At the album launch, the Plastics are introduced with something along the lines of: “And here are the Plastics, their new album was produced by Gordon Raphael, you know, the guy who produced the Strokes!” Alarm bells go off – oh shit, guys, if this is the horse you are riding then this is going to be a sad experience… but then the band takes the stage and turns my long-standing perception of them being dry live inside out.

The horror of Facebook, the deepest one, the most lastingly wounding, lies in how it turns our intimates into information. We’re all confessional blurts to be processed. Rather than rounded selves full of complexity and difference. The closest people in our lives increasingly become the sum of their wall posts. We’ve turned into a proliferating scroll of bulletins. A metastasizing network of confessors. It’s as if everyone in your world suddenly became an avant-garde art movement from the early

Hola ma cheapies! We’re dishing out tickets to the Fiddle East Guerilla Diskotek gig at The Woods in Jozi tomorrow night. Just click here and tell us about your mother’s beard…