News from Zimbabwe

With its poster clad interior, reasonably priced alcohol and tremendously diverse crowd, The Mystic Boer is the most appealing thing about Bloemfontein. Fittingly then, it played host to the aptly named MK Mystic Sessions. In spite of the bleak weather I excitedly made my way past a queue of shivering session-goers – Oh the perks! I haven’t attended a gig at The Boer since varsity and knew that my rapidly diminishing adolescents might nip my excitement in the bud… it

Predictably the swell of FIFA approved journalist’s tweeting about their withdrawal symptoms culminated late last week in “think” pieces about what we have learnt from hosting the World Cup. Even more predictably most of them focus on how proud we should be that Sepp Blatter has given us a little pat on the head and how now we should start working towards an Olympic Bid. But let’s just cut to the chase and say it up front, Fuck the

The days of competitive surfers being able to freely express their emotions in the view, or ear shot, of the surfing public are over. Fines at this year’s Mr Price Pro were getting dished out almost as easily as yellow cards in a Fifa World Cup final. Thanks to Ricky Basnett’s misunderstood performance at the South African Surfing awards the night before the event, which saw him being escorted out of the awards, the ASP officials were swift to throw

KIF. Now we finally know what happened to the Genie from Aladdin’s lamp. He drives a sierra blue mid 80s Toyota Corolla and rules the world from somewhere on the Cape Flats.

Last Sunday, 17h22 the Fan Park in front of City Hall, Cape Town.

It’s a strange thing death. One minute you’re dropping punch lines courtesy Michael Jackson, the next you’re crumpled in a church pew crying with your friends. I’d never had to deal with death before; I still have all four of my grandparents and our family pets were always “going to live on the farm” once they’d reached their autumn years. So it caught me like a knee to the nuts when I heard that my friend Dusty had been

Let’s rewind a week. South Africa is preparing for the World Cup Final and FIFA president Sepp Blatter is busy applying metric tons of FIFA pressure on our ageing father of the nation, tata Mandela, to attend the World Cup closing ceremony. Madiba is in mourning for the death of his great-grand daughter, who died in a car accident returning from the opening match. He’s also almost 92 years old and deserves to just be left alone to do

Flashback Hotel is perfectly titled in many ways, not least because its stories are glimpses back into history; more particularly, 1989 and 1996 – the years from which the two short story compilations contained within were originally published. The subjects of these stories are odd and veering, but all threaded together by Vladislavic’s unmistakable writing style: his rare way with the pen, finding magic and meaning in the banal, or otherwise just shell-shocking with his wordplay and wit. The

Welcome to Africa-South! Land of neon-bright hopes, where dark forces of discord make ongoing love to beauty and light, so every day there’s an explosion of energy to make a Star Wars battle sequence look as primitive as VHS. We gave birth to music and dance. Right here is where the exotic and the tragic mix – we do paradoxes better than perfection. We teem with despotic dictators and living legends. We got voodoo and white sangomas. We got

You got to love the Beeb. Here they mash the World Cup with District 9 and re-live all the high and low lights at the same time

KIF. When the internet bleeds into real life. In this taxi you can friend people and become a fan of “holding on for dear life while you whip through traffic and are delivered safely to you destination”. Guaranteed is a relationship status with the guy who takes your money that according to you will be “complicated” and to him “open”.

The Tri-Nations kicked off to a disappointing start this weekend. After conquering all and sundry during last year’s edition (apart from that game at Brisbane that we won’t mention), everyone expected us to roll over the All Blacks this weekend. FAIL. Not only did we not beat them, we were pretty much destroyed by them. By the end of the game most of the senior players looked as though they had just had an appointment with their proctologist- and

Download “Have You Paid Your Parking?” here. It’s been a while but here’s a brand new Citizen Bones track for you! Citizen Bones is Mahala’s in house musical project. In collaboration with Rambling Jay Bones, we’re producing original protest music about issues that matter instead of the pop schlock loop of love, sex and party ditties that afflict us on the radio. Here the Citizen takes on mega shopping malls and the capitalist commodification of just about everything.

You know it’s a slow news day when your editor asks you to write an introduction to an interview with The Sif Ous, purveyors of trashy rap that has an adolescent death metal like obsession with sex and violence. It’s hard to tell if the Sif Ous are seriously bad musicians or just taking the piss. What I do know is that they like to sing about piss and other bodily fluids. They once got asked not to perform

We all felt the fever – it was here. Now it’s gone. What’s next? We all sort of knew the boys wouldn’t make it very far in The Cup – but we dared to dream. Which was good for us. It’s been awhile since we had something warm and good to rally around. We’ve seen pot holes being filled and a great deal of national pride on display. Millions were inevitably blown on sending government officials and corporate insiders

Hey Cheapos! We’re handing out free tickets to the Balkan shindig at the Assembly in Cape Town this Saturday night, featuring Jahmez Waheb, Toby 2 Shoes, Nadia Comaneci and Maoriginal on the decks. Email us here and tell us about your favourite goat.

There is a girl. She is dancing and I think I love her, even though we’ll never meet. Like a sunset courting the shore she moves and smiles with a flick of a hip. She smells highly poetic and slightly demonic and looking at her you see a future you were too scared to imagine. The prettiest girl in the club, she knows – her laughter cascading in beach-tinged chords – yet always, just a memory for all the

The month-long football orgy culminated last night in a spectacular closing ceremony starring Madiba himself, a moving occasion that did little to predict the bruising encounter that followed, with British ref Howard Webb dishing out no fewer than 14 yellow cards, more than double the previous record for a World Cup final. Though Spain dominated passages of play, the match could’ve gone either way, and if it weren’t for a late goal, the tournament could’ve so easily been decided

There is something uncomfortable about contributing thought in the public sphere when the thought is critical of others doing the same thing. In less flowery terms, writers bitching about other writers are asking for trouble. Then, for a moment, with an acknowledgement that I write as a participant in the festival and not with the edge of the too obnoxious blog-journo, indulge a concern. The growth of the blogger has meant democratisation in the field of journalism. Many may

KAK. How about some steroids with your chocolate?