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Langa was the heart of the struggle, a neighbourhood in the Western Cape where the scent of freedom mingled with the smell of oppression. It was 1989, a year before Nelson Mandela would be [...]

On the warm afternoon of October 2, 2020, my mother received a phone call from a relative of my best friend. Instinctively, she tried to hand me the phone, but the person on the other end asked [...]

A small body is impaled on the other side of my broad sword. I watch in horror as the life fades from the little boy’s eyes. His mouth agape, the remnants of a bloodcurdling scream. Hooves [...]

My grandparents married in August 1950. They had a small civil ceremony in London, where they were living at the time as my grandfather was specializing in paediatrics. My grandmother had been [...]

I came out with the Truth To the Truth and All hands picked up stones, I come out to the Truth With the Truth and Everybody riots, Easier if you knew Who the enemy was! It’s sad… Flesh of My [...]

My pillow is a sympathetic flower I soak its trustworthy roots in starlit tears Drowning the day’s final hours In the pain I’ve harvested throughout the year Its cotton tongue licks the sorrows [...]

Mingaphi iminyaka yakho?  No no no no. Why me? I Don’t Understand What They Are Saying. Sorry, I only speak English. Hayi! Ngoba? You’re black and you don’t speak your mother tongue? You should [...]

They segregated my people. They threw them into the pig’s sty. They kept the fruitful soil for themselves. “Let them eat dirt,” they say. While standing on the blood of my people. While wearing [...]

A body has been found. I, Detective Constance Nkosi, loom over the body of a young female, dumped in a field near a quiet street. Between the smell and the state of the body a foul taste fills my [...]

Even as I stretch my mouth into some semblance of a decent smile, my spineless lips curl in on themselves, retreating towards my throat the way the ocean recoils from the shore and slithers back [...]