It once used to be that the word blessed, along with its derivatives, had hallowed connotations. Not entirely so these days, especially in black urban circles where “blessers” are a hot topic of conversation and all the rage. But what is a blesser? He’s a new version of the sugar daddy, except his spending power…
Author: Mail & Guardian
There was a nickname some of the boys in my primary school had for me, growing up in Laudium, Pretoria. Blackie. They weren’t white kids, but rather South African Indians; confined as we were by the stringent categorising of apartheid, even in its dying days. Tears pricked my eyes aged 11 when the worst of…
My laptop is suffering from a case of “pop-ups ads”, causing the most random things to appear on my screen. Often what appears are adverts to earn money in something that smells very much like a Ponzi scheme, but one day what came up was a cartoon of a man ripping the underwear off a…
Everywhere you looked was all black. Black girls in black clothes punting black womanness. So although the request had been made for those in attendance to do so wearing all black, maybe it wasn’t the best colour choice, considering the sun was out in full force. “I feel like I’m being cooked,” someone said. “I…
She is the artist who has launched a thousand thinkpieces. Everything that Beyoncé does is extensively critiqued. Her songs and their accompanying videos, her tours, outfits and statements have become “events”: not just because of the media and public attention they generate, but also because of their function in black women’s lives. Beyoncé speaks of…
There’s a game my friends and I played as children: we would page through magazines and pick the things we desired and the people we wanted to be. The trick was to be fast, so that you would be the first to pick the most beautiful people, clothes, car and house. We would flick through…
Weaved up? Check. Larney accent? Check. Yellow bone? Check. Manicured nails? Check. Make-up contoured to the nines and designer duds for days? Check. Congratulations. You’re well on your way to fitting society’s baseline expectations of what it takes to be regarded as an attractive black woman. And it doesn’t end there. So what happens, pray…
I have had a great love for cricket since my early teens, a passion instilled in me in the mid-1990s by the increased general interest in cricket brought about by a Zimbabwean team seemingly destined for exponential growth. Sitting through hours and hours of slow Test cricket play, I taught myself to understand lbw decisions,…
“Left! Clap! Right! Clap!” shouts a young woman dressed in an orange tracksuit. She stands in front of about 30 women, who follow her movements obediently to a regular beat, stepping from side to side with a chorus of echoing claps. “Now go down low!” calls the instructor over the noise in the cramped room….
I remember watching the music video to Destiny’s Child’s Independent Women as a child, failing hopelessly to mimic the dance moves and looking on in awe as the three singers – led by Beyoncé – dominated that video. It’s difficult to write a critical analysis of any pop sensation without feeling a little silly. Why…
There are some things sisters should not do to themselves. Such as drag other sisters down. If you call yourself a feminist – for the lack of a better word – you should work to raise other women up in whatever you do. This also reflects your own humanity. I call myself a feminist. At…
On October 30, the ANC Women’s League, which self-identifies as the custodian of the women’s movement in South Africa, will embark on a “Hands off Our President” march to the Union Buildings. “The nation’s mothers” as they like to refer to themselves sometimes, will descend on the capital from all nine provinces to “defend” our…
History repeated itself recently when students from the #FeesMustFall protest movement marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demand that the government freeze university fees for 2016 and to drive home their message that education should not be a privilege reserved only for the wealthy. Forty-nine years ago, on August 9 1956, about 20 000 South African…
On Saturday September 5 in Yeoville, Johannesburg, Patrick Wisani allegedly killed his 24-year-old girlfriend, Nosipho Mandleleni, by beating her to death with a sjambok and a broomstick. Someone alerted the police after hearing her screams. It was a horrifying and excruciating way to die. Wisani, chairperson of the Johannesburg inner-city branch of the ANC Youth…
“If there’s any female rapper that can do it better than me, I owe you 10 grand, yo!” said an animated Gigi Lamayne during a pre-performance interview at Johannesburg’s Maftown Heights in December. “Even male!” interjected Thabo, a member of Gigi’s dance crew, Supreme I. Lamayne stared right into the camera: “If there’s any male…