I have lived in Mahikeng (Mafikeng) for the past two years and, as far as I can see, there are no vegetarian restaurants in town. But I did trace a few places among the Indian and Ethiopian communities where I can catch a good veggie dish.
Mahikeng is, in general, a meat-eating town. You can’t even find a spinach-and-feta pie anywhere. Still, I doubt that this meaty scene has anything to do with the natives and their “authentic” taste buds.
I also struggled to find vegetarian food in Barcelona when I stepped out for a poetry festival recently. The Spanish, it seems, have a strong meat-eating temperament. But I am not speaking grudgingly. I enjoyed Barcelona.
Mahikeng is also good to me. I count it among my favourite places in the world. I seem to get a life-giving force from the spirit of the rocks.
Otherwise, Mahikeng is the land where my great-grandfather, Magogodi Pilane, came to settle from Mochudi many years ago. But I am also a creature of the city and that explains my love for Jozi.
I have not been inside a theatre to see a play recently. But my country is full of drama.
[Archbishop Emeritus] Desmond Tutu was being dramatic when he threatened to pray for the rulers of the land to fall.
The image of Tutu kneeling and wielding the power of the Holy Ghost against the ruling elite is aesthetically captivating. The picture is fantastic. It makes good material for a dark comic play about power and prayer.
I am rereading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I can’t get over the prophetic force of Orwell’s writing. Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published in 1949, yet the journey of the protagonist, Winston, is all too familiar. Winston’s battle against the state’s thought-control mechanics resembles a world I know, a world of secrecy Bills and secret services.
I am reading the last few pages, in which Winston is detained for thinking independently. His torturer, O’Brien, tells Winston: “We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.”
It seems to Orwell that people in power will always battle to control the way people perceive reality.
I find it amazing that a writer who passed away so long ago can speak so sharply to my times.
The music of Fela Kuti and Doctor Philip Tabane is usually in my company. Whenever I prepare for the stage, I listen to Kuti and Tabane.
I also get a great amount of energy from the spirit of [Kuti’s] Kalakuta Republic and the spirit of Malombo.
Lately, I am also into the music of Ratsie Setlhako, an old-school musician and poet from Botswana.
Setlhako’s picturesque language is a ceaseless poetic force. Some might find his lyrics to be vulgar, but don’t we live in a vulgar social order?
So perhaps the language is fairly Âappropriate.
I am also listening to the radio and still trying to decide which popular groove will be my number for December. I am not opposed to a bit of jiving.