Motswako legend: Jabulani HHP Tsambo died last week
THE PLAYLIST
Harambe, Tswaka, Jabba and all the hits by HHP: You sound like my brothers cleaning my dad’s car, flipping through pages of YMag, Hype, and XXL while I polish our shoes on Saturdays. You sound like mama and papa reminiscing on the days when they lived in Mmabatho and Riviera Park ko Mahikeng. Your words had me being hyped and proud about fluently rapping along to Setswana. You gave home a sound. As Uhuru said in the opening lines of her piece about you: “Re khawategile”. (ZH)
When It Falls by Zero 7: A beautiful throwback album that takes me back to my first few years in Jo’burg as a fresh-faced, booty short-wearing 22-year-old. I used to listen to this album on the passenger seat of my ex’s car, with the windows rolled down, punching the summer air with our head bobs, on our way to McDonalds on a Sunday night. It hasn’t aged a bit it’s still the perfect summer soundtrack. (MB)
The READING LIST
Edward’s Menagerie: Over 40 Soft and Snuggly Toy Animal Crochet Patterns by Kerry Lord: I have been really terrible with reading over the past weeks. Whenever I have free time, I want be using my hands. I want to sew, repaint a wall, knit or crochet. The stack of books on my bedside table has been swapped for a basket overflowing with yarn, knitting needles and crochet hooks. It’s not all that bad. I got this e-book in which a mother-to-be learned how to crochet two weeks before her baby’s arrival. By the time her baby, Edward, was 12 months old, she had made him 40 stuffed toys. In this book, she details step by step how she made each animal. What makes it cool is how each pattern is accompanied by a story that could work for bedtime. (ZH)
The Silent People by KS Bongela: Every few years, when I feel as if I have lost my way, I pick up one of my late father’s novels and revel in the blessed position of being able to read his work. It was his birthday last week. He would have been 82 and, one night when I couldn’t sleep, thinking about what he might be up to on the other side, I reread his 1981 novel, The Silent People, a small book that explains the place of ancestors in our lives as modern people. It deals with young men’s experiences in the migrant labour system, an educated Xhosa woman’s conflicting encounters with culture, a patriarch’s struggle to impart the wisdom of yore to his stubborn son and a young man’s struggle with guilt and violence. (MB)