Friday News brought to you by South Africa's best read!

Hugh Masekela and the irrecoverable idea of home

Friday Oyama Mabandla - 25 Sep 2020

Plagued by being in exile, Hugh Masekela’s oeuvre frequently explored the idea of home

Reframing women in Namibia’s early history of photography

Friday Lorena Rizzo - 25 Sep 2020

Women photographers, and black African women photographers in particular, are largely absent from early histories of the medium. This is slowly changing

The Portfolio: Jamal Nxedlana

Friday Christa Dee - 25 Sep 2020

The national lockdown provided photographer Jamal Nxedlana with a chance to push the boundaries of his practice as he transitioned into a new creative cycle

Phumlani Pikoli and the art of quitting school to make it

Friday Kwanele Sosibo - 25 Sep 2020

Writer, skater and filmmaker Phumlani Pikoli says his artistic intention was ‘to play’

‘Prisoner 913’: The long, zigzagging path to Mandela’s release

Friday Shaun De Waal - 24 Sep 2020

A new book draws on the secret archive of NP justice minister Kobie Coetsee to paint a detailed picture of the lead-up to Nelson Mandela’s release. Shaun de Waal spoke to co-author Riaan de Villiers

Canary in the coalmine: How Christopher Dorner keeps showing up in protest music

Friday Lloyd Gedye - 24 Sep 2020

Musicians break genre boundaries and, through the lyrics about the Los Angeles police officer who killed cops, express black anger

No grand illusions or announcements of change in Dolla Sapeta’s Skeptical Erections

Friday Tom Penfold - 24 Sep 2020

In his work, poet and artist Mxolisi Dolla Sapeta weaves a tight thread between his two practices and the Eastern Cape township of New Brighton

Is kwaito an old thing yet?

Friday Esinako Ndabeni - 21 Sep 2020

Kwaito was born during South Africa’s transition to democracy and lives on as a kind of heritage

Extract from ‘Born to Kwaito’: How we choose to fashion ourselves

Friday Esinako Ndabeni - 21 Sep 2020

How we choose to dress is an instrument to communicate personal, race, class, gender and identity politics, as discussed in this extract from ‘Born to Kwaito’

On Jackson Hlungwani: A close encounter with an artistic deity

Friday Mary Corrigall - 21 Sep 2020

A survey of Jackson Hlungwani’s practice presents a transcendental experience, even for non-believers

Omar Badsha: Recording the roles of the ordinary

Friday Niren Tolsi - 17 Sep 2020

Saho’s Omar Badsha believes in the power of people telling their own stories, but more funding to support this practice is crucial

A modicum of release: Lumumba’s remains return home at last

Friday Percy Zvomuya - 17 Sep 2020

Sixty years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the DRC’s first prime minister, his remains will be returned from Belgium

Review: The land is not to be outdone in ‘Dust’

Friday Kwanele Sosibo - 17 Sep 2020

Pieter du Plessis’s post-apocalyptic film throws up some interesting questions, but it also needs to work a little harder

The Portfolio: Khaya Ngwenya

Friday Khaya Ngwenya - 16 Sep 2020

Photojournalist Khaya Ngwenya’s style focus on exploiting natural light while staying in motion

Homegrown vs Big Pharma: Who stands to benefit from the legal market for medical marijuana?

Friday Guy Oliver - 15 Sep 2020

Cannabis is scheduled for its South African parole on September 18. Kelly McQue’s handy medical marijuana producers’ guide is an opening salvo against corporate medicine’s demand for exclusive rights to the plant’s healing powers

Achmat Dangor: On writing and change

Friday Andries Walter Oliphant - 12 Sep 2020

Celebrated author and political activist Achmat Dangor died on Sunday at the age of 71. Here, in a 1990 interview published in Staffrider, he speaks to Andries Walter Oliphant about his work and aspects of South African literature and culture

Nostalgia, connection and the nomadic sound of Mx Blouse

Friday Mx Blouse - 11 Sep 2020

Mx Blouse talks about their sonic influences and how these fused together to shape their debut album, 'Elementality'

Soul Assassins: Mx Blouse selects six producers who are vital to their sound

Friday Mx Blouse - 11 Sep 2020

From Micr. Pluto and Eye-On Feather to Parabyl, Mx Blouse has worked with a diverse range of producers who have all helped to shape their debut album, ‘Elementality’

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