Bessie Head

Your essential dose of art and culture

Summer Flowers, representing South Africa at the 15th Dakar Biennale, is an homage to author Bessie Head

From critiques of apartheid to reflections on post-colonial identity, Southern African literature has chronicled the region’s history and shaped its trajectory to a just society

One should reread Bessie Head’s book to fully appreciate it in all its magnificence

A new exhibition, When Rain Clouds Gather: Black South African Women Artists, 1940-2000, held at the Norval Foundation, is a corrective to the previous systemic exclusion of…

The history of clubbing in Jo’burg is less about physical space and fading memories, but about the sheer, frightful necessity of dancing

Jacob Dlamini’s new book, The Terrorist Album, tells the stories of people saddled with that catch-all phrase during apartheid and how their presence on that list made them fair…

The acclaimed author’s newspaper articles should have been given critical attention too

The dangerous re-ethnicisation of SA politics must be stopped lest it lead to the same ethnonationalism that caused bloodshed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia

In between working on Friday copy, this is what the team reads, listens to and watches.

A particularly South African kind of shame raises questions of home, belonging and mixed identity in this remarkable memoir

Bessie Head’s iconic novels <i>When Rain Clouds Gather</i> and <i>Maru</i> have recently been reissued.