The Gentrification Equation
by Muhammad Zaid Gamieldien “Look at the road you’re standing in”, says 27-year-old Yusuf Toefy. “You see barber shops, you see fish and chips eateries, you see clothing stores. Now remember how this...
View ArticleCollective Amnesia
The Con publishes two poems from, Collective Amnesia (Uhlanga Press) the highly-anticipated debut collection from Koleka Putuma, winner of the 2014 National Poetry Slam Championship and the 2016 PEN...
View ArticleThe Poets of the Black Consciousness Era
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. Mwelela Cele looks at the role this movement played in shaping South...
View ArticleReview: Bird-Monk Seding
review by Danyela Demir Lesego Rampolokeng, Bird-Monk Seding (Deep South, Grahamstown, 2017) 192pp. Much of Lesego Rampolokeng’s thirteenth, and most recent book, Bird-Monk Seding, focuses on the...
View ArticleKenya Groans Under the Weight of a Rapacious Elite
Firoze Manji A few days after the elections held in Kenya on 8 August 2017, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) announced that the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of...
View ArticleReflecting Rogue: An Extract
Reflecting Rogue: Inside the Mind of a Feminist, published by MFBooks Joburg. RRP: R240. Available at all good bookstores. A mothering feminist’s life A celebration, meditation and roll call During a...
View ArticleThe Human Hopes of October 1917 Revisited: On the Russian Revolution’s Centenary
by Michael Neocosmos The extraordinary events in Russia in October 1917, and their aftermath, shaped much of the last century. A hundred years on it is imperative to ask whether the failure of that...
View ArticleSisonke Msimang: Why I Write
An extract from Sisonke Msimang’s memoir “Always Another Country” On 16 August 2012, in a small town called Marikana in South Africa’s dry, rusty platinum belt, the South African Police Service opened...
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