Sihle Khumalo talking about his book “Dark Continent My Black Arse”

While shooting a portrait for Masixole Nkumbesi we talked about the signifigance of the Clan names for him and their relevance in today’s world.

We started this week with a Youth Seminar at the Artscape. One often notices obstacles on the communication lines between the grassroots and decision makers, and when it comes to youth issues this definitely is the case. Every generation of young people grow up with different circumstances, value systems, media influences and general zeitgeist, should I use such a word, and every previous generation is trying to understand them through the circumstances they grew up with. I guess if that is the case it is no wonder that we always venture out complaining about the youth of today. But admittedly sounding like a cliché or 80′s pop song, youth and children are the future. They are the leaders and decision makers of tomorrow and Youth Forum gave hope as many, I suppose mainly volunteers, talked and gave their views of the challenges in schools and communities and took responsibility to do what they can for the betterment of these circumstances. This, of course is something they have been doing already for long regardless of how thankless the job sometimes may seem.

Unfortunately we could not stick around for every session, but it was extremely educational and we recorded very interesting commentaries and interviews that we are looking forward using in our projects in future.

Audience member raising questions to the speakers.

Voxpop Africa’s Amkelwa interviewing Eric from KYDC, Khayelitsha.

Mr Michael Maas, Chief Executive at the Artscape.

It’s August again and women’s month. We took our recording equipment to the UCT GSB (Graduate School of Business) where Women of Africa conference was taking place. The theme was Power in Unity, and the reason we got interested was the impressive line-up of speakers. Dr Mamphela Ramphele, who we regard so highly, was giving the keynote speech and she was followed by South African business women with their stories.

We recorded some of the speeches and are working currently with the material, but we also sourced some very nice contacts for future interviews and a documentary series we are planning right now. More about that in the near future. Also, the audio will be put online at this site soon.

Happy Women’s Month!

Karina Anderson is a responsibility coach, who has written a book called, The responsible Individual. This book is in a form of a manual that can be used by individuals, families, teams and companies. It can be used individually or with the help of a life coach. Karina, is part of a group of responsibility coaches who coach at the Bramvlei maximum prison to the inmates as well as some of the wardens.

The Responsible Individual was launched at the Cape Town Book Fair at the CTICC where Voxpop Africa media had an opportunity to listen to her presentation as well as do a brief interview with her.

One of the interviewees Lindelwa ‘Mamtshawe’ Rosslyn Thole giving her views during the anti-xenophobia demonstration June 2nd in Cape Town.

I lack some very basic qualities of a journalist. Not that I am not cynical enough, but at times I can also get excited. I don’t feel the need to criticise what doesn’t need criticising. I am openly out of the closet fan of certain things. I don’t think that makes me less objective when I talk and write about them; after all, I like them because I like them. There’s no particular unconditional love in these fan relationships.

As a journalist and as a fan the past few days have been exciting because I think, as sincerely as I only can, that South Africa is living very interesting times literature wise. The new wave of Black, often a-political, witty, intelligent and engaging opinion leaders and writers has arrived in a big style and I have had a chance to chat and meet with almost every one that I have enjoyed reading. Granted there must be others that I didn’t get to meet and whose books I haven’t read, but it’s been a privilege nonetheless.

Like the previous post was already plugging, the last one of these new guys was Ndumiso Ngcobo. The author of Some of my Best Friends are White chatted with us after his presentation at the publisher’s stand. He’s pretty cool; a bit of an anecdotalist and observer. He also blogs and based on the book, blog, presentation and our interview, he’s a kind of person that one would like to have as an in-house opinion machine. To sort of comment every story, and hey, since both in his book and presentation he mentioned an arrangement similar to this being his dream, if only we had the funding to hire him, we probably would.

Tuesday is the last day of the book fair. We’ll still go there to record bits and pieces before we put everything finally together. It’s been busy but wonderful few days. It’s great time to live in South Africa. It may not be a perfect country, but having lived in a handful of countries, what is.