COLUMNS
Once upon a time I was a columnist for two South African weekly papers over a period of 8 years.
My first year's long column began in 2010 and was a Friday column for the weekly Mail & Guardian, under the guidance of Arts Editor Matthew Krouse. I was 24 and had no idea what I was doing or saying and if I went back to some of that writing today, I would probably cancel myself for the level of cringe that thinking out loud in a very serious space as a young person entailed. But I was privileged to have this space to test out my voice as a young writer and cherish the relationship I had with my readers.
I don’t have those columns here.
After my first stint at the Mail & Guardian, I started a Sunday column in the VOICES section of City Press when Ferial Haffajjee was editor. Charl Blignaut was my editor and I’d say it was at a time when I had matured a little in my thinking, but the writing was still on its way, as it continues to be today. It was during #FEESMUSTFALL, a time when many of us began to find a language of expression for the unfinished project of freeing ourselves from the colonial, apartheid and slave history of South Africa.
Some of these columns (dated before 2016) are in this list.
This collection mostly features the bi-weekly columns I wrote when I was the Arts Editor of The Mail & Guardian between 2016 - 2018, before I left that wonderful job to become a full time filmmaker.
There’s a throughline of my base ideas and beliefs present in all these columns. The only difference is the maturation of the voice and a consciousness that developed in the later years about my style and approach to storytelling. My filmmaking is fully influenced by the ever burgeoning spirit of my writing and this need to say things as a form of engaging self, others, ideas and art.
I don’t know how these land in a country that is not South Africa, but I share these with a hard earned capacity to share en-route and imperfect ideas.
18 November 2015
13 July 2018
24 August 2018
7 September 2018
5 October 2018