And now for something completely different.

I know this is quite frivolous, but I used to be quite an ardent Isidingo fan. (The reason for the wikipedia link, rather than the official website link, is that the official site requires you to register before you actually get any information. No thank you.)

For the benefit of non-South Africans: Isidingo (Isi) is a South African soapie, on at 6:30 every weekday evening.

The major thing that turned me away from Isi was Rajesh and Lee breaking up. That was sad for me... Rajesh was Mr Moral High Ground and he slowly became more and more dubious until he is now crazed and in jail. That was almost the end of Isi for me. Rajesh was my favourite character.

I still watch every now and then, when I find myself in from of the TV at 6:30. Which of course is often enough to follow the plot sortof. It is a soapie after all.

After the demise of Rajesh's character, the one beacon of light for me was Parsons and Nandipha. I dig Parsons, I dig Nandipha. I dug their relationship.

And now thats going south too! Whats going on??
Maybe I'm an atypical viewer, but I actually like shows where people have healthy devoted relationships, where people love each other and sacrifice for each other and what not. Am I alone in that? Are other viewers only interested in skande? Are the scriptwriters running out of ideas?

I like interesting plot lines, for sure. But come on, why are you messing with Parsons and Nandipha?




But actually this post was inspired by Parsons new lady friend, Thandi. Did anyone notice in Isidingo tonight that while she was getting ready for dinner with him her hair was curled. Then at dinner it was straight. Then after dinner it was curled again?

Come now Isidingo!

In the archives

My mother is a librarian. So she always insisted that I keep newspaper clippings of important events.

I was thinking about how to celebrate Freedom Day (tomorrow) when I remembered this, and I scratched around for them. And found a most enormous pile of newspaper clippings, starting from about 1992! What an exciting find! Thank the Lord for my mother!

I've been going through them, and here are some classics:

The 1992 referendum.

Apartheid is over! (March 1992, after the referendum)


Voter info, 1993.


Beans and candles, remember? :)


That day, 27 April 1994. Look at the queue of people waiting to vote.


Down with the old flag, up with the new.


And finally, for good measure:

Winnie's hat!

If I find more good ones I'll upload them later. What a trip down memory lane! It really made me remember how exciting it all was.

Celebrating Freedom Day

South Africa celebrates Freedom Day on 27 April, the day of our first democratic elections in 1994. The day that marked the beginning of the New South Africa. I blogged about it last year.

I remember sitting in my lab in front of my old computer writing that post. It was written with a really heavy heart because another year had passed without me doing anything to celebrate Freedom Day.

Christmas comes with hosts of traditions. Even people who aren't Christians and who don't celebrate the religious foundation of Christmas usually have family traditions on Christmas. Getting together for a meal. Turkey. Small change in your Christmas pudding. Presents. A tree. And Easter. Easter eggs and Easter hunts. And of course the many religious events that mark those days too. The USA has Thanksgiving, repleat with weird vegetable and marshmellow dishes, pumpkin pie, re-enactments of pilgrims and indians. We have traditions for birthdays too: in my family its opening presents together in the morning, and usually a birthday meal at some stage. There must be a million examples from a million cultures worldwide, of ways to celebrate important events.

Now with the newness of the New South Africa comes all of these important new days. Like Freedom Day, Youth Day and others. Important days, days that the nation has set aside to celebrate aspects of our past.

But because of the newness, we also have no traditions to structure our celebration of those days.

Actually, I should put in a disclaimer at this point: generally speaking, black South Africans have a pretty strong political culture, and from my observations they often seem to have well attended celebratory events. Afrikaans South Africans, too, have a remarkably rich assortment of traditions around the holidays that are most important to them. Leaving of course my people, white English speaking South Africans.

To some degree I agree with Sandile Memela in his blog and his column in the Daily Dispatch today, that we should just get over ourselves and join the general Freedom Day (or Youth Day or whatever...) celebrations, the rallies in stadiums with government speakers, or whatever events we see organised. And I agree that many white South Africans really don't care to celebrate these days, and that is a shameful thing.

But I think he goes too far to call it a boycott.

I want to celebrate Freedom Day. I have friends who want to celebrate Freedom Day. I just don't know how to do it. There is no precedent for me, celebrating Freedom Day. No food we always eat, no place we always go, no songs we always sing, no traditions at all.

So this year some friends and I decided to have a Freedom Day party. I've been trying to organise it quite last minute so I hope it works out. But we haven't quite figured out what to *do* at this party. As I said, we have no songs to sing, or food to eat, or places to go.

So we are probably going to try organise it around the theme of remembering Freedom Day, and sharing stories and memories and thoughts and readings on freedom in general and Freedom Day, 27 April 1994, in particular.

So we'll see how it goes.

Someone needs to start the ball rolling, Someone needs to come up with foods to traditionally eat and songs to traditionally sing and stories to traditionally recite. A Freedom Day liturgy, as it were.

So we'll try.