The Acne to my melanin

The role of government and it's institutions needs to be reimagined if we are to create the future South Africans deserve. Instead of bureaucrats and career politicians making all the decisions, humanities practitioners, educators, community leaders and creatives must be invited to the table and their voices need to be heard. Many public institutions are under-utilized or undirected, one of them being the public library.  South Africa as a third world country, has a multitude of problems and many of them are linked to literacy, education and access to information and resources. The country has a poor reading culture and libraries run the risk of fading into obscurity. The increase in internet connectivity is not helping the situation. The public library needs to go through a reincarnation and be more than it ever was. The library of the future needs to be more than just a silent room frequented by the old and socially inept where one can get a book. The library of the future needs ...

Envy Envy, I often experience it. For different reasons and usually not for long, thankfully. One of the most peculiar sources of envy for me recently has been because of religious doctrine versus ethnic cultural practices. I sometimes wish for a life where the spiritual beliefs that anchor my soul did not conflict with the ethnic culture that is a great source of pride for me. I sometimes wish I lived in a community, or society that made being a devout follower of my faith easy. A land where the laws and norms made practicing my faith easy, or the default thing to do.   Practicing Christianity is difficult. Practicing Christianity as an African man who is fully aware of how Christianity was used as a tool for evil against my ancestors, and the rest of the world is DIFFICULT. Living in an African community that has certain cultural rites that are expected of me, cultural rites that overlap with the spiritual realm when I was raised as a devout Christian is difficult. One of th...

Trying to separate the art from the artist is one of those controversial things that people will never unanimously agree on. Like almost everything else in life, separating the art from the artist is circumstantial and the variation of those circumstances is dependent on your personal moral compass. With this concept being so heavily linked to your own moral virtue, this means that judgment and indictment of your character, as a person, are almost guaranteed. Rightfully so too, because your actions are the only things that we can use to evaluate your character and try to predict your conduct in the future. Determining who cannot be separated from their art is far easier than determining who can. Here is where people’s personal values play a significant role and it’s impossible to not judge people based on these positions. Where there is a ‘grey area’, then surely there must be a black and white on either side to complete the spectrum. There are situations where we should all be in co...

There is a barrier between feminist theory and the people who need it the most. This is something that academia needs to realize and amend. The strongest performers of feminism, that I know of personally, are women that don’t identify with feminism and feminist theory even though their lived experience says otherwise. These real-life feminist heroines that I speak of are women who enter disputes with their late husband’s families over their rightful inheritance that they need to raise their kids. I am talking about women who resist forced marriages to relatives after the passing of a spouse. The women who make ends meet against all odds and resist oppressive traditions are feminist champions that walk the talk having never talked the talk. However, if you speak to these women about feminism, they often misinterpret your views and have no interest in learning about feminism even though they represent everything that feminism is about. This means that there is a disconnect between the ...

It is better to concede some ground and retain your position as a frontrunner than to fight for each inch and risk losing everything. There is a general anti-capitalist/anti-ultra-rich sentiment going around and it is spreading quickly. In the states, it is evident by the somewhat “radical” stances taken by the front runners for the presidential candidate in the Democratic Party. The understanding of radical is through the Western lens of capitalism, free markets, and hyper-individualism. There are talks of implementing a wealth tax and breaking up companies that dominate markets such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. These suggestions have gone from being the ramblings of communist anti-freedom madmen to a more mainstream conversation and public opinion is swaying. The middle class that vehemently defended the wealthy because they had somewhat delusional ambitions of one day joining the 1% is dwindling by the day and the voices of the disgruntled are becoming deafening.  The res...

This is me trying something new, me finding another outlet. Thoughts that aren't shared with the world serve no purpose so this is me sharing my musings with the world. Hopefully, my thoughts will resonate with someone out there and they may be inclined to share their views as well. I'll be posting as I write and some other materials that I've written already. Thank you for taking your time to entertain my thoughts. Sibusiso Spondo x