No Easy Answers

Here is to a meaningful women’s month to us all. Beyond the rhetoric and seminars, may we have the conversations we should be having around all the challenges that make up what it means to be a woman in the 21 st century. There are too many issues to list here but I will mention a few anyway: rape, sexual objectification, glass ceilings, patriarchy, abuse, self-hatred and whatever battles we fight daily simply because we were born female. It is ridiculous to say the least that we can’t jog in the mornings without being murdered. It is preposterous that a young girl can’t walk home after school without being raped and it is absolute ludicrous that mothers get raped in the passages of their own homes! Yet we live with these things daily. We live in constant fear for our lives. We cross the street when we see a man coming down the same way as us; we live to bring down the next woman because ‘who does she think she is?’; and we are constantly on the look-out for date-rape drug...

    Freedom day- again. Wasn’t it Freedom Day just last month? Oh, wait. No, sorry. That was Human Rights Day.   Same difference, right? All these public holidays are the same anyway. No school/work. Yay! Party hard the night before, sleep in, hit the malls, braai and drink with ama-genge, dread school/work then sleep. I fall in a generation that may or may not know why we even commemorate this day- funny because we are the generation with the most access to information. Perhaps that is our downfall- excessive access. But that is a whole different matter on its own. We’ll explore it on another day. Another public holiday, perhaps? This year’s Freedom Day comes on the back of several weeks of tension and pain born of the xenophobic attacks (aka Afrophobia) in the country that we have either witnessed or been involved in. We had to bear the shame of having the world, and more importantly, Africa, see the chickens of our frustration and dwindling hope come hom...

It's been a challenging year for me both personally and professionally. I have learnt more about myself in the last 12 months than in my entire life. I am about to take a major leap in my professional life to pursue my dreams. I have been making a few do-or-die decisions lately. This is born of my realisation that I'm not guaranteed a next time, or a soon or any kind of future. My future is now- in this very moment. This realisation is both liberating and intimidating I should say. I have a million and one dreams. Ok. Minus one because I finally fulfilled this one of having a blog. So I have a million dreams which I'm starting today already to achieve. 2015 will not make me a better person. It will not make me braver. I will do that by myself. So whatever I believe I can achieve in the new year, I can achieve today because the common denominator, me, hasn't changed. So I'm walking into 2015 differently to how I walked into 2014- armed with the knowledge that...

I find solace in music. Much like a lot of other people do. I lose and find myself in music. It is perhaps the best part of who I am. My taste varies but one of the following two things must be present to guarantee my enjoyment: 1. Authentically African 2. Beyonce I enjoy music so much that I often get emotionally attached to musicians. Theirs is a job I doubt I would ever try due to firstly, an appalling lack of talent and secondly due to the sheer BRAVERY it must take to follow such a path. I mean most career paths follow a particular formula or pattern to reach success and often one's success is determined by their own input. I don't think the same process exists when you are a musician, I believe that their success (well, too much of it) is determined by other people. From record label execs to the public, a lot of a musician's success is determined by external factors. To put bread on the table through pouring your guts out on a beat and melody then have people ...

Me at my favourite place in Bloemfontein- Naval Hill Hi Welcome to my whirlwind world. Here nothing ever happens smoothly or easily. I suppose you believe this is cynical and negative however you are incorrect. This is a fact. I am turning 23 next Friday and as with other birthdays I will be surrounded by the people my heart guards jealously, my family. The perks of being born on a public holiday! I will be by the beach and we will be happy and sun-burnt! I love that thought. But that is not how I'm feeling today, however that's a story for another day. For now let me welcome you to my life. Here I'll chronicle my experiences without compromising anyone's identity (as far as I can or the law restricts me). I am a simple girl living a simple life in a complicated way. It's my nature! If you know any way to cure this, heal me I beg! I'd like to thank   Titilope's TedX Talk "Speaking Into The Void" for giving me the kick I needed to do...