colonialism Archives - Living Mzansi

The tour guide versus the history teacher

South Africa is an attitude. Wherever you are in this great big wide world, if you’re South African, you come with gees. We’re just “built different” – as my daughter likes to say. There are so many crazy things that go on in our country and yet we find a way. As a writer (and a talker) stories are my happy place – reading them, writing them, telling them. That time when… Sitting around the kitchen table picking at leftovers after Christmas lunch or on the stoep as the sun goes down and braai smoke acts as a catalyst for tears and tales, or around a campfire when memories manifest in the flickering embers. The messy, tragic, beautiful, funny fables that make us who we are. The South Africa of our childhood and our parents’ childhood and their parents’ childhood and their aunty’s uncle’s mother’s friend’s childhood. The South Africa of now. And also, the South Africa that has taken over streets and neighbourhoods the world over… because it’s not just where we’re from – it’s how we roll.