So when DJ Fresh got a tweet that said (I paraphrase unfortunately, because I’ve lost the actual tweet) “I love you Fresh! I’m male, but don’t worry, I’m not homo”, his response was something along these lines: “Thanks. And whether you’re homosexual or not wouldn’t actually matter.”

When Nonhle gets this tweet from a woman: “No homo but Ur so sexy & beautiful,love you a lot,your a true Insipiration of beauty”, her response is simply “Thank u”. Okay, so it’s not the job of a celebrity to try and correct their fans, I guess. So we’re not judging Nonhle here for her lapse. I AM judging DJ Fresh though, and he comes out of it as a shining example of how celebrities can be a force for good, not just moneymaking monsters.

Some other Nonhle tweets, alas, don’t show her in a particularly good light when it comes to treading sensitively around gender politics..

Here are some tweets I used yesterday in a column called “Jesus, Smurfs and Nonhle Thema“.

The Tweetings of Nonhle
- Guyz that keep hating on me. As a GIRL need a DICK up their asses Full stop…faggots……

- Im your JESUS…just Deal with it..and keep it moving…ha ha ha IM TOOOO POWERFUL

- Do u know your dad  since your mother was a HOE. And was also rapped ha ha ha

- Im sure youre sooo ugly cos your mom tried to abort your fucked up ass….but gaddd damm u alive but UGLY and DIRTY as as shit

- Im sure SEAN PAGEs mother was rapped when she made his UGLY DUMB Ass…nigga looks like a RAPED rapper

- Aaawwwwww a NIGHT SHIFT thats how nigga was made…ha ha ha thst why he will neva marry. Cos his dick was also sucked by his mother

- Nice RT @Attenuater: @NonhleThema am your servant and you are my jesus! I worship your holy name my Smurfette! *bows*

- Ha ha boo Never i even lick my own ass i LoVE me RT @Sibunzi: @NonhleThema you keep on saying the same shit don’t u get bored of urself?

- How cool im dead….Thank u RT @TerisaJ: @NonhleThema one of the beatles claimed they were more famous than God! … http://m.tmi.me/lgPch

- Im making it rain NOW…im your GOD soo sit back and watch me do my magic….

- I make rappers angry an curse me out for PR LOL im the ish RT @MrPink47: @NonhleThema jesus performed miracles,so what can u do ???

All very amusing, but a decided contrast to the approach of DJ Fresh. (Oh, and if you have your own favourite Nonhle tweet, please put it on the comments section).

Visit Nonhle’s website.

This state of affairs informed the way the media worked, and the types of stories that were published. It also highlighted the growing importance of digital media. For citizens, as a way to continue to make their voices heard, and to access information necessary to a civil society intent on being the watchdogs of good governance and constitutional values; and for the media, it drove home how vital digital platforms are, and will be in future, in the preservation of the freedom of the press.

The Secrecy Bill and the battle for media freedom

In 2011, the media came under sustained attack from the government and the court of public opinion. It also contrived to stab itself in the back with a myopic, narcissistic response to infringements on the freedom of the press, both actual and imagined, as well as some unfortunate lapses in editorial rigor. Major pressure was put on media structures because of this combination of negative propaganda and legitimate criticism.The result was a publishing climate in which some news organisations were anecdotally considered to be practicing a form of self-censorship, and where attention was deflected from reporting the news, to campaigning to protect the right to continue doing so.

[These are the introductory paragraphs to a 2800 word essay I wrote for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Read the rest here - it looks forward to 2012's inevitable battles for the preservation of civil liberties, and asks whether we have the conditions for a social media revolution of sorts in South Africa.]

But wait! What if the Apocalypse happens in South Africa? Things will be handled very differently. The obvious point is that many people in Johannesburg won’t notice.  Aki Anastasiou’s traffic report on 702 will be business as usual. “Burning petrol tanker overturned on William Nicol, and traffic lights out at twelve intersections. Oh, and angels with trumpets are causing rubbernecking on Jan Smuts, so budget an extra 30 mins for your journey.”

There’ll actually be an upside to the Apocalypse. Street vendors will start selling cheap “I’ve been Raptured” flags to fly from your car, and people in Soweto will finally have something to show deluded fans of District 9 who are on Prawn Safari. Pirates supporters will have a jolly old time exchanging crossed bones salutes with Death, who will be so seduced by his popularity that he’ll start a small assassination agency in Pretoria called Die@BlouBulle. Some fat guy in a gematric Beemer will make a fortune reselling his “Number of the Beast” numberplate (NDAZE 666 GP), and Nonhle Thema will star in a reality show called Mzansi Maggots (“They eat flesh! Superhot naked flesh!!”)

In Cape Town, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, War, Death and, in particular, Toyota Conquest, won’t be able to find parking. And if they do, they’ll find it impossible to actually get anyone interested in their specialist areas. Famine will feel increasingly inadequate and frustrated as he realises that starving yourself is actually a lifestyle choice in Camps Bay, not a blight. War won’t be able to get people to fight, because he’s not part of the right clique, and anyway all the cool kids already belong to the Armoury Boxing Club.

In the South African suburbs where the nouveau riche congregate, there’ll be a rash of cool parents naming their kids Nostradamus (“little Nossie is SO precocious! Don’t you just love the way his little head spins around!), and Beelzebub (“it’s not Billy, it’s BEELY! And if you even think about calling him Bubba…”). Let’s just hope the Apocalypse doesn’t start off in Durban, because then Francis Ford Coppola would have to make a movie called Apocalypse Later.

We’re making light of a serious topic, though. And we haven’t even started to worry about what we’ll do if there’s a Zombie Apocalypse, which is like the normal religious Apocalypse, just more humane. The four Zombies of the Apocalypse are Itchy, Scratchy, Vegan and Lauren Beukes, and if they stumble into town – well, let’s just say you’ll miss Famine and Death.

(Published in Obrigado magazine, December 2011)

Random apocalyptic graffiti, Buenos Aires.

Juliana Venter's famous Nail Suit (Pic Andrew Bannister)

Hermit, to Can Temba, a scratchy lament for Sophiatown, Think Lark meets Can, and you’d be getting close to the sound. Except that Mud Ensemble were way looser around the edges, as befits a band whose operating principle appeared to be, do whatever the hell we feel like doing. In truth, some of their experiments might jar your 21st sensibilities now, such as the William Blake mashup of The Bat, with its refrain about ‘kicking/kissing Roman anus’. But overall, this is a document of an extraordinary band, who combined courage, craziness and a sophisticated musical knowledge to produce some of the most memorable performances of the  90s. Nobody who saw them blazing on stage will ever forget.

(read Toast Coetzer’s article on Juliana Venter’s current projects, and a 1996 review by the legendary Charl Blignaut.)

This review first published in Rolling Stone SA, December 2011. Visit their site and follow them on Twitter.

Picture of Juliana Venter by Andrew Bannister, and sourced from this site.

The Mud Ensemble performing.

A more interesting comparison would be John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, circa solo offering John, the Wolf King of L.A. Purkiss’s songs might be embedded in a folksy acoustic-rock genre, but they stray into the more dynamic area of straight rock every now and then.

That’s musically as well as lyrically. With sidemen of the calibre of Ross Campbell (ex-Fetish) and guitar genius Guy Buttery, the sound at times has a rhythmic urgency that adds interesting dimensions to the beautiful melodies. Lyrically, although Purkiss is precisely as sweetly romantic as you’d expect, there’s the odd moment of darkness and troubled introspection.

As this is a rerelease, there are a bunch of extras. The live version of Purkiss’s Monkey’s Wedding adds fire to the impressionist original, but the cover of Dylan’s Positively 4th St leeches all passion out of the original, replacing it with an anodyne and earnest prettiness that does the song no favours at all. On the whole, though, this is an album that will sit comfortably in that section of your music collection that you savour in times of ease and introspection.

FARRYL PURKISS: Fruitbats and Crows Special Edition (Sheer Sound)

(first published in Mail & Guardian)

Oh Brother

You’ll recognise the depth and emotional range of Alison Krauss here and even the lilting playfulness of Edie Brickell. Musically, you could shoehorn Six Winters into that particular brand of new folk that’s both adult contemporary and coolly retro and that manages to sound fresh at the same time as sounding chillingly, inevitably old.

There’s a gorgeous cover of Ring of Fire, the June Carter song made famous by Johnny Cash. Its lyrics could serve as a coda for Six Winters, an album scorched by painful desire and consumed by the conflagration of love: “Love is a burning thing/ and it makes a fiery ring/ bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire.” As a work of art detailing the climb out of that fire, Six Winters is exquisitely realised.

Laurie Levine’s website.

Laurie Levine: Six Winters (Rhythm Records)

(Originally published in the Mail & Guardian.

Quail with Macadamia rice and Maputo chilli sauce

I still can’t resist a quick review here, telling you one simple thing: go and eat the quail at The Leopard. Stuffed with macadamia rice, and accompanied by a Maputo chilli sauce, it’s in the top ten of dishes I’ve eaten in Joburg. Not because it’s spectacular, not because it’s intriguingly deconstructed, not because it’s ‘a delightful melange of the nutty and the moist’. None of that shit. Go and eat it because it tastes damn good.

I went to The Leopard two weeks in a row. The second week, I took an overseas guest and two mean women from the Sunday Times’ Home Weekly, and a blonde woman from Camps Bay (tough audience, huh) and spent the first half hour warning them to order quickly, because the odds of their food getting to them timeously were slim. After a while, they asked – uh, why did you bring us here if the service is so atrocious? The answer arrived on the plates. Food worth struggling for.

On the first visit, which was during the first week of opening, service veered between the late and the ludicrous. I think about six wrong orders were delivered, which you’d think would piss you off. But in each case, they just insisted we try the dish anyway. At one stage, the first main course plate arrived. Fifteen minutes later they came to take it away again, telling us the others weren’t ready.

But with each service error came weirdly good service – free tastings to pass the time, and the aforementioned donation of the wrong dishes to the greater gustatory good. I didn’t bother checking the bill at the end, as we were entering the realm of quantum restaurateuring by that stage, but I know a lot of stuff was taken off the final amount.

Miussels. Simple and delectable.

I tell you this tale to amuse you, not to put you off The Leopard. If you’re a Capetonian, or from ‘that’ part of San Francisco, the artistic service ethic will make you nostalgic. After all, who wouldn’t rather have a good-looking waiter than an efficient one. On my second visit, service was excellent, and most of the teething problems were gone. At this stage of the review, you normally supply some information about the chef etc. I’m just going to steal that from the official Mail & Guardian review, which you’ll find here.

“The restaurant’s name is taken from Il Gattopardo, a favourite childhood book by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that tells the story of the last of the ­Sicilian aristocracy and has beautiful, nostalgic descriptions of food. This is the kind of food she wants to emulate — the “simplest, simplest things”.

“Everyone remembers [chef Andrea] Burgener’s first restaurant 12 years ago, the Super Bon-Bon in ­Richmond, and that it served Coco Pops and milk. The dish came with “toys” like those you would find inside the cereal box, but larger — a huge blow-up pencil, or slippers.

“Some of that playfulness is still in evidence at the Leopard; you will sometimes find spaghetti and Marmite. The Marmite is melted with butter and then tossed with pasta and a sprinkling of parmesan.”

Hazy memory alert: the last time I saw chef Burgener was roughly (very roughly) 10 – 15 years ago, when she was called The Fairy and was part of the Braam Kruger ‘Kitchen Boy’ setup (read about him on Mahala). Frighteningly, she appears to look exactly the same, as gorgeous but perhaps less fey. But the sense of absurdity which you’ll find in Kruger’s excellent cookbook (I only have one) is hinted at in The Leopard.

Almost every dish on the short menu is a delight (and I got to taste them all over two visits, one of the benefits of being handed the wrong orders), but I’m always going to eat that quail. The mussels are good too, and the Son of Caesar salad is amazing: crunchy, fresh, and apparently a constant favourite.

I could carry on, but you probably get the idea. This is some of the best food you’re going to get in Johannesburg, if you like food that’s honest, original, fabulously created and incredibly tasty.

31 4th Avenue, Parkhurst
Tel: 011 447 6012
(bring your own wine).

Now you’d think people in those two cities would be tired of this us vs them nonsense by now, not to mention embarrassed that Durban and Bloemfontein never want to play. But apparently not. If you’re a person living in a third-world city on the arse end of Africa, how do you make yourself feel better about yourself? You try and find someone worse off. So instead of casting out the potholes in their own streets, they pick on the toilets in their enemies’ fields.

Readers of Obrigado will know that the word ‘hipster’ has become an insult hurled with abandon whenever someone badly dressed gets sneered at by someone in vintage Levi’s. It’s like a white version of ‘cappuccino’, which is the insult hurled by black kids with crap taste in recycled house, every time they get dissed by a black kid who listens to Kings of Leon.  You all know what a hipster is, right? It’s someone who isn’t you, even though she’s dressed in a 1930s straitjacket similar to the one you found under your mother’s bed. Your straitjacket is cool and ironic, hers is just an attempt to look different. Or possibly she’s actually insane. Your taste in obscure ukulele music of the 70s is clever, his collection of German electro is pathetic and pretentious.

The funny thing is, the term hipster comes from 1940s America, and was coined to describe white kids trying to act like black musicians. Now, in South Africa, it means rainbow people trying to act like cool Americans. The most fearful irony of all is when the inhabitants of Joburg and Cape Town start to insult each other about their various artisanal markets. I bet you thought ‘Art is Anal’ was the battle cry of your average unskilled performance artist from art school, but no. It refers to the practice of producing food in unhygienic conditions, and packaging it badly. Then it’s sold for an exorbitant amount of money to people who put it in the freezer and only bring it out to show off when guests come around for dinner.

For some reason, the Johannesburg/Cape Town rivalry has turned into a battle of the markets. So it’s not unusual to be walking through Market on Main in the Maboneng Precinct of Joburg, and overhear someone deriding the hipsters of Cape Town’s Neighbourgoods Market. The irony that the person doing the sneering is dressed in a small tutu and a pair of original 70s RayBans, and is sipping a macchiato made of of beans that have passed through the bowels of a Vodacom meerkat, appears entirely to pass everyone by.

Capetonian hipsters can often be found congregated in a small clump, huddling into the southeaster and making snide remarks about how Market on Main is a Johnny-come-lately, and how Joburg hipsters are pathetic losers who think it’s cool to listen to African jazz on audio cassettes. The sad truth is, hipsters are just the same as people in Supersport golf shirts who support Liverpool soccer club. And an even sadder truth is, Joburg hipsters and Cape Town hipsters are the same thing. The only reason they turn on each other is because nobody else gives a damn.

Image and text courtesty Obrigado magazine. Pick up a copy at Vida e Caffes, or go to Obrigado.co.za

Suddenly, at exactly 12 midnight geek time last night, all ads switched over to this:

Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. I guess it’s inflation linked. Or maybe, miraculously, the idiots who design these ads finally realised that nobody gets a prize for being the visitor before the millionth visitor.