Umuzi

Vir die eerste keer in sy 11-jarige bestaan het die Universiteit van Stellenbosch se Woordfees, in samewerking met die ATKV, woord- en visuele kunstenaars vereer deur die toekenning van WOORDtroFEES.

Die trofees, wat spesiaal vir die geleentheid geskep is deur die beeldhouer, Sanna Swart, is op Sondag 7 Maart by ‘n bekroningsgeleentheid oorhandig deur Prof Dorothea van Zyl en Japie Gouws, voorsitter van die ATKV.

In die kategorie Debuutteks het Karin Brynard en Bettina Wyngaard die louere gedeel – Brynard vir die onderhoud oor haar roman Plaasmoord en Wyngaard wat gepraat het oor haar roman Troos vir die gebrokenes.

Bettina sê die toekenning en prysgeld van R1500.00 was ‘n groot verrassing, “Uiteraard, dat ek ‘n prys ontvang het, is vir my ‘n besondere eer, en ek wil ook net my gelukwensinge aan Karin uitspreek.”

Die beoordelaars was beïndruk met die diepgang van die gesprekke waaraan die skrywers oor hul romans op die Woordfees deelgeneem het. Deur die bekroning van uitnemendheid, poog die ATKV om deur middel van die WOORDtroFEES, skeppende werk en kreatiwiteit in die kunste te ondersteun en te bevorder.

Hierdie toekennings sal verteenwoordigend wees van die verskillende fasette van die US Woordfees se feesprogram.

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• Troos vir die gebrokenes deur Bettina Wyngaard
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  EAN: 9781415200834
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The launch of Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout and Linda Vicquery at the city’s newest independent book shop, the Bay Bookshop in the Cape Quarter, was a sumptuous affair. Proprietor Pierre Engel said the book was a credit to South African cookery. He welcomed the country’s most famous white woman, helping her up to the podium. There she celebrated the virtual cutting of the shop’s virtual ribbon – the real one having inconveniently been forgotten in the excitement of the new event.

She said, “I am very happy to cut the ribbon. It doesn’t have to be a real ribbon. After all, when we say, ‘Viva democracy!’ it doesn’t have to be a real democracy.”

Tannie Evita looked stunning in navy and white polka dots and pearls. She said she was amazed to be there at all, considering that she’d just dropped in to the kitchen at Parliament where she was overseeing the preparations for tomorrow’s lunch. “Lots of people are fighting each other in Parliament; the ANC Youth League is fighting the ANC who’s fighting COSATU who’s fighting the Communists and whatnot! They wanted the country, I say let them sort it out! Alle wêreld, we are so relieved not to be involved any more.”

As soon as she was done in the kitchen somebody asked her to look in on the new Zuma children, “Two little babies, they’re called Z-43 and Z-49, and of course ek is nou vol sjokolade. I am full of little fingerprints of little Zumettes. Any mothers or grandmothers here in the audience will know that we do like to suffer under the fingerprints of our beloved grandchildren, and then one of them grabbed my hair and started to pull and I said, ‘My kind, my kind, oppas, dis nie Zoeloe hare nie.’”

Then there was the traffic to overcome. “As you know we’re getting ready for the World Cup and if 16 cars can’t pass in an hour, how are 60 000 people going to pass in a minute?”

Breathless but glamorous she kept the audience enraptured with her behind-the-scenes gossip. The book came from a box full of recipes torn out of Huisgenoot and De Kat, “even though one can never understand what’s written there”. It was prompted and compiled by the expert chef and illustrator from Provence, France, Linda Vicquery as Mrs Bezuidenhout felt she was too busy running the country.

“Buy the cookery book but don’t think I’m standing behind you,” she advised. “When you go into that recipe you’re going to be cooking for your own mouth! Not mine. You must say, ‘Nee wat, Tannie Evita, there’s too much butter.’ This is a good thing to say. It won’t taste as good, but your heart will keep beating without the butter.”

Evita pointed out the joys of Halaal and Kosher cooking were included in the book – although not on the same page. “When your Halaal guests come You must never panic. You must just find out. You have to wash your hands. You mustn’t touch certain things. The dog and the cat can’t be in the room. You must find out.”

She urged the chefs in the audience to experiment. “There’s no such thing as a flop. A flop becomes a new recipe. Take malva pudding for example. That’s not a flop. Who’d ever have thought of something so effective to shut up Winnie Mandela? Every time she talks we give it to her and her teeth stick fast.”

What a wild time! Congratulations to the Bay Bookshop on the official opening of their Cape Quarter doors.

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Book details

• Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200902
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• Evita se Kossie Sikelela deur Evita Bezuidenhout, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200919
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Sihle Khumalo delighted his audience with his dry sense of humour at the launch of his second travelogue, Heart of Africa, at the Melrose Arch Exclusive Books last week. The event doubled as The Citizen newspaper’s first Citivibe book club do of the year, and CitiVibe editor Bruce Dennill was on hand to welcome guests and introduce the author.

Khumalo took centre stage as he quietly shared the joys of travelling in Africa – particularly in Uganda and Rwanda. Saying he grew up wanting to “have each leg in a different hemisphere”, he was thrilled to find an actual white line demarcating the equator in Uganda where he could do exactly that. Khumalo shared the story of trying to travel by ferry from Mpulungu in Zambia to Kigoma in Tanzania. The ferry’s day of departure kept changing, partly courtesy of it being unexpectedly hired by the UN to move refugees. First it was leaving on a Friday, maybe Saturday, and then Monday – possibly. Noting that the best way to travel in Africa is without planning or expectation, he laughingly told how he diligently went to the authorities to report that his visa would run out while he waited for the elusive ferry. The immigration officials were unruffled about it and told him to return to them once it had expired. Khumalo took it all in stride and all was resolved on the Monday. The ferry arrived on Tuesday.

Khumalo also related the dubious joys of accommodation in Africa – including a room with low walls allowing for some sharing of his neighbours’ more intimate moments. Also, a stay above a night club where Lucky Dube’s Remember Me was played again and again – welcome at first but perhaps a little too much at two in the morning.

One of the highlights of this trip around Central Africa was a night in a pub perched 30 metres above the river Nile with a thousand stars in the sky above him. He remembered thinking, “Wow! No amount of money can buy this!”. Another highlight was his third bungee jump in Jinja, Uganda (also above the Nile) with bare feet feeling “the breeze through my toes”.

One of the saddest moments of his trip was visiting the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda. He realised that the Rwandan genocide could have been prevented and that the response could have been “far more swift”. However, he found the country itself beautiful and definitely recommends that other travellers put Rwanda on their itinerary. He said, “It truly is the land of a thousand hills”.

Guests were treated to a Q&A session: asking about his travel budget ($60 a day should do it); paying bribes in Africa (most of the time he didn’t have to pay officials); the idea of a “United States of Africa” (maybe in the long term but definitely not now); women in Africa (beautiful!); and whether he felt conspicuous while travelling (“No, after all I am a brother!”).

Saying his journey through the heart of Africa was not about getting to destinations but about exploring, he told how a security guard he met said that he was not in South Africa, that he was in the “real Africa” now.

Enthusiastic fans can probably look forward to a third book in Khumalo’s Africa series, as the author plans to travel to the continent’s northwest sometime in the near future – time, and his wife, permitting of course!

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• Heart of Africa by Sihle Khumalo
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  EAN: 9781415200810
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The poems in Bodyhood open widely to the inside while looking outwards at the connecting points of body and being – in love, in feeling, in the entanglements of desire, and in the many felt senses of human cross-connection. At once reflective, wistful, wry and ironic, they chart the individual’s imprint on a world accessible only through the bonds and affiliations of an embodied life.

About the author

Leon de Kock grew up in Mayfair, Johannesburg. He is head of the School of Literature and Language Studies at Wits and holds degrees from the Universities of Johannesburg, Leeds and South Africa. He is a writer, translator and academic, and has worked as reporter, sub-editor and in the private sector.

He has received the Pringle Prize for Poetry (1985), the FNB Vita/English Academy Prize for Poetry Translation (2000) and the SA Translators’ Award for Outstanding Translation (2000) for his translation of Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf.

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• Bodyhood by Leon de Kock
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  EAN: 9781415200995
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Wessel Ebersohn se aanhangers moes veertien jaar wag vir sy nuutste boek The October Killings om sy verskyning te maak. Mariana Malan het bietjie gaan uitvind hoekom en ook met Ebersohn gesels oor die weg vorentoe.

Veertien jaar was geheel en al te lank om te wag vir Wessel Ebersohn se jongste boek. Gelukkig het sy uitgewer ’n ooreenkoms wat twee boeke insluit met hom gesluit en is hy ook klaar met ’n derde. The October Killings het einde verlede jaar verskyn ná Ebersohn se stilte van meer as ’n dekade. Voorheen het hy sewe boeke geskryf wat in 11 tale vertaal is. As joernalis het hy ook verskeie ­artikels vir plaaslike en inter nasionale publikasies gelewer.“Dit was nooit my bedoeling om so lank te wag nie, maar daar was twee redes daarvoor. My boeke het altyd in Suid-Afrika afgespeel met plaaslike gebeure daarby ingewerk. Twee van my boeke is ­verban. Ek het nie ’n aktivis probeer wees nie. Ek het eerder sake in my boeke verduidelik.

• Lees die volledige artikel

Boekbesonderhede

• The October Killings deur Wessel Ebersohn
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  EAN: 9781415200742
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James Kilgore, author of We are All Zimbabweans Now, recently presented a paper at the University of Illinois’ Centre for African Studies, at which he is a research scholar. Kilgore discussed the background to We are All Zimbabweans Now, including his former hopes for racial reconciliation under Mugabe:

Good afternoon. I’d like to thank the Center for African Studies for inviting me here this afternoon and particularly Merle Bowen for organising this session. This is the first time that I’ve spoken publicly to a group about my book and I’m quite excited about it. I’ll try to keep my excitement in check. I had in mind to do three things. First, I’d like to talk a little bit about the background of the writing of the book. It’s somewhat unusual as I wrote it during my period of incarceration from 2002 to 2009. Second, I assume most people haven’t read the book, so I thought I would give a brief plot summary of the novel. Third, I wanted to discuss what the novel means, what it is I actually wanted to say in this story which I’ve titled ’We Are All Zimbabweans Now’.

There are three forces that drove me to write this book. The first one was a simple factor of the lack of activity options when you’re incarcerated. Since I’m not a big fan of the major social activities in prison – dominoes, weightlifting, card games, and I’m a little bit too old for the daily grind on the basketball court – I needed to find an activity that would keep my mind alive and fill a lot of time. Writing was a good choice.

• Complete article at Pambazuka news

Book details

• We are All Zimbabweans Now by James Kilgore
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  EAN: 9781415200711
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Evita Bezuidenhout is deesdae ‘n besige dame met die bekendstelling van haar nuwe boek Evita se Kossie Sikelela. Die boek is propvol smulresepte en skreeusnaakse stories. Kerneels Breytenbach het names Rapport sy stoute skoene aangetrek en met die “grande dame” gaan gesels oor die boek, resepte en van Evita se vrinne en ervaringe.

Moenie verder soek vir ’n portret van ons tyd – en aptyt – nie.

Evita Bezuidenhout staan trots, guitig en stralend op haar omslag. En dis reg só. Sy’t rede. Met een slag wend sy haar volle glorie aan om ’n uitlokkende, leesbare resepteboek te skep.

Van die vindingryke omslag (wat dadelik van die boek ’n versamelstuk maak) tot by die register agterin is Kossie Sikelelaanders. Daar’s baie wat jou laat lag, en nog meer wat jou kombuis toe stuur. Boonop met ’n woord vooraf deur Sophia Loren, die enigste vrou wat ta’ Evita in die skadu stel aangaande volrondheid!

• Lees die volledige artikel in Rapport

Boekbesonderhede

• Evita se Kossie Sikelela deur Evita Bezuidenhout, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200919
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• Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout, illustrated by Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200902
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Umuzi and The Book Lounge invite you to an evening with Mike Nicol – the launch of the second book in his Revenge Trilogy, Killer Country.

Killer Country cracks open a world of conspiracies and paranoia, corruption and greed as the new elites get their hands on the spoils.

Don’t miss your chance to meet this “killer” raconteur – or the opportunity to walk away from the do with a free copy of either Killer Country or the first book in the series, Payback: The Book Lounge will be giving out a copy of each on the night. See you there!

Event Details

• Date: Friday, 19 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge
  71 Roeland St
  Cape Town | Map
• RSVP: The Book Lounge, booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425

Book Details

• Killer Country by Mike Nicol
  EAN: 9781415201169
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Die gewildste toneel in Bettina Wyngaard se boek, Troos vir die bebrokenes, is waar die karakter Antie Mina ‘n vroueslaner met ‘n stuk hout moker.

Wyngaard het gister in gesprek met Desmond Painter by die Woordfees gesê sy probeer glad nie om deur hierdie toneel geweld goed te praat nie. Die boek spreek juis die probleem van gesinsgeweld aan. Sy wil egter met die toneel sê dat ‘n mens nie net moet toekyk hoe verkeerde dinge gebeur nie. “Jy moet self intree en ‘n verskil maak,” het sy gesê.

Dít is wat sy as skrywer probeer doen. In haar vorige beroep as prokureur kon sy net een persoon op ‘n slag help. “Skryf is ‘n meer subtiele manier om mense te verander, maar miskien meer ingrypend. Jy laat mense anders dink en anders reageer op situasies.”

As prokureur het Wyngaard dikwels met gesinsgeweld te doen gekry en op haar tuisdorp, Grabouw, het sy die lot van die fabriekswerkers beleef. Dit het haar gedryf om die boek te skryf.

Tog het sy nie oorspronklik ‘n politieke agenda gehad nie. Sy het bloot moeg geraak vir boeke wat nie die realiteite van mense se lewens weerspieël nie.

Wyngaard skryf al van kleins af, maar om regsdokumente te skryf is so anders dat sy heeltemal opgehou het om kreatief te skryf. “Op ‘n dag het ek net besluit: Nou moet ek ‘n plan maak.”

Al skryf Wyngaard baie realisties oor geweld, wou sy nie ‘n neerdrukkende boek skryf nie. “Ons kan so maklik vasgevang raak in die probleme van Suid-Afrika,” het sy gesê. “Maar ons kan dit oorkom.”

Die boek bied aan die einde hoop en troos, maar nie maklike oplossings nie. Die karakters moet werk aan hul toekoms. “Hoe sal ‘n mens lig waardeer as jy nie donker ervaar het nie?”

Wyngaard werk tans aan haar tweede boek, wat verkragting van lesbiërs, met die doel om hulle “reg te ruk”, sal aanspreek

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Boekbesonderhede

• Troos vir die gebrokenes deur Bettina Wyngaard
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200834
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Umuzi and The Citizen’s Citivibe book club are pleased to invite you to the launch of Sihle Khumalo’s latest romp through our continent, Heart of Africa.

In Heart of Africa, the author who gave us Dark Continent my Black Arse once again travels into Africa by public transport, and this time to its continental core: the Great Lakes region. Ever the wandering stooge, he recounts with his signature wit and charm the sometimes impossible travails of getting from one point to another – even if the two are not remote from each other at all! A much matured storyteller emerges in these pages.

We hope to see you there!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 11 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Exclusive Books, Melrose Arch, Shop No HL19
  Melrose Arch Piazza
  Melrose Arch Blvd
  Johannesburg | Map
• RSVP: melrosearch@exclusivebooks.co.za, 011 684 1260

Book Details

• Heart of Africa by Sihle Khumalo
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9781415200810
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