From The Thornveld April 2023 – Welcome
  • Cleaner’s Boy: A Resistance Road to a Liberated Life

    Patric Tariq Mellet, Cleaner’s Boy: A Resistance Road to a Liberated Life (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) BORN in 1956, Patric Mellet grew up in the ethnic melting pots of District Six and Salt River, Cape […]

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  • Russian roulette

    READING Peter Fabricius’s ‘Russian roulette’ (DM 168, 8 April 2023) one is struck by the parallels between South Africa’s growing closeness to Russia and Brexit. Both are based on mythology about the past and a […]

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  • Of potholes and privatisation

    THE photo that accompanies this piece indicates that whatever their level of current despair, South Africans have yet to lose their sense of humour, often the only protection against absurdity. A number of potholes in […]

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  • The Guerrilla and the Journalist

    Fred Bridgland, The Guerrilla and the Journalist: Exploring the Murderous Legacy of Jonas Savimbi (Johannesburg: Delta, 2022) THE Portuguese empire in Africa ended chaotically in the mid-1970s making civil war almost inevitable. This was particularly […]

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