Category: Perspective

Of penises, politics and Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe

We are just past the first weekend of 2014 and here in Zimbabwe, newspaper stands are already brimming with tabloid-style headlines of scandalous news – of the penile sort – to do with former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and miracle-working Pentecostal prophet, Emmanuel Makandiwa.

Yesterday, Zimbabwe’s news media revealed that Makandiwa, founder of the increasingly popular United Family International Church (UFIC), had performed a penis-enhancing miracle on a man from Namibia at a New Year’s Day service in Harare. The man is reported to have travelled to Zimbabwe in search of help for his penis which he is quoted as saying was the size of a two-year-old’s. He added that the problem was affecting his love life, and therefore his prospects of finding a wife.

“First month grow, second month grow, third month grow, fourth month grow, fifth month ummm stop,” Makandiwa is said to have commanded the man’s infantile penis which, I must assume, is still expanding exponentially as you read this.

On Saturday, the day before this revelation, the press was again teeming with phallic-related news; in this instance, an exposé of trouble in the un-paradise that is Tsvangirai’s love life. Apparently he and his current wife, Elizabeth Macheka, are living separately due to a range of unresolved issues, including those of the “sensitive personal” variety. The public jury is out and judgments ranging from erectile dysfunctional disorder to hexes over the former PM’s “male member” are moving around freely. Tsvangirai has, however, refuted any such claims, stating that he is fit on all counts.

Former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his wife Elizabeth Macheka (Pic: AFP)

Ironically, reports suggest Macheka packed up and left the marriage home during a visit Tsvangirai made to seek the counsel of Nigerian megastar prophet TB Joshua, who in 2012 gained cred for his prediction of the death of Malawian leader Bingu wa Mutharika. Well, let’s say he predicted the death of an African leader who was old and unwell, to the silent hopes of many.

And so we, the general Zimbabwean populace, find ourselves having spirited Twitter, Facebook and offline debates, enthralled by speculation about two men’s penises. Actually, make that three men as people are now also seemingly curious about how endowed Makandiwa must be if he can work such miracles on others.

A weekend victory for phallicism, I say. And, I fear, a portent of what is to come in 2014 for Zimbabwe.

As prospects for political change continue to decline, it is the rise of Pentecostalism and tales of the supernatural that seem to have filled the void in the collective imagination of most Zimbabweans. In fact, the myriad problems ordinary Zimbabweans face – such as crippling poverty and lack of access to social amenities – seem to correlate with the growth and popularity of charismatic Christian churches offering instant relief from anything from bankruptcy and HIV to unhealthy addictions… if you only just believe.

Early last year former Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono convened a press conference with Makandiwa and his fellow popular prophet, Uebert Angel, to publicly announce that the two men had not flouted any financial regulations by delivering ‘miracle money’ said to have inexplicably appeared in congregants’ personal bank accounts. And with that controversial move, the already blurred line between the church and the state in Zimbabwe grew murkier.

While a penis-enlarging miracle might seem like child’s play (that pun was really not intended!) for a man of such influence, a man who has even promised to perform the Christ-like feat of walking on water, it does epitomise the vulnerability of so many Zimbabweans who remain desperate for a change in their personal fortunes. Desperate for hope; for at least one pleasure, one relief.

And the commonality of the desperation is compounded by Tsvangirai’s pursuit of the same from TB Joshua.

Just think about Tsvangirai’s case a bit more deeply, if you will. Here is a man, aged 61, married as many times as he has lost in his bid to become Zimbabwe’s elected president (three), who makes a trek to a death-predicting spiritual leader in pursuit of answers and solutions to the problems beleaguering his personal and political aspirations. In a continuation of the comedy of errors that is his love life, he returns home to find his wife gone and, a few weeks later, speculations about his impotence all over the media.

What hope should the ordinary Zimbabwean hold onto, therefore?

Tsvangirai’s manhood may have come under literal scrutiny this weekend, but the truth is that it has been inspected – in a figurative sense – since July’s presidential election and his tepid response to a resounding loss, albeit a loss that seems to have been compounded by many factors out of his control. More and more, Zimbabweans are beginning to feel that he is not the man to deliver them to the ‘promised land’, and that he himself needs to start chanting his MDC-T party’s slogan of chinja maitiro (change your ways) and step away from its leadership.

I will end my analysis with a final irony. It is quite interesting to me that even though much of Zimbabwe’s mainstream press is alight with all these stories about phalluses, few – if any – can bring themselves from the comfort of their euphemisms to actually call the “male member” what it is. A penis.

And this is a perfect metaphor of the times. A fascination with the scandalous and supernatural and yet an inability, a systematised reserve or fear, of calling things as they are. A diversion of the “male member” at the expense of critical, constructive and progressive debate about the male members of society who still very much control the structures that govern our daily lives from the radical prophets to the un-radical politicians.

It should strike us all as unusual that a phallocentric culture cannot bring itself to name the symbols upon which its power is premised.

Indeed, this is the present tragedy of Zimbabwe.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter.

11 years ago

Italy: African immigrants use films and books to fight racism

Seven years ago, Dagmawi Yimer was “between life and death” when Italian navy officers rescued him and 30 others from a skiff in heavy seas between Libya and the island of Lampedusa.

Today, Yimer directs documentary films about immigrants like himself from the home he shares with his Italian partner and their two-year-old daughter in the northern city of Verona.

He is part of the fast-growing immigrant population that is changing the face of Italy, just as it has transformed the populations of more northern European countries such as Britain, France or Germany.

He is also one of many foreigners who are trying – through cultural initiatives such as films and books – to change the racist views of many Italians of the immigrants in their midst.

Contrary to popular perceptions, immigrants are making their mark across the Italian economy, politics and society. African-born author Kossi Komla-Ebri, a 59-year-old medical doctor, has published six books, all in Italian.

“Many immigrants think our emancipation is only economic and political, but we are convinced it’s cultural and that we can have a more profound influence through culture,” he said.

It isn’t easy. Italy’s immigration wave is swelling just as the country is struggling to emerge from its deepest economic downturn in the post-war era.

Nearly eight percent of the population here is foreign born, and in 50 years the number will triple to 23%, according to a projection by Catholic charity Caritas.

To help pay the pensions of an ageing population and to ensure long-term growth, Italy needs to integrate its immigrant population into the workforce, economists say.

Anti-immigrant sentiment
But high unemployment, especially among non-student young people, has fuelled anti-immigrant sentiment among the Italian mostly-white population.

Italy’s one-million strong Afro-Italian community, a fifth all legal immigrants, got a high-profile representative last April when African-born Cecile Kyenge became the country’s first black minister.

It did not take long before she was likened to an orangutan by a well-known politician and had bananas thrown at her at a public meeting.

Italy’s Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge. (Pic: AFP)

Politics
Many white Italians view the Afro-Italian community and other immigrants as cheap labour or petty criminals – partly because many work as domestic help and farm labourers or sell counterfeit goods in the streets of big cities.

Moreover, children born to immigrants do not automatically receive citizenship even if they are born on Italian soil, attend Italian schools and spend their whole lives in Italy. They must wait until they turn 18 to apply.

Though Italy was a colonial power in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries and migrants have come to Italy for decades, the country has mainly served as a transit route for the rest of Europe and so remains an overwhelmingly white country.

Over the past two decades, another factor has thwarted attempts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive immigration policy: the anti-immigration Northern League, once a key ally of Silvio Berlusconi’s former coalition governments.

Backed up by TV images of overcrowded boats being rescued off Italian shores, Northern League politicians portray migrants as invaders coming to steal jobs – rhetoric that neglects Italy’s history as a country of immigrants to North and South America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was high-ranking Northern League member Roberto Calderoli who likened to Kyenge to an orangutan last year.

Members of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova, or New Force, party were suspected by police of throwing bananas at her during a public round table on immigration. It denied responsibility.

The party also left mannequins covered in fake blood outside a Rome administrative office, urging her to resign because “immigration is the genocide of peoples”.

Kyenge seems to have taken it all in her stride, never losing her calm in public and sticking with her goal of making it easier for immigrants’ children to gain citizenship.

Only last month did the 49-year-old she reveal that she too had been a “badante”, or house servant, for six years to pay her way through university, saying it had been one of the most difficult times in her life.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a tribal chief with 38 children and four wives, she ended up an eye surgeon until she became a lawmaker and minister earlier this year.

“I’m not coloured, I’m black,” she told Reuters in an interview in her office in central Rome, rejecting the phrase “di colore” or “coloured”, which many think is the politically correct Italian term for blacks.

“It’s the proper term because it forces everyone to face the reality of a multi-ethnic Italy.”

‘Boiled elephant knees’
Italy’s immigration policies are ill-equipped to deal with the thousands of immigrants who show up – with scant identification and on rickety boats – on its southern shores.

Rules dating to 2009 and Berlusconi’s then conservative government make entering without proper documentation a crime, requiring officials to report clandestine migrants.

As a result, those who survive often treacherous journeys – at least 366 Ethiopian migrants drowned while crossing to Italy in October – often linger for months in makeshift immigration centres and then disappear withinItaly or eleswhere in Europe.

During the first 11 months of this year, 40,244 illegal migrants reached Italy by boat, almost four times as many as a year earlier, according to Save the Children.

The number living in Italy is not known with any precision, but the OECD has estimated that, alongside the 5-million legal immigrants, there could be as many as 750 000 illegal ones.

One of the community’s oldest cultural initiatives is the “African October” festival inaugurated 11 years ago in the northern city of Parma and now celebrated in Rome and Milan, showcasing African artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers.

“The meeting between Africa and Italy is very important,” says festival founder Cleophas Adrien Dioma, who was born in Burkina Faso. “Culture is born out of such encounters.”

Komla-Ebri, who came to Italy in 1974, is a doctor in a hospital north of Milan and writes in his free time. This year his book Imbarazzismi – an Italian neologism merging the words “embarrassed” and “racism” – was printed by Edizioni SUI, a publisher owned by an Eritrean-born Italian.

In the book, Komla-Ebri writes about when his white Italian wife took a walk in the park and a stranger complimented her for adopting two “African orphans”, or the time her friends ask her what he eats, “no doubt with the chilling thought of a menu of smoked snake or boiled elephant knees”.

“My irony is a defence mechanism,” he said.

The anecdotes capture the often naive quality of racism in Italy, infamously exemplified by Berlusconi’s 2008 remark – made in jest, he said – that the newly elected Barack Obama, was “young, handsome and suntanned”.

Yimer (36) harvested grapes in the south and later handed out fliers to university students in Rome until he took a video production class offered to immigrants by a non-profit group.

His fifth documentary film – released this month – is about three Senagalese men recovering from racist attacks.

Entitled Va Pensiero, after the chorus of an opera by Giuseppe Verdi about an immigrant’s nostalgia for home, the film follows the men as they try to come to terms with the hate and violence they endured.

The first man was stabbed and left for dead by a skinhead at a bus stop in Milan. Passersby ignored him for more than an hour. The other two were randomly shot by a radical right-wing thug who hunted down and murdered two other Senagalese men on the streets of Florence in 2011, and then committed suicide.

At an early screening of the film for possible distributors, the reaction was that of having been “punched in the gut”, according to one representative of the state-owned TV network, who suggested softening the tone.

Yimer and his Italian partners on the film, who have founded an association to collect the testimony of immigrants called the “Archive of Migrant Memories”, stood their ground.

“I’ve experienced a lot of prejudice,” he said, “and I see a worrying trend in Italy where racism is becoming more ideological.”

Steve Scherer for Reuters

11 years ago

In 2014, it’s unacceptable for girls in Malawi to be unable to go to school

Every Wednesday, Shakira Yakiti gets together with a group of at-risk girls at the Nampingunja School in the rural Mangochi district of Malawi. Their Girls Club organises home visits to girls who have dropped out of school to get married, works with teenage mothers to encourage them to return to school, interfaces with school headmasters to make sure the returning students are welcomed, and provides social support for girls facing serious challenges in a country where poverty is endemic, secondary school attendance for girls is significantly lower than for boys, and girls routinely get married and have children as teenagers.

Shakira said: “Whenever those girls come back, we sit down as a club to discuss what problems they’re facing and what problems caused them to drop out of school. Sometimes we even raise money to help them out if the problem is poverty, so they can buy soap and the like. We are always proud when we see a girl coming back to school.”

Shakira is a force of nature, slim and poised and speaking with the easy eloquence of a seasoned politician. When I met her, she was talking to a team of aid workers and visiting journalists jamming microphones in her face and jotting down her every word. She handled our questions fluidly and coherently, providing incisive answers and encouraging the members of the Girls Club to share their stories. As we left, we all agreed that her grassroots organising skills and her persuasiveness indicate a fine future in politics.

Did I mention she’s 13?

I met girls like Shakira across Malawi: bright, resilient, and working hard in their communities to make life better for women and girls. I also met girls who are hanging on by a thread, desperate to go to school but facing enormous barriers. There was Ethel, whose parents were too poor to buy soap for her to wash her clothes, let alone pay for her school uniform (the Girls Club got her soap and encouraged her to come back to school; Ethel is now enrolled).

There was Chrissa, who got pregnant as a teenager and had twins. The man who impregnated her is 21 and left her and the children for a more lucrative job in South Africa. She came back to school, despite being ostracised by some of her peers. “I don’t mind if they’ll be laughing at me”, she said. “I’m going to continue with learning.”

There was Christie, whose mother abandoned the family, leaving Christie to raise her six siblings alone and in extreme poverty. Her only way out was marriage at 14 and a child the same year. She dropped out of school after eighth grade, and wants to go back, but can’t quite find a way.

Challenges
They face barriers that are cultural as well as practical. When family income is limited, paying for a male child’s schooling can seem like a better investment than paying for a girl’s. Cultural norms promote early marriage, and a lack of access to comprehensive sexual health education and contraception means pregnancy is common among young women – nearly two-thirds of women in Malawi have given birth by their 20th birthday. Adolescent pregnancy poses serious risks to the mother and the child: 65% of fistula patients developed the condition as adolescents, and infant deaths in the first month of life are 50-100% higher when the mother is under 20 than if she’s older. Girls who get pregnant are more likely to get married, and once a girl is married she quits school.

Secondary school girls in Malawi. (Pic: AFP)

Girls also face the practical challenges of getting to school in a country with a largely rural population. At another school in the Mangochi district, headmistress Molombo Basuro said some students walk as far as 16 km each way to a schoolhouse where there are no chairs, not enough exercise books, no electricity, a limited water supply and as many as 65 students to a class. With no boarding facilities, 32 girls who live far away currently sleep in one of the classrooms.

Seemingly simple problems become substantial barriers for girls’ education. Lack of access to soap and sanitary pads means girls miss school when they’re menstruating. No chairs make it harder to sit comfortably and focus on the lesson instead of modesty when your school uniform is a dress.

But the girls keep showing up, in large part thanks to innovative efforts led by community members and the girls themselves, funded mostly by international aid organisations. Some of the girls at Headmistress Basuro’s school have bikes, purchased by a joint United Nations program carried out by Unicef. The bikes mean the girls not only get to school faster, but safer – walking for kilometres along rural roads puts them at risk for harassment and sexual assault. Other Unicef funds go to things like soap, sanitary pads, school fees, supplies and exercise books.

Thanks to endemic corruption, though, these girls who are doing everything in their power to stay in school may see the few resources they have stretched even further, or taken away all together.

Cash Gate
The problem is a scandal called Cash Gate, where Malawian officials are accused of plundering millions of dollars in aid money from a country where 40% of the budget comes from donor funds. In response, many big Western donors are withholding aid until the Malawian government can prove that donor funds will be used appropriately. It’s a harsh decision, and not necessarily unfair – why funnel millions into a system that has proven itself to be corrupt?

And yet it’s girls like Shakira, Chrissa and Christie who will lose out.

There’s no easy solution. The Malawian government has a series of options, including allowing international auditors to evaluate the scope and depth of the corruption. Donors, though, have to make tough decisions: keep giving aid and essentially fund corrupt officials with little consequence, or pull aid with the knowledge that the ones who suffer most are the many Malawians who need basics like health care and education.

Nearly three-quarters of Malawians are extremely poor, living on less than $1.25 (US) per day. Over and over, the girls and women I spoke with emphasised that the most effective programs were the most local – the ones that were developed with leadership from girls, community members, health care providers and grassroots organisers, not outsiders parachuting in. But they need money to be implemented effectively.

The Malawian government needs to step up, and allow international auditors full access for an investigation. But donors shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And girls like Shakira, polished and intelligent as they may be, are still children – babies deserving support and protection.

Jill Filipovic for the Guardian

12 years ago

An African president’s Christmas wish list

You see, Africans are an odd bunch. Barack Obama is winning elections using Facebook and next thing every African politician wants to win elections by a landslide using Facebook. My friend and brother Kim Jung-un is putting a rebellious Uncle in his place and next thing AU Summits are full of nervous jokes about the endangered Uncle species. The Egyptians are gathering in Tahrir Square to pull Mubarak down and next thing elements in Nigeria are obsessed with turning every open patch of ground into a revolutionary square. South Sudan manages to earn its independence, next thing every hamlet in Tanzania is raucously debating colour choices for an independence flag.

Copycats – that’s the problem with Africa. We haven’t got minds of our own. We are always copying everything we see, good or bad. Treasonable uprisings, immoral music videos, Western sexual practices – nothing is above being copied by the youth of this continent.

In my country you now have a group who think themselves an African Tea Party. They think that by repeatedly falsely labeling me a Communist they can turn me into one.

Every time I speak of my commitment towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for my country, these disgruntled elements start to snicker. And then cartoons show up on the internet, thinly disguised caricatures of me proclaiming that what I actually meant by MDGs was Murders, Drugs and Guns.

I let it go, because I am not a tyrant; I am a democratically elected President.

But it really does get to me. Because that is how people start getting ideas to throw a man out of power – it starts with anonymous comments on the blogs and snide cartoons on Facebook. Ask Brother Zuma to tell you how his troubles started, with the shower-head cartoons. Now see how much hate the man has to deal with because of minor renovations to his crumbling homestead.

If I go ahead and invoke state powers and order prosecution on the grounds of libel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International jump on the case, desperate to justify their generous funding. They call me names. But I let it go, because I am not a tyrant; I am a democratically elected President – and by a landslide too.

My Nigerian brother, the democratically elected Goodluck Jonathan, once cried out that he is the most abused President in the world. Do you know what it must have taken for him to say that out loud? Do you know how painful it is to watch disgruntled elements distort your every word, make fun of you at every turn?

Look at Brother Uhuru in Kenya, also democratically elected, like me, who has to suffer the indignities of being treated like a common war criminal.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan (L) and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. (Pic: AFP)

If we continue this way, very soon no one is going to want to be an African Head of State. We will have no leadership, no government. And you know what that means. Chaos. Disaster. We will slip back into the dark ages.

I don’t want that to happen. Neither do you.

Therefore my wish is for Africa’s new generation of freedom fighters and activists to realise that the times have changed, and that the weapons that were perfected in the fight against yesterday’s tyrants cannot and must not be deployed against today’s generation of democratic statesmen. I know Brothers Goodluck and Uhuru, we are not Brothers Abacha or Mobutu, and we do not deserve to be treated like those men.

No we don’t. We are men who have an eye on the verdict of history. It has just dawned on me: now that there’s a Madiba-shaped hole in the heart of Africa, I would really like nothing more than to be the man of destiny to fill that space.

I have a lot more in common with Madiba than you’re willing to acknowledge. You look at me and think I’ve been President for X years – failing to understand one simple truth; that I’ve actually been a Prisoner all that time.

What you call the Presidential Palace, I call a Maximum Security Prison – without the hard labour of course, and with a few conjugal visits thrown in (when Her Excellency is not trying to avoid me).

I spend my days and nights holed up in this place, trapped by the endless “security reports” that say the streets are full of mobs of tweeters, snipers and revolutionaries; all rooting for my downfall, thirsting for my blood.

To evade them, I am forced to be a Prisoner.

I need to get out of this prison. Because Africa deserves another Nelson Mandela.

My long walk to freedom has now started. Someday soon, dear friends and comrades, brothers and sisters, I shall be free from these chains of duty and service to a most ungrateful country.

It is my fervent – and final – wish, that, at that time when I am cast out of this stuffy and joyless Prison into the exceedingly fresh air of freedom, my friend and Brother Mo Ibrahim will not have given up on his laudable idea of handsomely rewarding those rare African statesmen who do what needs to be done when the ovation is at its loudest.

Tolu Ogunlesi is a Nigerian journalist and newspaper columnist. He has written for the Financial Times, CNN, the London Independent, Al Jazeera and The Africa Report, amongst others. Between 2009 and 2011 he was features editor at NEXT, a Lagos-based daily newspaper. Follow him on Twitter.

12 years ago

Step up in honour of Madiba, South Africa

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realised. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

For far too long, as a nation we’ve watched our father, Nelson Mandela, cling to life even when there was so little life left to cling to. I remember being shocked by how disoriented and shrunken he looked during the 2010 World Cup. But he’s had a full, rich life, I reasoned. His service to our nation, remarkable.

Yet, he clung to life for another three years because, as a nation, we would not let him go. We needed him still because he had become, over these last 20 years, an embodiment of the force that keeps us moving forward, however haltingly. He had come to represent our Hope.

Without it we feared we would not withstand the protracted, agonising birth of a vibrant democracy. He was a symbol of the triumph of the will of the people over oppression and indignity. A symbol of courage. A symbol of the power of forgiveness. A symbol of the resilience of the human spirit and a reminder that the desire to succeed should always be matched by a determination to stand up again each time life brings you to your knees. However deeply divided we may be as a nation, on one matter we remained united. The day this rich African earth, with its rolling hills and much too wide sky welcomed Nelson Mandela to its breast, was the day we as a nation were blessed.

His passing will see many voices raised in lament, and as many raised in celebration of his life. It will see a near beatification of the man. The adoring voices will finally dull enough for us to hear the murmurs of dissent. The voices that decry. That avow his role in our continued suffering. That is the point that you and I, who value his contribution and understand just how much he has made possible for each of us, need to remember: that while Nelson Mandela was at the helm, he had with him an able crew. South Africa’s slaying of the Monster of Apartheid was not a one-man show. His achievement could never have been possible without the contribution of millions of South Africans.

As a nation, WE made it happen.

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”

His death comes at a crucial time in our history. We’re an angry nation. Disillusioned. Divided. Nkandla continues to sour our mouths. State coffers continue to be plundered while millions still live in near inhumane conditions. Many of us view our unstatesman-like president as little more than a moron. Elections loom, like a bank of angry clouds on the horizon. We’re plagued by uncertainty and more and more, we have the sense that South Africa is roiling. One small catalyst away from a massive implosion.

It is moments like these that, throughout history, have birthed leaders. True leaders. Sons and daughters of South Africa, step up. The shoes you have to fill are massive, but as Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Volcano Drum Majorettes perform in honour of Nelson Mandela on December 7 2013 outside his old home in Vilakazi Street, Soweto. (Pic: Gallo)

Hamba Kahle, Tata Madiba. A nation mourns, but we shall celebrate your legacy by fighting the good fight. For you. For ourselves. And for the generations to come. Your courage lives on in each son and daughter of South Africa.

“Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.”

Saaleha Bhamjee is a writer, social media addict, confectioner and mother of five from Benoni, South Africa. She is a columnist for The Review, an East Rand publication. Visit her blog here.