This Week & Beyond
March 17-23: St Patrick's Day and other reasons to celebrate
🍀🍀Happy Saint Patrick's Day! 🍀🍀Originally a religious holiday marking the anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the patron saint of Ireland, St Paddy’s Day/St Pat’s Day is a cultural event that is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival.
Show that you celebrate the irresistible gorgeousness that is the Irish people by wearing something green, preferably a big silly hat, and being super-kind and super-cute all day. The usual restrictions in honour of Lent are traditionally lifted for the day so feel free to have Guinness or two in the evening.
Talking about celebrations of heritage, now is as good time as any to start/restart learning isiXhosa … and not just because Zimkhitha, above, is offering a free starter class tomorrow night, Tuesday March 18 at 9pm.
Pax Africana?
The apparent end of Pax Americana – the relative peace in the world after the Second World War with the U.S. as the world's foremost economic, cultural and military power – doesn’t seem a good enough reason for our erstwhile ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, to have a go at Donald Trump, who was his host after all.
For America to say he is no longer welcome in the US seems a bit disproportionate, but then these are not reasonable times.
In a sense, it feels a little like the step-child, the Developing World, is being forced to leave the parental home, the Developed World, after threatening to move out for decades.
💉Please subscribe FOR FREE for your weekly dose of news 💉
Wouldn’t it be incredible if somehow everyone in Africa started to leverage the extraordinary power of the people and the resources of this continent for our own upliftment. #ExploreAfrica on your next holiday. Choose to #buylocal wherever you can. (Let’s not forget we have managed without the Levis and the Marlboros before.) #AriseAfrica
📖I wonder if Mr Rasool will make it home in time for the launch of Gavin Evans’ book, White Supremacy, at the Book Lounge on Tuesday March 18.
Evans will be in conversation with Zackie Achmat discussing how white supremacy is on the rise in the world again. In the book, Evans explores the roots of this ideology, traced back to the 19th century to Charles Darwin and Francis Galton’s race-based theories. He examines the spread of eugenics and the rise of Nazism and apartheid. Evans further investigates the 21st-century evolution of ‘Great Replacement’ ideas, their spread through alt-right forums, and their influence on young men with access to weapons.
Thankfully there will be wines form Spier to soften the blows of reality.📖
For those who want to get more involved in activism, there’s a meeting on Wednesday March 19 at Bertha House in Mowbray about the recent cuts to HIV funding, something that affects millions of South Africans.
Cheer yourself up with a dose of local inspiration at the 15th annual Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival, on at the Baxter Theatre until March 22. Invading all the Baxter’s spaces to create a festive atmosphere, this festival sees community theatre groups presenting their plays on a professional platform.
Approximately 50 new theatre works, many of them in indigenous languages, are created annually. This year, the Baxter has curated the festival for the first time, commissioning 15 productions and partnering with highly respected theatre-makers as mentors to the artists.
What’s on at Zabalaza Bookings at Webtickets
Another event that looks like the perfect antidote to the horror many of us feel at the violence and danger implicit in current global events is Ancient Wisdom, “a return to the original vibration of the universe, the Aum, the heartbeat” with instrumentalists Victor Sithole and Dave Reynolds at The Holy Trinity Church in Kalk Bay on Thursday at 7pm.
“A gentle journey into Ancient African Wisdom through African music. Ancient Wisdom is a door into a sacred world inside us.”
Sithole’s deep dive into indigenous instrument-making and playing with traditional Zulu instruments, such as udloko and makhoyane as well as the handpan, has taken him all around the world. Reynolds, South Africa’s unchallenged steelpan maestro, also produces super-rich grooves on his ten-string classical guitar and heavenly sounds on his Paraguayan harp. Tickets, from R250
If you are in the mood for the escapism of a little classic made-up murder mystery, Theatre on the Bay is staging Agatha Christie's Black Coffee from 19 March to 26 April, with none other than Alan Committie as Hercule Poirot.
“This three-act thriller, a superbly crafted mystery with endless red herrings, subplots of infamous spies and an astonishingly prophetic storyline about weapons created through ‘bombarding the atom’, is one of Christie’s most gripping country house murder mysteries.”
🏖️🩴🏊♀️🚶🏃🥂🍾It’s a long weekend!🏖️🩴🏊♀️🚶🏃🥂🍾
Many of us will be taking Friday March 21 off from the salt mines. Time to relax and breathe out! How about we all also take a break from being so cross about all the things that we are not getting right in South Africa, and reflect on how far we have come.
Human Rights Day commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960, when police opened fire on thousands of unarmed South Africans protesting peacefully against the Pass Laws. They killed 69 people and injured at least another 180, many of them shot in the back as they tried to flee.
After the massacre, the apartheid government declared a state of emergency and banned anti-apartheid organisations, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which had organised the protest at Sharpeville, and the ANC.
It was also an important turning point in the fight against apartheid. The massacre drew international condemnation and intensified resistance, fuelling the shift from peaceful protest to armed resistance.
Just in case you don’t already have tickets …
Cape Ballet Africa’s Breathwords is on at Artscape next week! Featuring an expanded version of Reverie by South African choreographer Kirsten Isenberg, as well as two international creations. The programme opens with the global premiere of Whispers From Within by Dutch choreographer Wubkje Kuindersma, set to Summer and Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (!!!) recomposed by Max Richter. This is followed by Nacho Duato’s Remanso, and Kirsten Isenberg’s ethereal masterpiece Reverie, which is set to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
And, last but not least … as autumn closes its gentle misty arms around us … the last of the Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts, on March 30, sees Ami Faku and Simmy, presenting a soulful fusion of Afro-soul and Afro-house. Tickets