By Benevolence Mazhinji When asked how he felt about returning to Makhanda for Wordfest 2025, writer Etienne van Heerden said, “We were told to expect the worst, and we were really expecting a dystopic city, but it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful to be back.” The award-winning novelist, poet, and columnist was among the many writers, performers and thinkers who came together for the two-day festival to celebrate South African literature in Makhanda. The festival welcomed over 15 speakers exploring a wide range of topics and afforded us a thought-provoking experience. Audiences were moved by deeply personal and often gut-wrenching biographical…
Author: Benevolence Mazhinji
Read More
By Benevolence Mazhinji As poet Jeannie Wallace McKeown stepped onto the stage at Amazwi last week, the room surged into a sea of anticipation for the launch of her latest poetry collection, Ornithology. She began with ‘Ground Zero’, her voice piercing the expectant silence: My mother died this morning, in the early hours, and so tonight is the first night of the world without her in it. Night one. Ground Zero. “I started writing these poems the moment I arrived in St Francis after my mom passed away,” McKeown said. “I had a notebook on me, and I started writing.”…
Word Fest Preview By Benevolence Mazhinji The cherished literary haven of Word Fest returns to Makhanda this month, ending the four-year silence that had settled following the death of its visionary founder, poet Chris Mann. The festival was originally conceived in 1999 through the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) at Rhodes University. It was forged with the singular mission to be South Africa’s only multilingual festival of languages and literature to sustain a culture of reading and writing. Over the years, Word Fest attracted some of the brightest names in literature, including four Booker Prize winners.…
Breathe: Grief Unspoken PREVIEW By Benevolence Mazhinji At some point in our lives, grief has crashed us into tiny, unrecognisable pieces of ourselves. It has stripped us bare and left us to gather the remains in order to plaster together some resemblance of a new identity. Probably everyone can admit that, in those moments, we found ourselves scrambling for words to name our experiences and searching for people who could understand the feelings that threatened to consume us. That’s why Breathe: Grief Unspoken invites us to a holding space for these unspoken emotions. The creators of this show have spent…
By Benevolence Mazhinji After months of intense practice and preparation, the Rhodes University Chamber Choir set off in mid-August on a week-long journey across KwaZulu-Natal, filling up four buses to travel hundreds of kilometers to the northernmost parts of the province. This was not an ordinary musical tour. It was a journey of commitment, taking music beyond the concert stage into classrooms, township halls, and rural communities with limited opportunities to nurture the arts. Composer and choral conductor Sibusiso Njeza said that the objective of the tour was about laying the groundwork for future choirs and opening spaces for young…
‘Ingoma yoHadi’ Music Concert – Asakhe Cuntsulana REVIEW By Benevolence Mazhinji When Asakhe Cuntsulana’s voice rose with the first notes of Yesu wena Ungumhlobo, a song which says ‘Jesus, you are a friend / A soulmate’, the entire audience chimed in almost immediately without needing to be prompted to sing along. That is how atmospheric Ingoma yoHadi, yesterday’s music concert in the Beethoven Room, was — more of an open invitation for each of us in that room to actively contribute to that sacred experience. This song captured the heart of this concert so perfectly, with Cuntsulana’s voice being the…
Book Launch RootBound by Mantiphe Moila By Benevolence Mazhinji Rootbound is Manthipe Moila’s debut poetry collection, which traces the tangled roots of an estranged father-daughter relationship. It is a deeply personal exploration of a bond that can no longer be reconciled because the father dies before they can bridge the distance between them. Moila said that the book is an effort to “facilitate this impossible conversation that could never happen”, and she uses her poetry to reach across the silence that has been left behind. Moila initially began writing a poetry collection in 2019 which she submitted to uHlanga Press.…
By Benevolence Mazhinji For decades, Sangoma was the only record by Miriam Makeba that Professor Tsitsi Jaji owned. It had not arrived in her life through a conscious pursuit or scholarly intention; instead, it was just a CD she had received in the 1990s through a subscription series, long before streaming replaced the ritual of opening a jewel case and placing a disc onto a stereo. Jaji, speaking at the Confucius Institute this week, and a musician herself, said that she did not own many records at the time. Yet, this unassuming album would dramatically re-enter her life when a…
PhD Recital: Belinda de Villiers (piano) Saturday 2 August 6pm Winterreise: Thomas Erlank (voice), Tinus Botha (piano) Sunday 3 August 6pm Venue: Beethoven Room Preview by Benevolence Mazhinji This weekend, the Beethoven Room hosts two classical concerts that could not be more different in mood, yet both are delicate blades of emotion, sharp enough to pierce a soul. The weekend starts on a high note with Belinda de Villiers’ PhD piano recital tomorrow (Saturday). Her programme is a burst of diverse sounds and emotions, bringing together the heartfelt power of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff, composers with whom she feels a deep…
By Benevolence Mazhinji What happens to Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the hands of Dr Dominic Daula is nothing short of the pristine sweetness of listening to a harmonious melody that offers you a palpable sense of release from tension. Being the only pianist in this country to carry the Goldberg Variations in his repertoire, his performance’s maturity and serene songfulness stood as a testament to his remarkable artistry and dedication. The Goldberg Variations were initially written for a harpsichord with two keyboards. This means that playing it on a piano with one keyboard is particularly challenging due to the potential…