Like any place, there have always been bands from Port Elizabeth. Their quality and style varies, the scene waxes and wanes and one’s personal taste will determine whether any of them are any good. Sometimes consensus, and the respect of his fellow musicians will dictate that, yes, afro-folk singer-songwriter Dave […]
True love for Port Elizabeth means taking the rough with the smooth, the beaches and the bonhomie with the post-industrial bleakness, writes Hagen Engler. Tim Hopwood is leaving PE. For anyone who knows Port Elizabeth, this will come as no surprise. Tim Hopwood has left PE many times. Also, people […]
“Coming in to Joburg. Sandton swimming pools and Soweto shacks…”Like the song says, it’s the main thing you notices flying in to jan Smuts. Or Joburg International, or whatever it’s called now.What’s it now? Three years I’ve been away. I figured I’d take a bus down to PE from Joburg. […]
The following is the original “10 Reasons Cape Town can Fuck Off” piece. I wrote it under my pseudonym Haai van der Schyff in 1998 for Skyf!! magazine, a Port Elizabeth scene ‘zine I published for a while. The piece was meant to satirise the whole trend of leaving your […]
Dawid Kotze was the fastest sprinter at Laerskool Lorraine. Yooss, he was rapid! In the inter-house athletics gala, he would beat me in the 100 metres by about 40 metres. That’s why he jolled wing and I jolled hooker. When Kotze gave it flat box, he made this “sss-sss-sss” sound, […]
At the moment rain is bollocking down over Jo’burg, from where I write this column. A glance out the window show Randburg wreathed in grey, with a black lump of a cloud depositing lashings of rain on that wretched suburb. But no suburb has been spared. I don’t think I’ve […]
As a young boy of four years old, I remember getting my first lesson in African history from my mother, who was born and raised in the Transkei. Why, I had asked her, do black people all have to work for white people? It’s because, my mom explained to me, […]
It was a Saturday arvie when it happened. A Saturday arvie in the Fence parking lot at Kings Beach. It was during our first holiday back from varsity – my best mate was at UCT and I was at Rhodes.The wind was blowing homping west and it was on of […]