So sorry for the silence

I have received some desperate e-mails - and some unflattering ones too - about my silence. Let me start by apologizing, which seems to be a very common African trait. I am velly solly! OK ? That's done it, satisfied? Now the explanation; so much has happened in the past month...Where should I begin?

Well, he country is still is a mess and those in charge haven't stopped screwing all and sundry. Sorry for the language bu I am afraid that is how the shitstem has got us to. Gono has changed the currency...again. It is now criminal to be found with lots of money. At least until the 21st of August. Then I suppose everything goes back to normal with the rich continuing to screw the poor.

My grandmother and aunt passed away in rapid succession in the last two weeks. That has knocked the steam out of my father who has had to shoulder most of the nitty gritties. I worry for him and wish he could sell a coulple of cows and take a well deserved holiday. My granny was 95 when she died. She possessed such a wicked sense of humour. I could sit for hours listening to her spiced up stories. Like the one about the witch hunter, Gawule, also known in other parts as Tsikamutanda. This character would be summoned by the Chief with the cooperation of the community in reaction to a spate of deaths or drought.

The roadshow would roll into the villages and soon witches, their apprentices and paraphenelia would be paraded before the amazed crowds. If a witch had left some of his tools behind, lets say, a snake or goblin or such like, he would told by Gawule to hamba thatha munye! (Go and collect the rest of your stuff.) Incredulous as it may sound, Gogo would make comic references to neighbours exposed with all sorts of witching gear some of which would make your hanir stand on end!

I will never forget Granny, on one of her excursion into the city to our home way back when I was a kid, and her funny references to what she saw on TV. She was convinced that the Weatherman was the chief cause of the droaught with all those little diagrams about low and high pressure gibberish. She also had a theory that the then Apartheid government was shooting at the rain clouds on their side of the border so that they would get the rain and we wouldn't.

I promise to contribute to this blog every week from now on in her memory. May her soul rest in peace. Lala kuhle ntomenhle yakoNkiwane, Mabhonzo, Mthengisi sizakukhumbula.