Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
memorylatest news & developments
South African rapper, producer and musical artist, Sam Turpin

Sam Turpin’s notes on grief

The legacy of photographer Gisèle Wulfsohn echoes through her son’s music as Sam Turpin confronts sorrow through art

Prize-winner: Variations on a Theme was cast entirely from the local community. Photos: Supplied

Directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar push creative boundaries with Variations on a Theme

A poetic, genre-blurring film, Variations on a Theme excavates ancestral grief, memory and forgotten histories in a Northern Cape community still waiting for justice

Afro soul star: Berita will be holding a special Workers’ Day performance at The Market Theatre.

Berita’s ‘Echoes of The Soul’: A meditation on migrant workers

Berita’s Workers’ Day performance becomes a powerful meditation on migration, memory and xenophobia in a nation built through labour, movement and forgotten solidarities

Mirroring the past: At times, the actors in Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept step out of their roles entirely, debating the material they are performing, questioning its meaning or even its validity. It’s here that the play’s meta-theatrical dimension comes into focus. Photo: Thandile Zwebanzi

What does it mean to forgive? A play asks, 30 years after the TRC

Drawing from archives and lived experience, the international production probes the emotional and political complexities of reconciliation in a fractured world

‘Cape Fever’: When fiction fills the gaps of history

Through Soraya’s journey, Cape Fever explores identity, resilience and the hidden histories of Cape Malays in post-war South Africa

Ndumiso Zondi’s three must-reads

Many commit to reading books every year and are not sure where to start. Here are three books poet Ndumiso Zondi suggest

Author: Abdulrazak Gurnah at LiteretureXchange Festival (2025
Denmark) Photo: Hreinn Gudlaugsson

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft: A story of servitude, survival and the search for home

Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah returns with Theft, a moving portrait of loss, longing, and the elusive idea of home.

Women of the struggle: Artist Sue Williamson with works from her series of photo portraits from the ongoing series All Our Mothers.
Photo: Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery

The long and short of a 50-year artistic career

Sue Williamson’s new show opens in Joburg and a retrospective is coming soon

The eternal dance: Nduduzo Makhathini recently released his third album, which is titled uNomkhubulwane. Photo: Arthur Dlamini

uNomkhubulwane and songs of the water spirits

Nduduzo Makhathini unpacks the philosophy and traditions behind his new album

Untitled 21 (January 1st, 2020), 2021 (from the ongoing series eBhish’)

The Portfolio: Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose on bringing eBhish’ home to KZN

The artist reflects on the homecoming of his exhibition, and how it interacts with the gallery and its environment

Visual love letter: Tshepiso Moropa used her parents’ marriage as inspiration for her latest collage, titled Til Death Do Us Apart.

The Portfolio: Tshepiso Moropa digs up family treasures

Tshepiso Moropa used her parents’ marriage as inspiration for her latest collage, titled Til Death Do Us Apart

War is the backdrop of The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. (Photo: Nina Subin)

Maaza Mengiste: ‘We are now catching up with the past’

As war drums beat again in Ethiopia, author Maaza Mengiste finds new language to memorialise the Second Italo-Ethiopian War