By Jade Campbell There is a section for each animal. Labels in all-caps announce what they have become: cows recast as beef, etc. Creatures transformed into something different, necessarily less creaturely. The shelves bow under the weight....
Fiction & CNF
Johan de Kirk’s a series of unfortunate events
By Thabiso Tshowa I Life is quite something, and it challenges billions of people on a daily basis. Some challenges are harder than others but the way I now see it after Gavin shared the story with me, ‘It’s not about how good a punch you packing but how many times...
Cake
By Jade Campbell I did not know him but I liked the way he could make himself cry. I felt I knew him when he did, and that he knew me too. He played the role of a wronged husband. At a small table in the dim light, the woman pretending to be his wife admitted to...
Balondemu: The Chosen Conqueror
By Joshua Omeke In the ancient kingdom of Buganda where the Bantu tribe resides, there roamed a joyous woman named Nantale, who fell for the charms of a native hunter whose name was Dembe. The couple united in the consecration of their families— engaged in native...
An Act of Vengeance
By Rosemund J. Handler ‘Pauline! The kitchen’s a catastrophe!’ That big word is one of Madam’s favourites, Pauline thinks sourly. Everything is a ‘catastrophe’ to Madam. She tells her friends on the telephone all the time how bad the whole world is to her and how good...
The Other Woman
by Kingsley Alumona. Image source: zexy-zwcom, on Pexels. Two hours before Bayo’s wedding, he received a call that unsettled him. He’d just been invited for an interview for a job that he applied for, ten months ago, the same month he met his about-to-be...
Burden
by David Mann. Auguste Rodin. Marsyas (Torso of The Falling Man). Permission: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Image Library: www.lacma.org for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.– Rainer Maria Rilke It was a...
Relapse
by Thabiso Tshowa “I am sorry, Nkele, but we ran the test several times. You can’t have kids,” said Dr Mosala with a grim face, seated behind her huge pine desk in her office. Looking at her wedding ring and the pictures of her, and her happy family, I...
A Waiting Room
by Rory Kilalea. Rhodesia is to become Zimbabwe after a bitter bush war. Britain has sent personnel to join the Commonwealth Monitoring Force to oversee a peaceful transition. This is a story from the time. # The waiting room was packed with women. Some with...
Composer at Large – Fictional Diary-Memoir – Excerpt from Entry ‘Sex under Apartheid’
by John Simon My life at this time was a wild and exciting one. Johannesburg was a self-assured, if highly dislocated city, with a citizenry that talked only about money. Crime had yet to become a topic of conversation. In 1979 trams and buses set off en masse from...