In 1906 there was an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto. One day Pareto noticed that every year, 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced approximately 80% of the peas. This got him thinking about economic output on a larger scale. Sure enough, he began to find that in various industries, societies and even...
Category: Conversations
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Black Economics …
I have often heard one of my favorite speakers, Vusi Thembekwayo, exclaim “Black people judge success by the car you drive. Fact”. While not necessarily quantifiable, that statement certainly rings true in our townships. Hands up anyone who knows someone that drives a posh car but stays in a shabby looking place. Without counting hands,...
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The Day I Drove A Bargain With My Ancestors …
A few days after I was hijacked in 2015, I sat in my flat, physically unhurt by the incident, not angry with the perpetrators and not stressed about losing my car but confused as to why izinyanya, my ancestors, would allow this thing to happen to their child and how something so dangerous could happen...
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The Thing, and The Fight to Fall …
I have never been good at relationships. Particularly, I have never been good at romantic relationships. Something about them seems to me unnatural. Actually, a lot seems unnatural. There is the rushed togetherness. There is the relentlessly pursued sense of oneness. There is the expected sharing of the self, the packing into little conversations of...
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Maybe You Don’t Know What Love Is …
We sit silently. My friend stares deeply into her empty glass, occasionally shuffling the ice around with her straw. “Wow,” she says. I sit and wait for her to say something else. What started out as a festive night somehow became a long, deep discussion about love, what it consists of, and how rare it...
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Indoda Yesimanje Manje (Modern Man)
When the resident office trickster, George, asked me to write on the modern man, I was very reluctant. In fact, I turned the piece in at the last minute because the word “modern” is devoid of meaning to me. Instead, I started thinking about manhood itself, and my very identity as a human being, as...
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How I Came To Understand My Male Privilege By Experiencing Racism …
A few months ago, I was watching a documentary about the history of the formation of our country with my son . It touched on topics such as slavery, colonisation and apartheid. While we were watching he turned to me and asked, ‘Papa, why did white people do this to us?’ It is not that...
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Ten Commandments for the Modern Man ….
Well, you see I have a lot of male friends. In fact, I can count the number of female friends I have on one hand. I’ve always been drawn to men. Even when I get to a mixed group of people, I always find myself gravitating towards the men. I find women strange and rather...
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Happiness Is A Four Letter Word: The Men
The movie “Happiness Is A Four-Letter Word” opened a few weeks ago with record breaking stats in just 10 days. By all intents and purposes, the film – a screen adaptation of the book by the same name, written by Cynthia Jele – is a chick flick; the three leads are all women, namely, Nandi...
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This Extravagant League Of Kenyan Grannies …
Big up to African Digital Art for putting us on to Kenya’s League of Extravagant Grannies. NYANYE, the latest editorial from Kenyan digital photographer Osborne Macharia, tells a fictional story of badass grandmas bringing straight fire to Somalia. In other words, it’s the ultimate in #SquadGoals. As Macharia explains: “This is the story of Kenya’s League of...