First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
The opulence, wealth and drama that’s often displayed on the Real Housewives shows is what attracts millions of viewers across the world, and this week six women from our balmy east coast port town got to show off their glitz and glamour in the premiere of The Real Housewives of Durban.
An intimate associate of our former president, his ex-fiancée Nonkanyiso Conco, extends her 15 minutes of fame on the show. Conco, who is in her 20s, was reported to have been engaged to the 78-year-old polygamist in 2018, but by last year there were reports that the relationship was over.
South Africa: New Books | Seeking Asylum in Joburg allafrica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from allafrica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Wits University Press, 2020), edited by
Cobus van Staden and Nicky Falkof.
Marooned: Seeking asylum as a transgender person in Johannesburg
“When I come here for me, my perspective about South Africa is that it is a gay-friendly country … when I … get in the plane I was crying because I felt relieved. I say, ‘Oh my God!’ and I cried. There was a … woman on the plane who said, ‘Why are you crying?’ I know why I am crying. I know because I was feeling, when we land to Johannesburg I will say, ‘Thank you, God, now I am safe!’”
South Africa is the only country on the African continent that recognises sexual orientation and gender – including gender identity and expression – as human rights, enshrined within the country’s Constitution (1996).
Unpacking Johannesburg’s myriad anxieties
17 Dec 2020
The dominant gaze on the CBD and working class people is that we have to fix their problems, says academic Nicky Falkof. (Delwyn Verasamy)
The flickering of electric fences when it rains is a quintessentially Jo’burg sound, as
Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic once observed. I may be paraphrasing him, but this characterisation has stayed with me over the years.
It speaks to the city’s nervous energy, and the swirling anxiety that our systems are falling apart; that we are never quite safe in our houses or in our minds. Even during the glory of a highveld thunderstorm, we are reminded that something is not quite right, the sparking of the electric fences needles at our psyches.