This year will mark Ashley Kriel’s 60th birthday. The student leader and MK operative was 20 years old and three months shy of his 21st birthday when the apartheid Security Branch assassinated him on this day in 1987.
Immortalised in Music.
In 2016, twenty-four years after her passing, her eldest daughter Thandiswa Mazwai released her critically acclaimed, award-winning jazz tribute album titled Belede.
The album features radical reinterpretations of anti-apartheid protest anthems and jazz classics by Miriam Makeba, Caiphus Semenya, and Dorothy Masuku, serving as a direct sonic monument to her mother's rebellious spirit and intellectual legacy.
My biggest fear about our generation is the lack of community.
Earlier this year my grandmother passed and I watched an entire village come together to help with the proceedings. There were women who brought their massive pots and cooking utensils while the men brought chairs, tents and tables and also offered much needed hands. I genuinely couldn’t believe how many people showed up. People were even cooking throughout the night. No matter how much you may think you’ve prepared for a funeral, it’s never enough especially in the village. It made me realize that such things wouldn’t necessarily happen in urban areas.
Many young people just choose to live in complete isolation. Some don’t even know their own neighbours and it makes you wonder who will stand beside them when the inevitable occurs.
Not exaggerating when I say the future depends on this catching on en masse. Kids, adults. Book clubs, silent reading groups. For the past twenty-five years tech has corroded our attention, intelligence and basic pleasure in living, and books are the key to winning them back.