What's on Mthoko's mind?

Now, that the world knows more about Africa they are bound to be interested in our cuisine. There are many dishes (meals) Africans eat that originated from other continents outside Africa but I'm not going to focus on them & will focus on purely African/African-style dishes. There are quite a few local fast-food chains in Africa including a variety of well known international fast-food chains but I'm not going to focus on them on this blog either but rather homemade African dishes.  1) Sorghum . Sorghum is an original African food. In Zulu culture, sorghum is often made beer or a porridge. Sorghum is said to have been first cultivated in central Africa.  2) Maize meal . Known as maize meal in South African English, it goes by the name fufu in Nigeria,  nsima in Zambia & uphuthu or ipapa in my home province, KZN. It's often eaten with a side dish or with sour milk in it's drier version (uphuthu), made softer & eaten alone as a morning porridge or eaten wit...

To people that know South Africa, they'll know that not all of us are as fluent in English, French or Afrikaans as it may seem to the rest of the world on the internet. We use English online to convey a message online & when we're out in public we speak our home languages. But it may not seem so to someone from outside South Africa. When I look at some South African internet posts, YouTube & Twitter in particular, I can see how it can be misleading to someone who is not from South Africa. From an outsiders perspective, South Africa might seem like a country in revolution of some sorts or a country where everything is happening at once, while this is the case on several occasions, it is not the entire truth. South Africa is as typical a country as probably any other, what sets it apart is it's awkward cosmopolitan nature. A stark contrast to it's nationalist history & background. A history of Apartheid almost forgotten by the world & South Africa itself, ...

Some of us may have seen some strange & laughable attempts at Africans trying to create spacecraft to go to space but let us not kid ourselves, extraterrestial activities cost a lot of money. Money many African countries simply do not have. So since Africans will, eventually, see need for us to explore outside the planet Earth, how can we do so so that it makes economic sense?  We can look at South African-born American/Canadian entrepreneur Elon Musk who is planning to make an extraterrestial cruise ship-like business for wealthy people to get an experience of space travel.  My belief is that Africa needs to be united in it's extraterrestial ambitions & activities e.g. Namibia cannot send a satellite or spacecraft on it's own without approval of a united African astronomical sciences & exploration body. This will prevent us cluttering the already cluttered external stratosphere orbit & gather us more funds & scientific brains for any space missions whethe...

I actually wanted nothing more than a Zulu state a while ago, doing everything I could to rally people around this cause & go to meetings in Durban. Four years of research, devising plans & campaigning for a Utopia  only for it to be diluted as though a juice concentrate into something that should be whispered about. Becoming a debate on who is Zulu & who is not Zulu & how the "Zulu state" was formed... some even implying that the Zulu state can't exist because it was created by bloodshed. But then, South Africa was also created by bloodshed.  Ideally, Zulu will be the lingua franca  & sole official language accompanied with various indigenous languages but French speakers would still speak French at home, Portuguese would still speak their language at home & so would English speakers, Swahili speakers etc. The point was to have a land that has a sort of legitimacy  to it. Rather than the rainbow everyone was so hyped up about in 1994 which to...

To distinguish the two terms; culture is what a particular society or community does daily & heritage is the origin of a person or people's ancestors. I'm going to put the "Everyone is from Africa" nonsense on ice for now because the first homo sapiens were from Africa, yes, but put simply, if you are not dark skinned with short, spirally hair: your immediate ancestors (ancestors who look like you) don't originate from Africa & arrived too recently in history for your genetic group to be considered African . Culture & heritage are often used interchangeably but they are not exactly the same thing. CULTURE I'm watching one of the popular dramas briefly on a TV (I rarely watch TV, I'm more a talk radio fan) & the mother is scolding the daughter for planning to marry someone without letting the family know. I imagine how differently this could turn out in a white family where eloping is more frequent. This is black culture in South Afric...

I've been thinking & reading up on this concept of utopias or "ideal societies". People often say "A perfect society doesn't exist". Alright, sure. Perfection is often an unattainable concept but let's put it in alternate terms. A straight line between two points is perfect, right? You can't find a shorter distance between two points other than a straight line, so that straight line is perfect, therefore, simple practicality can be considered perfect. A country that uses solar buses in an uninterrupted transport system might be considered ideal right? Maybe, utopian? For, South Africans a country with an efficient 24/7 transport system is pretty close to a utopia. What I am trying to get at is that utopia is often closer than most think. A country that is simply run well with anti-corruption laws is utopia for me. I look at European, Asian & American countries & just long for just things these people take for granted. A government that...

The man behind this blog is an average Joe from KwaZulu-Natal who likes reading up on common topics to get the story behind the story. My favourite topics to read up on are history, geography, anthropology, a little astronomy & love watching wildlife footage. I also like microblogging (Twitter). Find me on my socials to get a little more of what I'm about below this paragraph. Thanks for reading this blog, I'll post something whenever I feel there's a subject to write about. Facebook   Facebook page   YouTube   Twitter   SoundCloud     Blip FM   MocoSpace   Instagram   My music album (Free download)   Ask me a question anonymously   Google   My official Android app   Talks with Mthoko podcast   Talks with Mthoko podcast Facebook page For people who want to get to "get familiar", here's my  WhatsApp : +27847181987