Nonqaba said ...

The internet killed clothing stores. Online shopping is our favourite scapegoat when we see another empty shop at the mall. It is a wrong assumption, like assuming that everybody has a laptop. For most people, it is not a necessity, like winter hats, long johns and gloves. Not everybody shops online because it needs a fluid bank account, long distance credit cards, a computer or a cellphone and wi-fi. Before the pandemic, a variety of factors forced clothing stores to declare bankruptcy. Casual Dressing The world is less formal than it was when famous department stores set up business more than 100 years ago. There were clothes for every occasion, starting with the office and work in general. Parents also enforced church dress code, dress code for going downtown/city, visiting relatives and travelling. Couples wore their best clothes for dining out and dates. Not any more. The world now prefers torn blue jeans, sweat pants and gym pants. Fitness Centers There is more awareness now abou

  1.  I cook because of rude noise, from the stomach. 2.  I cook because I love colour on the chopping board. 3.  I cook because I love the hissing of things in the oven. 4.  I cook because I’m not in prison. I’m @ home, where I can  cook. 5.  I cook because I have money to buy food. 6.  I cook because I wait for the writer’s block, to call it a truce. 7.  I cook because I want to delay tough decisions I have to make. 8.  I cook because I want to mute wrong decisions others took about me. 9.  I cook because I don’t understand the world. 10.  I cook because I can see. Another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms have people who call themselves influencers. They are part of the belief that anyone can make money on the internet. That’s why some influencers take photos in birthday suits and hair extensions and post them, just to harvest more views. Some of them are quite aggressive. Influencer:  I have 40,000 followers on Instagram. Manager:  So? Influencer:  If I stay in your resort for a week, they’ll see me lounging outside the pool, getting a rub down in your spa, and eating oysters at the bar. Manager:  So? Influencer:  Great advertising! They might come here on vacation or honeymoon. Manager:  All 40,000? Influencer:  Some.   Before Google and Yahoo, the British film industry and Hollywood influenced  Africa and other continents that speak English through colonization. They smoked in the movies, so we smoked. They drank whisky on the rocks, so we drank it. They had mini bars in their sitting rooms, the middle class in Lagos and J

Joe Biden and Democrats should not ‘change the drapes yet’ said one commentator online. Good advice, because ‘ikusasa kalaziwa’ , a Zulu proverb that means nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, 3 November 2020 in this case. Team Biden/Harris should not put too much into President Trump’s self-induced suicide, double/double speaking. They should don their masks instead and search for undetected voters, who do not live in computers and cellphones. That however, is a problem because COVID-19 has pruned all meetings. The virus is downright anti-human. Team Biden/Harris will be inviting palpitations big time if they assume that they have 11/2020 signed , sealed and delivered. Ask Hilary Rodham Clinton about how she lost to Trump in 2016. The very thought must give her massive palpitations, to this day. “I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Mr. Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and re

Trevor Noah, and producers of The Daily Show  sometimes take cameras to the street and ask voters about the state of America and why they will vote for Trump the current U.S. President or Joe Biden, the former U.S. Vice President who wants to live in the White House. Some answers are funny. Others ridiculous, but what lingers in one’s mind is the sadness, that during elections, people voluntarily give up common sense. Common sense is how mothers bring up kids. Don’t touch the kettle or heater with wet hands. Electricity will zap you. Look left or right before you cross the road. Wash your hands before you touch that hamburger. Kids grow up and they embrace common sense. They even threaten younger brothers and sisters: I’ll tell Mom you didn’t brush your teeth. Therefore, it is baffling when adult voters over 25 years have no common sense, when it comes to voting, a process that might find their sons and daughters in another part of the world, guns and drones ablaze fighting Tik-Tok cre

Waiters and waitresses are called servers now, but it doesn’t change the fact that they still wait at your table, notepad or i-Pad in hand while you take your precious time about the bacon. The novel I’m currently reading has two guests driving a waitress crazy on her first day. One woman wanted nitrate-free bacon. Her friend wanted a garbanzo bean pancake with no  raita . Bacon is bacon and I don’t like it, nitrate-free or not. The abuse comes in when people go to restaurants to show off their online cuisine vocabulary, and not to eat; when people don’t have anything to do so they got out to kill time; when people go fishing for males or females in popular hangouts or when people go out to order vegan free lettuce and water. Servers have to be patient. They can’t be rude, unless it’s in a movie. Jungle Fever , Spike Lee’s volcanic movie has a rude character, played by rapper and film producer Queen Latifah. She was on a roll, about why the black man at her table should not be dating t

Essential workers.   We ‘civilized ‘ Africa for many reasons. AFRICANS EUROPEANS Midwives delivered babies. Hospital delivery. The placenta was buried at home, in the yard to bond kids with their land. Placenta is medical waste. Plants from forests provided medicine for mother and baby. Mothers bought medicine from the chemist/pharmacy. Babies slept with mothers. Babies slept alone in their cots, in their rooms. Breastfeeding for six months or more. Bottle feeding. New mothers were surrounded by other women like mother-in-law, sister-in-law, midwife and grandmothers. New mothers at home alone or learning from books. New mothers in isolation away from husbands and house work. New mother works, takes care of baby, husband, cooking and other chores. Mothers covered babies in animal skins. Pink clothes for girls, blue clothes for boys. Babies crawled naked around the yard. Colour-coded clothes for boys and girls. Babies never missed mothers’ warmth because mothers carried them on their bac