Kudo's to Zapairo

Our premier political cartoonist, the ever-inspiring Zapiro, has once again managed to capture the emotion and sentiment felt my so many South Africans at the moment. So many people worked so hard and sacrificed so much - oftentimes their lives - to give our country hope. So many inspirational leaders and ordinary people bent their wills and hearts towards turning South Africa into a country to be proud of. After all this, how can so many people whom others have fought and died for be so quickly willing to tear it all down again in one great, violent wave of greed, envy, mistrust and fear. People are stupid. P.S. For the very few out there who don't know, the two characters are Ex-President Nelson Mandela and Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu. I'm sure that most would agree that in our world of fading hero's, these are two that you can still feel proud to look up to. Wise men who were once strong leaders, but whom many have now chosen to ignore - sometimes publicly - in favour of political and financial gain.

After the Weekend - mini xenophobic update and new Lectcha Sketch

Any-who... so the last news I heard was that another person has been murdered during xenophobic violence over the weekend, along with over a thousand more people displaced. As to the sudden spike in race related rapes, I can't make any specific, well informed comments but, if popular media is to believed, they are disturbingly high. I was quite perturbed by my own reaction on hearing about the latest death - my first thought was; Thank heavens it wasn't more! Horrible, I know. But also an unfortunate reality. I can't claim to have my facts straight - the weekend isn't the best time for me and intelligent consideration - but things could have been a lot worse. Terrible abuses of personal rights and freedom were committed, and the violent actions perpetrated by those concerned cannot be forgiven or justly explained, but at least the death toll wasn't any higher - something that was expected after the sudden spike in violence over the two days preceding the weekend. But hey, the country's still standing for now. I'll make a more informed update in a day or two once my workload has died down. 'Till then, here 's another Lectcha Sketch: More fun at Brett's Funeral! (Here's hoping that's not a dramatic pun in the making...)

Xenophobic Violence in South Africa

I feel the need to follow up that ridiculous bit of nonsense with a far more serious post.

Over the last eleven days, xenophobic violence has erupted in several spots across South Africa, focused mostly in the settlement of Alexandria and at certain areas surrounding Gauteng, although violence broke out in Cape Town as well last night along with looting and vandalism.

The media has been commenting on how the actions and captured footage are like flask-backs to the Apartheid era. Personally, I wouldn’t know. I was nine when apartheid crumbled. When black children started arriving at our school, most of us didn’t even bat an eyelid. Why should we? Kids came to a school every day.

Ironically, it was our teachers’ and parents’ pointing out to us that drew attention to the past atrocities. Now, I know all the arguments for studying and understanding the wrongs of the past, but I can’t help but want to think that maybe, if the generation before us had just kept their mouths shut, we’d be living in a far friendlier country because none of us would have known any better.

Yay ignorance.

While I’m at it, I’m going to wish for a pony.

I digress though.

What troubled me the most about these xenophobic attacks (and I can’t help but notice how everyone is doing their damnedest to avoid using the word “racist”) is the complete lack of action by our government. Neither our belligerent ex-vice president and president of the ANC, the ruling party, Jacob Zuma, nor our timid president, Mr Thabo Mbeki, have ventured anywhere ear the conflict fraught areas – surprising especially considering that many of the perpetrators have been heard singing the song Lethu Mshini Wami, Bring Me MY Machine Gun; a favoured song of the struggle and personal theme-song to the presidential hopeful, Mr Zuma himself.

Even the Zimbabwean presidential hopeful and leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, has managed to take time away from his country and political conflict with the embittered (maybe ex-) president, Robert Mugabe to address the people of Alexandria in an attempt to curb the violence at least.

Apparently Mr Mbeki is overseas at the moment. Again. One wonders if he is ever planning on coming back?

I brought up apartheid so as to make a point. People outside of South Africa assume, because of the rampant crime in our country and the sins of our past, that we are all familiar with violent crime. I think that they look at the rest of war-torn Africa and find it hard, as foreigners, to separate the open atrocities of the central and northern half of the continent from the violence and crime in South Africa. This may sound absurd – after all, violence is violence – but the crux is that, although so very prevalent in South Africa, it is still considered a serious crime as opposed to just another part of the wan and wane of everyday living, such as theft and mugging. Almost every South African has experienced crime, and has or is connected to someone who has suffered a violent crime – murder, assault, rape and even police brutality are things that I, through others, have become acquainted with – but the violence stills horrifies us. It is not yet, thank heavens, a part of our everyday lives.

So yes, crime we know, but this open aggression and wide-spread violence is something that my generation has never properly been exposed to (I make no such suggestion regarding township and informal settlement life, however – to myself an others like me, that is another world and I could never make any honest claim regarding it).

The first ten years of my life was spent in the pink haze of childhood worries and luckily I was never touched by the troubles that surrounded me during that tumulus time. As it is, I entered my adult life a free South African; no different to any of the other young adults around me; Black, White or other. The violence of the past was something that I had read and been taught about – there was nothing tangible to connect me to it.

Now, to see people being attacked and murdered for what amounts to no reason at all, I think that I can begin to understand the horror of the years that slipped by me as I was playing in my sandbox.

Forty-two xenophobic related deaths have been confirmed in the last twelve days – a number that was half as high two days ago – and with the weekend upon us and the shabeens fully stocked, who knows what news awaits us Monday morning.

And only twenty eight violence specific arrest. The mind boggles.

We’ve grown up in a world where the inefficiency of our government has become a running joke, but the more that this sort of violence escalates, the faster this joke becomes a dangerous inadequacy. In a country whose leaders are more concerned with their international profiles and more likely to lay the blame at the foot and a mysterious, malevolent third party, where do we turn when their political impotency eventually comes to a head? And what are the far reaching consequences of this inaction? Because of our own internal conflict, the media has had little to report on the violence and political squabbling that has been happening just across our border in Zimbabwe, but it’s still there, I assure you. The worries and dangers of that precarious affair have not gone away; rather, they’ve been buried under newer, more prevalent worries, to swell and fester and add to the ever present anxieties that seem to dominate the South African condition.

This new violence has been an eye-opener as to how political inefficacy is not just an inconvenience, but a danger to the lives of the people who live within that country’s boundaries.

I’m going to leave you with a link to a slide show hosted on the Times multimedia website entitled Flames of Hate. Sometimes it helps to see what’s happening rather than read or listen to it. To (miss-) quote a war photographer whose name eludes me: “I take these photos so that my mom won’t think that war is something that happens on TV.”

We’re not at war – I don’t think – but you get the picture.

Lectcha Sketch #6

So this one is seriously lame, but that's never stopped me before :) I was just thinking about funerals and how seriously bored kids get. Kids automatically concider old people dull, and when I eventually peg it I don't want this stigma following me beyond the grave : "Golly gosh gee, do you remember that old geezer, Brett? Wow, he had a kak boring funeral" or something like that. So how do you entertain kids at a funeral? Easy, you give them candy - and there's so many fun, exciting and surprising ways to go about it... The reason that it is so badly drawn is that I was joking about it with a mate of mine during class and he was getting quite creeped out by the whole idea - heaven knows why - so I rustled up a visual as quickly as possible to lend emphasis to my inane ramblings. Have a few similar, more detailed ones on the way. God-damn, I'm gonna be an awesome granddad...

Lectcha Sketch #5

Second post for today, but I realised that I had not posted a comic for a few days and thought that I'd make up for it. This one is far more recent than the last few and the first one to be posted from Cape Town (which makes it from a Marketing lecture). You can see how my illustration style has changed, even when I'm drawing quick, non-detailed works. It's probably because of all the scamping that we have to do. Someone mentioned celebrities - that's pretty much all it took...

Tom Fee Illustration

Marker rendering is not known for coming across as particularly original. No matter how much effort someone puts into a work, inevitably it comes out looking like a glorified scamp. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for marker work. I'm a fan of the rough, scamping style in general, although I do my best to keep it to as few colours as possible (for some reason, colour subtlety seems to have alluded a generous portion of the marker-artist world for generations). The problem is that there seems so little possible variation when it comes to markers: a marker work aways looks like a marker work (even when done very successfully, as with the work above). What really caught my eye when i visited Tom Fee's website was one image and one image only. I can't fault the rest of his work, except that I feel he has fallen into the same colour trap that most marker artists do, making it feel quite expected. The image that captured my attention, however, did so because of the sheer originality of it. Now, maybe someone has done something like this before (seems plausible I guess) but I've sure as hell never come across it. Squint your eyes until the two images overlap, then try and focus on the combined faces (similar to how you would view those three-dimensional pattern things) and see what happens. Pretty impressive for a marker work.

Lectcha Sketch #4

Who says that puns are dead? In many respects, I find that I have a very specific sense of humour. I wouldn't be able to put my finger on it, but I am one of those people who cans himself in the cinema and then nervously wonders why no-one else is laughing. We are the few and are between. There's probably a whole thesis just waiting to be written about us. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to writing it one day, just as soon as I stop giggling every time I watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre and some one get klapped in the head with a hammer. Rare as we are though, we're our own best friends. Finding someone with a similar sense of humour as you is easy enough (and it's always fascinated me how a specific sense of humour can bridge cliques and social gaps where nothing else could) but finding someone with an almost exact sense of humour is nigh on impossible. When you encounter one of these people, as friend or lover, it's best to hang on to them, because these days a good sense of humour is rare. (We suggest a six-pack of man-cans and a copy of Eyes Wide Shut. Hysterical.) As far as the comic is concerned, you all might notice that I'm trying to use colour a bit more. this is for two reasons. The first is that, seeing as how all these pics were drawn while I was supposed to be paying attention to my lecturers, I didn't really bother with much in the way of detail. The second is that it's fun. Oh, I also need to apologise for the crappy spelling. Apologise, not correct. If it bugs you then you should probably stop reading now, because on a good day I can put a fifth-grader to shame and that's never going to stop - I can almost guarantee it. At the age of twenty-five, I still compulsively spell project with a 'd' - as in prodject - don't ask me why. And if any Americans are going to get bleak about the way that I spell humour, colour or apologise for that matter, all I can say is; we made it, you broke it. Maybe I'll post entirely in Ebonics one day. That ought to make them happy.

Lectcha Sketch #3

Lectcha Sketch

I'm going to be posting one of these comics a day, unless something else comes up that I'd rather write on. Basically they are space fillers. Think no less of them though; I've been meaning to post them for ages now and this gives me an excuse to (I didn't want to just randomly drop them onto the site.) So if you like them, keep on stopping by.

Lectcha Sketch

During my time at Rhodes, I developed a habit of doodling during lectures, often drawing inspiration from whatever topic we were discussing. This was either Fine Arts or English - but hell, where Barthes is concerned, does it matter?

What the Heck Is Emo?

Here are two emo sites I found (without much tying though, i must admit). I have to say, if you're an emo kid looking for some good resources, your a bit strapped for choice. What the Heck Is Emo : This one isn't so bad, and the guy is obviously trying to be objective. Quite a nice little History of Emo, but I have no way of knowing how accurate it is. The Emo Corner : Now this site is special. It would have us believe that dudes making out is the pinnacle of emo hotness. think I'll pass. Also, it makes the amazing claim; "Emo hair becoming Very Popular with Emo Kids". Who woulda thunk it? Luv-Emo : Apparently emo kids are persecuted because they have a condition...

The Emo Debate - A Mini Article

It’s become a joke now that Emo is the new scourge of the music and fashion world; black and neon kaifs, skinny jeans and mascara abound and the same three chords have never in the history of radio been played so frequently on air. But why does this new fashion seem to upset so many people? For the jocks and coo-girls of this world, emo kids are just another target for ridicule, but for the goths and metal-heads these stripy, skinny-legged little munchkins seem to have instilled an all-permeating loathing. Why would these two old alternative factions, after having learned to coexist with each other for so many years, suddenly decide to turn on this fledgling fashion, rather than embrace it?

Now, I tend to think of myself as an open-minded person and have always opted for the more alternative turn when it comes to fashion, music and, most specifically, mindsets. I’ve spent my whole life bouncing between cliques – with many friends in the goth, metal-head and jock camps (although my foot is probably slightly firmer on gothic ground) – and I’m just as at home in the mosh-pit as I am writhing to Type O Negative, and yet even I am irked by this new trend.

I know my own reasons for my distaste, and I imagine that they are similar to those of others.

We need to travel back several years to when Emo first started to blossom. Back then, before the term emo had been termed, we of the gothic persuasion had names for these kids: wannabes, neo-goths and weekend goths. They were the kids who wanted to test the waters at the metal and alternative parties – where the drinks specials were cheaper – and still be able to save face at the cocktail clubs and Bourbon Street bars that they usually frequented. They were the kids who thought that Nickelback was a metal band and that Enter Sandman was the only song that Metallica ever released. They had never heard of Alice In Chains or Type O Negative, Kurt Cobain was a ghost to them and every one of them thought that Nevermind was the real title of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Some had even been known to vehemently argue this point…

Essentially, they were in it for the fashion. Metal and alternative evenings for them were like dress up parties, where they could try on all the clothes and fashions that they had often observed, often admired but never had the guts to try for themselves. You could always tell the weekenders from the second they entered the room – they were the ones wearing neon coloured, plastic spikes. Unfortunately, nothing much has changed since then. They got a new name, some new hairstyles and the dudes are talented enough now that they don’t have to ask their girlfriends to do their make-up for them, but the crux remains the same: it’s more about looking good than the mindset that it represents. Now, I’m aware how strongly many emo kids would argue this, and I realise how unlikely it is that all of them really are little more than narcissistic, pseudo-alternative, socialite fops. For this I shall allow them one chance at exemption from my generalization above: that they were born just a few years too late. I myself often feel that I was born just shy in years to fully appreciate the golden days of goth, grunge and metal – when sounding under-produced was a sign of how hard you were struggling to make it rather than that your producer had told you it sells better.

(Hell, most of the original heroes were dead of overdoses before the kids of today could tie their own corsets.)

Now, if I managed to miss the boat, these kids haven’t even seen the ocean. My point is that they don’t know any better. They wear black just like any other person of a particular mindset feels compelled to, and then they get caught up in a popular fashion culture that is as anti their ideals as rugby jerseys and stilettos. The true gothic culture has dwindled so far and become so obscure in some areas that emo kids have little other choice. The metal world isn’t much better either these days. So many metal cliques have become so intense that if you mention the name Def Leppard you’re liable to get thrown out or smacked. In this sort of sink-or swim socializing arena, it’s no wonder that kids are clinging to the next best thing.

I’d like to offer a solution to this trend, but of course that’s impossible. Like any other fashion it’s going to have to run its course and, much like after the eighties, people are going to look back in ten years time and think, “What the hell was I thinking?” but hey, that’s their cross to bear.

There are still a few places left to go for that old-school feel – Gotham in Cape Town, The Eye of Horus in Bellville and the Red Room in Jo’burg – but they are few and far between. They world just isn’t the space of free-roaming sub-cultures that it used to be and that’s sad. But it’s no excuse for that stupid hair.

The Emo Debate

This is just a reminder to myself to write this :) I have a bit to say on the Emo vs Metal-heal vs Goth debate, but i don't have the time to write it now, so please drop by in a day or so if you're interested. peace.

The Writer Returns

In the last few weeks I have decided, for the second time in my life, to take up writing quite seriously.

My first attempt at this was a little less than successful, for several reason: 1. I was almost straight out of school. 2. I had what amounted to no real writing experience beyond a personal ramblings - certainly nothing published - which compounded the next point. 3. I leapt straight into a full blown novel. Apparently I felt, at the time, that a few shorts written in school, a few tattery and painfully Emo poems and a book full of lyrics - some of which were performed, some of which weren't - were enough to prepare me for the slog that lay ahead. Hum... That isn't to say that I'm not proud of what I accomplished; I had a good story, interesting characters and over 50 000 words - about 145 pages - and in my humble opinion it is a good read. I lay the blame almost entirely at the foot of my own inexperience and hence a lack of knowledge of my own capabilities at the time. I went from a few tiny, 2000 word shorts straight into a fully fledged novel (which, by my approximation, would have reached completion at around 400 - 500 pages), three main characters - each with an individual storyline - and a deadline of one year. Yeah. The novel has now taken a back seat - or, more correctly, has been tightly buckled there and told not to open the windows or talk too loud - and receives a few hours of consideration a year; five to ten pages is my guess. My focus has now turned to short stories. After the (arguable) failure of the novel, my interest in writing took a sturdy knock, and it wasn't until two years later that I found myself reading a Something Wicked: Quarterly Horror Magazine off the shelves of CNA. In it I found a request for writers to make horror/sci-fi submissions for a short story competition. The prize was R1000 and getting published in the mag and I thought to myslef; "Why not?" The dry spell was over and i felt inspired again. My first story in almost two years was titled Birth One 1. As it turned out, four finalist were all published, including mine, and the winner was left up to public vote and has yet to be decided. I did, however, get to meet the editor of the magazine, the wonderful Mr. Joe Vas, and he expressed a strong interest in my writing and requested that i make further submissions in the future, which I certainly shall. And that's where it began. Since then I have begun several new stories, one of which is very near completion, and joined the Cape Town Writers Guild - something that I am especially excited about. I am also, obviously, still doing my photography and illustration and am busy considering ideas for a new, definitely longer stop-motion film. I even have my puppet (assuming i can rescue him from an old lecturer). And as for the novel... well, watch the shelves - in maybe four or five years time ;)