This post is FAR too long to be opened in email — hundreds of pieces of writing here. I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

Hello out there!

Wild storms hit across South Africa over the last few weeks, bringing with them new wild viruses and school cancellations. I had so hoped to put out this digest last week two weeks ago but it was not to be.

This digest covers the period 27 April to 19 May — it’s been a huge time in politics both here in SA and in the world, so, unsurprisingly, there is a lot of political analysis here this week. There is also commentary on household food insecurity, poverty, and reminders to all of us to be grateful if we have a roof over our heads.

If you survived the storm and are safe and warm today, please consider doing your bit who don’t have that privilege (like donating to Gift of the Givers here).

Big news - Trialling a New Format in June / July

It’s my hope that the next digest (mid June) will be not one but a few digests. These will be split thematically, with the following topics covered in each:

• Every Second Monday: Arts Digest (Covering Books, Poetry, Fiction, and Arts & Culture)

• Every Second Tuesday: Personal Digest (Personal Essay, Human Interest, Birth and Parenting, and Relationships)

• Every Wednesday: Politics Digest (Incl Politics, History, Feminism, Education, and Religion)

• Every Third Thursday: Business Digest (Business, Trade and Industry, Tech & AI)

• Every Third Friday: Our World Digest (Travel, Climate, Science, Sports & Fitness)

I’m going to trial this for about two months worth of digests, and check which format is read better (this one or the proposed new one), and I’ll update here. Any thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll base my inclusion in each digest on the types of posts people have been commonly posting, so if you’re about to branch out and start writing on a new topic, please let me know so that I check your profile on the relevant day.

Thank you for reading.

Please share, subscribe, and encourage your friends to sign up to be on the list.

Be safe everybody!

Share

Arts & Culture

The Trial of Dedan Kimathi

The Margin is Dead

A delightful time warp that still surprises

Read Between the Covers

• Currently Obsessed: The May Edit

• Dive In: Random Bits from the Met Gala

We Belong Together

Skielik klink ons almal dieselfde

The Shape Game

• Andrew Buckland’s gracious, gratefully funny appeal for humans to stop acting the fool

• Variations on theme: a slow-burn film that powerfully interweaves reality and magic

• Louis Viljoen on the power of theatre stripped to its essence

• Lest we forget: a new play observes June 16th through a fiercely human lens

The greatest album of the 2010s

Rising Stars Youth Concert (7 June)

Journey to Jazz: Lessons to be learned from a beautiful and different festival

Jazzy Jungles

Milan Design Week Debrief: Fever, Furniture Trends, and FOMO

• Finding Gold Between Scrolls

• Great Films, Greater Soundtracks

Birth, Fertility & Parenting

Can we build better brains for our kids?

Just Be

Books, Writing & Literature

Notes on rejection

Full Expression as Free Range Practice

April & May: What’s Up?

Three women who have inspired me this week

• Literary resources and a chat

• The creation vibration

Words about numbers

My book-hawking holiday

Here’s Why I Read Children’s Books

• 10 places to submit your writing in May 2026

• Finding the fun

• How to bring your writing to life using your senses

• Something new is coming soon

• Come write something new

• Ready to submit your flash?

• Deadline Extension

• Call for flash stories

The adventure continues next month!

In Its Totality

On peas and peace and pieces of writing

On Cutting

A Birth Day for Milk Fever

Confessor Cop is a sellout with a twist!

• Life of a Writer

• Boom dizzled

• The weirdness of sprouting corpses

• Sincerely Boring

• The Geopolitics of the Literary Witness

• Letters to Sartre

• The Wound That Stays Open on Shattered Lands

• Careless People

• The Matter with Things

Literary Postmortem: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

The Wisdom of Sundays

And On the Way, I Lost It

• The Wedding Therapist by Livian Blush

• Fake Skating by Lynn Painter

• Sawadika American Girl by Daria Sommers

• Bride by Ali Hazelwood

• A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

• A Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir

• A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir

• Mysteries of the Mountain Moon Tribe by Jack Ruedisueli

Your Invitation to Join ‘Write Club’!

SBC B-day @ Bertha House!

• A compendium of ‘becoming’

• Too few clever drunks and arseholes, not enough gossip

Ons was eens die toekoms

I made it to New York*

Business, Work & Economics

• Radical Curiosity Audits: How to Break the 2017 Filter and See the World of 2026

• Redefining the One-Sentence Answer: How to Speak with Authority While Building Your Next Skyscraper

• The Performance of Reinvention: Why Your Pivot Doesn’t Need a Launch Campaign

• The Private Proof: Why Your Quiet Pivot Needs Evidence, Not Applause

• The Minimum Viable Authority: Why Your Next Business Needs a Framework, Not a Vision

• The Operator’s Manual: Why Your Framework Needs Rules, Not Vibes

• The Transfer Test: Why Your Business Isn’t an Asset Until Someone Else Can Run It

• The Scar Tissue: Why Your Business Handover Fails When Your Instinct Never Makes it Onto the Page

• The Pressure Test: Why Your Business Isn’t Transferable Until Someone Else Survives the Ugly Client

A society cannot be the sum of its consumers (Part 2: The origin story)

FourZero Monthly Picks

You Cannot Replace the Wisdom You Have Already Fired

• History for builders

• Workless

More questions than answers

• The Portfolio Mindset Series #5: Reflection is the key to unlock the career you want

• The Portfolio Mindset Series wrap up

• Field Note #05: The Salutation Spiral

SA built an exclusive economy, now it can’t sustain inclusion

Climate, Environment & Sustainability

Planting Season Has Arrived

Are our universities carbon captured?

Tiny Architects of the African Wilderness

Education

Kan die Staat Werklik ‘n Kurrikulum Voorskryf?

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

Feminism, Gender & LGBTQI+

Feminism is For Everybody

Khumbulani Pride 2026 Needs Your Support

Were You Queered for Such a Time as This?

The Trad Wife is an Utterly Modern Invention

Winter in Shanghai

Koffieblikspook

and Uhann / Almanso

Fiction

Green Light, Another Driver

• The Quiet Mirror

• Threads of Quiet Trust

• Gentle Footsteps

Forbundsy Chapter 12

A splash of fiction for you

History

• The World That Was Drawn Smaller

• Hy Slat Kaparang

We were there too: Queer life in the shadows of liberation

• The Pineapple Rental Market: Why 18th Century Aristocrats Treated Fruit Like Supercars

• The Fork Heresy: Why Eating with Pointy Metal Was Once Considered Suspiciously Sinful

• The Shopping Trolley Shame Machine: Why People Had to Be Tricked Into Using Carts

• The Human Alarm Clock: Why People Paid Strangers to Shoot Peas at Their Windows

• The Pigeon Missile: Why WWII Bombs Nearly Came with Feathered Pilots

• The Frozen Pond Empire: Why Victorians Shipped Lakes Across the Equator

Die Tragiek van Skotse Jakobitisme: 1745 Waarsku die Afrikaners

• Why didn’t slavery wither away?

• Skills for economic historians

• Running towards

Rough Crossing

Personal Essay & Memoir

The Doctor Brough My Brain Back Online

Heavy Footsteps

The Magical Negro

• Kak haircuts make me happy

• Requiem

Let’s Start at the End

• Van Jawap tot Tamat

• Yasmine and Her Flea Circus

• The Women Who Built the World Quietly

• Every Madd is Now a Star

Nonchalant Dreadhead in the Streets, Vulnerable to ChatGPT in the Sheets

with

• Freedom reads & Library Gardens playtime

• What’s on at Bridge Books

Peeves Vol. 2

• What Does Freedom Mean If It Was Always Yours?

• Your dream is yours for a reason

Ziggy’s day off

When The Market Stops Singing

She Never Intended to Marry the Revolution — The War Came to Her

Thoughts of the day 6: Birthday thoughts - 30 / 04 / 2026

In Praise of Girlfriends

• We are all too cool to have crushes

• Fuck Kujenga

Does anyone have Rassie’s phone number?

When the storm passes

• The Jaxx Husky Story - Part 1

• The Jaxx Husky Story - Part 2

• F is for Founder

• F is for Form

• F is for the Franschhoek Literary Festival

Listing my Substack posts chronologically

Before Convenience Took Over Everything

Nostalgia: She’s a Flighty Bitch

Contemplation

• Mother’s Day at Bridge Books: Brunch and Books

• with Staff Picks, Soweto’s Theatre of Resistance, and LitDistrict news

• Holiday digest

• What is authenticity?

• Homework

• The Garden Centre: The Middle-Finger from Hell

• Helen Mirren Weeps for Italian Olives

• The Dog-Walker at Dawn

• For Whom the Bell Tolls

My ma nou weer hou van beige

It’s all made up

• April’s allowance of play in the backdrop of beauty tainted with natural elements of dark fantasy

• A splash of gratitude

This feels like too much admin for living

• ‘You who never arrived’

• How to see an octopus

• How do you measure this thing?

Friday roundup: WHO do you think you are?

• Who’s afraid of posting on Substack?

• Oh shit, I write about real people

Humility, Attention

• Time Travel

• The Most Important House You’ll Ever Build

Life lessons from a basketball coach

• Skirt + jacket = skirjacket

• Slow reno resumes

• A wintry wander

Kuyabanda

The Not-so-romantic Side of Being Self-employed

#2 Rites

• Gone to hell in a hand basket

• Last one standing

• Leaping into autumn

• Things you should do with people you love

• Things no one would be allowed to buy if I was president for life

• Things that are charming

My Mother Never Tells a Short Story

• Head Butts and Buttock Bumps

• Grandpa Chappie and the Art of Buying Rams

Wat ‘n mens moet weet

• Seven-ping Sunday (13)

• Seven-ping Sunday (14)

• Seven-ping Sunday (15)

The Pieces We Keep

• Coming Soon

• Troubled Furniture Heiress

FGM

• Not Other

• The Taxi Rank

• Sun Clouds Danced on the Sydney Bay

I’ll bring the river to you

Ma se bors

Poetry

• Before We Knew Each Other

• The Lion is Not Smaller

• What Holds, What Falls

i prayed about you / i really wish i prayed a little harder

Life as an Algorithm

Newsflash: Poets selected for Woordeloos anthology

Living poetry in Southern Africa 22

Her Winter

• Carpet Resurrection

• Holding Back the Dark

Hate medicine

• Anamnesis

• Magical Night

• No Heaven Without Hell

• You’re A Queen

• Let Me

• What She Taught Me

• Jesus Meets You at the Crossroads

• Who Loosed the Foxes?

Monday Morning Meditation

Politics, Media & Government

• They Were Never Foreign

• The Scalpel and the Empire

• The Empire That Scrolls

• The Price of Silence

• The Smell of Koesisters Before Sunrise

• Cape Town is Not Tel Aviv

• Wanneer die Geskiedenis Omgedraai word

• Houghton Gholfbaan — ‘n Aktivistiese Slagveld

• Celebrating the 3rd new South Africa

• Our country’s a mishmash of disarray, like a household without elders

• Gesonde Verstand is Meer Medemenslik as Mooipraatjies

• Voldag Vrydag met OntLaer (8 Mei 2026)

Who Holds Power When No One is in Charge?

• The vigilante crackdown on illegal immigrants: Xenophobia or justified anger?

• 100 days of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry

• Weekly Wrap: 11 - 15 May

• Om demokrasie af te skaf

• Iran: Die Populiste en Intellektueles Verenig

Voldag Vrydag met OntLaer (1 Mei 2026)

Vryheid met Toe Öe: Visuele Nasionalisme en Ideologiese Blindheid

• The Iran Saga — Part VII

• The Iran Saga — Part VIII

• Die ANC se krisisisse en die deparate terugval op ras

• 31 Mei en die Republikeinse ideaal

Six World Press Freedom Day takeaways

• We the People — Thina Bantu: Reclaiming the Liberal Promise of South Africa’s Constitutional Preamble

• You Should Listen to Economists, Even When They Don’t Preach Morality

• Nothing But the Truth, the Whole Truth: Will Ramaphosa Come Clean on Phala Phala?

• A Reality Check on Joblessness and Poverty Among the Working Class

What we’ve built

• The Week That Was: 4 - 8 May 2026

• The Week That Was: 11 - 15 May 2026

• Months of Waiting: Kwakhanya, Court Delays, and the Shape of Justice

• We are Working and We are Still Poor: The Lie at the Heart of Workers’ Day

• You Can’t Drink Data: Cape Town’s Not So Subtle Infrastructure Pivot

I and I a hang on in there

• UCT and me

• The Scary Prescience of the Sound of Ice

• Tali and the NWASA

• Nakba Day Rally

• The SACP’s electoral ambitions

• The Week Ahead: 4 - 8 May 2026

• The Week That Was: 4 - 8 May 2026

• The Week Ahead: 11 - 15 May 2026

• The Week That Was: 11 - 15 May 2026

• The Week Ahead: 18 - 22 May 2026

Constitutional Reckoning in the Phala Phala Matter

• How the BBC deceived the world about xenophobia in South Africa

• The new generation of fake leftists: from Zohran Mamdani to Zack Polanski

• How Elon Musk deceives on X manipulation

• March and March Brings its Xenophobic Thuggery to Gauteng

• Epitaphios. May Day. Not Even the Dead

• Analytical and Ethical Dereliction Before the Xenophobic Mob

• A Moment of Decision for the Left

The Media and Mitchell’s Plain

• ‘Just Enforce the Law’: When the Rules Only Apply to People Without Votes

• The Marches Against Undocumented Immigrants are a Bell Pottinger-Style Move

‘Smurfism’ is ruining the DA

Consent, Consuls, & CapeChoice

Relationships

• There’s a Box full of Words you Forgot about

• A Physically Touching Story

• Love Language Lock-in

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya Was the Original Wednesday

• Between two cloths

• Shūrā and the Missing Voices

• The Disappearance of the Kaparang

• The Hands That Guard the Gate

• The Key They Still Carry

• When Grief Begins to Hate

• The Ballad of Raoul and Elvira

• On Sabr, Power, and the Subtle Erosion of Adab

• He Came to Set the Captives Free

• The Courage to Say ‘NO’

• The Call to Remove the Veil

• Who Do You Belong To?

• The Narrowing of the Moral Imagination

• The Pope’s Solidarity with the Oppressed

Science & Health

• The Fig Wasp Tomb: Why Your Favourite Fruit is Actually an Insect Graveyard

• The Blood-Dripping Organ: Why Your ‘Second Wind’ is Actually Biological Cheating

• The Neurological Typo: Why ‘Brain Freeze’ is Just Your Face Hallucinating Pain

• The Amphibian Glitch: Why Hiccups are Your Body Accidentally Trying to Breathe Like a Tadpole

• The Solar Sneeze Glitch: Why Sunlight Can Make Your Nose Detonate

• The Wallpaper Failure: Why Bubble Wrap Was Invented to Decorate Your Walls

• The Ketchup Cure: Why Tomato Sauce Was Once Sold as Medicine

• The Mouse-Dust Plague: Why Hantavirus is Terrifying, Deadly, and Somehow Not a Pandemic

• The Shower Curtain Ambush: Why Your Bathroom Plastic is Actually a Tiny Weather System

• The Lead Pencil Lie: Why Your Pencil Has Never Contained Lead

The Cult of Powdered Optimism

I err, therefore I am

The curious case of the White House and the missing scientists

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

Liverpool are no longer champions. Now, they lead a more serious and troubling list

• The farce of French rugby television

• Kevin McKenzie and the column in his wallet

Tech & AI

We’re all going to pay more to use AI, and very soon

Transnational accountability and AI

• Ghost in the machine: South Africa’s draft national AI policy and the problem with fabricated references

• AI risks are global. Who makes the rules?

An AI policy that empowers

• The elephant in the room - China is gradually winning the AI arms race

• What does the world’s greatest living mathematician think of AI?

• The truculence of the titans - Musk and Altman slug it out in court

• Data centres in space - foolhardy or visionary?

Trade and Industry

• Why Tea Fairs & Festivals Are the Real Entry Point Into the Global Tea World

• The Museums Trying to Preserve the Sound of Tea

The Car Instalment isn’t the Scary Number Anymore

• Start here: How to use this Substack

• PGM Arc: 65 years of PGM Processing

• Zimbabwe remains the most reliable buyer of South African maize

• Land and agricultural issues in democratic South Africa

• Canola production in South Africa may reach a fresh high in 2026

• We cannot discuss the need to improve household food security in South Africa without considering the role of fresh produce markets

• Some additional context on the expanding canola plantings in South Africa

• South Africa’s wheat plantings could fall to the lowest level in 12 years in the 2026-27 season

• Leading global agricultural producers must avoid export restrictions

• Two points about the uncertain weather outlook and its impact on South Africa’s agriculture over the coming months

• The South African agriculture sector now has broader tariff-free access to China

• Fears of a global food crisis are premature

• On South Africa’s household food insecurity challenges

• Will the current rains damage grain and oilseed quality in South Africa, given that we are late in the 2025-26 season?

• South Africa’s agricultural conditions

• Weather forecast — Challenges ahead for South Africa’s agriculture

• The news of a super El Niño drought from October 2026 through to 2027 persists

• South Africa is set to have a record summer grain and oilseed harvest in the 2025 - 26 season

Controlling Nature: A Civil Engineer’s Reflection on John McPhee’s Masterpiece

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

• Where tourists don’t go

• A local flower shop

• Tranquil neighbourhood plantations in India

• The week ends with a road trip to Williston

• Oppie Williston plaas

• Karoo Plaas Fauna & Flora

• The pad back from the plaas, and a funeral

• Langsie Pad: Velskoendraai Farmstall, Clanwilliam

The Troubadour Old Brompton Road, London

• London Museum

• Two Cocks Fighting

how to get a stomach ache in KL in 72 hours

City Spotlight: Nairobi, Kenya

• I’m glad I’ve been to Timbuktu

• Lost Memories on the Silk Road

• The masks of Venice

The way to my heart is through a biscuit

• Wines of the Drakensberg

• Century City Tramway Experience in Cape Town

• Simon’s Town’s Famous Dog

• Cape Winelands Wine Tours

• Atlantis Dunes Adventure on the Sand

• From Sabie to the Three Rondavels — South Africa’s Most Dramatic Drive

• Tankwa Karoo Desert Silence

• Kalk Bay Cave Routes

• Golden Hour on Lion’s Head

• West Coast Wildflowers in Bloom

• South Africa’s Edge of the Sky

• Baviaanskloof Canyon Hiking Experience

• Diving in Sodwana Bay

• Beyond the Trail into Crystal Water

• A Fairytale Castle Overlooking Cape Town’s Coastline

• Kings of the African Savannah

• Where Prehistoric Giants Once Roamed South Africa

• The Otter Trail — South Africa’s Legendary Coastal Hike

• An incomplete hike on the slopes of Kasteelberg

• The Shoes and the Frozen Yoghurt

• Reading about Storms While It’s Storming

Nature in South Africa

Soulal en sommer ‘n klomp goeters

• Paris in photos

• Fez and friendships, things that have stood the test of time

• A thing about tomatoes

Prosperity, Family and the Chinese New Year

A-Maizing Grains: Reclaiming Your Plate

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

A reminder that if you’d like to be included you need to write a post not a note.

The reason I made this choice is that we can all share other things on notes that we didn’t write, and so if I had to start searching there for your original content I might be here all week treading through all the funny / irritating / enraging / clever things you’ve shared from other writers.

So you need to publish a post, make sure that your posts are visible on your profile, and I’ll check every person on the list each week to make sure I don’t miss yours.

I just added ten new names to the list of South African writers on Substack and each time I do this I’m struck by two things:

1. WOW! We have a humungous talent of South African writers who are putting their words out there to help us understand ourselves, our country, and the world. Thank you!

2. I don’t know so many of these names and when I click through to prepare the digest and read the pieces I’m blown away. The talent, the vulnerability, and the breadth of topics are magical.

The digest is growing longer and longer, partly because I’m not able to get to it weekly as I was at the start of the year. But I’m still committed to doing it, and to publishing those posts for free.

But I’d like to start a paid offering from June. This means that regular subscribers will get the entire archive of digests for free and any new digests I published too.

Subscribe now

Paid subscribers will also get:

• Twice monthly interviews with some of the people on the list. I’m brainstorming this still but I was thinking

  • For one of these I’ll interview a group at a time who are writing on the same theme and

  • For the other I’ll interview someone who I’ve noticed is writing prolifically but isn’t necessarily one of South Africa’s ‘big name’ writers.

My only rule for these interviews will be this: If the writer uses AI to write their posts they will need to state this up front. I have my own personal views on AI, which I acknowledge that not everyone on our list shares. And I think that transparency is valuable and important. So I’m not saying that if you use AI you won’t get featured, but I’d like you to be honest about it, and maybe we’ll explore this in the interview.

So, I’ll be reaching out to people on our list in the next few weeks via message for these profiles. If there are any contributors you’d personally like to hear from, please let me know below.

And I’ll be aiming to publish a digest next week (If no further sick children and wild winter storms. Fingers crossed).

Thanks to everyone who reads and shares the digest. I am so enjoying compiling it and the list of names.

Have a good weekend!

Jen

x

Share

This post is FAR too long to be opened in email — 334 pieces of writing here. I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

Hello readers and writers out there!

This week I’ve added quite a few new names to the digest. Wonderful that this list is still growing. It makes this a very big and very happy job.

If you wouldn’t mind helping out, could you have a look through your subscribers lists and see if there are any SA writers on there who should be on the list? Tell them to reach out or reach out to me to let me know! Would love to feature them in the digest.

Autumn (or as we like to call it in Cape Town, winter: part 1) has arrived. It’s a perfect time to sit down with a warm cup of something delicious and read. This digest covers the period 8 to 26 April 2026. Many days when you were all busy typing away, producing wonderful stuff. There are (on very tired counting) 334 new pieces of writing here. AMAZING.

Events coming up and exciting news:

• Franschhoek Literary Festival taking place from 15 - 17 May. The Silent Book Club will be there on the 16th. Details via here

• The Silent Book Club will be on the Train to Town on 2 May. Details via here

Topics for this week

• Agriculture (29)

• Arts & Culture (12)

• Birth, Fertility & Parenting (1)

• Books, Writing & Literature (35)

• Business, Work & Economics (15)

• Climate, Environment & Sustainability (1)

• Education (2)

• Feminism, Gender & LGBTQI+ (2)

• Fiction (4)

• Mining (7)

• Personal Essay & Memoir (84)

• Poetry (11)

• Politics, Media & Government (56)

• Religion, Spirituality & Theology (8)

• Science & Health (13)

• Sports & Fitness (7)

• Tech & AI (12)

• Travel & Food (35)

Thank you for reading. Please share, subscribe, and encourage your friends to sign up to be on the list.

Take care of yourselves out there!

Share

Agriculture

• Maintaining a long term view of the Middle East as a potential key export market for SA agriculture

• South Africa’s tractor and combine harvest sales slowed in March 2026

• A review of South Africa’s agricultural performance in the first quarter of 2026

• South Africa’s agriculture enters a critical month

• El Niño impact on South Africa’s agriculture?

• Does South Africa miss its maize export target?

• Are cooling agricultural equipment sales in South Africa a temporary blip?

• Misleading narratives about South Africa’s farming sector continue

• Higher input costs and a likely drought would be a bad combination for SA’s 2026 - 27 agricultural season

• Tough environment for South Africa’s maize farmers

• Maize yield levels convey a key message about El Niño periods in South Africa

• The Southern Africa region’s agriculture faces a real challenge ahead

• April is a busy month for South Africa’s agriculture

• A possible El Niño in the 2026 - 27 season presents risks for South Africa’s agriculture

• Is the world facing a food crisis?

• We are at a time of favourable feed prices for the poultry farmers

• The Ample Global Rice Supplies Will Benefit The South African Consumers

• Drought in the U.S., Higher Farm Input Costs, and Food Prices

• Early rains in the Western Cape bode well for the start of the 2026-27 season, but uncertainty remains

• The Agricultural Produce Agents Council plays a key role in our agricultural progress and food security

• Fuel price increases are an upside risk to South Africa’s consumer food price inflation

• South Africa’s consumer food price inflation slowed to 3.4% in March 2026, from 3.7% in February

• A conversation with the South African Meat Processors Association

• Continuous inclusion of South Africa in AGOA is critical

• South Africa is set to have a record summer grain and oilseed harvest in the 2025 -26 season

• El Niño on the Horizon and the Key Risks to Watch

• South African sheep farmers enjoy higher wool prices

• Will the current rains distort grain quality in South Africa?

• Expropriation, Land Reform and Agriculture - Wandile Sihlobo - Conversations with Gabriel

Arts & Culture

Speedsta of Love and Hate

Back to the lab…

• Did You Get Your Fill of Moon Joy?

• This Week In: ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up If You Tried’

Bohemian Rhapsody

Getting Killed by Geese in Cologne

So, I tried sewing a blanket big enough to cover the whole street…

Nothing stupid about this play

Music is political (whether we like it or not)

• It’s Show Time - 2026 Series Reviews

• Listening to music, or watching it?

On Masterchef South Africa and Missing Home

Birth, Fertility & Parenting

Presence Needs Some Practice

Books, Writing & Literature

Let’s catch up :)

• The Promised Land

• Complicating Consent

• Getting Published: An Updated Timeline | Post 15

• Literati Parties

• Music at Bridge, books for Main St Sunday

• Get to know James Baldwin, the LitDistrict, and Walking Tours

• Riotzine Launch, Silent Reading Club, and news from the LitDistrict

Rational Defiance One Month Recap

A March of Imaginative Exploration and Written Wonder

• One hour to a better piece of writing

• The Schedule for 2026 - May to December

Meals and books worth waiting for

On Raging Against

• The clergyman’s daughter unpacks her suitcase of memory

• A kind of tantric torture

• Down to earth

But Did It Change Your Life?

Autism awareness month and being a writer on the spectrum

• The Arithmetic of Suffering

• Satan and Apocalypse: And Other Essays in Political Theology

• Thirteen Cents and Azure’s Education: Book Review

• Welcome Bookworms!

• On Writing

• The War of Art

• Bird By Bird

• The Miracle of Mindfulness

At the Writer’s Waterfall Edge

• Chasing Lucky by Jenn Bennett

• Forgive-Me-Not by Mari Costa

• SBC at Norval Foundation

• SBC on the Train to Town

• SBC at Franschhoek Literary Festival

• They love me, they love me not

• What we die for

Business, Work & Economics

• White Bread Business: Why Your AI-Optimised Brand is Absolutely Invisible

• The Luxury of the ‘Week-Long Plan’: Why the Best Specialists Refuse to Rush

• The Survival of the Genuinely Interested: Why Curiosity is Your Only Real Moat

• The Funeral for the First Idea: Why Deleting Your Greatest Deal is the Only Way to Grow

• Sunk Cost vs. Soul Cost: Why the Deepest Toll of a Pivot Isn’t Found on the Spreadsheet

• The Identity Vacuum: Why Losing Your ‘Founder’ Title is Your Biggest Upgrade

• The Clean Slate: Why Burying Your First Idea is the Only Way to Build Your Skyscraper

• The Strategy of the Lean Authority: Why Your ‘Survival Work’ Is Actually a Strategic Laboratory

A society cannot be the sum of its consumers (Part 1: The Prognosis)

A Wildlife Sanctuary as a Near-Closed-Loop Economic System — Part II

• Why South Africa needs a data observatory

• Bigness is goodness

Fieldnote #03: The humble list

Stop Trying to Fix Yourself

‘Can I Afford to Live There?’ The Question Defining Careers in Cape Town

Climate, Environment & Sustainability

What is ‘The Sorghum Agenda (R)’?

Education

Geregtigheid en Inklusiwiteit

The Battle Over South Africa’s Past

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

Feminism, Gender & LGBTQI+

Things that are feminist

and Why midlife women are turning to horror

Fiction

• The Gentle Bloom

• Holding Gentle Space

• Softly Letting Go

Short Story _ Courage to Be Yourself

Mining

• Ground that Surprised: Selebi-Phikwe, Botswana

• PGM Arc: Modikwa and Two Rivers

• Ground that Surprised: Trojan Nickel Mine, Zimbabwe

• Mining and Empowerment: From Policy to Law

• Mining Beneficiation Back at the Centre

• PGM Arc: Platinum Group Metals’ Waterberg Project

• Start here: How to use this Substack

Personal Essay & Memoir

• A Con Art

• We Were Seven

• The Story That Travels Faster Than Truth

Botox runs in my family

• Sweet Sixteen x Two

• Reclaim your girlhood

The Joy That Sits Between Us

In the pursuit of Colour

The Generation of Cowards: A Letter to the Not-Yet Born

I hate to break it to you but …

• Papa e a cha!!!

• Tea Meditation with Asa Yee

• I Am a Rapist

• Silence as inheritance

• Against the fiction of a single self

• I want sex

• Against straight memory

• The protea have started to flower!

• A gatskuur week

• Ouma Astrid & Oom Boet, ai!

• Bowie - the first six months

The power of celebration

Imagine if we all showed up a little more

There are so many ways to be alone

I’ve been swimming through my archives

Sharing clothes

Come to my Hills 22

• how starting a substack heals

• things on my mind

Calling This Your FAQs on Menopause

On living wholeheartedly

• F is for Fun

• F is for Familiar

The Prisoner

• Thoughts in the aftermath of war

• Memories of flying over Africa

• Creativity without reckoning

• Where the Outsiders Once Walked

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

• Where the Light Begins to Leave

A transformative recharge with rebel Albie Sachs

Thresholds & Fire

• Our Names Are Not Hard To Say

• What Your Childhood Trains You For

• Who We Think You’ll Be When Everything Is Perfect

• Bumping into people

• Soundtracks and playlists

And To Our Mothers I Say: In The Next Life, May we be ‘Bad Gals’ Together

Invisible Ancestors

Ticked Off the List

A Small Update

• You Don’t Need Motivation

• You Missed It Trying To Capture It

contrary to popular belief, i am not grateful for my suffering

• Moving On

• Did someone say cycling cake?

• Family vibes at Ohana Cafe

• My nan knew me well

• On Apartheid (and fascist?) Nostalgia

• I want love! I want love! I want love!

• Noticing

• Observing the World, Reshaping Yourself

• I will not let it break me

• Nothing Lasts Forever, and I Hope I Can Live With That

• I’m Too Much

• A lesson in patience

• The next step

Things that are sexy

• Boys (and some girls) and Frogs

• We Took the Pictures, but that was the Least Important Part (We Went on a Bear Hunt)

• The Peanuts

• Playing Whack-a-mole with Bush Spirits

To go away - or not?

• Seven-ping Sunday (10)

• Seven-ping Sunday (11)

• Seven-ping Sunday (12)

At the end of the river is a tree

Terrible, Wonderful Medicine

• Toilette and the Springboks

• Inhliziyo (heart, center of emotions, passion)

• Onheilsame dinge

• A loose holding

• Kots & klimaks

• Markus (en die brandblusser op die derde verdieping)

Poetry

• Everyone Thinks They’re a Poet

• He Arrived Late

• N14, Dusk

• Batavia: A Name That Returned

• Between What Remains

Sanchia Alexi Radford

• You Are Worthy

• Gypsy Spirit

• My Letter to The World

• Nothin’ so Stubborn as a Weed

• A Little is Enough

Politics, Media & Government

• Dink Mooi oor die Oorlogskamer

• Is Suid-Afrika Soewerein?

• Hollywood keeps writing this script; the trouble is, so does history

• The rot within: porous ethical borders & the betrayal of public authority

There’s a story we tell ourselves about wealth

• MK se Aanval op Selfbeskikking is Vreemd

• DinkWeer Donderdag | OntLaer en langformaat skryfwerk

• Om Demokrasie Af te Skaf

• Iran is Trum se Achilleshiel

• Voldag Vrydag met OntLaer (10 April 2026)

• DinkWeer Donderdag | Pleeg Meer Heiligskennis

• Bemarking in aksie: KitKat het ook ‘n breek nodig

• Sosiale media, die Nuwe Tabak

• Die Tirannie van die Woord ‘Regime’

• Pete Hegseth, die Sekretaris van Oorlogsmisdade

• Trump’s Iranian Debacle: The Art of Strategic Defeat

• Wat gaan regtig aan in die onhderhandelinge tussen Iran en die VSA

• The Imperial Tantrum - Trump prepares to block the Straight of Hormuz

• Hormuz, Schrödingr’s Strait

• Iran: Is die Straat van Schrödinger oop of toe?

• The Grammar of Coercion

• The Iran Saga

• The Iran Saga - Part II

• The Iran Saga - Part III

• The Iran Saga - Part IV

• The Iran Saga - Part V

• The Iran Saga - Part VI

• Assessing South Africa’s New National Centre for Intelligence Co-ordination

• Launching the Strategy Podcast!

Die Vertrouenskrisis in Munisipaliteite

• Democratic Alliance Congress: Liberal Success and a Liberal Challenge

• Stabilization is Not a Transformation: South Africa’s Economic Strategy Needs a New Gear

Inequality is not new

2029’s Starting Gun Was Sounded at Gallagher Estate

and

• The Week That Was: 13 - 17 April 2026

• The Week Ahead: 20 - 24 April 2026

• The Week That Was: 20 - 24 April 2026

• Ellen Pakkies, Power, and the City That Manages Crisis, Not Change

• A new injection arrives, but who gets to feel its promise?

• On the Cape Flats, Mother Keep Building What Violence Breaks

• 3 days of rain in Cape Town isn’t just weather, it’s a governance stress test

• If We Can Fund Walls, We Can Fund A Universal Basic Income Grant

Apartheid’s Mark of Cain

• Normalisation

• South Africa’s Heart of Whiteness

Trump’s America, Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China

The Messiah Complex: Political Idolatry from Rome to Trump

• On Iran, Trump is no aberration

• The United States-facilitated coup in Pakistan

• A global gathering of fake progressives

• Men with Guns

• The GNU sets the stage for violence and repression

Johannesburg and the Case for Mayoral Boldness

• Succeeding with secession

• Consent, Consults and Cape Choice

The DA just elected its best leader ever … and it may still not be enough

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• The Caliph Who Returned the Tongue to Mercy

• What We Build Between Us

• Entrusted — Then Enclosed

• Between Dust and Light

The Pillar of Protection

Intimacy, Reconsidered

God is Not a Christian

The Queer Art of Seeing the Unseen

Science & Health

• The Hydration Hoax: Why ‘8 Glasses of Water a Day’ is a Complete Myth

• The “Zero Gravity” Lie: Why Astronauts Are Actually Just Falling Forever

• The Breakfast Psy-Op: How Guilt and Greed Invented the Morning Meal

• The Doomsday Fish: Why the Ocean’s Scariest Sea Serpent is Just a Terrible Swimmer

• The Ear Thunder Mutants: Why You Can Hear a Storm Inside Your Head

• Nature’s Toothbrush: Why the ‘Apple a Day’ Myth is a Dental Nightmare

• The Microwave Illusion: Why Your Lasagne is Always Frozen in the Middle

• The ‘Fresh Rain’ Lie: Why Your Favourite Smell is Actually Bacterial Chemical Warfare

• The Pharoah’s Curse: How We Defeated an Ancient Monster with a Sieve

• Phantom Vibration Syndrome: Why Your Thigh is Hallucinating Text Messages

• The Tear Duct Sink: Why You Are Literally Leaking Eye-Water Out of Your Nostrils

• The Moth Navigation Glitch: Why ‘Drawn to the Light’ is a Biological Lie

• The Sound Barrier Myth: Why Thunder is Actually an Atmospheric Bomb

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

Afternoons of Solitude

The “Prose Dana”: MMA’s Right-Wing Mythology

Challenging Dogma: The Neutral Spine of Deadlift

• Gary Woodland is fighting PTSD at the Masters — a small step for the golfer, a giant leap for the man

• Is Rory McIlroy the only person who can stop Rory McIlroy?

• LIV’s dead, baby. LIV’s dead

• The night Lennox Lewis caught a klap in Brakpan

Tech & AI

Don’t Hand Over Your Compass

Confessions on Co-Authoring and Disclosure

Where is your newsroom AI policy?

• Can AI speak Igbo?

• The oldest tool in the book

• What I told our HoDs about AI

Japan reflections and a new Living Electric series

• Renting humans — agentic AI’s external labor pool

• The software industry’s Andromeda Strain — suddenly nothing is safe anymore

• Artemis II - a brief breath of oxygen as the world drowns in conflict

• Amazon makes moves to compete with Musk - can it make a dent?

• Mythos and the cyberhacking panic - what this means for crypto

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

• A visit to Grounded restaurant - Yzerfontein

• An ‘inloer’ at the Crazy Cat Café, Piketberg

• A few nice surprises at Kloovenburg wine estate

• A Riebeek-Kasteel: First Impressions

Romanisches Café, Berlin Germany

• City Spotlight: Johannesburg, South Africa

• City Spotlight: Mahé, Seychelles

• Twilight Safari in Kruger

• South Africa’s Vibrant Underwater World

• The Legend of Just Nuisance

• A slow travel guide to South Africa’s most celebrated coastal drive

• The Franschhoek Motor Museum is a Must-See

• The Ultimate Cape Town Catamaran Experience

• Nambiti Hills Luxury Safari Retreat

• Seal Snorkelling in Hout Bay

• Saxenburg Wine Estate Stellenbosch

• The Wild Coast: South Africa’s Last Untouched Shoreline

• A Hidden Conservation Valley in the Western Cape

• Magaliesberg Biosphere Trails

• A Lost Kingdom in the African Landscape

• Sunrise to Sunset on Lion’s Head

• Cape Town Explored Differently

• Your First Slow Journey Through the Western Cape

• Becoming No One in Kathmandu

• Mango Sticky Rice - Love at First Bite

• Travel After the Fact

A note from the trail

The man from yesterday

Things best eaten and drunk when baby, it’s cold outside

• Final Threads

• Episode 62: Final Threads

• Spring break and asparagus

• Dijon, the mustard and a charming small city

• Lyon and an urban winery

Conversations with Strangers in Shanghai

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

A reminder that if you’d like to be included you need to write a post not a note.

The reason I made this choice is that we can all share other things on notes that we didn’t write, and so if I had to start searching there for your original content I might be here all week treading through all the funny / irritating / enraging / clever things you’ve shared from other writers.

So you need to publish a post, make sure that your posts are visible on your profile, and I’ll check every person on the list each week to make sure I don’t miss yours.

This post is too long to be opened in email, so I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

Howzit! Hola! Hoe gaan dit?

This is your invitation to breathe a deep breath, sit back, relax, and enjoy some wonderful writing produced by South African writers on substack. Our list is over 300 writers now, and this digest’s content covers the full range of topics and feelings that you need.

April is here - month of many public holidays, changing seasons, and a sign that the second quarter of the year has begun. This digest covers the period 27 March to 7 April 2026.

Events coming up and exciting news:

• is having several book events in Cape Town on the 14th, 16th and 21st of April. Details here

• Samantha Keller who is also published by of Modjaji Books will be launching her debut novel, The Light Remains on 14 April at EB Cavendish. Details here.

• is running two workshops on writing memoir / life writing. 18th of April in person in Cape Town (4 spots left); and online on the 24th April via Zoom (5 spots left). All the details here.

• Karavan Press will be at the Blown Away By Books event at the Fishhoek Library on 18 April 2026 at 9.30 AM. Details via here. Other SA Substack writers appearing are , and

• ’s book, The Great Storybook Heist, is now available in South Africa. More details here

• Friends of Silvermine Nature Area are having a few fundraising walks this year, and the first is on 25 April. Details via here

• has launched a new Zine on Substack called Liminal and the first issue was published on 3 April. Congrats!

• The will be meeting at the Norval Foundation on 25 April at 10am. More details here.

I also noticed that a lot of writers were honest about the fact that they were struggling with their mental health this week. If you or someone you know needs help, support, or a listening ear, please reach out to SADAG for help.

Take care of yourselves out there!

Share

Agriculture

Thinking about war and the soil under my feet

wrote an astounding 18 articles on the agricultural issues including the citrus industry, trade barriers, plant breeding techniques, the impact of the USA-Iran war, the abuse of market power in food, the impact of disease, higher fertiliser prices, and more. Check them all out via his Substack!

Arts & Culture

• From Boeremusiek to Bernoldus (Part 1)

• From Boeremusiek to Bernoldus (Part 2)

Looking into an ancient well

‘I’d sooner have gone to hell than come to South Africa’

Matsuli Music is a National Treasure

Sadness and joy at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival

Birth, Fertility, Parenting

The Sugar Rush Hallucination: Why ‘Hyper’ Kids are a Parental Placebo

Our Beautiful, Chaotic Mess

Books, Writing & Literature

What I learned after teaching 4 writing workshops in 3 weeks

The imitation game, or, on literary voices

Working witches

When Freedom Turns Dark

On freewriting, a writer’s retreat, and finding your own freedom

• How we’re celebrating the end of March

• Walking tours, children’s books, and Easter weekend

• Music at Bridge, books for Main St Sunday

Running - a means to address Writer’s Block

My Novel Experiment: A Reflection on Crafting Resources

Writing from life

‘Tell me about Toototabon’

The Story Explorers Club | April 2026

metaphorically speaking

• Time and the writer

• Easter eggs that can’t be eaten

Heat and humidity

A Point of View

• The Scribal Lineage: From Guilds to Canon

• Hearts Burning: Chris Zithulele Mann’s The Road to Emmaus

• Introducing LMNL Issue #1: “A Hallway Is Just a Hallway.”

• [DOWNLOAD!] The one in which a group of writers dissect the in-betweens

A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft

SBC @ The Bookery 12 April

Business, Work & Economics

• The Art of the Useless Hour: Why Founders Need to Play

• Digital Minimalism as Self-Defense: How to build a ‘Moat’ around your sanity

• The Quiet Success: Why the Best Victory is the One Nobody Sees

• Why the long weekend is for recovery, not for racing

• The Death of the ‘I Don’t Know’: Why Your AI-Generated Business is Dying of Boredom

Most Leaders Are Decorating. Nobody’s Built the House

Bemarking in aksie: KitKat het ook ‘n breek nodig

A Wildlife Sanctuary as a Near-Closed-Loop Economic System

Mind the gap, South Africa

The Portfolio Mindset #3: What career rewards really matter

The Architecture of Excess: Billionaires, Democratic Erosion, and the Unfinished Project of Economic Justice

How a single crypto trader lost $50 million in a few seconds, in broad daylight

Climate, Environment and Sustainability

The Butterfly Effect

Curse my Cotton Socks

Education

Scholasticide from Gaza to Tehran: When Universities Become Targets

Zionists expose their hate

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

Feminism, Gender and LGBTQI+ writing

Let’s talk about my vagina

What threatens feminism?

Seen and Still Erased: Trans Visibility and the Fight to Be Counted in South Africa

Don’t you dare abandon trans people

• Laatsomer in Shenzhen

• Herfs in Shanghai

Fiction

Same Car, Same Email

• Listening Beneath

• Gathering Gentle Warmth

Forbundbsy Chapter 11

History

White Thieves,Black Blood: Europe’s Crimes Have No Statute of Limitations

• Written on Horseback: Remembering Uthman dan Fodio

• By Any Means Necessary

• When we say ‘slavery is slavery’

• Mowbray Maqbarah: The Ground that Holds Us

• The Medora: Cloth, Crossing, and Inheritance

• The Red Crown of the Cape (Part II)

The archive did not love us: queer bodies and the struggle that forgot them

The Weaponised Vegetable: How Carrots Became a WWII Psy-Op

Durban’s Dockside Diva, Now Forgotten

Personal Essay & Memoir

• Witness, From a Safe Distance

• When a Child is Given a Name

Peeves Vol. 1

Sweet Sixteen x Two

Badges and Blazers

Are We Regressing as Humans?

• To Conform or Not to Conform

• What is an OuTea?

• Papa e a cha!!! (The Art of Burning Pap)

• The city I inherited, the lineage I continue

• For Phenyo, and the Beautyful ones who will remember

The thrill of adventure

Snakes alive!

One hundred pink Substacks

bearing witness while the world burns

FourZero Monthly Picks

Now We Are Six

The lost language of cranes

What the Yellowwood Said

I stopped forgiving

Apple ID hacked (help!), Wine Glums found, and a Sober surprise

Every woman needs a shed

Childhood friendships, adulting & crayons

A collated sense of self

My Beautiful Son

Things that are beautiful

• We’re Going on a Bear Hunt

• The Great Shadow of a Man

When I couldn’t go home…

The world is on fire, but here is a sticker sheet

• Seven-ping Sunday (8)

• One-ping Wednesday

• Seven-ping Sunday (9)

Frank and the Future

You’re just a snot-nosed kid

The Weekend

Begin Again

Subscribe now

Poetry

• After the Promise

• The Work of Tapestry

• When the Ship is Taken

• The Witness Who Cannot Turn Away

• Being. Losing. And then … a seeing

• Still, the Living Remain

• Four Short Poems

• Issue 32

• The Altered Eye

• The Rocks We Carry

• The Darkness Waits

A Cottonwood Falls

He read their names

The Tuesday Pause: Future Memories

Politics, Media and Government

The Semiotics of State Violence

Prioritising Public Value Over Patronage Temptations (politicians should be banned from announcing project budgets)

Bogus Igbo king fiasco in East London

• Vrydag met OntLaer (27 Maart 2026)

• MK se Aanval op Selfbeskikking is Vreemd

Die Afrikaanse Media en ‘n Jaar van OntLaer

Looking at US politics and IR through the eyes of John Rambo

BREAKING NEWS: When Did Everything Become Our Business?

Hiep Hiep! OntLaer op ‘n Jaar

How African media is adapting to digital disruption

Onderhoud | Habermas, Kritiese Teorie en ons tyd

• Iran en die kernbomkrisis

• Peter Hegseth, the Secretary of War Crimes

• Sam Harris and the Rationalists’ Reckoning in the Desert

• The Regime of the Regime

Iran’s War of Attrition

and The Week That Was: 23 - 27 March 2026

Apartheid’s Mark of Cain

The Way of the Generals

• What use is free speech…if no-one can hear you?

• Navigating rabbit holes in social media and alternative media

Xenophobia on the March and March

• Why does the US want Cuba?

• The social media industry finally got bludgeoned in court - why now?

The Cape of Tranquility

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• Shāh Māt: Reading the Board

• The Camel That Walked to the Water

• Who Owns the Earth?

• The Prayer That Carries Us

the spider in the front yard

Already but not yet

• The Three Pillars for Godly Boundaries - Part 1

• Stewardship

Science and Health

• The Playground Myth: Why Your ‘Blue’ Blood is a Biological Lie

• The Trojan Therapist: How Your Mental Health App Turned Your Trauma into Targeted Adverts

• The Medical Case for Being Annoying: Why Squeezing Your Partner’s Bum is a Biological Necessity

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

The invisible hand at the crease

Tech and AI

The Slow Fade: Why We’re Letting AI Steal Our Thinking (and How to Fight Back)

Panel on Safe & Trusted AI in Africa at India AI Impact Summit

• The Digital Cheat Codes: How to Stop Using Your Computer Like It Is 1998

• The Trojan Cylinder: How You Paid to Bug Your Own House

• The preacher’s assistant

• Fear of the box

• Terafab - Is this Musk’s Last Gamble?

• Autonomous weapons, agentic AI and future of prompt warfare

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

• If You Like Dry Red, You Can Be a Well-Paid Tea Taster

• Tell Me Your Wine, I’ll Tell You Your Tea

• A kuier at Piket-Bo-Berg Farmer’s Market

• A gatskuur to Bokkomlaan & a Farmer’s Market

• Coffee and Cheesecake at the Bokstal

• Painting Class & French Toast at the Mad Hatter’s Coffee Shop, Lambert’s Bay

• And overnight stay at the Rider’s Rest farm cottage

• Kerrieviss & Easter

Café la Palette Rue de Seine PARIS 3/3

The echoes of the Old Way with nature

Broke…

• Snorkelling with Cape Fur Seals

• South Africa’s Best Adventure Destinations

• Meet South Africa’s Wild Cats at Tenikwa

• The Natural Beauty of Thonga Trails

• Flower Fun Overland Tour in South Africa

• The Otter Trail Experience

• Palace of the Lost City

• South Africa’s Greatest Mountain Escape

• Wild Adventures at QWABI Private Game Reserve

• Racing the Atlantis Sands

• How to Travel Southeast Asia on a Budget (Without Missing the Point)

• Black Jelly Beans and Bokkoms

A restaurant that cares. My restaurant of the year

Just happened to be there

• Goddesses and Fiddles

• Episode 61: A Patchwork of Irish Surprises

• Seasons…

• Guinea fowls and couscous…

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

A reminder that if you’d like to be included you need to write a post not a note.

The reason I made this choice is that we can all share other things on notes that we didn’t write, and so if I had to start searching there for your original content I might be here all week treading through all the funny / irritating / enraging / clever things you’ve shared from other writers.

So you need to publish a post, make sure that your posts are visible on your profile, and I’ll check every person on the list each week to make sure I don’t miss yours.

This post is too long to be opened in email, so I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

Hello out there!

This digest covers the period 16 - 25 March. If you’re a regular reader you’ll have noticed I have not been keeping up with this weekly digest. It’s a project of love, and so when projects that are lovely and also involve being paid come up, I have to do those first (Boo! Down with capitalism! Forward Universal Basic Income, Forward!)

Sorry about that! I hope that you still find value in the digest even though they’re not weekly. Do you? Let me know with your vote below.

A reminder that if you’d like to be included you need to write a post not a note.

The reason I made this choice is that we can all share other things on notes that we didn’t write, and so if I had to start searching there for your original content I might be here all week treading through all the funny / irritating / enraging / clever things you’ve shared from other writers.

So you need to publish a post, make sure that your posts are visible on your profile, and I’ll check every person on the list each week to make sure I don’t miss yours.

Welcome again to all the new joiners to this digest. As of 25 March there are now 315 writers on the living list. Hooray!

Events this week:

• Saturday 28: and Bridge Books are hosting their silent reading club from 9am to 11am. Tickets here

• Saturday 28: and Bridge Book are hosting a book reading at 10.30am for 11.00. Full details here

• Saturday 28: will be at the Time of the Writer festival in Durban. Details here

• Sunday 29: Silent Book Club Cape Town is meeting on Bree Street. Details here

Events in April

• is having several book events in Cape Town on the 7th, 10th, 14th, 16th and 21st of April. Details here

• Samantha Keller who is also published by of Modjaji Books will be launching her debut novel, The Light Remains on 14 April at EB Cavendish. Details here.

• The Silent Book Club is taking place at Keurboom Park on the 4th of April. Details here.

Have a goodie,

Share

Agriculture

wrote a wild 16 pieces over the past ten days, covering everything from food price inflation to export markets and AGOA. If you are interested in all things agriculture, visit his Substack.

Arts & Culture

The Song That Was Not Allowed to Be Heard

AI is polluting your art

The Last Word

The 90s Had the It Factor

Don’t Buy the Replica

Skin Erased: When the Body Becomes Archive on the Cape Flats

Chuck Norris Died — Who Will Save Us Now?

The rise & rise of the podcast

Contrasting goodbyes to a cultural icon

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man — A Haunting Farewell to Tommy Shelby

Books, Writing & Literature

On cultivating leaders and becoming lighter

• Adapting Austen

• The Correspondent by Virginia Adams

Revising a Manuscript: The Developmental Phase | Post 14

• What we’re reading in March

• This Saturday: Reflections on the War in Gaza at Bridge

My Novel Experiment

• Two free winter workshops with me at Bertha House in Cape Town

• Workshop downloads are available

First of December

‘The least we can do’

On Playing God

A funny thing happened on the way to the book festival

A Point of View

Siembamba

A Wheelie Bin Full of Words

SBC @ Keurboom Park

I could’ve danced all night…

Business, Work & Economics

• The Architecture of Joy: How to Reclaim the Foundation of Why You Started

• The Theft of Play: Why Your ‘Side Hustle’ is Killing Your Sanity

• Your Identity is a ‘Market-Hallucination’. It’s time to wake up.

• The Structural Integrity of ‘No’: Building the Walls

• The Luxury of Being Unknown

Don’t Block Your Career Pivot by Forgetting Your Story

• Part V - The Stewardship Imperative

• Critical Thinking is Not Enough

• Uninvited

• When does marriage stop making economic sense?

• 'South Africa is this underexploited source of insight'

What we were promised, and what we actually received

Climate, Environment and Sustainability

• Register for our second fast fashion webinar (happening 15 April)

• On climate anxiety, our community journey, and Conscious Capital

Education

🇿🇦n Child 'Slaves' Zepped Today, But Did They Study?

Die SA Staat se Minagting van Ouerskap

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

Fiction

• First Car. Real World

• The Brown Envelope

The Softening Clay

History

• They Could Not Erase Him

• The Debt of Cuito Cuanavale

• The Gravest Crime

Whispers of herstory: Wathint’ Imbokodo, UZAKUFA!

• The Biological Heist of 1726: How One Woman Convinced the King’s Doctors She Was Birthing Rabbits

• Operation Paul Bunyan: The Nuclear-Backed Landscaping Job

• The Poison Squad: The 12 Men Who Ate Embalming Fluid to Save Your Groceries

Die einde van wit politiek in die referendum van 17 Maart 1992

The Cape’s Colonial Elites

Mining

The Stilfontein Echo: A Year On, Are We Listening to the Warning from Beneath Our Feet?

• Cut 18: PGM Geology

• Cut 19: Platreef, Mokopane

• Start here: How to read #MiningIsHuman

Personal Essay & Memoir

Curls

Chance meetings, animal therapy and the perfect day

I hope you get your bus

Come to My Hills

All your dreams will come true

• F is for Fad

• F is for Freelance

Fragments of a War

The Consequences of the Chosen Path

• Choosing Stillness Over Striving

• There is Mercy in Deep Waters

February Rain

• Holding on and letting go. A lesson on grief from Barry and nine years ago.

• Barry McCallum — a St Patrick’s Day eulogy

Nog lessies deur ‘n journalis-intern geleer

When Paradise Feels Fragile

The Extraordinary Will Take Care of Itself

The Sky Remains The Sky

• Group Therapy Needs a Bit of Humanity

• A Lover's Discourse, Angela Carter, and my love for white women: Why my love is a plea.

Be The Peace

Writer Blocked

Things that are essential everyday luxuries

Sips: No, your bartender isn’t flirting with you

Sayings on the Trail

When Problems Become Invitations

Seven-ping Sunday (7)

International Happiness Day

Bob is not happier

In Community We Overcome

5 lessons my students taught me this term

Subscribe now

Poetry

• A Sky of Wings

• When Truth Arrives

• The Fish That Complained of Thirst

• The Measure of Power

Living Poetry in Southern Africa 21

Zohran

• The Tilting Cabin

• An Offering to the Goddesses

Seed of Adam

• The Tuesday Pause: Part 15: Remembrance

• The Tuesday Pause: Part 16: Staying Power

Politics, Media and Government

• When Power Speaks

• Dialogue Without Surrender: Cuba, Sovereignty, and the Price of Pressure

Oorlog as Enigste Uitweg in Iran

Back in the newsroom, back in the classroom

Ambassadeurs vir die RNE

• Understanding the Iranian Diaspora

• Propaganda and the American/Israeli - Iranian War

• South Africa’s Pelindaba Blueprint: The Way to End the Middle East Nuclear Crisis

• Midde-Oosterse Kernkrisis?

Afrikaners — Al meer bewus van eie en trotse identiteit

• The Fight for the City of Gold

• Preview: 18 March 2026 By-Elections

• 18 March 2026 By-Election Results

• The Week That Was: 16 - 20 March 2025 with

• The Week Ahead with

• Preview: 25 March 2026 By-Elections

• By-Election Results: 25 March 2026

Politics in the French ‘platteland’

Murder, memory and resistance

Israel as the ‘sacrificial wolf’: Part I

Our Debt to the Cuban People

News 24: On The Record

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• The Light That Finds Us

• The River Must Move

• Empathy Is Power: From Firʿaun to the Tuangs

• Discipline Is Not a Cage

• The Courage of Being Rooted

Reflections as the month of Ramadan unfolds

When We Choose to Let Go

• Equipping the Called

• Setting Godly Boundaries

AI Spirituality is a mirror of self that doesn’t necessarily lead to the mystery of God.

Science and Health

• The Full-Body Retina: How Octopuses See With Their Skin

• The Phantom Chill: Why Dead Bodies Get Goosebumps

• The ‘Alpha Wolf’ Lie: Why the Ultimate Biological Flex is Completely Fake

Our scientific future

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

The Art of The Choke

• ‘This is not the football we fight for, nor the Africa we believe in’ — Afcon final disgrace

• LIV South Africa — Bawling Bryson, beer and the Brawl of the Boets (the PGA are watching)

Tech and AI

AI Safety Newsletter #10: How we stop AGI, and what we build instead

• The AI Productivity Paradox: Why Your Robot Assistant is Ruining Your Life

• The CAPTCHA Conspiracy: How Google Tricked Humanity into Building Self-Driving Cars for Free

• Clippy en Simboliese Protes

• Jy is 'n Aanlyn Proefkonyn: Kreatiwiteit as Verhandelbare Data

First the Em Dash, Now Everything?

MacBook Neo testing + innovations from Spain

• The quantam threat to encryption is real, but you can sleep easy

• The man who used AI to build a cancer vaccine for his dog

• Nvidia and Uber just upended the robotaxi market

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

Falafel: Pièce de Résistance

• De Kleine Schuur

• Where’s Bowie?

• The Plaasmol Padstal

• A kuier at “Ek & Djy Vissery”

Café la Palette Rue de Seine Paris 2/3

• Namaqua Spring Flower Safari

• Cape Town’s Ultimate Scenic Hiking Adventure

• Face-to-Face with Rockhopper Penguins

• The Call of the Wild

• Scenic Wine Trails of Franschhoek

• Three Days of History, Culture and Wildlife in Gauteng

• Luxury Sailing Along Cape Town’s Stunning Coast

• Cape Town Trails and Tours for Every Explorer

• The Karoo’s Artistic Heart

• The Valley of Wine and Roses

Hiking at Summer’s End

I’m heading out for a walk

• Patchwork Counties

• Episode 60: Mergin with the Wild Beyond

Spring is on the way…

the kiepersols will see you now

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

This post is too long to be opened in email, so I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

You all did it again. Amazing. Isn’t there something wonderful in showing up and putting words out there?

And for those of you who had an off week, or are having an off month or year, don’t despair. Writing will be here for you when you’re ready or need it again. I promise. For now, you can read and enjoy the other writing available, letting it stew in your subconscious until something magical happens.

This digest covers the period 8 - 15 March. A reminder that if you’d like to be included you need to write a post not a note.

The reason I made this choice is that we can all share other things on notes that we didn’t write, and so if I had to start searching there for your original content I might be here all week treading through all the funny / irritating / enraging / clever things you’ve shared from other writers.

So you need to publish a post, make sure that your posts are visible on your profile, and I’ll check every person on the list each week to make sure I don’t miss yours.

Welcome again to all the new joiners to the list and who have recently subscribed. Hope you enjoy!

Events this week:

• is hosting a writing workshop focussed on writing speculative fiction on Friday the 20th from 9am to 1pm. There are just four spots left. All the details here

• will be launching her latest book, The Woman and Her Stars, at the NRF|SAOO in Observatory, Cape Town on Thursday the 19th at 6.30pm. Tickets via Quicket.

Events next week

• FynbosLIFE Botanical Art Auction is happening on 24 March. All the details via ’s post here.

Have a goodie,

Share

Here are some of the themes we have to enjoy this week.

• Agriculture (13)

• Arts & Culture (10)

• Birth, Fertility, Parenting (1)

• Books, Writing & Literature (13)

• Business, Work & Economics (7)

• Climate, Environment, Sustainability (2)

• Education (2)

• Feminism & Gender Politics (2)

• History (3)

• Mining (5)

• Personal Essay & Memoir (31)

• Poetry (4)

• Politics, Media, and Government (22)

• Relationships (1)

• Religion, Spirituality & Theology (9)

• Science & Health (5)

• Sports & Fitness (1)

• Tech and AI (2)

• Travel and Food (10)

Enjoy them!

Agriculture

• South Africa’s maize export activity remains weak

• Cannabis and Hemp’s slow journey of policy formulation in South Africa

• How the Middle East issues will likely impact South Africa’s agriculture

• Welcome to a period of high input costs in South African agriculture

• I’m not in an anti-cannabis bus, folks

• We get to see the outcome of South Africa’s 2025 agricultural fortunes today

• South Africa’s Agriculture Grew in 2025, But Foot-And-Mouth Disease and African Swine Fever May Present Challenges This Year

• The mood in South Africa’s agriculture and agribusiness remains subdued

• Why are South African farmers feeling downbeat about business conditions in the country?

• Our broad view of South Africa’s agricultural conditions

• A window on the crop conditions around the world

• Implications of Middle East conflict for SA agriculture

• South Africa still has an ample soybean harvest on the horizon

Arts & Culture

Marty Supreme

Africa Is Too Hot For Boobs To Be Immoral: Dissecting Mrs Tinubu and Livingstone

Release!

Beautiful end

It’s Ping Pong VS The Performing Arts

Jung, The Hero Archetype, And the Perils of Timothée Chalamet’s Enormous Fame

Me & George

13 Songs for Peace & Freedom

Wild Light Retreat

in praise of the public swimming pool

Share

Birth, Fertility, Parenting

Many Small Battles

Books, Writing & Literature

March: the heat of the season

Plodding on through the (heavy) writing life

Body Problems Launch and The Miraculous Mandarin

An interview with Ntendeni Luvhengo

Cover reveal for Braided River

• Watch! Andrea Nattrass on South African Publishing and Publishing with Pan Macmillan

• A new offering from me — Close Reading

The powers of “and” and “&”

The Knysna Book Festival

Brave New World — Huxley’s Actual Warning

the miracle of mindfulness

AI Killed the Writer

you have to be prepared to wait

Business, Work & Economics

• Adrenal Debt: Why Pushing Through is a High-Interest Loan You Can’t Afford

• The Gut-Brain Connection: The Hidden CEO

• Stop trying to be a ‘Productivity God.’ You’re just red-lining the engine.

Banking & Investment Products Weren’t Built for Her

'n Happie te Klein, 'n Debat te Groot

Clans, corporations … and clones

Representation Is a Heavy Business Model

Climate, Environment and Sustainability

The Ocean Has Lost Its Radicals

Join our (free) Climate Media Lab — just a few spaces left

Education

Red carpet economics

Africa’s Deep Mathematical Past and Its Present Crisis

Feminism & Gender Politics

Rest in Power, Prof. A. Lynn Bolles (1949 - 2026)

The Manosphere & the Cult of Personality

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

History

The Red Crown of the Cape

• The Cobra Effect: How to Accidentally Fund a Venomous Army

• The One-Man Extinction Event: The Tragic Toxic Genius of Thomas Midgley Jr.

Mining

• MiningIsHuman Story 1: Silver, Guano, and What the Land Kept

• MiningIsHuman Story 2: Manganese, Godl, Tin and the Western Cape

• MiningIsHuman Story 3: The Search for Copper

• MiningIsHuman Story 4: Springbok District

• MiningIsHuman Story 5: The Copper That Remained

Personal Essay & Memoir

Why Didn’t They Tell Me About the Eyelashes?

• Mornings for one

• The death of flirting on Grindr

• Belladonna

• An Autumn Heatwave

How far have you come?

My AI writing tool experience

This morning

‘Everyone else can’t be doing this?’

How four chickens became food critics in Pringle Bay

The Woman I Never Met

A trade exchange

Remembering Barry, my brother

Die moedertong en ander tonge

Cape Town Cycle Tour and Hope

• Sunday Scribble #13: Nothing from my side

• Sunday Scribble #14: Winning my first ever grant and what it taught me about audacity

Twenty-Five Songs for my Quarter Quell

The Weight of Love, Loss and Gratitude

Things I would buy if I won the lottery

The Most Dangerous Sentence in the English Language: “I Can’t.”

Words That Make Men

When Celebration Isn’t About You

• Seven-ping Sunday (5)

• Seven-ping Sunday (6)

Merging with the Wild Beyond

Hand on the Wall

The Sandwich Generation Goes to the Coast

We Pray For The Fall of the American Empire

Scenes from a Campus Story

Oor vuur en pêrels en pers hare

Subscribe now

Poetry

• I beg you

• Paint me

The Interstice

The Tuesday Pause: Part 14: Save Changes

Politics, Media and Government

Who Speaks for the African Majority Now?

Feedback and other forms in which we are feeding societal psychosis

Gauteng by ‘n Kruispad

• DinkWeer Donderdag | Teen die Strome met meer Dostojefski’s

• Vandag me OntLaer (13 Maart 2026)

Die Onvrede van Vereeniging

Does Iran have a right to defend itself?

• The World as System

• Part II — The Stewardship Problem

• Part III — Stewardship in Practice

• Part IV — The Failure of Systems Thinking in Modern Governance

Sovereignty Imperatives and Regional Realignments: A Liberal Institutionalist

and

• The Week Ahead: 9 - 13 March 2026

• The Week That Was: 9 - 13 March 2026

Paperless, Powerless: Cape Town’s E-Billing and the Quiet Erasure of Our Elders

Oil just hit $110 a barrel: and climbing — SA in for a rough ride

True Story: An Open Letter to Geordin Hill-Lewis, mayor of CapeTown, and Alan Winde, premier of the Western Cape

• Was Mehdi Hassan Infiltrating London Mosques for MI5?

• Tucker Carlson’s Deceptive CIA Persecution Story

From state, to party, to the racket

George Soros - the astonishing demonisation of a successful philanthropist

Speech, Theory and Trump’s War

Relationships

Forget Your Therapist. Your Car Does It Better.

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• Why Muslims Cannot Celebrate the Killing of Other Muslims

• When the World Sleeps

• The Qunūt of the Last Nights

• This is Not Checkers

• Shāh Māt: When Winning Becomes Too Expensive

• The Lord of This House Will Defend It

• The Body That Remembers

Scenes From a Dream

The Spectrum of Love: From Henry Drummon to Paulo Coelho

Science and Health

Africans sign away health data in deals with US

• The Front-Wheel Drive Tongue: Why Frogs Are Biological Catapults

• The 1904 St. Louis Marathon: The Most Absurd Race in Human History

• The Phantom Pee: Why Poking Your Belly Button Feels Like a Glitch in the Matrix

The space economy — suddenly everyone wants to go back to the moon

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

See no evil and speak no evil. Do the empty words of the IOC and Fifa make them complicit in the Iran war

Tech and AI

Grieving what we’ve lost in the age of AI

When agentic AI goes rogue with crypto

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

• The Long Curve of the Garden Route

• Dramatic Cliffs and Ocean Vistas at Africa’s Tip

• Explore South Africa’s Karoo Wilderness

• Luxury and Wonder at the Palace of the Lost City

• Nature’s Playground on the Wild Coast

• A Serene Village by the Sea

• A Cape Town Escape for Two

I Once Walked Over the Pyrenees — The Story Continues: Pamplona, Spain

A note from the road — almost

South Africa …

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

This post is too long to be opened in email, so I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

Subscribe now

Wednesday Tuesday Monday Digest is here. Yahoo!

The weeks and days are zooming by. The eleventh week of the year already. I’m clearly juggling too many balls, but this is one I didn’t want to put down.

Well done everyone who put fingers to keyboards and got the words now this week. 115 new pieces over the period of 1 - 7 March.

Welcome to all the new joiners to the list and who have recently subscribed. Hope you enjoy!

Events this week:

• is running a mindfulness and writing workshop from 9am to 3pm in Houghton Estate, Johannesburg. Details here.

• is hosting a free webinar with Andrea Nattrass of Pan Macmillan South African on the 12th of March from 1pm - 2pm. Details here.

• is running a writing workshop focussed on writing speculative fiction on Saturday 14 March from 9am - 1pm in Newlands, Cape Town. Details here.

• will be at the Books on the Bay festival this weekend. Details here.

• is at the Knysna book festival this weekend. Details here

• This Saturday the Silent Book Club () will meet at the Artscape in Cape Town. Details here

• On Monday next week the is performing a Classically romantic concert. Details here

Have a goodie,

Share

Here are some of the themes we have to enjoy this week.

• Agriculture (9)

• Arts & Culture (5)

• Birth, Fertility, Parenting (4)

• Books, Writing & Literature (17)

• Business, Work & Economics (6)

• Education (1)

• Feminism & Gender Politics (1)

• Fiction (1)

• History (3)

• Personal Essay & Memoir (25)

• Poetry (7)

• Politics, Media, and Government (16)

• Religion, Spirituality & Theology (8)

• Science & Health (3)

• Sports & Fitness (1)

• Tech and AI (1)

• Travel and Food (7)

Enjoy them!

Agriculture

• An end to La Niña rains in South African agriculture

• Presidential Envoy for Agriculture & Land Reform

• Early impressions of how the Middle East issues will likely impact South Africa’s Agriculture

• Botswana easing restrictions on SA vegetable imports

• OBITUARY: Gift Mafuleka championed the progress of black farmers in South Africa

• Jobs, Growth, and Structural Changes in South Africa’s Agriculture

• SONA 2026 clearly outlines agricultural priorities

• South Africa’s agricultural machinery sales remain resilient

• Notes from our Western Cape agricultural roadshow

Arts & Culture

• Sequins scandal and a second act

• A fabulously audacious spectacle

Seggae Man

Reminder! Classically Romantic Concert on 15 March

Reflections on Patterns in Media: Power, Technology and Society

Share

Birth, Fertility, Parenting

The Sleep Training Myth: Why 700+ Danish Psychologists Declared War on ‘Crying It Out’

and Motherhood: but make it Yours, Vol. 17

Tears, Tools and Treasure

Joy, Gratitude and Grief

Books, Writing & Literature

Some comfort

The Mountain (Which Mountain?)

The cover is out

When Rain Clouds Gather

How (some) writing can bring joy

Next Saturday: Body Problems Launch and The Miraculous Mandarin

TGIF

Rational Defiance is Live

An exquisite corpse

The Story Explorers Club | March 2026

Six Months Later: Rejection, Mortality, and Beginning Again

A Second-Hand Book and the Wayward Women Who Travelled the World

On accounting in Sumeria

Getting down to brass tacks

Benni’s back in the hood (somewhat)

Kindle Deal Alert!

SBC @ Bree St Sunday Closure

Business, Work & Economics

• The Imposter’s Tax: The High Cost of Knowing it All

• The Leadership Vacuum: Why the Top is So Quiet

• The Shame of the Pivot: Why Changing Your Mind is Expertise

How to Build Your Hydra

The Situational Awareness Gap

What market volatility taught me about myself

Education

How Laugher Builds a Human Bridge Across the Digital Divide

Feminism & Gender Politics

The Sound of Belonging

Fiction

Without Warning

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

History

The Day Badr Reached the Cape Flats

Apartheid and The Evil Eye: SA’s Allergy to Visible Black People

Die Kommunikasie-wapen in Oorloë

Personal Essay & Memoir

• Let the Pumpkin Fritters Walk

• Boeber Night - Ons is op die Berg

Swimming in the Year of the Horse

The Kaffir in me: Ndili Kafula!

• The weight of naming

• What my grandmother knew about clothes

• The quiet economy of friendship

• Proof of grief

The First of the March Lily & the End of Summer

Notes on Walking

What sex and community have in common

Ndabeni Blues: Love Among the Ruins

He speaks another language

Commitment devices

The apology you refuse to receive

Hope in honey

Is suicide painless? Stop the world. I want to get off.

The Personal as Political

Pickles & Pretzels

• Sidenote #1

• Our Roots Are Our Foundation

Things that are chic

Walkabout - A Forgotten Pastime

13 Songs for Peace and Freedom

Seven-ping Sunday (4)

Subscribe now

Poetry

Living Poetry in Southern Africa 20

I Write to Write

Negotiations for peace in the Middle East

A Poem to the Chief Rubbish of South Africa

• Doubt Kills

• Pleasure is a Freedom Song

The Tuesday Pause: Part 13: His Majesty

Politics, Media and Government

Die Onttroning van Mandla Mandela

• The State of the Nation Address: Connecting Democratic Authority to Administrative Action

• On Terror Lekota

The $170 Billion Bonfire: A Financial Autopsy of Modern War

• Schrödinger se Kaapstad

• Voldag Vrydag met OntLaer

• Onderhoud oor Iran

• What the War on Iran Reveals About Power

• War in Iran

The superiority of Western civilisation?

A firm budget

and

• The week ahead

• The Week That Was: 2- 6 March

Is this war just the start towards the real war coming soon?

Understanding the attack on Iran

The Present War and Iran’s Long History

Share

Religion, Spirituality & Theology

• When the Lights Went Out

• He Found You

• When Moral Urgency Forgets How to Listen

• Between Two Minarets

• The Lord of Daybreak

VIDA-debat is meer as Teologie

When Your Old Man Detection Device is Sounding an Alarm!

Mesmerised by the Moon

Science and Health

• The Butter Deception: Why Yellow Doesn’t Always Mean Healthy

• The Mutant Brains of London Taxi Drivers: How a Map Physically Rewired the Human Mind

• The Avian Oncologist: How Pigeons Learned to Diagnose Breast Cancer

Subscribe now

Sports & Fitness

Once upon a snotklap with Killer Kiwis, Dances with Wolves and Russian bears

Tech and AI

Intellectual Shallowness

Subscribe now

Travel & Food

• The Best Time to Visit South Africa

• Swim with Seals in Cape Town

• Cape Town in Full Colour

• A Day at Lourensford Wine Estate

• Majestic Lions of Pilanesberg

• Sodwana Bay: The Jewel of KwaZulu-Natal

Episode 59: Tales from Albion

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

This post is too long to be opened in email, so I suggest opening it on the site or app! It’s worth it.

If this is your first time reading, welcome. This digest is compiled weekly by me, , with the aim of bringing eyes to South African content and building a little South African community of writers on this platform.

I’m getting a few DMs a week on how to be featured and it’s really simple: write a post and publish it. I’m not able to scan everyone’s notes (great as they are when I do get the chance), so you’ll need to publish a post. Here’s how to do that, in case you’re not sure.

Subscribe now

Happy Monday everyone,

A new week, a new month, and it kind of feels like a second new year after the longest February ever. We had our first rains of the season this weekend in Cape Town and the air is crisp and fresh this morning. Very pleasant indeed. It’s writing weather.

This week’s 136 posts are a real showcase of what writers on the platform are writing about - arts, agriculture, politics, books, creativity, the environment, health, science, sport. It’s all here.

Congrats to on being named Presidential Envoy on Agriculture and Land — see all his posts in our Agriculture section.

Events this week:

• will be chatting with Michiel Heyns about the latter’s new book, The Wildest Beauty (3 March)

• will be running a writing workshop in Cape Town (7 March)

Looking forward to seeing what’s produced next week!

Have a goodie,

Share

Here are some of the themes we have to enjoy this week.

• Agriculture (13)

• Arts & Culture (8)

• Birth, Fertility, Parenting (3)

• Books, Writing & Literature (16)

• Business, Work & Economics (10)

• Climate, Environment, Sustainability (1)

• Education (3)

• Feminism & Gender Politics (3)

• Fiction (3)

• History (3)

• Personal Essay & Memoir (15)

• Poetry (4)

• Politics, Media, and Government (25)

• Religion, Spirituality & Theology (9)

• Science & Health (6)

• Sports & Fitness (3)

• Tech and AI (1)

• Travel and Food (10)

Enjoy!

Agriculture

Huletts see Bitter Stryd (26 Feb)

• Uncertainty (21 Feb)

• South Africa’s maize export activity continues, but slowly, and mainly within the Southern Africa region (21 Feb)

• Trump, Tariffs and Uncertainty (22 Feb)

• Wheat farmers had a tough season in South Africa, but we don’t have supply issues (22 Feb)

• An appreciation note (23 Feb)

• South Africa stands ready to provide maize supplies to Kenya as the drought threatens the harvest there (23 Feb)

• The value of pushing for AGOA renewal in South Africa’s agriculture (24 Feb)

• Beef and dairy products are safe for consumption (25 Feb)

• South Africa is in for a better 2025-26 summer grains and oilseed production season (26 Feb)

• South Africa’s agricultural exports in 2025 reached a record US$15.1 billion, up 10% y/y (27 Feb)

• What is South Africa’s possible consumer food price inflation path for 2026? (27 Feb)

• South Africa has a record canola harvest in the 2025-26 season, but the season wasn’t without challenges (28 Feb)

Arts & Culture

The Hoodie (24 Feb)

The wait continues (23 Feb)

Where to watch the SAFTA film nominations (25 Feb)

“Know that your people walk with you” (28 Feb)

Thinking about local talent (25 Feb)

Dissolved (21 Feb)

Sewing is a knife, needlecraft is rebellion (24 Feb)

Take a pause. Take stock. Keep moving (21 Feb)

Share

Birth, Fertility, Parenting

My Mommy says I’m a Miracle (23 Feb)

and The Other Club (23 Feb)

You are invited: The Social Media Ban — Lessons from the Australian Frontline (26 Feb)

Books, Writing & Literature

and Finding Your Creative Confidence with author and personal mastery teacher, Cathy Park Kelly (25 Feb)

Book Club (26 Feb)

Hell is a Man Searching for Goodly Pearls (24 Feb)

The closest I ever came to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love (24 Feb)

• Mother Tongue Day, Precolonial Atlas and More (21 Feb)

• Spend your Saturday with Books and Art (27 Feb)

• Speculative fiction workshops in March (24 Feb)

• Free publishing workshop in March (online) (27 Feb)

Imagining progress (23 Feb)

Flash Writing Workshops (28 Feb)

On dragons (23 Feb)

The Bookish Month of March (25 Feb)

When Your Editor Says, ‘Blah’ (26 Feb)

About Books | Edition #26 (26 Feb)

The Witch of Benbar’s Cross: You’re invited to the launch (24 Feb)

From London to the Mines (21 Feb)

Business, Work & Economics

• Your Calendar Is A Crime Scene: And You Left The Door Unlocked. (23 Feb)

• Why your self-worth is a high-risk liability. (25 Feb)

• The Freeze: Navigating the Fragility of 2026 (27 Feb)

Real power is not a throne. It’s a Hydra (24 Feb)

• From Managed Decline to Strategic Reset Part III (23 Feb)

• From Managed Decline to Strategic Reset Part IV (24 Feb)

• From Managed Decline to Strategic Reset Part V (25 Feb)

• From Managed Decline to Strategic Reset Part VI (26 Feb)

How I structure my ETF portfolio as a South African (21 Feb)

The Colonial Script Behind the ‘Poor Work Ethic’ Claim (26 Feb)

Climate, Environment, Sustainability

Delay, distract, deny and despair (21 Feb)

Education

Mother language miracle (21 Feb)

South Africa’s ‘Reading Crisis’: Flaws in the Methodology (26 Feb)

Research quality and ways to improve it (27 Feb)

Feminism & Gender Politics

African Men Loved IShowSpeed's Cows: Grootmanism, Girl Besties, and How Class Subverts Age (23 Feb)

I built a life they could not laugh at (24 Feb)

Gender, Race and Class in the Digital Age (23 Feb)

Fiction

Are We There Yet? (25 Feb)

Capture The Flag (21 Feb)

By Morning I Am a Weeping Fig (21 Feb)

Share South African Writers' Pub Hub

History

The Plate That Walked (26 Feb)

Why do we find it so hard to care about the rights of other people? (24 Feb) [PAID]

Politiek bo Prestasie: Deel 4 | Frankryk voor die Val (27 Feb)

Personal Essay & Memoir

The joy of creating … (27 Feb)

F is for Firebird (22 Feb)

FourZero Monthly Picks (26 Feb)

Loss in the time of trees (24 Feb)

I like big words (28 Feb)

Did I tell you about the time my mother died? (21 Feb)

Between Roots and Wings (26 Feb)

Joy be my guide (22 Feb)

My Year of Living Dangerously (28 Feb)

Things that make me laugh in delight (22 Feb)

Always Pack the Bully Beef (24 Feb)

Seven-pin Sunday (3) (22 Feb)

To the sea (26 Feb)

3 things to remember when you feel low (27 Feb)

When we die (23 Feb)

Subscribe now

Poetry

Until the Day When Eyes Will Stare (22 Feb)

Sussex or Essex Park (23 Feb)

Stygian Folds (25 Feb)

The Tuesday Pause: Part 12: Gone Too Soon (24 Feb)