The Cheeky Natives

Send us Fan Mail “By unflinchingly depicting people in a township getting on with the everyday business of being themselves without the overarching gaze of whiteness, Yizo Yizo showcased that we were and are not as integrated as those Castle adverts had been leading us to believe. To say that Yizo Yizo is the greatest TV series of all time would sound hyperbolic to some, but what is certain is tha...

Send us Fan Mail “Every morning Portia paraded down Pritchard Street to the offices where she worked on the corner of Market Street and Von Brandis Street. Even though her shoes squashed her corns and made her feet swell she bit down the pain and soldiered on. She practiced walking in her heels diligently in her apartment. Many times before she had fallen flat on her face leaving her son reeling w...

Send us Fan Mail “To imagine these women is to face their questions. They are difficult. They are painful. They are necessary. We cannot turn away even as we know in our hearts that we collectively fear facing these women because they will demand that their questions be answered. We know that their questions will release a torrent of granite boulders that will destroy the versions of us and the na...

Send us Fan Mail ‘History dooms us to condemn the guiltless (and ourselves with them) when we don’t choose mercy over sacrifice. Homophobia in God’s name is horseshit. The blasphemer who condemns gays in the name of God loves neither gays nor God. No one who hates his brother, whom he has seen, can claim to love God, whom he has not seen, for all we know, God could be lesbian’ – Siya Khumalo, You...

Send us Fan Mail “I studied for the whole year without paying the university, so I was in debt. I was hungry for success. But, during that year, I was physically hungry, too. It was difficult to study and do well when you had an empty stomach and, added to that, were not going to see your results at the end of the semester. I knew that I was paying the price of fitting into previously white spaces...

Send us Fan Mail ' "Why don’t we do that now? Paint?” Grace tried. And Mary would exhale the wordless sigh of a woman who had surrendered her dreams to the world too soon.' -Grace, a novel by Barbara BoswellDr Barbara Boswell(@BobbiBoswell) is an African feminist, writer, lecturer and mother whose novel “Grace” is the subject of our last edition of our Women in Literature series for...

Send us Fan Mail 'Motherhood is not for me, because what if - like heart disease and haemophila - the ability to abandon one's own children is hereditary? it's not a risk I'm prepared to take.' - Sara-Jayne King Sara-Jayne King is British South African journalist and writer who has travelled the world in her quest for identity while working as a renowned journalist. Her me...

Send us Fan Mail ‘She comes to me in snatches - I remember pieces of her laugh, the look she gave when she was upset. Sometimes I sniff the bottle of perfume of hers that I saved, but it doesn't come close to the robustness of her smell. It is her, flattened. This is what it's really like to lose. It is complete and irreversible. How pernicious these little things called memories are. Th...

Send us Fan Mail “The rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes —unless we topple the Mubaraks in our mind, in our bedrooms, and on our street corners — our revolution has not yet begun.”This quote ends the first chapter of Mona Eltahawy’s Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution. Mona Eltahawy is an a...

Send us Fan Mail Dr Danai Mupotsa is a lecturer in the field of African Literature. As a scholar and a writer she is committed to feminist, queer and anti-racist praxis. At the time of the recording of the podcast, the final touches were being put to Danai’s first collection of poetry titled ‘feeling and ugly.’ Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sat down with the quietly brilliant Dr Danai Mupotsa to discuss th...

Send us Fan Mail Lidudumalingani first caught our attention with his 2016 Caine Prize winning short story, “Memories we lost”, which discusses mental illness and issues of access in an often forgotten rural context, it was poignantand powerful giving a voice to a population often ignored. Lidudumalingani is a master of many trades as a writer, photographer and filmmaker. After the success of winni...

Send us Fan Mail “You learnt it was human not womanly to cry.” ― Tapiwa MugabeTapiwa Mugabe is the author of a poetry collection called Zimbabwe. This book tackles topics around masculinity, immigration, love and family relations. In this episode, Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane conversed with Tapiwa about when he started writing, books, life in the UK and his future projects. Tapiwa also speaks about his...

Send us Fan Mail Migritude is a term coined by the ineffable Shailja Patel which denotes the migrant attitude. In her book, Migritude, Shailja tells the story of migrant attitude through prose, poetry and short stories. Shailja is an internationally acclaimed Kenyan poet, playwright, theatre artist, and political activist. In this episode of the podcast, Patel sat and spoke to Dr Alma-Nalisha abou...

Send us Fan Mail ‘If we aren’t intersectional, some of us, the most vulnerable, are going to fall through the cracks.’ - Kimberlé Crenshaw Intersectionality has been a buzzword for some time now. The term was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. In this episode, Letlhogonolo sat down with Profesor Kimberlé Crenshaw to speak about intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, race relations in South Afr...

Send us Fan Mail In the latest episode of the Cheeky Natives, Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sat with the incomparable Zukiswa Wanner to discuss books, life and almost everything in between. Over the course of an afternoon, there was a wealth of mics dropped and wisdom shared. In this hilarious and heartwarming episode with Zukiswa Wanner who is a daughter of the soil in the most true sense of the word. Zam...

Send us Fan Mail 'But look how she dances when she thinks no one is watching. Look at the balm oozing from her bones she is my pomegranate promise in this land of the living' -Ashlee Haze Ashlee Haze is a poet and spoken word artist who has performed at the Apollo Theater. Her collection of poetry 'Land of the living' is a must have. In many ways, the book is an ode to Black wo...

Send us Fan Mail ‘This poem is about joy. how long it stayedhow we remember itin usalways’ - Ebony StewartThese words are the last lines from a poem titled ‘This poem is a joy’ by the prodigious Ebony Stewart. Ebony was named Champion of the Women of the World Poetry Slam 2017 for her exceptionally crafted poem ‘Common Fatigue’. She has recently published her first book titled ‘Home. Girl. Hood’ -...

Send us Fan Mail “because writing is soft and a hard place, all at once.” – Yrsa Daley-Ward Instagram poetry seems to dominate the modern way of consuming poetry and also in many ways a way to introduce people to amazing poets such as Nayyirah Waheed, Warsan Shire, Upile Chisala and Yrsa-Daley Ward. This episode features the ever-brilliant, multi-talented, gorgeous model and Insta famous poet, Yrs...

Send us Fan Mail "Black Joy is one of the entities that has gotten us through the many trials and tribulations of our existence around the world." -Kleaver Cruz Kleaver is the creator of The Black Joy Project, a digital and real-world movement to center Black joy as a form of resistance. He loves being Black, Queer, Dominican and the myriad of elements that comprise who he is with the un...

Send us Fan Mail Hlomu, Zandile and Naledi. Three seemingly random names but whose stories our readers are so invested in, you'd swear they were real. Dudu Busani-Dube, author of the Hlomu series, new editor and poster girl for the power of self-publishing joins Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele to talk about all things Hlomu: the wife series. In this frank and heartwarming episode, we reveal the machinat...

Send us Fan Mail "To discover and name what shapes us is to engage in the work of history" -Darnell L. Moore. On this episode of the podcast, Letlhogonolo speaks to acclaimed writer and Black queer thinker Darnell L. Moore about his upcoming book 'No Ashes in the Fire' to be published in May 2018. This is the first public interview about this book. bell hooks describes this boo...

Send us Fan Mail ‘A dose of nectar’ with Upile Chisala. So begins a conversation that can only be described as a black girl communion of spirit and ideas. Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sat down with the ineffable Upile Chisala, author of two anthologies of poetry to discuss her role in the archiving of black womxn’s stories. After her second sold out performance in South Africa, the Cheeky Natives had the...

Send us Fan Mail Toni Morrison says "If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it." A recent story revealed the tragic news of a Columbia PhD student shot in the head and killed by his boyfriend. Domestic violence is often spoken about in the context of heterosexual relationships but research shows that domestic violence i...

Send us Fan Mail What's up Cheeky? In the latest episode of the podcast we check in with Dr Slay and black boy magic, Letlhogonolo to find out just what's been popping over the past few months. It's a poignant episode with musings on love, life and grief. There's some wonderful meditations on the power of friendship and even some revelations around romance. It's just been...

Send us Fan Mail "This book is both personal and political - it is about how I was made by the liberation struggle and how I was broken by its protagonists'." - Sisonke Msimang The Cheeky Natives sat down at a beautiful venue to chat to the incomparable #BlackGirlMagic Sisonke Msimang about her memoir 'Always Another Country'. Her book has only been out for more than a wee...