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| Arts/Culture Review
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Art for art’s sake?
IN Africa there is arguably no or possibly little breathing space for such a thing as art for art’s sake. A sense of the social runs the whole gamut of all that man talks and walks, all that laces his environment (abstract or concrete) today as it did years back with the Picasso at the Tsodilo Hills, carving pages from his diary on stone. Whether it be the fire in the sun or the monkey swinging from tree to tree, the artist will always have an eye for seeing the social, even in the seemingly undisputed natural.Lifestyle; of love and cultures
ONE hears often enough that love is an international language and if love is a language proper or just a kind, then it must also be a culture. Last week some of these thoughts turned in my mind as I sat through one of the most sacred ceremonies of human life, the realisation of ‘holy matrimony’.Rivalry and squabbles in a royal tale
Tshekedi Khama: The Master Whose Dogs Barked At, Gasebalwe Seretse, published by Gasebalwe Seretse, (2004)
Available from Exclusive Books, P110
BEING an unabashed republican, I find it tricky to read and respond to books about feudal succession disputes. In the words of cultural and literary theorist, Walter Benjamin: “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognise it the way it really was. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger.” The moment of danger in Gasebalwe Seretse’s book is the royal rivalries and squabbles that led to the ousting of Tshekedi Khama (1905-59) from the Bamangwato throne. The position of the author is that the demise of Tshekedi was the result of machinations of a “brood of vipers”, royal uncles who nursed animosity towards him.
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