About two weeks ago i published an email from a friend of mine who is white, male, South African and presently living in the UK who had some thoughts, feelings, questions and frustrations about life in South Africa and some of the conversations we'd been having on here. i shared his email under the guise of 'Bob' and invited a few of my friends to respond, all of which you can catch up with over [...]
Another guest on Friday was our mate Portal Pete who has moved with his wife, Sarah, into Manenberg and is running a drug rehabilitation program among other things, and he had these words to say: Great food etc. It didn’t feel awkward to me. It felt OK. Living and working in what some call missional community in Manenberg, I feel and cause offence on a fairly regular basis. We’re learning that offence most often leads [...]
My lovely wife Val was of course the hostess for Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and she shares some of her thoughts from the evening: The idea is simple: gather good people around good food and good discussion and see what happens. So we did. We turned off technology and tuned in to people. It was messy and it was chaotic, it was painful and it [...]
Daniel was another of the guests from Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and he shares some of his thoughts from the evening: We need to learn to listen to one another. Such a simple concept, "I stop talking, you talk", but very hard to execute. On Friday, Brett invited me to a dinner with a number of other peeps from different ages, colour, [...]
My friend, Rebecca, who has written before on my blog - a message to South Africa over here, and about her journey with dyslexia over here - wrote this as a status update the other day: Dear racist old man on the Pavilion escalator. I'm sorry you smashed your phone screen and that it's going to cost you R4000 to fix. But you don't have to call the salesman you talked to that [insert derogatory name] [...]
This is my friend Rob Davey who lives in Zimbabwe. i have not seen Rob for something like 10 to 15 years i imagine and yet we recently connected and i asked him if he would write a piece for this blog. i have a saying that 'Quality Shows' and with some people you just identify that immediately - Rob is one of these people - reading this piece will give you that impression as [...]
i like to call myself 'The Eternal Optimist' This is particularly true when it comes to sport, and especially cricket. If it is still mathematically possible, i hold on hope to the very end, even if it looks really likely that we are going to lose. And then get genuinely surprised when we do. i like to think i am the same with people to a large extent. i want to believe the best of [...]
So, the other day i tried to take a few steps back in this ongoing Race and Reconciliation conversation we've been having over here with this post trying to see if we could all agree that the incredibly out-of-proportion extreme gap between rich and poor in our country [and the world at large] is not okay. Most people stayed away from engaging at all [maybe it's cos of the busy time of the year, but [...]
From Worst Christian Book covers of 2014 to how to respond to Trolls or other people online you disagree strongly with, to a whole bunch of really helpful, insightful and great articles on race-related things and some reflections on our time at Robben Island, this has been another crazy week of much to read, watch and ingest, and i would hate for you to miss any of it and so i have compiled this Don't-Miss-Out [...]
i am almost overwhelmed by the amount of posts i have been discovering or people have been linking me to when it comes to race. What has been amazing has been so many of them have been so incredibly good. i imagine there are a lot of people who see 'Anothe ace post by Brett Fish' and roll their eyes or reach for the unsubscribe. But i am confident that there are enough people following [...]