Fezokuhle Mthonti

Johannesburg

Staff Writer at New Frame

Writer. Editor. Researcher. Living in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Articles

Zoë Modiga and the politics of love

Nov 24, 2024 | mg.co.za | Fezokuhle Mthonti

In November last year, critically acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison sat down with fellow writer Pam Houston to discuss Morrison’s eighth novel titled Love for Oprah Magazine. When asked why she had chosen that name, Morrison responded by saying, “[Love] is easily the emptiest cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion — because hatred is involved in it, too.
Thandiswa Mazwai’s technologies of resistance

Nov 7, 2024 | mg.co.za | Fezokuhle Mthonti

On 2 June, four days after democratic South Africa’s seventh general election, publicist Maria McCloy captured Thandiswa Mazwai’s performance at the IEC gala dinner on her phone. The footage is an intimate portal into a nationally charged conversation. Through this pixelated technology, we hear the chords of Mazwai’s song titled emini from her fourth studio album Sankofa. The percussive stomps of the drum call the militants to action.
Fezokuhle Mthonti

Oct 30, 2024 | znetwork.org | Fezokuhle Mthonti

This August, during Z’s fundraising drive, we are asking you to take action with us. It’s time to get up and stand up, not just in opposition to all the horrors unfolding around us, but to stand up FOR something in unity and strength. To provide a forum and tools for diverse activists to propose, not just oppose, has been Z’s mission for nearly 50 years.
Writers For A New World

Oct 30, 2024 | znetwork.org | Fezokuhle Mthonti

The debacle around Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest book shows us that no matter a writer’s individual acclaim, the liberal media establishment will never tolerate anything that fundamentally challenges its racist edifice. In Michael Neocosmos’ excellent book, Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics, the author presents three expressions of universal humanism across time and space. The first is articulated in 1222 in the Mande Charter.
FEZOKUHLE MTHONTI - Writers for a New World -

Oct 21, 2024 | theelephant.info | Fezokuhle Mthonti

Log into your member account to listen to this article. Not a member? Join the herd. In Michael Neocosmos’ excellent book, Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics, the author presents three expressions of universal humanism across time and space. The first is articulated in 1222 in the Mande Charter. The expression is simple: toute vie (humaine) est une vie,(every human life is a life).
Siyabonga Mthembu: Musical prayers said by hymn-self

Oct 10, 2024 | mg.co.za | Fezokuhle Mthonti

Siyabonga Mthembu is no ordinary vocalist. His capacity to invoke the worlds of the seen and unseen through a deliberately meditative pace and his ability to hasten us into urgency with exploding vocal riffs and repetitive plosives situate him well beyond the confinements of genre. Mthembu invites us into prayer, action and revolution through his urgent prose and lyricism. Each note situates us in new worlds, new dimensions and new conceptions of our shared oral histories.
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: TOP CREATIVES UNITE FOR DON JULIO’S MEXICO RESIDENCY

Oct 8, 2024 | yourluxury.africa | Fezokuhle Mthonti

It’s early on a Friday morning and there’s a flurry of activity at The White House in Bryanston. Crew members intermingle with hurried creatives as they sort out the inner workings of the Don Julio photoshoot for the launch of the Por Amor (For Love) Artist Residency. YourLuxury Africa is part of the mix of teams making their way in and out of the expansive mansion to shoot the October cover story.
A phoenix from the ashes

Oct 3, 2024 | mg.co.za | Fezokuhle Mthonti

James Baldwin’s 1963 collection of non-fiction essays The Fire Next Time takes its title from a couplet from the old African-American spiritual Mary Don’t You Weep. This song, which originates from the time before the American Civil War, is said to be a coded message of hope, resilience and resistance.
‘Reflections: On Black Girlhood’ and the politics of representation

Sep 12, 2024 | mg.co.za | Fezokuhle Mthonti

A 30-minute drive west of Estcourt is a small village called Emangweni. Emangweni is characterised by its reddish soil, which gives way to crater-like potholes in the rainy season. The sounds and smells of Emangweni animate my earliest memories of girlhood. Deep into the hilly KwaZulu-Natal terrain are the homes built by maternal and paternal grandparents. Memories, like words, can often be unstable purveyors of truth, as African American writer Kiese Laymon has argued.
The Art of Connection

Sep 5, 2024 | yourluxury.africa | Fezokuhle Mthonti |Norma Young

On 15 September 1987, African American Nobel laureate and writer, Toni Morrison, sat down with American journalist, Don Swaim. Toni was in the midst of her book tour for the then newly released book, Beloved. The conversation that ensued was a meditation on the brutality of slavery, violence, and the reification of Black life. In her musings, Toni poignantly remarked that, for her, “art is the restoration of order”.