BrightLights@BookBuddy

'I guess the best place to start a story is at the beginning. My name is Lindiwe Hani. I was born on 27 December 1980 to Limpho and Martin Thembisile Hani. My father was also known as Chris. My parents named me Lindiwe, which in isiXhosa means ''the daughter we have waited for''. In that year, a leap year, the world's population sat at 4 434 682 000, the Voyager 1 space probe confirmed the existence of a moon of Saturn that was to be named Janus (or Janusz) - how's that for prophetic - and Robert Mugabe was elected president of Zimbabwe.'  It took me a day and some to get over reading Lindiwe Hani's autobiography, Being Chris Hani's Daughter , because I desperately wanted to hang on to the fuzzy feeling of being a confidant to its brave author that developed as I read the book. This is precisely why some biographies are pure magic. They take the reader behind the scenes of major socio-political events and in the process, create a sense of t...

' 'And on this Christian holiday, Good Friday, the whole of South Africa became aware of the existence of Griekwastad. It all started when a fifteen-year-old boy named Don Steenkamp sped into town in his father's white Isuzu double-cab and screeched to a halt in front of the town's almost deserted police station. It was shortly before 19h00 when Don jumped out of the vehicle, dressed in black rugby shorts and a T-shirt, and ran into the station's charge office covered in blood...'' As a creole of African and European descent myself, Griekwastad ('Griquatown' in English) is a place of immense historical significance. Although South African history books still refer to them as 'bastards' (persons of multicultural heritage), the Griquas had been among the first of many groups of creole peoples to abandon European Dutch society at the Cape of Good Hope and, under the leadership of captains, migrated further inland to free themselves of coloni...

Zulu-speaking people ( Amazulu ) belong to one of the largest cultural and linguistic groups in southern Africa. There are an estimated 12,5 million Zulu-speakers currently thriving in South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Malawi, Botswana and Mocambique with the largest concentration of people in South Africa (approximately 10,5 million). The word iZulu means 'heaven' and the word zulu means 'rain', if translated into English (Amazulu means 'rain people'). The  Amazulu is not a homogenous group of people and consists of different clans who had settled in the mountainous and hilly rural areas of northern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. This cultural and linguistic group is patrilineal and had migrated in a southerly direction along the eastern coast of Africa from the 9th century onward. According to notable archaeological finds, they initially came from an area in modern Cameroon. The largest of these clans was established by Zulu kaMalandela around 170...

The oldest human genome outside Africa can be found in the Aborigines of Australia. Scholars estimate that the ancestors of modern Aborigines migrated from Africa more than 70 000 years ago after the earliest human remains discovered in Australia were dated and found to be approximately 50 000 years old. Aboriginal tribes in Australia, similar to African nations, are very different from each other in terms of genetics, customs, cultures and languages. These tribes had evolved into separate and distinct social groups (or, nations to be precise) in isolation for thousands of years so that by the time contact was first made with Europeans, 250 distinct languages were spoken on the Australian continent. European settlement caused a collapse in Aboriginal population sizes. Three years after the arrival of Europeans on the continent, a smallpox epidemic decimated healthy Aboriginal populations causing massive depopulation. The systematic massacre and genocide of Aborigines during colonia...

The Mayan civilisation developed in central America around 2000 BC and collapsed around 1000 AD. Mayan territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to modern Honduras and El Salvador. It was a remarkable civilisation, socially sophisticated, ruled by dynasties, organised around religion with an extensive hierarchy of social stratification, in the form of classes. By all accounts, Mayan civilisation could hardly be described as peaceful and was characterised by political upheaval and, ironically, coup d'etats , still very much a feature of politics in modern South America. Mayan civilisation is chronologically divided into the following historical periods: archaic, pre-classic, classic and terminal classic. During the classic period of development, the Maya were concentrated in cities, similar to the modern metropolis. These were also the seats of their rulers. However, for reasons unknown, it was during the terminal classic period that Mayan civilisation deteriorated and disintegr...

Pre-colonial African stories are most interesting in that they were neither specifically designed for children nor did they exclude children as an audience. They were meant for everyone. It used to be that the elders in villages used stories (metaphor) as vehicles to convey information to other (adult) villagers, which, naturally, included children. I also have to mention here that many pre-colonial cultures considered children the incarnations of ancestors, sometimes spirits, and people who had passed away.   Pre-colonial stories, the oldest on the continent, had strong animal motifs featuring insects, reptiles, predators, elephant, rhino, buffalo with the abilities to speak human languages. The speaking-animal stories are ancient and originated in ancient African spiritual folklore when it was commonly believed that animals, forests, rivers, mountains had 'spirits', in other words, souls. In accordance with ancient folklore the spirits were generally peaceful but were r...

The Chinese New Year has been celebrated since ancient times and is traditionally a wonderful burst of red and gold and long, brightly decorated monsters. But, did you know that this tradition also has a wonderful story behind it? A long time ago, in ancient China, there lived a monster called Nian. Every year, Nian enjoyed visiting little villages in the countryside, to scare the living daylights out of everyone he saw. He thought it was great fun. He also liked to do this around the time of the Chinese New Year to remind the villagers that he was still alive and around. And, every year, after scaring everyone witless, he could hardly wait for the next New Year to scare them again.  This would probably have gone on forever. But, one day, around the time of the New Year, one of the villagers wore a bright red tunic. When Nian jumped out to scare him, the monster took one look at the red of the villager's tunic, turned about and ran away. The villager got such a fright at seei...