The villagers will actually lose more than they will gain from the few jobs that will be created. Very little of the money that is made here will cir… - Zakes Mda

Conversely, Noria’s memory of the village is the pale herd boys, with mucus hang- ing from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with sparse grass and shrups. The lean cattle and barren hills are partly result of overgrazing, which is in turn due to shortage of land for black people.

When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories.

It is not different, really, here in the city. Just like back in the village, we live our lives together as one. We know everything about everybody. We even know things that happen when we are not there; things that happen behind people’s closed doors deep in the middle of the night. We are the all-seeing eye of the village gossip. When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, ‘They say it once happened…’ we are the ‘they’. No individual owns any story. The community is the owner of the story, and it can tell it the way it deems it fit.