K. Sello Duiker

Tshepo, a young student at Rhodes, has a difficult time keeping up with his own strange mind. He is absorbed in making sense of a traumatic past in a violent country and so when he finds himself at the Valkenberg mental facility, it is perhaps not entirely due to cannabis-induced psychosis.

The Quiet Violence of Dreams

I spent alot of my time in uni at this cafe/bar so nice to see its been like this since k sello wrote this book in the 90s

Marion

Ganesh is an idiosyncratic cafe-cum-bar tucked away in the han of Obs, the kind of hangout that plays subliminal, unobtrusine music that grows on you furtively. It's a little hideaway, a find, really, that you always hear stories about but never see advertised anywhere. They are always outlandish stories about lovers quarrels and certain regulars who feel the need to belly dance ineptly at night in front of everyone. It's a charming spot because it's small and familiar, you soon get to know everyone and if everyone likes you they get to know you. 

Cape Town never ceases to remind us who we are. When we leave the sanctuary of our utopia at work we become pigments in a whirlpool of colour. In the centre it is lily white. On the edges of the whirlpool the other colours gather like froth and dregs.

Cape Town is very white, the influence of European traditions is inescapable. In some places in Cape Town you don't feel like you're in Africa. And this is what they call progress, the obliteration of any trace of the native cultures.

Joburg is different, the other cultures more aggressive to the dominant white culture. I think it has something to do with there being a bigger, more established black middle class. Going out in Joburg is more pleasant, it isn't such a process of elimination to find a suitable place to enjoy yourself. In Cape Town there are certain places where you know you are not welcome and the patrons make you feel it. The culture of having a good time, jolling is different in Gauteng: In Joburg people hang out. In Cape Town people go out.

In Joburg people are into dancing, clothes and what's fashionable. In Cape Town people are into drumming, doing their charts and doing drugs. Cape Town tries too hard, it looks too much to the West for inspiration when there is enough inspiration in Africa.

The Quiet Violence of Dreams quotes

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