Ouma’s favorite grandchild, Ragadi’s favorite niece. Ne re hopotse ouma the other day, going back and forth about ke mang o phetseng le yena ho feta o mong and I came out on top but I knew she was the favorite. I’m digressing.

She has always loved fashion and beauty from her high school days I am told, “ she would sleep on the chair after she had done her hair”. My sister taught me fashion unknowingly. Her first job after matriculating was as a cashier at a retail store in the East Rand suburbs. Every month when they got paid she would get a magazine and an item or more of clothing, “You can not buy clothes every day”. That is our mother, always exaggerating. So she started hiding the clothes. We shared a bedroom so I was the only person in the house she could hide the clothes from. To keep me from telling mama I would also get a dress or outfit from her to keep me quiet.

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Always Beautiful was originally published in The NICE Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Article by Malefetsane Raymond Moiloa aka Slim Fetz

There we were, all 25 of us standing in the hall as we waited to hear what our futures held for us. We waited for the white man to tell us where we would be staying. We waited for him to show us how much more powerful he was than us. We waited, unsure of anything. All we wanted was a better life, but this better life was without any certainties. My goals were clear, I knew what I had to do, I knew what I was here for, but every second that passed as we waited was the more anxious and unsure I was becoming. We were here waiting just like our fathers had done when we were younger. Here I was waiting to follow suit. “Why was I here waiting? Why was I here waiting to become a victim of the same difficulties my father had been subject to in search of this better life? Would my children also have to wait like I was waiting?” These were questions I kept asking myself as I waited for a future that I knew was full of hardships. Somehow this misfortunate future I was waiting for was the solution to a better life.

We had to wait no longer as he walked in, Christiaan. I had neither met nor seen him before but from the descriptions in aunt Zanele’s letters that she used to send every three months to tell us about life in the mines, and the township, and work, she never left out Christiaan, the supervisor from hell, as she had coined him. “There’s this white supervisor from hell here. He’s a skinny and tall white man who always has a cigarette in his mouth. He wears nice brown creased suits every day as if he stays ready for an unexpected church service or wedding. We call him Leader because he keeps a patch of mustache like the guy on the newspaper that had caused the whole world to fight.” Christiaan indeed carried himself like a leader as he stood mountainously in front of us. It was as if he was a pigeon how he looked over our heads and walked with his head held high and broad chest out. For a skinny guy, he really had a huge chest. He was carrying a brown leather bag underneath his armpits. Only important people were able to afford those kinds of bags and my father had died with the bag still on top of his wish list. With all our heads looking to the ground, fearful of disrespecting him by looking straight into his eyes he starts talking with his raspy voice and Afrikaans accent, “Listen up. When I call your name you should stand up and I’ll show you which group to go over to”.

He pulled out a book, put on his round reading glasses and started reading. Only seven of us remained to be allocated to our groups and he continued calling us out. “Tjhe… Tjhi…Tjhipho”, he starts to read fragmentedly. Tshepo stands up and Christiaan points to the group of black men already standing in assembly and waiting to be taken to their new homes. As Tshepo walks towards the men he mutters, “Tlohella ho bala masepa, ke nna Tshepo”, and the men in the group he was headed to started laughing under their blankets. I did not fully understand what he had said but I could tell that he was complaining about how Christiaan had butchered his name, just like the names of all the men before him. The men wore red beautiful blankets that were draped in black patterns of corncob. From the way, the men were dressed, especially in the baking heat, and the language they were speaking, I could tell all the men in the group were Basotho speakers and we were going to be divided according to our ethnic groups. Finally, I was called to my group of all immigrants from KwaZulu-Natal after a good number of attempts without any success by Christiaan to pronounce my name. If Tshepo was difficult for him, Phiwokwakhe was a nightmare. As we headed to the train station Christiaan could now rest his tongue and stop embarrassing himself by not being able to read properly in front of us. Tshepo and his companions were the only ones that headed to the bus station.

Our train ride was smooth and the scenery was just so different from what I was used to seeing back home in Kwazulu-Natal. When we left Germiston we were first introduced to this sea of shacks called Dukathole. They say this was the first black migrants used to stay but were kicked. This was nothing like KZN.

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Buyafuthi was originally published in The NICE Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Nonhlahla Nolwazi Sibiya

I want to represent a women’s business since people who don’t live in the hostels think that women from the hostels are dependent. Most of them think that only men have access to owning a business. What‘s more interesting about this story is that most of the ladies selling chickens are single parents and they are the breadwinners.

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Chicken story was originally published in The NICE Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Written and Photographed by Sibusiso Maxwell Ndlandla

Housing has long been an issue in South Africa for a while, it is a basic human right to have shelter running water and electricity. After government and presidential candidates did not fulfill promises they made before or during elections, people of South Africa were pushed to take matters in their own hands and build their own settlements. In the end, government is forced to recognize the spaces people create, and new informal settlements become part of townships.

“ My work captures environmental portraits of people that stay in Sakhile, to show who they are in their living space. I believe that through images I can also make a statement or help to show the statement the people make by building their own space to a wider audience — creating a sense for the complex situation through a series of images”. Sibusiso Maxwell Ndlandla

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Sakhile was originally published in The NICE Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I remember sneaking into my mother’s bedroom. I would wait for that time when no one was in the house. I’d lock the door so that if my mom or sisters suddenly pitched up at a time I wasn’t expecting them I could put the clothes back in the kist without being caught and scolded. My mom’s Sunday Best were neatly packed separately in the kist where we used to keep diphahlo tsa Christmas. My mom had the best ‘two-piece outfits’, there were these silk like cotton leggings that came creased. I mean you couldn’t iron them. I loved modeling her clothes, I felt all matured, self-assured and graceful, I’d automatically pull myself together. I could smell and feel her presence when I walked around in the house, just like her, pretending to have a fashion show. The living room was my runway. Through this body of work, I’m exploring concepts of memory and identity.

“People usually think of daydreaming through memories and longing for the past as ‘nostalgia’. For me however, it is also a way to connect to my mom’s youth. She comes from this generation who lived through the difficult time of struggle, but also enjoyed her life and I like to bring to life the fun and joy in the way she dressed” Lebogang Tlhako

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Sibadala, Sibancane was originally published in The NICE Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.