I once lived in Pietermaritzburg. I arrived there tired, tired of Johannesburg, tired of the noise, the urgency, the performance of becoming. I had no plan whatsoever, only a quiet need to breathe again.
It remains the best decision of my life. What I found was not spectacle. It was sincerity.
An arts scene that did not reach for polish or permission. People making do with what they had and somehow creating everything they needed. A poetry session at a local tavern where words were exchanged like currency.
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A rap battle unfolding outside the library, verses bouncing off concrete and passing bodies. A makeshift pop-up thrift store squeezed next to a gogo selling vegetables at the market; art and survival sharing the same pavement. I fell in love instantly, not with the idea of the place but with its honesty.
It was there that I met poet and radio presenter Ndumiso Zondi. At the time, I didn’t know how much his work would settle into me. I had the privilege of watching many of his pieces performed live and what struck me was how familiar they felt.
He wrote about places, spaces and people he encountered every day. People I recognised because of where I come from, because of what shaped me. These were not distant characters or romanticised figures.
They were our neighbours, our relatives, ourselves. Zondi may not know this but together with a small group of friends, we returned to those people and places through his work. We revisited them differently.
With tenderness. With attention. He gave us the space to appreciate again what we had learned to overlook.
It had everything to do with movement. With leaving, with returning, with seeing from a different angle. Distance, I learned, can be an act of care.
Often, he spoke fondly of the people who raised him, challenged him, carried him. Through the books he read and loved. I listened.
I was intrigued. I felt something opening. I knew I wanted others to experience this same quiet magic: the recognition, the remembering, the permission to look again at the ordinary and find it sacred.
So I asked Zondi to compile a list of must-reads for the year. Not as an academic exercise, not as a trend but as an invitation. An invitation to reflect.
To see the people and spaces we know, the ones we forgot and even the ones we tried to escape from. These books are mirrors. They do not flatter.
They reveal. And sometimes, that is the most generous thing art can do.
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