bios

Thoughts on The CCID’s Not My Forever Campaign

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by Roger Young

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Disclaimer: This shit makes me very angry.

“A partnership with the CCID is more than a donation. It’s an investment in a safer, more dignified city centre for your staff, customers and clients. Your support directly funds the outreach and reintegration programmes that turn small first steps into lasting change. It provides your brand with a visible, meaningful commitment.”
— Cape Town Central City Improvement District, Not My Forever campaign page

Reactionary Reviews | Crossed Out | dir: Ernst Roets & Pierre Malan

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Crossed Out is a giant temper tantrum of a film. With the visual language of InfoWars, FOX News and myopia, it is, as a film, a batshit rendering of an issue through a selective lens with graphics envisioned by a four-year-old who likes staring into the sun and thinks daddy has abandoned him because he left his blankie in the palatial chicken coop. Somebody needs a fucking nap.

Reactionary Reviews | Newish Music Round-Up | 4 October 2026

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This week’s round-up of newish releases from Spoek Mathambo, Loatinover Pounds, Mila Smith, Birdie, VERMOOR, Shortstraw, and Celeste Noxx.

Reactionary Review | Mother City | dir: Miki Redelinghuys & Pearlie G. Joubert

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Mother City is by no means a fun night out at the cinema. But, in light of the upcoming municipal elections, seeing this film is a civic duty.

Reactionary Reviews | Valley Girl | Amy Tjasink

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Valley Girl is a bright breezy self-identified contemporary folk album that is charming until you listen to it.

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an interview with Kaden Arguile

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Kaden Arguile, the GOOD candidate for Ward 77 in Cape Town, turns 28 on the day of the municipal elections. The “GOOD party” sounds like the name of a 90s rave but it’s really not.

With the party challenging Helen Zille’s legal right to run for mayor of Johannesburg, and Arguile running as a candidate in the city bowl, on an anti predatory property development ticket, in municipal elections that have the highest youth voter registration rate in recent history, along with a sharp increase in the number of candidates under 30, some under 20, it seemed like a good (sorry) idea to unpack exactly how one of the older young candidates sees the political landscape.

This interview conducted on 17th September 2026

Reactionary Reviews | Vuka Zulu | Umlilo

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Vuka Zulu is the sound of an artist reaching maturity. This is a coded way to say that an artist has plateaued.

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by Roger Young

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“White crosses on the church yard, I want to smash them all” – Against Me.

On Saturday 26th of September Ernst Roets, of AfriForum fame, under his new supervillain designation, Lex Libertas, an international advocacy project for Afrikaner rights, will be planting 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in Washington. These crosses symbolise the deaths of white people by violent crime in rural areas and farming areas of South Africa. Lex Libertas says each cross will carry the name of a victim, and its preliminary list contains more than 2,203 names. The event is being staged in partnership with the New York Young Republican Club, following a conference at the National Press Club on Friday the 25th. There will be no black crosses.

Reactionary Reviews | Silas en die Ysbeer op Tafelberg | dir: Zandré Coetzer

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Disclaimer: I am not an eight-year-old child.

Silas en die Ysbeer is a fantasy set in a world where a single mother can afford a two story apartment in Higgovale on a firefighter’s salary.

Oh, shit, I mean…

Reactionary Reviews | 1977 | Derek Gripper & Felix Laband

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1977 is an ambient bromance a decade in the making. The first major work for Laband since Deaf Safari (at best The Soft White Hand often felt like outtakes from that album), this duet soundscape with Derek Gripper, the guitar master of transposition, is just fucking gorgeous. Perhaps collaboration is what Felix Laband has always been searching for.