EDITOR. I have sat at my computer and written, tapped backspace and rewritten again and again; but none of it seems capable of gently leading you, dear reader to the place I wish you to see. Isn’t it always like that when you have news to share? You fidget and fumble with ways to tactfully break it to someone, but there is no simpler way than to just tumble the information out.
EDITOR. When I wake in the morning the air is missing that wintry nip and the sun seems to be waking up earlier than me each day. My garden is waking with delicate peach blossoms and greening grass, and the weaver birds are struck with nest building frenzy. There’s no denying it- Spring has sprung.
EDITOR. Spring is in the air! The bare trees of winter are unfurling tender leaves, the air is warming and blossoms are bursting forth in abundance. To celebrate the Earth’s awakening in the Southern Hemisphere, Penton will be holding a Spring themed photography competition with a R100 Kalahari.com voucher for the winning photo.
BRONWYN KATZKE. Yesterday I did what I normally do in the afternoon- bring the laundry in from off the wash-line. I reach for a shirt, and there is a spider that has spun a delicate web between it and another shirt. Grabbing a small stick, I carefully pick it off its web and place it on a branch. See, I’m not scared of spiders. Getting to the final bit of laundry, I unpeg a long black skirt off the line and drape it over my arm. Out the corner of my eye I notice something large and greyish rubbing against me. I think nothing of it. As I plop the skirt in the laundry basket, the greyish thing moves and realisation dawns.
EDITOR. In the words of House Stark- ‘Winter is coming’. The sun is setting earlier and the mornings are moving well past ‘nippy’ to positively chilling. However winter’s approach also signals the Sabbat of Samhain, the time to honour the ancestors and prepare for the coming hard, cold months. To our predecessors, winter’s approach carried a greater sense of urgency than it did today. We live in the modern age of heaters, electric blankets and supermarkets- we don’t share the same sense of foreboding when we feel the mornings grow cool.
BRONWYN KATZKE. According to a report on Christian news portal, gatewaynews.co.za, Commander of the SAPS Occult-related Crime Unit, Attie Lamprecht, confirmed that previous media reports stating the disbanding of the ORCU in 1997 were false. This would mean that despite pressure and petitioning from various human rights groups at the time, SAPS, instead of adhering to the SA Constitution, chose to keep the ORCU operable while lying to the public and media, and using the taxpayer’s money to fund the religiously-motivated crusade of a few.
BRONWYN KATZKE. While SA’s ‘Satanic Panic’ has somewhat subsided amongst its white population, it seems that it is only just beginning to sprout in the townships of South Africa. A recent media report claimed that a teenage girl was attacked and killed by Satanists in Mohlakeng, Randfontein; all for the purpose of ‘drinking her blood’. While the facts are somewhat unclear, what is crystal clear is that this tragic event was less to do with actual Satanists and more to do with teenagers fulfilling Satanic Panic myth. However this fact is not being seen by ‘religious leaders’ and it came out in media reports yesterday that this horrible event is being used by the Gauteng MEC for Education, Barbara Creecy, to implement a program with the help of “faith-based organisations” (read excluding minority faiths) on curbing “Satanism and the occult” in schools. What is most damaging to Paganism and occult-orientated religions is that government is essentially endorsing and sponsoring the slandering of minority faiths, which are being termed as “harmful religious practices”.
BRONWYN KATZKE. Found in Zulu mythology, the Abatwa are humans who look just like the Zulu peoples, with one exception- they are so small they can ride ants and hide under a blade of grass. In Zulu folklore it is believed that when the nature spirit Vash’Nok cried, his tears fell to the earth; and at the moment those tears touched the ground, they erupted into the Abatwa peoples.