The Mdantsane Way

The photo documentary and the coffee table book project " THE MDANTSANE WAY " has come to an end. The book will be available from next week onwards on Amazon.com. You have the option between an e-book version and a hardcover version. You can also order it directly from me.

It was not easy to make the selection of images to be included in the book. In fact this was our biggest problem, to choose between more than 10.000 images that we have shot during the last five years.Reluctantly we had to limit the scope of " THE MDANTSANE WAY " although we would have loved to create a 1000 or more pages edition - which would have been easily possible. 

The hardcover version measuring 30 x 25 cm, with over 200 pages, hundreds of color images and some amazing stories of amazing people, this book is a portrait of Mdantsane that we are proud of. It includes a number of images and articles that we like and that we have partly shown on our blog but it also contains a lot of new material. It is a personal, very human account of what we have seen and encountered during our countless visits.

We thank Onehitale Akhimien Ugue for an amazing job he has done on the layout and the graphic design of The Mdantsane Way. If you love color, you will love browsing through this book !

We called Mdantsane in the beginning " the mysterious one". There was this big township right in front of our door and nobody had talked about it or devoted a photographic project or film project to it. Many said, it's not interesting. Township reportage is boring now !

Nobody could even explain to us what the name Mdantsane means. Our book starts with a short description of our search for the origin of the name. 

Every African name has a meaning. So, I said to myself, the meaning and the origin of the name has to be found. But each and every person I asked said to me: Nope, it doesn't mean a thing ! 

" The Mysterious One" has been turned into a to us much known and beloved one. When we started the process, we saw there are so many amazing things to discover. It's not boring at all. It is exciting ! We are able to share at least some of the excitement with you now.

And there is more to come in the future !

On A Hot Day

Normal Flat

I invite you to stay a little longer in the beautiful Transkei with me.

I was so lucky to be able to spend a couple of days there inlcuding New Year's Eve.

Girls, if you ever had a problem bringing your color TV home alone, just follow the example of this lady in Kentani, a small village at the wildcoast, a few kilometers outside of Butterworth.
Not only is she " walking her TV home very independently " -  no man in sight who thinks he should intervene ( I don't think she needs one)  - but she is doing it with great style and class as well !

Hm, I should rather say : Do not follow this example ! Do not do this at home ! It does demand practice ! 

Rest And Play

There is a time to rest and a time to play, so I was told. The inhabitants of house 4837 can do both.
This is a typical Mdantsane scene. People love their houses and whenever a possibility presents itself and the necessary means with it, houses, shacks and even containers are improved and beautified. The walls of this house have been painted in a beautiful pink. The love of color in Mdantsane is refreshing and gives the whole township an artistic touch.

The Last Sheep

While the last sheep waits more or less patiently on Hi-Way market that his fate will be determined, a group of young men are engaged in a board game and some intense conversation on on the other side.

Mdantsane - A Way of Life

Car Wash on the weekend overlooking beautiful NU 5

The material for the book " The Mdantsane Way " has been collected for over five years by now, and my archive of photos and stories is still growing. The Mdantsane Way has evolved and become a project. The first version of this book will be released in January as an e-book. We have decided to publish it as an e-book as well because e-books are taking the whole world by storm. The book will be cheaper to aquire and this puts more people in a position to have access to it. There will be a hardcover version as well. 

We have named the book " The Mdantsane Way " because most of all Mdantsane stands for a certain way of life. It is the second biggest township in South Africa but foremost it represents a life-style. A lifestyle that embodies community spirit, African vibrancy and energy, uniqueness, creativity and a whole lot of humor. If you live in Mdantsane you do it the Mdantsane Way. 

It was our objective to capture and to show you as many scenes of daily life and street life of this township as possible. I can say today this has not been done before ever. Not for Mdantsane. There is very little photographic material about Mdantsane available. Nobody has taken as many pictures and collected as many stories as we did. What started in my head as an art project became a journey with consequences. I infected my friends with this idea and we could not let go of it since then. And we feel a little proud of it.

This blog was created for you, the people in Mdantsane who have helped us pushing it through. 

The stories, the faces, the photos we were allowed to take, the fun and the new things we have seen and learned are worth a trillion.

I hope you see your face here on this blog sooner or later. And it is for all the others as well that have taken an interest in it. I can say there are many who know Mdantsane by now a little bit through our stories and pictures. 

If you want to use and upload the pictures that you see here and on our facebook and twitter pages-you can. Spread them, show them around, add them to your photos. That is why they were taken. Just mention our name so that we get seen and heard more.

This will enable us may be to get more support for the online magazine and the movie we have started working on.

Everything Under Control On Hi-Way !

There is no other way to say this, but the "Orange Dude" is an institution in Mdantsane.

Hope he forgives me for calling him like that.  But whenever I come to Mdantsane he is there, around Hi-way in front of an orange mountain counting the money in his plastic bag.  He is there, was there and should never leave. I give him dozens of likes if he ever sets up a fan page.

And there is no way that his picture could not crown a page in our book.

Coming Home

The best thing is to come home before the day ends.

Close to the taxi rank, one evening before the sun went down.

If you have been to Mdantsane you can feel the atmosphere in these pictures. Mellow ! All good !

Fan Of Siya

Africa is the continent of Soccer.

Soccer is a uniting force. 

It's a peace maker ( in the true sense) and a crime fighter.

Siyabonga Eugene Nomvethe, born 2 December 1977,  is a South African soccer player who has played in several European leagues, and now represents Moroka Swallows in the Premier Soccer League. If I am wrong, please do correct me !
And here is his fan in Mdantsane. One of many.

Commando Brandy

The leader of Commando Brandy !

The Commanding Officer.

The General !

With Eyes Wide Open

With your eyes wide open you will see !

 

Close to the Sisa Dukashe stadium in NU 1 is a grey concrete wall, fenced and spiked on top, serving as the ideal location for all sorts of advertisements. You can see this wall to your right when you drive down Shai road in direction to the high way.

The wall does not only display advertisements but also the handpainted pastel murals that you can see in the pictures. The colors are faded which makes them even more attractive giving them a small ressemblance with old fresco drawings in churches in Italy that have endured thousands of years. 

These African murals are very beautiful. Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder. But to me they are beautiful.

They seem to portray typical village scenes. Adolescent boys playing a board game while sharing a coke. The glass coke bottle is drawn in a naive but accurately charming way. You know immediately it's a glass coke bottle.

Other scenes show older men sitting in front of their houses, chatting, ( chatting like in the old days, namely face to face) and smoking a pipe. And I guess the scene on the right with the dog and the men in traditional clothing shows an initiation school.

Then there are women in front of houses attending to a garden and a farmer leaving with his donkey cart. It is probably not Mdantsane that is shown here. 

Who made them? Who is the artist? I don't know. Many advertisements in the township are signed by their creator but here I could not find a name or a phone number. The paint is washed off in many places but these murals are large and very impressive. You can just walk along them and move from one scene to the next.

I was busy studying them when these two ladies spotted me and developed a keen interest in my photographic ambitions. 

It has to be mentioned that they had already downed a considerbale amount of happy making spirit. So, it became nearly impossible to look for a name and instead I became the object of their undivided attention and had to take photos of them. Nope, not shown here ! They wouldn't like it ! Only the back.

But hey, it was Mandela Day and that is a true reason to celebrate.