Nondindwa's song-book.

If your adolescence was anything close to black then you definately would have had a croxley 72 page excercise book adorned with pictures of Brandy and Tamia from Bona Magazine as well as song Lyrics precariously gathered from Metro-fm or copied from Refiloe's advanced songbook. You would have played "come a little bit closer" by Brandy while thinking about that boy with the most prominent baritone in the church choir or "the boy is mine" by Brandy and Monica when you catch Charity sitting in your man's gusheshe. If you were in love with the "city boy" who visits your village every Dezember, you would play "still" by Tamia when you miss him and if you were dating a schoolboy the appropriate song to play would have been "bills" by Destiny's Child. Many of us blackgirls learnt how to add colour to the English language through these songbooks hence they came in handy when writing essays. It seems this blackgirl ritual dissappeared into Winnie Khumalo's cleavage and It made me sad to see such an important part of blackgirl heritage go down the drain. I declare this a national crisis and I urge all the blackgirls of the Sharon D generation to pass down the song book tradition to young teenagers. It is your civil duty to teach those girls the art and science of blackgirl songbooking!!

Ps:Ndinithanda nonke emakhaya!