Woman Zone CT

10/06/2026

A feast for the soul!!The entire staff and all those working at Artscape sit down together to eat and celebrate 55 years of this landmark building. Bon appetit!!

10/06/2026

Just sharing an invite to a run of The Blue Album at Theatre Arts in Cape Town. Directed by the lyrical Ernest ‘Ginger’ Baleni and performed by award winning Vuyelwa Maluleke from Jozi.

The Blue Album is a one-woman performance that centres a Black le***an woman’s experience of the corrective r**e, and what home does to those it claims and rejects at the same time.

This is not just a story. It’s about the beauty of township life; its characters, languages, and improvised survivals. It is also about the violent silences we continue to live with in South Africa.

Bring a friend. You’ll want someone to sit with afterwards. 💙

🎭 The Blue Album
📍Theatre Arts Observatory, Cape Town
🗓 16 June– 19 June
⏱️ 19:00
🎟️ Tickets R120:

Theatre Arts is a home of independent theatre, art and performance. For audiences it's a place to access fresh new work from Cape Town's talent. For local theatre practitioners – it's a place where they can create work, develop skills, perform, engage in dialogue and meet and work with theatre pra...

08/06/2026

WZ BOOK REVIEW
Among Willows: Essays on plant form and family by Cynthia Fan (Batis Books)

‘Since the days of the Han Dynasty in China…people have broken off branches of the willow tree to gift to departing loved ones. It is a symbolic gesture, a way of asking the traveler to stay and reminding them that their absence will be sorely felt.’ I mentally searched for the nearest willow tree to be sure I had a branch to hand next time there was a departing loved one.
But I had many more mental searches on reading this book – like why ‘Among Willows’? Cynthia Fan’s mothers maiden name is Liu, the same Chinese character as willow. So when she spent time with her mother’s family in Shanghai, she was ‘among willows’. Heart softening eh. Mental note to search for meaningful names in my mother’s heritage.
Aside from her willowed, Chinese heritage, South African born Cynthia Fan, now living in London has a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of and Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, so her own ‘form and family’ give her a fertile background. And she uses it richly. She is a fine artist as well as plant biologist ‘whose work encompasses research, curation and sculpture in the medium of plant arrangement’. This thought-provoking bouquet of essays includes such exotic themes as ‘Alstroemeria reaching for heaven’ and ‘When a bamboo flowers’, they cover thoughts, and, in some cases, her own brand of philosophy on ikebana, marriage and ‘the role of self-sacrificial behaviour in developing evolutionary fitness…’ among other things. For readers more visual than literal there are also copious photographs that explain or support her words. And Capetonians will be pleased to know that populations of wild ixias on Rondebosch Common get a mention, and a pic.
I’d be hard pressed to tell you more without stealing more cuttings from her book – but this one says a lot…’having a relationship with plants is not simply about defining them – but about learning to see, to feel, and, most importantly, to wonder.’ And if you have more wonder, do check her website and Instagram, me, I have become a fan.

06/06/2026

WZ BOOK REVIEW:
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (Vintage Japan). Reviewer: Nancy Richards

An unexpected gift from Japan, this little book delighted me so much it has become my new favourite treasure. Not least because it’s one in a series of Vintage Japanese Classics each with cover designs by award winning illustrator Yuko Shimizu. It’s written by Yoko Ogawa, who’s a bit of a phenomenon in her own write. She has apparently won every major Japanese literary award since the 80s – but interestingly, when she married, she quit her job and wrote while her husband was at work. He only discovered she had been doing so when her debut novel The Breaking of the Butterfly, received a literary prize. She’s had over 50 titles published since, though not all of them have been translated into English.
So, this one The Housekeeper and the Professor, is about an aged mathematics professor who, following an accident, has only eighty minutes of memory, after which it’s back to square one, on repeat. His housekeeper from the Akebono Housekeeping Agency is the narrator of the story which is much to do with mathematical formulae and baseball, neither of which I know anything about, but with which I became increasingly fascinated, and familiar. The odd but lovable professor nicknames the housekeeper’s son, Root, because of his square hair cut that he likes to pat every time the boy comes round. The fluttering notes on the jacket cover make reference to the slips of paper the Prof attaches to his suit as reminders. What a dear, tender little book.

02/06/2026

Two Kates from are the latest 'Women on the Shelf' in the Woman Zone Stories podcast series on Spotify. Take a listen here and enjoy...
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ZZ2onu9qO8GsU1QgCwvfN there's a lot to be learned about libraries!

02/06/2026

Just a reminder of the Woman Zone Book Club event coming up Saturday June 13th 10.30-12.30 with Guest Author of the Month on her new anthology 'Disabled, But'. She will be joined by some young writers from who will share what they've been writing - and reading. And as always, we look fwd to hearing what YOU'VE been reading! RSVP [email protected] or [email protected]

02/06/2026

What an inspiration! At the Artscape free lunch time concert, dancers share the stuff of their skills under the watchful eyes of founder Debbie Turner and Ballet Master Dianne van Schoor with CEO Marlene Le Roux ensuring every one gets their moment of fame! Many rounds of applause and appreciation.

01/06/2026

WZ BOOK REVIEW The Immortalites by Claire Robertson (Umuzi)

It was only on reading the closing line of the Author’s Note in The Immortalites by Claire Robertson that I learned the link between the author herself and the story in this book, through a small, but not insignificant detail. It would be a pity to spoil it for you completely – so maybe it’s enough to say the ‘detail’ concerns the ‘barbarous murder’ of 11 year old Elizabeth Shone in 1832. It was a real event. And a tragic one to find in the suitcase of family legacy.
The bigger story here concerns another young lady, Ellen Kent and her arrival on the shores of South Africa on the good ship Immortalite and finally destined for the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. Fresh from an orphanage in England, Ellen considered herself fortunate to have had the opportunity to accept a job as governess in ‘Africky’ – though she would have had no way of knowing how her life would pan out. Nor would she have known the complications of the different players in the Frontier Wars of the time.
So, literally in her own words, we journey with Ellen on this assignment – ‘a sober girl, on my way to being a ‘sorting’ sort of woman, a manner of unsexed female who has retained only the useful womanly parts – quick hands, small opinions.’ Vulnerable as she is, she’s also observant and reveals great insight into the characters she meets along the way. A colourful cast, they include the conniving Captain Makepeace whose responsibility she becomes, the extraordinary Elsie Divine with her painted wagon, the interpreting Gysbert de Boer, a parrot named Xerxes, a shipwreck dog named Hector and a horse called Swan. Their adventures, fortunes and misfortunes are lyrically described in a colloquial language that I found both haunting and infectious. ‘I should mention that this same war was so repeatedly fought here, we knew the chapters of it by their number.’
I have no idea how much of the rest of this story is real or imagined, but as a journalist well used to working with and weaving facts and research, it’s certain that Robertson’s exploration of ‘history, archives, small museums, country churchyards and hunches’ have contributed a great deal to this evocative tale. And that cover – the inimitable Eastern Cape aloe and sepia winding wagon trail speak volumes.

01/06/2026

WZ BOOK REVIEW: A Love That Heals by Cathrine Phiri (Kwela)

Nobody would argue that these are dark times we live in – war in so many parts of the world; crime, corruption and confusion here at home – not to mention the troubles many people have right in their very own home. So nobody could be forgiven for wanting an escape from time to time. And a girl could really do worse than pick up a book – and while you’re at it, why not make it one with a happy outcome.
Well, I’m not going to spoil your experience of Catherine Phiri’s latest title ‘A Love That Heals’, but it’s helpful to know that it is unashamedly a Kwela Romance, and is labelled as a story of enduring faith. It’s dedicated book-person Cathrine’s sixth title – and once again fulfills her goal to ‘spread joy and inspiration, making the world smile, one novel at a time.' Jonathan Ball Publishers Local