Wanda HennigLeverage. Ubuntu. Sustainability. Transitions.

Poetry Africa 2011, Durban
Colombian poet Fernando Réndon, in Durban this week for the 15th Poetry Africa festival, has helped transform Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city — known as a world capital of drug trafficking, terror and violence — into a world capital of poetry.
© Wanda Hennig, 2011
When Fernando Réndon and a few of his friends organized the first International Poetry Festival of Medellín in 1991, the city was known as the epicenter of the cocaine trade and the world capital of drug trafficking. The so-called ‘Medellín cartel’, a multi-billion dollar …

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to …

Story first published op-ed page, Sunday Tribune, Durban, South Africa, on August 29, 2010

It’s Sunday morning at North Beach in Durban. The sun is shining. Somewhere the sardines are still running. The new, improved beachfront promenade is alive with foot traffic. People cycling, strolling, jogging, walking their dogs, walking their kids. The surfers are out; the fishermen are complaining to anyone who’ll listen about their ban from the piers; the skateboarders and BMX-ers are shooting the ramps at their graffitied concrete park …

Blow them? Ban them? Love them? Loath them?

On and off the field and across the world the hammering drone of the vuvuzela is raising more intense emotions — and a greater range of them — than when ones favorite team gets knocked out of the FIFA 2010 World Cup.
Now Durban interior designer Liesl Heath is doing something about it.
Since last week she has been taking the guts out of the vuvuzela’s discordance and turning it into a whisper with her cleverly branded ‘Shu-Shu Zela’ earplugs.
The idea for the earplugs …

Experiencing the political change of South Africa rates as the second preference of most foreign visitors after a visit to a game park. Until recently, there was a lack of tourism facilities in KwaZulu-Natal with a strong liberation theme.
By Wanda Hennig

The heart of Inanda, the sprawling township that is part of the greater Durban municipality, known as eThekweni (Zulu for “where the earth and the ocean meet”), is called Freedom Valley for good reason. It is a fountainhead of South Africa’s rich liberation history; a source of legendary — and contemporary — people, places and events that have shaped and continue to shape the “new” South Africa.