Boyd Tonkin

Something new out of Africa

Instead of famine, war and disease, it’s smart phones and money transfers that preoccupy this year’s Caine Prize winners

issue 23 July 2016

In a Johannesburg mall, a listless and lonely IT worker chats with his dad about the bitter fruits of upward mobility in South Africa. ‘Do you remember when you scored 139 for that IQ test?’ Pa asks, in Masande Ntshanga’s story ‘Space II’. ‘I thought it meant my life would be different, I tell him, but I don’t really like computers.’

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