Stories

FLIGHT RISK

Zakes Mdluli · 11 hr

One team charter, one season, and two people who would each lose everything if anyone saw them. His rule was simple: she would have to be the one to ask.

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#FlightRisk

MINA NAWE

Zakes Mdluli · 8 hr

Two years divorced, and Naledi still opens the restaurant with him every morning. Nobody ever told her how to stop wanting a man she was the one to walk away from.

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#MinaNawe

SAY THE WORD

Zakes Mdluli · 2 hr 33 min

She plans her meals two weeks ahead and sorts her socks by day of the week. Tonight she is going to do exactly one reckless thing, and it is going to take five weeks to find out what she started.

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#SayTheWord

THE PARAGON

Zakes Mdluli · 6 hr

I went to time the walk to my first proper job and ended up flat on the marble of a Sandton lobby, looking up at the man who owns the building. By Thursday he had told me exactly what he wanted from me — no dinner, no flowers, no romance in it anywhere.

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#TheParagon

THE SECOND TAKE

Zakes Mdluli · 3 hr 39 min

At eighteen, Chandré Cupido spent one night on her parents' roof with the quietest boy on the team, and the next day he inherited everything her family had been promised. Twelve years later he walks back in — rich, famous, and still looking at her exactly the same way.

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UBUYILE

Zakes Mdluli · 1 hr 36 min

He is the correspondent the country trusts with the worst news; she is the face it wakes up to every morning. Between them they have a stage, a big screen, a few hundred students and nowhere private left to finish a twenty-year-old conversation.

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#Ubuyile

93 DAYS

Zakes Mdluli · 7 hr

Vusi Hadebe has ninety-three days before they fly him to the Gaborone gallows. He will only talk to one reporter — a woman two months into the job, who has never understood why her. By the time she does, it is far too late for either of them to be saved.

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#93Days

NO SIGNAL

Zakes Mdluli · 3 hr 14 min

The car dies on a Waterberg gravel road with no signal, no traffic and one weathered board pointing eight kilometres down a farm track. The farm is not what the board says it is.

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#NoSignal

SINDISWA

Zakes Mdluli · 1 hr 17 min

He told her once — one time only. She took five days, then she took the neighbour, and the worst part was what it did to him, watching.

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#Sindiswa

UMOYA

Zakes Mdluli · 1 hr 41 min

The spa burned down the morning we were meant to leave, so I booked the first upmarket place with a vacancy and a discount. Nobody explained what “play is allowed everywhere except the dining room” actually meant until we had already unpacked.

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#Umoya

GOOD GIRL

Zakes Mdluli · 6 hr

He runs a members-only club where people pay to be told exactly what they are worth. She is twenty-one, broke, and the last woman in Durban who should have knelt on his office carpet.

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#GoodGirl

ZASHA HOUSE PART 1

Zakes Mdluli · 1 hr 11 min

Mandla booked the resort to fix a marriage that had gone quiet. Standing on his side of the wall, listening to his wife come apart for a stranger, he finds something better than a fix.

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ZASHA HOUSE PART 2

Zakes Mdluli · 2 hr 3 min

Kagiso booked the Lodge to give his new wife a honeymoon she'd never forget. He just didn't expect to be watching when she found out what she really wanted.

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ZASHA HOUSE PART 3

Zakes Mdluli · 1 hr 18 min

A black envelope every morning, a new experience every night — and Nomsa is about to discover exactly how far she'll go at Zasha House's coastal retreat.

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#ZashaHouse

THE AUDIT

Nontsikelelo Mabaso · 23 min

I went undercover in my own client's building to catch whoever was lying about my cleaners. Then the man on the 14th floor made me coffee, and I forgot I was the lie.

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#TheAudit

SAFE LOVE

Tracy Nxumalo · 14 min

I was six the day I learned what men can take. Twenty-two years later, I let one give. He didn't tell me he was married until I was already in love.

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#SafeLove

KHOTSO LE PALESA

Nontsikelelo Mabaso · 27 min

Every family on the platinum corridor has a man the mines kept. Palesa crossed a border for a first date — and found out exactly what hers had kept there.

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#KhotsoLePalesa

THE TENANT

Nontsikelelo Mabaso · 48 min

He paid six months' rent in cash and asked no questions about the lease. I should have asked one.

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#TheTenant

THE WRONG ONE

Nontsikelelo Mabaso · 29 min

She chose the man who ticked all the boxes. Then found the one who ticks the one box she didn't have. Now what?!

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#TheWrongOne

THE WRONG ONE: HIS SIDE

Nontsikelelo Mabaso · 47 min

He walked away from the woman who made him laugh during sex. He married the woman who made him feel correct. Now they're both staring at phones in the dark.

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#TheWrongOne