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Posta — the ordinary archive
A recordKept in the open

Mzansi,on its own terms

A living record of the rituals this country shares — the braai, the rank, the bread run, the salon, the trade, match day, the long road. Recorded where they happen, in the words they happen in. Nothing translated for comfort.

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The rituals

All 7 →
The Braai 02Fire, meat, and whoever is standing around it.
The Rank 02Loading, waiting, and fixing the thing before it moves.
The Bread Run 02The shop at the corner that is open before anything else.
The Salon 02A chair, a mirror, and three hours of the week that are yours.
The Trade 03Goods on a table, goods on a pavement, goods on a head.
Match Day 01One screen, one room, everyone in it.
The Long Road 02The distance between provinces, taken for granted by those who travel it.

The ordinary,
kept properly

Groups of stories are organised by what people do, not by who they are. A pavement braai in Kayamandi and a Sunday spread in the suburbs sit under the same heading, because they are the same ritual.

Flower sellers’ stalls on Adderley Street, Cape Town: cut flowers and greenery standing in buckets along the pavement.
Cape Town Central · WCPT_001·WC

The stall is designed every morning

Flowers, buckets, and a layout that has to work in one glance from a moving car.

The TradeDiscott · CC BY-SA 3.0
Packages of raw meat on a table: a marinated beef roast, lamb chops, boerewors and chicken wings.
Cape Town Central · WCPT_002·WC

It starts as shopping

Before there is fire, there is a table with four kinds of meat on it and a decision about quantities.

The BraaiVictorgrigas · CC BY-SA 3.0
A market clothing stall under a white canopy, with a red and black patterned shirt and a purple dress on a rack.
Cape Town Central · WCPT_005·WC

The canopy is the architecture

At Greenmarket the stall is a roof, a rack and a colour decision, and that is the entire building.

The TradeMatti Blume · CC BY-SA 4.0
A black and white photograph of the interior of an informal hair salon in Yeoville, Johannesburg.
Yeoville, Johannesburg · GPPT_006·GP

The chair and the three hours

The salon is the only room in the week where someone else does the work and you do the talking.

The SalonGuinivere Pedro · CC BY-SA 4.0
A small metal tuck shop at Cathedral Peak, KwaZulu-Natal, with one window and a door and goods advertised on the wall.
Cathedral Peak · KZNPT_009·KZN

The shop that is smaller than its sign

Cathedral Peak: one room, one window, and a list of goods painted on the wall.

The Bread RunKing of the Grasshoppers · CC BY-SA 4.0
An ostrich standing in sparse, rocky Northern Cape landscape.
Kimberley · NCPT_013·NC

The long road starts with a bird

An ostrich in the Northern Cape, standing in exactly the kind of space the road has to cross.

The Long RoadSouth African Tourism · CC BY 2.0
A deep canyon with a waterfall and a river below, in Limpopo.
Tzaneen · LPPT_014·LP

The road has a shoulder

A canyon, a waterfall and a river below: the part of Limpopo that the highway only skirts.

The Long RoadSouth African Tourism · CC BY 2.0

One screen, one room / GP

The last reliableappointment in the calendar

The photograph is of the first match of the 2010 World Cup, at Soccer City. What it documents is not football. It is a room full of people watching the same thing at the same time, which is now almost extinct.

A packed stand of spectators at Soccer City, Johannesburg, during the 2010 World Cup.
PT_012·GPCelso FLORES · CC BY 2.0
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The record is open

If you have a photograph of something ordinary that happens where you live, it belongs here. We ask where it was taken, who took it, and what it shows. Every submission is read by a person before it is published — and if we cannot verify a detail, we say so rather than smoothing it over.

SubmissionsReviewed by a person
PhotographsCredited, always
LanguagesAs written, not translated
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