When did you start up the kagablog and why?
November 2005. I was interested in creating a forum for writers, poets, artists, academics, digital explorers of all persuasions to present work. this forum would, unlike the mass media as we know it, NOT be market driven, not be dictated to by the market. either in the sense of its content always relating to new product, or in the sense of having to pander to the consideration of what the “readership” wants.
i invited contributors whose work i admired, respected, believed in and or loved. once in as a contributor there is no editorial censorship. in this way too, the blog works very differently from market driven mass media.
What are your average number of hits per month? How many regular readers do you have? What percentage of your hits are from SA?
it varies quite dramatically. in the months nov 2007 through to feb 2008 the blog was getting over 250 000 hits per month. it’s dropped off considerably since then because i am living in sweden at the moment and not able to give the blog as much attention as it needs.
about half the readership is located in geographical south africa. the blog gets a lot of hits from the usa, a lot from the netherlands.
The kagablog covers a wide range of disciplines – music, art, photography, poetry, fiction, film etc. We don’t see any print publications like this around in SA, hence the nonprint distribution of the net obviously helps in this and gives you a wider readership. Any comment on this?
like i said in the answer to your first quesiton, i started the blog because ALL mass media is market driven. which is a huge problem. it means that “freedom of speech” has come to mean “freedom to promote what is available in the shops”. the blog steps out of that paradigm and presents are broad set of interests and obsessions of the various contributors (there are over 90 of them).
While the blog has a number of local contributors, they are a number of contributors from overseas, particularly Europe. Some posts are even in French, Dutch or German. I also feel at times that there is a distinct “European” flavour to the blog, references to debord etc. Do you feel that this “Eurocentric” aspect places the blog outside of the South African cultural context?
the point is that the kagablog does not exist in geographical south africa. it exists in the world of the web, and is thus global and local at once. because many of the contributors do live in geographical south africa i would say that the kagablog has a lot of relevance to those only interested in arts and opinions from the region. but in 2008 i don’t think it is really all that interesting to get hung up on regional locality. the work that i try to promote on the kagablog is work that i consider excellent, that i consider challenging - these are qualities that i consider far more important than where the contributor lives physically.
and its good that you mention Debord, because the Maponya Mall in Soweto is more “spectacular” in the Debordian sense, than any building in Paris. which says it all really. i believe that the kagablog reflects an entirely new, and medium specific, attitude to media and how it has changed our lives. thinking of art, of poetry, of critical discourse, in terms of national and regional boundaries only takes us back to what we already know, it does not take us forward. in other words, not only am i not interested in colonial regionalities of the mind, i am also not interested in post-colonial regions: the kagablog is a space in the collective mind that is outside of the colonial mind market’s agenda altogether.
Does the blog receive any sponsorship at all?
none whatsoever. it is a labour of love, on my part and the part of all the wonderful contributors.
In view of the low level of internet penetration in SA – about 7% - how feasible do think online publications are for reaching local audiences?
7% is better than 6%. and it is growing all the time, geometrically. in a decade’s time those figures will be radically different.
Do you think that online publishing vehicles such as blogs are taken seriously in SA? Do you think that they are regarded by SA audiences as legitimate publishing mediums? There are, after all, now awards given for blogs, so there must be some degree of acceptance.
Gary the only things taken seriously in SA are drinking and soccer and rugby and cricket. I cannot allow myself to be contained by the mediocre opinions of the market. What matters is that I take blogs seriously, that you take them seriously, that the contributors and the readership takes them seriously.
Starting up a blog is relatively easy and cheap, compared to print publishing. Some print publishers worldwide feel threatened by online publishing, since it does sort of inroad on their business territory and could impact on their survival from a financial aspect. But do you think this threat is only financial, or is there a threat to a perceived cultural territory as well?
Look, the crisis in the publishing industry isn’t because of blogs, it is because too many books are published, too many books are thrown out into the marketplace in the hope that something sticks. It’s just a huge jumble sale out there, and it is exhausting for people, for readers, to keep up with it all. And that’s why people retreat, they turn inwards, they find refuge in the classics, in what they already know, in genre fiction, because it is just impossible to read through all the books that are thrown at one.
In fact blogs don’t impinge on the territory of physical publishing at all . The blogging phenomenon is something entirely different, it’s a distinct medium of its own. If anything, I think that blogs stimulate people to buy books because of giving readers access to so many fresh critical voices, who are writing from a position of passion rather than the established critical voices who write from jaded positions of power and assumed authority.
When the internet first came out, some people foresaw the end of print books – this clearly hasn’t happened. In what do you see the relationship, if any, between online publications and print books?
Online publications encourage people to buy print books. The same phenomenon happens in the music industry. The “end” of print books has already happened in a sense, with the demise of the specialist bookstores and the usurpation of bookselling as a craft and a trade by the ubiquitous supermarket chains that “wholesale” books to the public, two for the price of one, just like baked beans.







