Lynette Hlongwane

Births and Belly Buttons Lynette Hlongwane

Is it possible in the new dispensation to break the cycle and level the playing field - South Africa's well-documented history of inequality that generations have been subjected to, while it benefited others? Is education in expensive multiracial schools the answer for South Africa's children? Are Affirmative Action positions the answer? Do Gender Equality university courses change patriarchal mindsets? Is South Africa a country still at war with itself, and its citizens unwilling casualties? is it possible to be a casualty of both oppression and freedom? Has Mandela's olive branch yielded juicy fruit and healing experienced by all? Find out from the Sitholes, the middle class African family in the famous rainbow nation. Philani, the husband and father; Siphesihle the wife and mother, and their son, Langa. What are their experiences as individuals, as a family and as the African collective? When human dignity comes under attack, how does Philani, his wife and son respond, in their individual circumstances? And then there's the reality of living life, with all its twists, turns, beauty and surprises, for all that are woman born. Indeed, who doesn't have a belly button? This is a human story about striving to make sense of life, as well as learn and grow from it. The better versions of our individual selves we aspire to. This story will resonate will all, across all borders - geographical as well as superficial and imagined, to reach our common core, the human heart, which has no boundaries. Human frailty. Life lessons - when we cheapen life and life in turn cheapens us. Then love supreme. The redemptive power of love, for individuals, for a people, for South Africa, for humanity. One reader has described this novel as, "an epic." Grab yourself a copy and emerge wonderfully enriched on the other side of the last page.