Page 2
A note on, our editors letter
beginnings.
Every magazine starts somewhere. A conversation. A frustration. A question that would not go away.
Ours started with a simple one: why is there no magazine for the whole South African family? Not for women.
Not for kids. Not for sport, or politics, or celebrity gossip. Just for curious people who love this country and
want to understand it better. People who still find the world interesting. People who want something worth
reading on a Sunday afternoon with their children beside them.
We looked. We could not find it. So we built it.
Moxie is South Africa's family discovery magazine. Science, nature, history, travel, food, faith, puzzles, and
the stories about real South Africans doing extraordinary things quietly, without fuss, without recognition.
Eight sections. Every month. Written for curious minds aged 8 to 80.
We are four people who believed this was worth doing. We are not a media house. We are not backed by a
conglomerate. We are a team with a laptop, a lot of late nights, and a genuine conviction that South Africa
deserves a magazine that takes its readers seriously.
This first edition is about us. About why Moxie exists, what we believe, and who we made this for. It is also
about three winter recipes with stories behind them worth knowing. About your children and social media,
and a conversation every South African family needs to have. About what AI actually is, stripped of the hype.
It is, honestly, about saying hello. About introducing ourselves to you and asking you to
come along.
We are under no illusions. A first edition is a beginning, not an arrival. There will be things we get better.
Things we learn from you. We want that. If something moves you, tell us. If something misses the mark, tell us
that too. Moxie is not a finished product handed down from somewhere. It is a conversation we are starting
with South Africa.
Thank you for picking this up. Thank you for being curious.
South Africa, we are glad you are here. Stay with us every month.
Christo Goosen, Barend Uys, Dewald Rosema & Jaco Vorster
The founding editorial team
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
A special word of thanks to Greta van Rensburg, who introduced us to Krulkop and the wonderful community they
had already built around the Moxie name for women 50 and over.
That foundation mattered more than they perhaps know.
Moxie already meant something before we arrived, and we did not take that lightly.
To Krulkop, thank you for selling us the name you loved and for passing the baton with such generosity. To every reader
who followed Moxie before this chapter began, you are not left behind.
You are the reason this magazine has roots. We are simply giving it wider wings and we look forward to your
continuing love and support as we grow.
Page 3
This Magazine Belongs to
South Africa.
Not to us. To the people who read it, share it, write for it, and make
it better.
Moxie is South Africa's family discovery magazine. Science, nature, history, travel, food,
faith, puzzles. Written for curious minds aged 8 to 80. No sponsor to please. No agenda.
Just a country we believe is worth knowing better.
A magazine only goes as far as the people who read it. You are how Moxie
grows. We want you to be part of it, not just a reader at the end of the chain.
Every South African who passes Moxie on is part of why it survives.
Every one who sends a story, a hero, or a recipe is part of why it grows.
01 SHARE IT
Tell someone who needs it.
Know a family that would
love Moxie? Forward the
link. Share it on your
WhatsApp group. Post it
on Facebook. Word of
mouth is the only
marketing that has ever
worked for things worth
reading.
02 WRITE FOR IT
You have a story we do not.
Every South African
family has a recipe with
history behind it, a place
worth discovering, a
person worth knowing.
We want those stories.
Contributors are
credited by name.
Submissions are open.
03 NOMINATE A HERO
Someone near you deserves
this.
Every month we feature
one South African doing
something extraordinary
without recognition. No
grants. No applause. Just
the work. If you know
someone like that, tell us.
They have earned the
page.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION ON FACEBOOK
Follow us, share your Moxie moments, tag a friend.
facebook.com/moxiemag
South Africa has enough spectators. We are looking for the ones who show up.
Moxie is a monthly digital magazine.
Free with Smart Value Club membership. R49 standalone.
Publish date: 1st of every month.
E-mail us at editor@moxiemag.co.za with feedback - submissions - questions
and anything you would like to share.
Page 5
Pages 04–08
TRANSPARENCY
We do not have this much hair and
well the colour might also be slightly
more lighter!
But you'll understand the picture
once you've read below
One Word. Four Men. And a Magazine That
Believes
South Africa Is Worth Fighting For.
Before the first page was designed, before the first story was written, four
ordinary South African men sat around a table and asked a question that
refused to go away. What if we stopped complaining and actually did
something?
THE WORD
moxie
Force of character.
Determination. Nerve.
The courage to begin
again.
THE NAME
Moxie Mag
A name with history,
passed on with purpose,
given a bold new
direction.
THE TEAM
Four Men
Different ages, different
scars, one shared belief
in South Africa.
THE MISSION
For Everyone
Not for one kind of South
African. For all of them.
Ages 8 to 80.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 6
"Force of character. Determination. Nerve. The courage to face a hard situation and decide,
quietly but firmly, that it is not the end of your story."
Definition of moxie · Merriam-Webster
It started as a bottle of nerve tonic in 1870s
America. Something you drank to build up
your courage. Over time it stopped being a
brand and became something better. A word.
A quality. A way of describing people who do
not fold when life gets hard.
When four South African men went looking
for a name for what they were building, they
found it already existed locally. They saw the
word. They looked at each other. And they
knew. Not because it sounded good. Because
it meant them.
Moxie is not a soft, comfortable word. It has
edges. It carries a challenge. When you say
"you have moxie" you are recognising
something most people never develop.
And "have the moxie" means something
bolder still. The thing you need is already
inside you. Now stop waiting for permission
to use it. That is the magazine you are
holding.
FOUR MEN AND A TABLE
It grew the way real things do. Four men, different ages and backgrounds, all carrying the
restlessness of having lived enough life to know that complaining about a problem and
solving it are two very different things.
CHRISTO GOOSEN
The Technical Brain
More real life scars than most would wish on anyone, turned every one into something useful. Figures out how
while others debate whether.
The Grey-Haired Voice
Stops a conversation cold with a single sentence. Tough questions, heart of gold, first to roll up his
sleeves when help is needed.
DEWALD ROSEMA
The Community Builder
One thing on his mind: how do we get communities working together? Not as theory. As something real
and daily and practical.
JACO VORSTER
The Builder at Heart
Farmer at heart, waiting to trade the city for open land. Every builder's instinct going into something
that might outlast all of them.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
BAREND UYS
Page 7
A news magazine.
Your phone is full of headlines. Moxie is not adding
to the noise.
One audience.
Not for women, men, or children alone. For all of
them. That is harder to make and the only thing
worth making.
Corporate or sponsored.
Not opinion dressed as editorial. Not here to sell a
lifestyle you cannot afford.
Negative.
No crime, politics, or catastrophe. Not because
those things are not real but because you already
know about them.
Real South African stories.
This country as it actually is when the cameras are
pointed elsewhere.
People without applause.
Extraordinary things in ordinary places, without
grants or contracts.
Family adventures.
Places your family can actually go without breaking
the bank.
Eight pillars.
Discover · Explore · Roam · Gather · Thrive · Believe ·
Think · Play. Every month. Ages 8 to 80.
WHERE THIS ALL LEADS
South Africa has never had a shortage of people who see what is wrong. What it sometimes lacks are
people willing to get up, away from the comments section, and actually do something.
Moxie exists for the people who are ready to be those people. You are one of them. We believe that
without having met you.
Every month: stories, adventures, history, ideas, food, faith, play. All of it asking one question.
What does it look like when ordinary South Africans decide to have the moxie?
Welcome to Moxie. Now have the Moxie.
Christo · Barend · Dewald · Jaco
info@moxiemag.co.za · moxiemag.co.za · Free with SVC · R49 /month standalone
Got a story? Know a remarkable South African? Want to advertise?
We want to hear from you.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 9
One Table. Two Strangers. A Movement
That Changed Everything.
In Centurion, one man got tired of walking past the problem. What Jacques Papenfus built next has given 108
people back the one thing they had lost. Their dignity.
THE STORY
We're good at talking about what's broken.
We'll tell you exactly who dropped the ball, who should have done more, whose job it was to fix it. We can
go on about it for hours. At the braai, in the comments section, in the car on the way home. And honestly?
Sometimes we're not even wrong.
But here's the question nobody wants to answer. While we were talking, what did we do?
Jacques Papenfus got tired of asking that question. So one day, he stopped asking and started doing. He
pulled up a table on the side of the road, set out a few chairs, cooked a warm meal, and waited.
Two men came. Their names were Basie and Klasie.
That was how Moeggesukkel Reconciliation NPC began. Not with a board meeting. Not with a
government grant. Not with a business plan. With a table, a meal, and a decision to show up.
Today, 108 people have a safe place to sleep. 866 families receive nutritious meals every month. And it
costs just R20 to feed a family of six. None of this happened because one person had all the answers. It
happened because one person started, and a community followed.
People currently
living safely at
Moeggesukkel
Families receiving
nutritious meals
every month
R20
Is all it costs
to feed a
family of six
The strangers, Basie
and Klasie, who
started it all
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 10
Moeggesukkel in action. Community, one Tuesday at a time.
WHAT A COMMUNITY LOOKS LIKE IN ACTION
Moeggesukkel is not a charity that runs itself. It is a living thing, kept alive by ordinary people who
decided that ordinary was enough.
SOME PEOPLE START THINGS.
They see the gap, they feel the pull, and they do something about it. Jacques was that person. He did not
wait for the right moment or the right resources. He started with what he had.
SOME PEOPLE MAINTAIN THINGS.
They show up every week. They cook the food, they stack the chairs, they drive the van. They are not
famous for it. There is no plaque with their name. But without them, nothing works.
SOME PEOPLE SUPPORT THINGS.
They donate R50 when they can. They share a post. They drop off blankets in winter. They are not at the
site every day but their contribution is felt every day.
AND SOME PEOPLE BENEFIT.
They arrive broken. They leave steadier. Some stay and become the ones who now maintain, who now
support, who now start their own small version of the same thing somewhere else.
This is what community looks like when it actually works. Not one hero carrying everything. A web of
people, each doing the thing they can do, in the moment they can do it.
Moeggesukkel is proof that this is real. It is not a theory. It is a Tuesday morning in Centurion, where
someone is cooking, someone is eating, and someone is building something that was not there yesterday.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 11
The Question That Will Not Go Away.
Moeggesukkel didn't begin with a strategy. It began with a table, a meal, and a decision to stop walking past.
The question it leaves every South African with is not complicated.
There is a lie that South Africans have been telling themselves for too long.
It goes like this: the problem is too big. I am too small. I don't have enough money, enough time, enough
skill, enough connections. Someone else will do it. Someone better placed. Someone with more.
Moeggesukkel exists to prove that lie wrong.
One table. Two strangers. One person who decided to stop walking past. That is the entire founding story
of an organisation that now reaches hundreds of people every single month.
You do not need a budget. You do not need a committee. You do not need permission. You need a
decision. A small one. A consistent one. The kind that gets repeated on a Tuesday and a Saturday and
again the following week, until something real has taken root.
South Africa has no shortage of need. What it has always needed are more people willing to take the first
step, and more communities willing to take the second one together.
Moeggesukkel is not waiting for the perfect conditions. Neither should you.
"The question it leaves us with is not complicated. What is your table?"
MOXIE TIP
Start where you are. Use what you have. Moeggesukkel began with one table and two strangers. Your
version does not need to look like theirs. It just needs to begin.
GET INVOLVED WITH MOEGGESUKKEL
moeggesukkel.co.za
068 948 3959 · office@moeggesukkel.co.za
facebook.com/Moeggesukkel
Donate via PayFast or PayPal on their website · Reference: Daar is HOOP
Know Someone Remarkable? Tell us at info@moxiemag.co.za
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 13
The Life Your Child
Is Living Online Is
Not Their Life.
It started as a way for university students to share photos and class schedules. Twenty-one years later it is reshaping
how an entire generation understands who they are. It is time to talk about what social media is actually doing to our
children. And to us.
On 4 February 2004, a nineteen-year-old Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg launched a website called The
Facebook. Its purpose was simple: let university students share photos, post their class schedules, and connect with
each other on campus. It was a digital noticeboard for college kids.
What it became is something nobody planned and very few people have honestly reckoned with.
Before The Facebook, Zuckerberg had built another site called Facemash. It let Harvard students rate each other's
physical appearance. It was shut down within two days for violating university policy. The irony is almost too sharp to
sit with: the platform now used by three billion people to curate how the world sees them began as a tool to judge how
attractive you looked to strangers. The seed was there from the beginning.
Nobody handed your child a manual for this. Nobody handed you one either.
The Mirror That Only Shows You What You Are Missing
Here is what social media actually does, stripped of the marketing language. It shows you a continuous, curated
stream of other people's best moments. Their holidays, their bodies, their relationships, their achievements, their
homes, their children. All of it selected, filtered, angled, and lit to look as good as possible. None of it is a lie exactly.
But none of it is the truth either. It is a highlight reel presented as a life.
Your child watches this for three, four, five hours a day. Their brain, still forming, still figuring out who they are and
where they fit in the world, draws conclusions. I am not pretty enough. I do not have enough. My life is not exciting
enough. My body is wrong. My family is ordinary. I am missing something that everyone else seems to have found.
This is not an accident. The platforms are engineered to produce exactly this feeling. The scroll never ends. The
comparison never stops. The dopamine hit of a like, a comment, a new follower, keeps the brain coming back. It is not
a social tool with some unfortunate side effects. For children especially, it is a comparison machine with a social tool
bolted on.
Identity Does Not Come From a Feed
There is a generation growing up right now that has never known life without this. They are building their sense of
self, their understanding of beauty, success, friendship, and worth, inside a system designed by advertising
algorithms. They are not choosing who to be. They are being shown who to be and then told they are falling short of it.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 14
Talk to us. What are you seeing with your own children? Write to us at moxiemag.co.za or join our Facebook page - @MoxieMag
The personas they see are not real people. They are brands. The influencer with the perfect skin uses twelve products
and two filters before posting. The family with the beautiful home has debt you cannot see. The body that looks
effortless took obsession you are not shown. Behind every curated identity is a real person who is also, privately,
comparing themselves to someone else's curated identity.
Our children do not know this. And we are not telling them.
The Danger We Are Not Talking About Loudly Enough
Social media is also, plainly, a space where people who want to harm children operate with ease. Predators, scammers,
and manipulators have learned to use the language of connection and validation, the very things teenagers are most
hungry for, to gain access. A child who has been taught that their value comes from online approval is a child who is
more vulnerable, not less. The false identity social media builds is not just emotionally damaging. It is a safety risk.
Social Media Is Not the Enemy. How We Use It Is.
Facebook was not built to damage your child. It was built so university students could share their schedules. What it
became is the result of scale, advertising, and human psychology colliding in ways nobody fully anticipated and very
few have been honest about.
Social media is not going away. Your child is going to use it. The question is whether they use it knowing what it is, or
whether they use it believing the lie.
That is your job. Not the platform's. Not the school's. Yours.
What You Can Actually Do
Talk about it at the dinner table, not as a lecture but as a conversation. Ask your child who they follow and why. Ask
them how those accounts make them feel. Watch their face when they answer. Ask yourself the same questions about
your own feed.
Teach them that a curated photo is not a life. That a follower count is not a measure of worth. That the people who
seem to have everything online are also lying in bed at night wondering if they are enough.
And then teach them, by example, what real identity looks
like. It looks like showing up when things are hard. It looks
like knowing what you value and living it. It looks like being
genuinely interested in the people in front of you rather
than performing for the ones watching a screen.
Identity should not be established by what your children
see on social media. It should be built on what you teach
them. Be very mindful of what you are not teaching them.
Because if you leave that space empty, social media will fill
it. And it will not be gentle about it.
MOXIE TIP
A curated photo is not a life. A follower count is not a measure of worth. Teach your children this. Then live it yourself.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 16
Wouter Botes portrait
Some questions deserve
a lifetime of answers.
Wouter Botes · Pilot · Author · Cold Case Investigator
Wouter Botes is a commercial pilot, author, television producer, and
one of South Africa's most determined cold case investigators. He does
not do this for fame. He does it because the families of the missing have
been waiting long enough.
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a plane that does not land.
Not the silence of peace. The silence of a question with no answer yet. Where did it go? What happened
in those final minutes? Was it pilot error, weather, mechanical failure, or something else entirely?
Families spend decades living inside that silence. Some of them never leave it.
Wouter Botes decided, somewhere along the way, that he was not willing to let that silence be
permanent.
A PILOT WHO STARTED ASKING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS
Botes holds a Commercial Pilot's Licence and has spent more than two decades flying across Africa.
Low-level survey work, aircraft maintenance, recovery flights in remote terrain. He has seen the
continent from the air in ways most people never will.
But it was what he found on the ground, in old bookshops and dusty archive files, that changed
everything. South Africa has a history of aircraft disappearances that were never properly resolved.
Planes that went up and simply did not come back down anywhere anyone could find. Families told, in
effect, that the sky had swallowed their people whole.
Botes looked at that history and saw not a closed chapter, but an open case. Many open cases. And he had
the skills, the patience, and the stubborn South African refusal to let it go, to do something about it.
THE WORK THAT FOLLOWED
More than twelve years of intensive research across Southern Africa. Hundreds of hours of archival work,
interviews, site visits, and collaboration with marine technology specialists, diving teams, aviation
historians, and museum curators. It is the kind of work that most people would find quietly exhausting.
For Botes, it is the work itself that keeps him going.
His methodology is meticulous. Every investigation begins with the historical record, working backwards
from the last known position, the last radio contact, the weather data, the flight plan. Then forward again
through the evidence, cross-referencing against what modern technology can now tell us that was
impossible to know fifty years ago.
These families have been living with a question for decades. The least we can do is
keep asking it with them.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 17
The series was followed by a coffee-table book of the same name, then Air Accident SA, then
Doodloopspore, then Doodloopspore 2. Each book carried the same conviction: these stories matter,
these people deserve better than silence, and the truth, however long it takes to find, is worth pursuing.
Plane Wreck Hunter followed, taking viewers directly into the active search process. Not reconstructed.
Not dramatised. The real thing, with all its patience, frustration, and occasional extraordinary discovery.
Audiences responded to the honesty of it. South Africans understand, perhaps better than most, what it
means to keep looking for something when the world has moved on.
MORE THAN INVESTIGATIONS
Beyond the screen and the page, Botes is a passionate advocate for aviation safety. He speaks regularly at
events including the Loutzavia Safety Evening and the South African Air Force Museum, translating
decades of investigation into practical lessons for the pilots who fly today.
There is something quietly powerful about that. A crash that happened in 1967 becomes, in Botes's
hands, a lesson that saves a life in 2026. The dead teach the living. The only requirement is that someone
was willing to go back and find out exactly what happened, and why.
He also organises motorcycle tours across the region, because the man who hunts missing aircraft is, at
heart, simply someone who cannot stay still when there is something worth exploring. The sky and the
road are different routes to the same instinct.
WHAT DRIVES A MAN TO KEEP GOING
Every investigation carries a family somewhere on the other end of it. A grandmother who never stopped
wondering. A child who grew up without knowing the full story of how their parent died. A community
carrying a collective silence about something that happened in the sky above them fifty years ago.
When Botes locates a wreck site, identifies a cause, or recovers an artefact for a museum or a family, the
point is not the metal. The point is what that finding does for the people who have been waiting. That is
what he is actually hunting.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN SPIRIT IN IT
There is something deeply familiar about what Wouter Botes does, if you know South Africans at all.
It is the refusal to accept that a problem is too old, too deep, or too complicated to be solved. The decision
to start with what you have and trust that the rest will follow. The understanding that giving up is a choice,
and that some questions are simply too important to abandon.
He began with a second-hand book and a pilot's curiosity. He built a television series, a body of published
work, a reputation as one of the country's most thorough aviation investigators, and a community of
people who follow his work because they feel, rightly, that someone should.
He is not finished. The families are still waiting. That is reason enough to keep going.
MOXIE TIP
You do not have to solve everything. Start with what you have. Ask the question. Follow the gap.
The rest has a way of finding you.
Thank you Wouter and we look forward sharing more of your journey with our readers!
FOLLOW WOUTER'S JOURNEY: Search 'Wouter Botes' on Facebook and YouTube · Books available online
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 19
What AI Is.
And What It Is
Not.
Everyone is talking about it. Half the world is scared of it. The other half thinks it will solve everything. The truth,
as usual, is far less dramatic and far more useful.
There is a man sitting in a government office in Pretoria in 1987. He needs a report. Headcount by department, salary
bands, leave balances. He types a query into a mainframe terminal. Thirty seconds later the printer spits out exactly
what he asked for, formatted, readable, done.
He did not write code. He did not build a database. He asked a machine a question in something close to plain
language, and the machine went and found the answer inside the data it had been given.
He was using AI. He just did not call it that.
Artificial intelligence is not a new idea that arrived with ChatGPT in 2022. It is not a Silicon Valley invention. It is not a
robot that thinks. It is, at its core, a machine that takes a question, searches through an enormous amount of stored
information, and gives you back an organised, readable answer. The mainframe did this. The search engine did this.
Your GPS does this every time it recalculates your route.
What changed recently is not the idea. What changed is the scale, the speed, and the quality of the output.
Today's AI tools have read, in effect, most of the internet. Every article, forum post, recipe, research paper, Wikipedia
entry, and comment section that was publicly available when they were trained. When you type a question and get a
confident, well-written answer back in four seconds, that answer did not come from nowhere. It came from
somewhere. Usually from many somewheres. The AI found it, assembled it, and presented it in a form that makes
sense to you.
That is genuinely useful. It is also genuinely important to understand, because it means the AI is not thinking. It is
retrieving and reorganising.
It Gets Things Wrong. Often Confidently.
AI tools do not know what they do not know. They do not flag uncertainty the way a good colleague would. They will
give you a wrong date, a misattributed quote, an invented statistic, in the same calm, assured tone they use when they
are completely correct.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
This is not a bug that will be fixed in the next update. It is a structural feature of how these systems work. They are
pattern-matching at extraordinary speed. Pattern-matching is not the same as understanding.
This means one thing practically: a human being must always check the output. Not skim it. Check it. AI is a powerful
first draft, not a finished product. Anyone using it as a finished product is taking a risk they probably do not realise
they are taking.
Page 20
So What Is It Actually Good For?
Quite a lot, honestly. If you have a pile of information and need it organised, AI is extraordinary. If you need a first
draft of something and your blank-page paralysis is real, AI breaks that wall down. If you need to understand
something complex and want it explained simply, AI does that well. If you are managing a workload that involves
repetitive structuring tasks, AI cuts your effort dramatically.
What it does not do is replace judgement. It does not replace expertise. It does not replace the person who knows the
context, knows the client, knows what the data actually means in the real world. That person is still you.
A South African example of this done honestly is Vowie, a companion chatbot on WhatsApp and Telegram. Vowie is
upfront about what it is not. It does not search for answers. It asks better questions so you can find your own. That
distinction matters. The best use of AI is not to hand your thinking to a machine. It is to use the machine to think
better yourself.
The Honest Summary.
AI is a tool. A remarkable one, genuinely useful, genuinely powerful. But a tool is only as good as the hands holding it
and the mind directing it.
The person who understood that in 1987, typing queries into a mainframe terminal in Pretoria, knew something that
got lost somewhere between then and now: the machine works for you. Not the other way around.
It always did. We just forgot for a moment.
MOXIE TIP
AI is a powerful first draft. It is never a finished product.
Always put a human brain at the end of the process.
Have a thought on AI, or a question about how it works? Write to us at editor@moxiemag.co.za
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 21
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moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
E-mail us at editor@moxiemag.co.za with feedback - submissions - questions
and anything you would like to share.
Page 23
Don't Book July Yet.
These Two Are Worth The Wait.
Two of South Africa's most beloved events land in the first week of July 2026. If you are still planning your school holiday
calendar, block these dates now.
3–12 JULY
FOOD & LIFESTYLE
Knysna, Garden Route, Western Cape
MUSIC & AFRIKAANS CULTURE
innibos.co.za
Knysna Oyster Festival
Nine days of freshly shucked oysters, craft beer, live music, cycling events, trail runs, and
beachside picnics on the Knysna Lagoon. One of the most consistently loved family events on
the South African calendar.
knysnaoyster.co.za
2–5 JULY
Toyota Innibos Festival
Mbombela, Mpumalanga
The premier Afrikaans music, culture, and entertainment festival returns with an
extraordinary lineup across multiple outdoor stages. A full weekend of music, laughter, and
family moments in the warm Mpumalanga air.
Have an exciting event coming up?
We love sharing what South African families are doing. If your community, school,
church, sports club, or neighbourhood is hosting something worth celebrating, send
it to us. We read every submission and publish the events that deserve a bigger
audience.
Send your event to editor@moxiemag.co.za
Subject line: Events Submission · Include event name, dates, venue, contact details, and a short description
Event dates and details correct at time of publication. Always confirm with the event organiser before travelling.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 25
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moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 26
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moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 27
JUNE Family.
LUKE 15 : 20
"While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, threw his arms
around him and kissed him."
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
There is no word in the language that carries more weight than this one. More history. More hope. More
complicated, unresolved, still-being-worked-out feeling. Family.
For some of you it lands warm. The people who showed up, who stayed, who knew you at your worst and
loved you anyway. The Sunday lunches and the inside jokes and the WhatsApp group that drives you mad but
you would not trade for anything. If that is your experience, this month is an invitation not to take it for
granted. Because not everyone got what you got.
For others it lands heavy. Family is where the oldest wounds live. Where you learned, before you had words
for it, what love with conditions felt like. Where distance grew quietly until one day you looked up and
realised you were strangers with the same last name.
For most of us, honestly, it is somewhere in between. Beautiful and difficult and unfinished. The relationship
where we are most ourselves, which means it is also the relationship where we do the most damage and
receive the most. Where forgiveness is not a once-off event but a practice you return to again and again.
This month is not going to pretend any of that is simple.
We are going to sit with the distance and the guilt and the grief of family relationships that did not look the
way you needed them to. The parent who was absent or critical or both. The child who walked away. The
sibling relationship that got lost somewhere in adulthood. The restoration you are hoping for and the one you
have stopped believing is possible.
And we keep coming back to the father in Luke 15. The one who did not wait for his son to arrive cleaned up
and rehearsed. Who ran. While the son was still a long way off. That is the model. Not the tidy ending. The
running toward, even before the explanation.
You are not too far gone. And neither is the person you have been keeping at arm's length.
June is going to ask you to get honest about the people who made you. And brave enough to do something
about it.
EXTRACT FROM
Standing 365 ·
In Conclusion with AM I...
A devotional journal for the honest moments.
Now available on Amazon.
Coming soon in paperback for South Africa.
FIND IT ON AMAZON · STANDING365
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 28
There are recipes. And then there are recipes that carry a whole world inside them.
Waterblommetjiebredie is the second kind.
The name alone is worth sitting with. Waterblommetjie means "little water flower" in
Afrikaans. Bredie is the Cape Malay word for a slow-cooked meat stew. Put them
together and you have something that does not exist anywhere else on earth: a lamb
stew made with the aquatic flowers of the Cape pondweed, harvested from the cold
mountain streams and vleis of the Western Cape.
You can only make this stew in June, July, and August. The waterblommetjies bloom in
winter, and when they are gone, they are gone. That seasonality is part of what makes it
special. You do not order this. You wait for it.
WHERE IT COMES FROM
Three Hundred Years at the Cape
Long before Dutch settlers arrived at the Cape in 1652, the Khoikhoi people who lived
along the rivers and wetlands of the Western Cape had already discovered that the
flowers of Aponogeton distachyos, the Cape pondweed, were good to eat. The plant grew
in abundance in the slow, clear streams fed by the Cape mountains. The flowers are
unusual among aquatic plants: they bloom in winter, pushing white twin-spiked flowers
above the surface in the cold months when almost nothing else grows.
When Cape Malay cooks, brought to the Cape as slaves by the Dutch East India Company,
began working in the kitchens of the Cape Colony, they brought with them the tradition of
the bredie: a long, slow, fragrant stew made with whatever was available. The
waterblommetjie was available. It was free, it was local, and it turned out to be
extraordinary in a pot with lamb and sorrel. The stew that resulted was neither Dutch nor
Khoikhoi nor Cape Malay. It was Cape. And it has stayed Cape ever since.
Today you will find waterblommetjies in winter markets across the Western Cape, sold
fresh in their stems, smelling faintly of cucumber and cold water. Farmers from Grabouw
to Villiersdorp still harvest them by hand from farm dams and streams. The best ones are
firm, white, and harvested in the morning. By winter evening, they belong in a pot.
KITCHEN
·
EDITION 01
·
JUNE 2026
The Stew That
Smells Like Winter.
Waterblommetjiebredie has been warming South African homes for over three hundred
years. It starts in the vlei. It ends on the table. And everything in between is worth
knowing.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 29
"You can only make this stew in June, July, and August. When the
waterblommetjies are gone, they are gone. You do not order this. You wait for
it."
The flavour of waterblommetjiebredie is unlike anything else. The lamb gives it depth. The
sorrel gives it a gentle sourness that balances the richness. The waterblommetjies
themselves almost dissolve into the stew, giving it a subtle, grassy, slightly mineral flavour
that is completely its own. It is not a showy dish. It does not photograph especially well. But
on a cold Cape winter evening with yellow rice alongside it, it is one of the finest things you
can put on a table.
If you are in Gauteng, Limpopo, or KwaZulu-Natal, you may need to look for
waterblommetjies at a specialist food shop or order them online from a Cape supplier. It is
worth the effort. This is one of those dishes that connects you to a South Africa that most
people never stop long enough to taste.
W AT E R B L O M M E T J I E B R E D I E
L AMB AND CAPE PONDWEED FLOWER STEW
SERVES 6
PREP: 30 MIN · COOK: 2 HRS 30 MIN
W H AT Y O U N E E D
T H E M E AT
1.5 kg
Bone-in lamb shoulder or knuckle, cut into large pieces
2 Tbsp
Sunflower or canola oil
500 g
Fresh waterblommetjies, trimmed, soaked 20 min in cold salted water, rinsed
Handful
Fresh sorrel (suring) or 2 Tbsp lemon juice if sorrel is unavailable
2 large
Onions, roughly sliced
4 cloves
Garlic, crushed
2 tsp
Fresh ginger, grated (optional, traditional in the Cape Malay version)
250 ml
Dry white wine or good lamb or chicken stock
250 ml
Water
Bay leaf
Pinch
Ground nutmeg
Salt & pepper To taste throughout cooking
Salt & pepper Season the meat generously before browning
T H E F LO W E R S
T H E F L AV O U R B A S E
TO SERVE
Yellow rice
Cooked with turmeric, cinnamon stick, sugar, and raisins in the Cape tradition
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 30
01 Prepare the waterblommetjies. Trim any tough stems and submerge the flowers in
cold salted water for 20 minutes. This removes any bitterness and any small creatures
living inside the flowers. Rinse well under cold running water. Do not skip this step.
02 Brown the lamb in batches. Season the lamb generously with salt and pepper. Heat
the oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over high heat. Brown the lamb in batches without
crowding the pot. You want real colour on the meat. This is where the depth of flavour
comes from. Set aside.
03 Build the base. Lower the heat to medium. In the same pot, cook the onions slowly until
soft and beginning to turn golden, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and stir
for another minute. Do not let them burn.
04 Bring it together. Return the lamb to the pot. Pour in the wine or stock and water. Add
the bay leaf and nutmeg. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce to a very low simmer. Cover
tightly and cook for 1 hour 30 minutes, checking occasionally that there is enough liquid.
05 Add the waterblommetjies and sorrel. Once the lamb is tender and nearly falling from
the bone, add the waterblommetjies and sorrel (or lemon juice). Stir gently. Cover and
cook for a further 30 to 40 minutes. The waterblommetjies will soften and almost melt
into the stew. Taste and adjust salt. The stew should be rich but not thick. It is not a
gravy. It is a bredie.
06 Rest and serve. Remove from heat and allow to rest 10 minutes before serving. Serve in
deep bowls over yellow rice. Put a warm pot on the table and let people help themselves.
That is how this dish has always been served.
M OX IE T I P
Waterblommetjiebredie is better the next day. Cook it the evening before, refrigerate overnight,
and reheat gently. The flavours settle and deepen in a way that first-day cooking simply cannot
match. Plan ahead. The table will thank you.
G O T A FA M I LY R E C I P E W I T H A S T O R Y B E H I N D I T ? S H A R E I T W I T H U S AT M OX I E M A G . C O . Z A
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 31
Die Waentjie is op Pad.
Elke maand, een leser se storie. Gepubliseer presies soos geskryf. In die taal waarin dit geskryf is.
Hierdie een behoort aan 'n familie wat besluit het, stad lewe is nie normaal nie.
Verlandeliking. Ek moes gaan opsoek watter woord, hierdie nuwe tendens van 'platteland toe skuif',
beskryf. Van verstedeliking het ons in aardrykskunde op skool geleer, maar nooit het ek tóé gedink dat
mense in strepe sou moeg raak vir die klatergoud in die stad en weer smag na 'n eenvoudige lewe nie.
Ons het 2020 se grendeltyd, deurgebring by familie op 'n bosveldplaas en dit het ons oë oopgemaak vir die
vryheid wat mens kan hê, te midde van chaos. Ons het daaroor gebid en ons eie stukkie vryheid begin
soek. Ek is altyd oop vir 'n avontuur en toe my man karoo toe beur, het ek ingestem om te gaan kyk hoe dit
lyk, al is ek baie lief vir die bosveld.
Karoo-dagbreek. Stil voor die wêreld wakker word.
Nou kyk, as jy opknap tydskrifte lees, sal jy amper glo almal wil 'n huisie in die Karoo hê. Met reg word
daar gespog met opgesmukte plaashuise en tuine, maar wat die glansfoto's nie kan vasvang nie, is die
vrede en rustigheid wat hierdie wêreld gee. Die wye vlaktes bring 'n gevoel van nederigheid en nietigheid
wat op hulle beurt plek maak vir ontsag vir ons Skepper. Ek het uit die staanspoor besef, híér, met min
mensgemaakte dinge wat jou aandag aftrek, kan jy 'n hegter verhouding smee.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 32
Die plaas in die vallei. Hier begin die nuwe hoofstuk.
As jy wil ervaar watter lafenis hierdie landskap vir jou kan bring, kom sit saam met my op die klipkoppie
langs ons huis. Ek neem klein slukkies varsgetrekte gemmer en borrie tee uit my termiese beker en hou
die horison dop vir die goue strale wat kop uitsteek oor die berge, amper te bang om asem te haal in die
heilige oomblikke van dagbreek. Die swaeltjies duik en draai om my. Vars karoo geure sweef in die lug.
Die plaaswerf onder my word wakker. Die oggendrustigheid sypel in en versadig my siel van 'n dors wat
ek nie geweet het, bestaan nie. Ek sug diep en sit nog 'n rukkie langer.
Ek bêre bietjie van hierdie karoo-lafenis vir uithaal wanneer ons weer terug is in die voorwêreld. Tot
dusver moes ons pendel van die stad na die plaas, maar in 'n geloofsbesluit, het ons nou begin om die
permanente skuif plaas toe te maak. Soos ek hier tik, staan die dubbelas waentjie gelaai, gereed om môre
die lang pad karoo toe te neem. Gaan daar uitdagings wees? Beslis. Maar die ontduiking van die
geroesmoes in die stad, maak dit die moeite werd.
Die waentjie is op pad na hanslammers, groentetuine, donkie-vure, helder sterrehemele, oop-ruimtes en
vryheid. Mag dit 'n geseënde reis wees.
Gepubliseer soos ontvang. Moxie het nie die inhoud geredigeer nie.
Het jy 'n storie? Do you have a story?
Every month we select one reader submission and publish it exactly as written. Any
language. Any South African story worth telling.
Submit to editor@moxiemag.co.za · Subject: My Story
Reader submissions express the views of the contributor. Moxie publishes unedited reader work in good faith.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 34
The Kingdom South Africa Was
Not Supposed to Remember.
On a sandstone cliff in the far north of Limpopo, a civilisation once flourished that traded gold with
China, built the first sacred kingdom in southern Africa, and vanished without a battle. Most South
Africans have never heard of it. That changes today.
Photo by Marius Loots / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
It started with a secret.
For years, the community living near the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where South
Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana meet today, knew about the hill. They called it Mapungubwe. Place of
the jackal. They had not forgotten what it was, or what had happened there. They simply had not told
anyone outside their own people.
In 1932, a local community member led farmer E.S.J. van Graan and his son to the base of that sandstone
cliff rising thirty metres straight out of the earth. Van Graan climbed the narrow stone stairs carved into
the rock face. What he found at the top would quietly rewrite the history of an entire continent. Royal
burials. Gold ornaments. Pottery. And in one burial, wrapped in thin sheets of beaten gold, a small
rhinoceros no larger than a man's hand. Sitting in the dark for seven hundred years. Waiting.
The King Who Climbed Above His People
For centuries before Mapungubwe became a kingdom, chiefs lived in the centre of their communities,
accessible to all. Around 1220 AD the ruling class moved the king to the top of a sheer sandstone cliff,
separating him from the commoners in the valley below. This was not a practical decision. It was
theology made into architecture.
The king became sacred, a spiritual mediator between the living and the ancestors. He was not seen in
everyday moments. When he died, he was buried facing north, surrounded by gold and cloth that
marked him as something beyond everyday life. Stand at the base of that cliff on a winter evening and
picture smoke rising from royal fires above. The people below could see it every night. They could not
see him. That distance was entirely the point.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 35
A Stone Age Wall Street
Photo by Sian Tiley-Nel / University of Pretoria Museums / CC BY-SA 4.0
The Limpopo region had gold, and the people of
Mapungubwe knew how to work it. Indigenous
miners extracted ore using iron tools, hammered it
into foil, and used tiny gold tacks to fix it onto carved
wooden objects with extraordinary precision.
Swahili Arab traders walked hundreds of kilometres
inland from the East African coast. For Mapungubwe's
gold and ivory they brought deep blue glass beads from
Egypt and India, celadon porcelain from China, and
cotton cloth. A king in Limpopo, in 1250 AD, was
buried wearing Indian glass beads surrounded by
Chinese porcelain.
South Africa was not a historical bystander. It was a trading node connected all the way to the markets of
the Middle East and the kilns of southern China. The population at Mapungubwe's peak: around nine
thousand people.
When the Rain Stopped
Around 1300 AD, climate cooling disrupted rainfall across the globe. In the Limpopo Valley: drought.
Floodplains dried, agriculture failed, elephants migrated south. A sacred king drew his authority from
the ancestors, understood to control the rain. When the rains failed year after year, a ruler who cannot
promise rain is a ruler whose power is already leaving.
The kingdom did not fall to an army. The population moved north, carrying goldsmithing, sacred
kingship and city-building. That migration became Great Zimbabwe. Mapungubwe did not end. It walked
north and built something bigger.
Mapungubwe Today
South Africa's most prestigious civilian award is called the Order of Mapungubwe. The golden rhino is
now at the University of Pretoria Mapungubwe Museum. Mapungubwe National Park near Musina has an
award-winning Interpretation Centre. Winter is the finest time. The story holds a twelve-year-old and a
fifty-year-old equally.
MOXIE TIP
Before you go into any exhibit at Mapungubwe, sit for a few minutes at the base of the
hill. Look up at the cliff. Think about the smoke that rose from the royal fires at dusk,
and the people in the valley below watching it. Some stories need a moment of quiet
before they can reach you. This is one of them.
Plan your visit: sanparks.org/parks/mapungubwe · Golden rhino: up.ac.za/mapungubwe-museum
We have such a rich history - We'd love to hear from you, the stories not
told or not headlines - Let's share with the new generation.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 36
·
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK · 100 YEARS · 1926–2026
This year, Kruger National Park turns one hundred. Not a hundred years of tourism brochures and swimming
pools. A hundred years of lions at night, rivers that never stopped flowing, and a decision made by a handful of
people that this wilderness was worth saving for all of us.
On 31 May 1926, a piece of paper was signed and a stretch of Lowveld bush became something official.
South Africa's first national park. Named after a president who had worried about vanishing wildlife
decades before anyone else thought it mattered. Proclaimed into existence by a government that had
finally listened.
In that first year, three cars entered the park. Three. The roads were rough enough that speeding was
physically impossible. There was no accommodation. Visitors made their own camps inside thorn bush
enclosures and took their chances with whatever came calling in the night. Night driving had to be
banned after too many animals, blinded by headlights, were getting killed on the tracks.
Think about that the next time you queue at the Skukuza restaurant.
What happened between those three dusty cars and the 1.9 million visitors who arrived in 2024 is one of
the most extraordinary conservation stories on earth. It is a story of patience and stubbornness and vision
and sacrifice. And it is a story that belongs to every South African. Not just the ones who can afford private
lodges. All of us.
IMAGE: KRUGER NATIONAL PARK — SUNRISE OVER THE BUSH
Wide landscape, golden hour, suggested: aerial or river frontage shot
Chris vd Merwe from Polokwane, South Africa, CC BY 2.0
A Century in the Wild. Three Cars.
One Hundred Years. Everything.
FC Georgio, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Founders - created by the
renowned South African
sculptor Coert Steynberg.
Left to right:
Piet Grobler, Paul Kruger, and
James Stevenson-Hamilton.
Can be seen in in Skukuza,
Kruger National Park, South
Africa.
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 37
Before any of this existed, there was one man.
James Stevenson-Hamilton arrived in 1902 as the first warden of the Sabi Game Reserve. He was handed
a job that most people thought was pointless. Protect wildlife that poachers considered fair game. Push
back against farmers, miners and politicians who all had better uses for the land. Do it with almost no
resources and very little official support.
He stayed for forty-four years.
The Tsonga people who lived alongside this wilderness gave him a name: Skukuza. Loosely translated, it
means he who sweeps clean. He earned it. He removed poachers. He resisted his own government's plans
to mine the land he was trying to protect. He wrote letters, submitted reports, argued with committees
and refused to give up on something that had no guaranteed future. When the National Parks Act was
finally passed in 1926, his vision became reality.
Today the largest camp in the park carries his name. It feels like a fair tribute for a man who gave
forty-four years to a wilderness most people had written off.
"Every camp sign in Kruger is a chapter. Every name is a thread connecting the present
to something older."
WHAT THE NAMES CARRY
Here is something most visitors never stop to think about. The names on the camp signs are not random.
Skukuza honours the man who built it. Lower Sabie and Shingwedzi carry the names of the rivers they sit
beside, rivers that have shaped this landscape for thousands of years. Pretoriuskop remembers a
Voortrekker who met his end in the bush not far from where families now braai on holiday weekends.
Letaba means River of Sand. Olifants means Elephants. Punda Maria remains a mystery that historians
have been arguing about for decades, linking it to prospectors, pioneers and colourful characters from
the region's early days.
The satellite camps tell quieter stories. Bateleur takes its name from one of Africa's most magnificent
eagles, that short-tailed, flame-faced acrobat of the sky that most visitors recognise but cannot name.
Tamboti from the beautiful but highly poisonous tree that grows throughout the Lowveld. Maroela from
the wild fruit tree that elephants have loved for as long as elephants have existed. Shimuwini means
Place of the Baobab.
In the north, where the roads are emptier and the bush feels wilder, Shingwedzi and Mopani and Punda
Maria each carry a character that feels different from the busy south. Regular visitors to these camps
often describe them the same way: like finding the real Kruger.
Bart Swanson(Bkswanson), CC BY-SA 3.0
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication
Page 38
·
You can drive through Kruger without knowing any of this. Many people do. But once you start looking at
the names, once you start asking what they mean and who they honour, you cannot stop.
WHAT A HUNDRED YEARS ACTUALLY MEANS
A hundred years is long enough to forget why something started.
Kruger exists because wildlife was disappearing. Because uncontrolled hunting was taking everything
and leaving nothing. Because a handful of people in 1898 looked at what remained and decided it was
worth protecting, even when nobody was thanking them for it and the politics were working against
them at every turn.
That decision is why your children can watch a lion cross the road in front of the car. It is why elephant
herds still move along ancient paths through ancient bush that has never been broken by a plough. It is
why you can pull off at the Olifants lookout and stand in the afternoon heat while the river moves far
below and feel, for a moment, that the world is exactly the right size.
This year Kruger turns one hundred. SANParks is marking the centenary with heritage programmes,
community partnerships and a renewed commitment to all twenty of South Africa's national parks. But
the best way to celebrate is the simplest one.
Go. Take your family. Stay in the camps. Wake up before sunrise. Sit with your coffee and listen to what a
hundred years of protection actually sounds like.
It sounds like a fish eagle calling across a still river at dawn. It sounds like something that very nearly was
not there.
MOXIE TIP
SANParks Wild Card gives unlimited access to all South African national parks for a full year. A family
Wild Card starts from around R3,000 and pays for itself in a single Kruger visit. Check current prices at
sanparks.org.
CONTRIBUTOR PHOTO
WRITTEN BY
Losaan Meiring
Explorer at heart, animal lover by nature, and forever drawn to the beauty of the African
bush. I don't just write about the Kruger, I stay here - It's my home, my life and everything that
makes me love life to the fullest!
COMING IN MOXIE — JULY 2026
The Parks Beyond Kruger.
South Africa has nineteen other national parks, each one a world of its own. Next month we take you inside
Addo Elephant National Park, where the world's densest elephant population shares its home with the
Big 7. The month after, the Drakensberg. Then the Kalahari. Then the . . .
The parks that shaped this country are waiting. We are just getting started.
Subscribe at moxiemag.co.za · Free with Smart Value Club membership
moxiemag.co.za · A Smart Value Club Publication