ANTAKALIPA

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: Strategy as the Highest Form of Intelligence Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is often misunderstood because it has been quoted too frequently and read too shallowly. It appears on corporate PowerPoint slides, leadership seminars, and motivational posters—usually reduced to clichés about “knowing your enemy” or “choosing battles wisely.” But The Art of War is not a book about aggression. It is a book about restraint, perception, and the invisible mechanics of power. At its core, it is a philosophy that treats war as a tragic failure of politics, to be concluded swiftly, intelligently, and with minimal bloodshed. Unlike later Western military theorists such as Clausewitz, who framed war as the continuation of politics by other means, Sun Tzu frames war as something to be avoided if possible, and ended before it begins if unavoidable. Victory, for Sun Tzu, is not measured by conquest but by control without destruction. This inversion is what makes The Art of...

The 50th Law: Fearlessness as Power in a World Built on Anxiety Robert Greene’s The 50th Law, co-authored with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, stands apart from Greene’s other works not because it abandons strategy, but because it strips strategy down to its rawest psychological core: fear. Where The 48 Laws of Power teaches manipulation, misdirection, and control, The 50th Law asks a more unsettling question—what happens when fear disappears entirely? The answer, Greene suggests, is not recklessness, but sovereignty. This book is not a motivational manifesto, nor is it a gangster memoir disguised as philosophy. It is a meditation on power from the perspective of those who begin with nothing—no safety net, no institutional protection, no illusions about fairness. By pairing Greene’s historical analysis with 50 Cent’s lived experience of poverty, violence, betrayal, and reinvention, The 50th Law becomes a study in fearlessness as an existential stance, not a personality trait. At ...

From Florence to the Boardroom: Machiavelli’s The Prince and Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power Power does not announce itself as evil. It arrives disguised as necessity. Niccolò Machiavelli understood this in sixteenth-century Florence; Robert Greene understands it in corporate offices, political arenas, and social hierarchies centuries later. The Prince and The 48 Laws of Power are separated by time, language, and cultural surface, but they belong to the same bloodline. Greene’s book is not a reinvention of Machiavelli—it is his translation into a world that still pretends to be moral. Together, these texts form a single philosophy: power is amoral, relational, and governed by perception rather than truth. What Machiavelli articulated with brutal minimalism, Greene expands into a manual for psychological warfare in modern life. The Break with Innocence Machiavelli’s great rupture was his refusal to speak of power as it should be. He rejected saints, philosophers, and th...

Marabi At the Market Theatre for the opening of "Marabi". Piano, Kasi, Stocko, Doornfontein! A full house, everyone in full attendance. The energy palpable, everyone is just excited! It's the first show of the year! Marabi is a South African musical theatre classic adapted from Modikwe Dikobe’s novel The Marabi Dance and originally developed through Junction Avenue Theatre Company workshops. It’s set in the Doornfontein slumpyards, rusted corrugated sheets is the feeling and tone, 1930s - the show tells a powerful story of family, music and change.  The play opens with the Mabongo family, first-generation Black migrants who have come to Johannesburg in search of opportunity but instead face the harsh realities of urban poverty and crowded township life. The central figure, July Mabongo, carries the burden of ancestral expectations, traditional values, and the tension between holding on to the past and surviving in a fast-changing city. ...

Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince: Power Without Illusions Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince is not a book that asks to be loved. It asks to be understood. Written in the early sixteenth century amid the political disintegration of Renaissance Italy, the text reads less like a moral treatise and more like a survival manual for a world governed by betrayal, chance, and force. What makes The Prince endure is not merely its cynicism, but its brutal clarity. Machiavelli tears away the comforting illusions of virtue and exposes power as it actually operates—unadorned, unstable, and merciless. In antakalipa style, The Prince is a confession whispered behind palace walls, a chant for rulers who understand that innocence is a liability and appearances are weapons. It is not an argument for evil, but an autopsy of politics after morality has failed. A World After God Machiavelli writes in a world where the medieval synthesis—God, monarchy, virtue, and order—has fractured. Italy is div...