Africa Is a Country

City Press

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

City Press

By
Sean Jacobs


A few years ago during bouts of insomnia, I used to imagine redesigning a newspaper, any newspaper. I’d always get stuck on the Johannesburg newspaper, City Press, historically aimed at black readers.  I hated their ugly design. (I wrote some freelance pieces for them in the early 1990s).  Now the paper is having a design face-over.  That’s the old design on the left and the new on the right. Link to the web page of the graphic designer, Peter Ong, responsible for the redesign.  (BTW, I think the redesign has a lot to do with the fact that it has a new editor, Ferial Haffajee, formerly editor of the Mail & Guardian).

For more on the redesign, see also Charles Apple‘s website as well as The Daily Maverick, which contains some errors.

* Nowadays when I have insomnia, I play computer games.

Further Reading

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.