AfricaIs aCountry

Postapartheid Ideology

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

Postapartheid Ideology

By
Sean Jacobs

The video for “Go Getter,” by Johannesburg’s MB featuring Malika, which I saw playing once or twice on a TV in the background (TV’s are always on in people’s houses there) while in South Africa earlier this year. Pay attention.  Here’s the refrain: “You need to let it go/go get it/go get it.”

Let it go? and go get what? That’s when you notice that for the people they actually show, this sort of positivism may not be, er, realistic: the ice cream man, the street sweeper, and the people standing against the wall, checking the paper for…wanted ads?

Further Reading

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.