Africa Is a Country

Postapartheid Ideology

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

Writing while black

The film adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’ leaves little room to explore Black middle-class complicity in commodifying the traumas of Black working-class lives.

The Mogadishu analogy

In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.