Africa Is a Country

An Ordinary Killing

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

An Ordinary Killing

By
Sean Jacobs

Riveting piece of journalism in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine as well as an accompanying video piece (narrated by correspondent Barry Bearak) on the ordinary murder of a Zimbabwean migrant and widespread mob “justice” in Diepsloot, a squatter camp to the north of Johannesburg. The piece is generally good.  As one friend remarked: “To his credit, Bearak’s clearly made an effort at getting to know Diepsloot and writing a good story. While it has a whiff of Rian Malan‘s ‘Hammerman’ tale towards the end, with the white man’s discovery of and fascination with muti, etcetera, it is generally good, and didn’t stray into laziness.” So go ahead and it.

Further Reading

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

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?