Imagine you’re a 17 year old middle class Dutch girl. You just cycled home from another boring day at school. Trapped in the conventional humdrum of the day, you are deprived of the stirring type of high school tales that you often watch. Back home, you switch on the TV and stumble upon a rerun […]
About a month ago, we came across the ‘World’ series by Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel. Initially, his art stood out because of the ‘race’ and age of his models, the majority of whom are black children. Since the artist, as we soon learned, grew up in a small and rather homogeneously white southern Dutch town, […]
A month after the BBC wondered if South Africans will ever be shocked by rape, the sadistic rape and murder of the 17 year old coloured working class woman, Anene Booysen, from Bredasdorp, a small town in the Western Cape, provoked nationwide outrage. As last week’s news reports (see here, here and here, for example) and social media traction indicate, […]
Few subjects manage to pull our critique trigger as handsomely as Western celebrities on an Africa related mission. But when a rock star gets it right and decides to do some awesome stuff during his first-ever visit to the continent and proves deserving of praise, we’re the first one to crack the nod. So when […]
South African advertising is known for its eagerness for political commentary; very little ends up being off-limits. Blink Stefanus, or BS Beer (the double meaning for ‘bullshit’ being an obvious choice) is no exception. In September this year the brand won a Pendoring, a local South African advertising award for TV and print campaigns in the Afrikaans language. […]
Typing in ‘Gaborone’ in the New York Times search engine and taking a look at the first 21 articles makes for some curious maths. Of these first 21 pieces, 5 were published in the 1970s, 7 in the 1980s, 2 date back to the 1990s and 7 were written in the 2000s. The average publication […]
In early October this year, PBS released the documentary ‘Half the Sky’, based on the book by frequent AIAC target and New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn (a former Times journalist) focusing on the lot of girls and women in the Global South. As part of Kristof’s mission to replace […]
In a recent interview, Pepijn Vloemans, a regular commentator in Dutch mainstream press and the author of the book ‘Wat hebben we weer genoten’ (What a joy we had), described how his drive for adventure and experimental urge to test himself in a low-comfort environment led him to Africa. We’ve lifted and translated some highlights […]
We’re always ready to travel far to get satisfaction. God knows we’re prepared to get hot and sweaty. So when, after months of romanticizing and exoticizing, our dreams finally take off, there is only one thought on our mind: Oh Africa, I’m coming!
