Apartheid

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

Ronald Reagan’s Africa

Ronald Reagan will be celebrated again today (his birthday is February 6, 1911) as a world statesman and champion of democracy (mostly by Republicans and Conservatives in the United States), but this not how people in the Third World experienced his tenure. Take Southern Africa (I grew up in South Africa) for instance. As I

Monday, February 4th, 2013

Canada and the cover of whiteness

It was in Yeoville sometime in the 1990s that a ‘spook’ from South Africa’s now ruling party, the ANC, with whom I was acquainted began asking me questions about my father. My family had migrated to Canada,...

Thursday, January 24th, 2013

David Goldblatt is interviewed (by African Lookbook)

Aaron Kohn’s African Lookbook interview with David Goldblatt covers a wide swath of subject matter—from childhood experiences, how he began working as a photographer after his father’s death, and why he was never cut out to be...

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

We write what we like about Steve Biko

Had he not died, Steve Biko would have turned 66 years old today. But since the Apartheid police murdered him two months shy of his 31st birthday, we the living are left once more to think, through...

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

While we were tweeting…

The month of August came and went explosively in South Africa, with 34 striking miners killed in a hail of police bullets. Ten more have died in the protracted strike (2 police, 2 security guards, and an...

Monday, July 30th, 2012

Summer List: More Readings in New Academic Books

Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities by Carl Nightingale (University of Chicago Press, 2012) examines the world history of segregation, highlighting the notorious role played by South Africa in dividing communities along racial lines (a central...