slavery

Monday, April 14th, 2014

The Cape Town company that designs and markets “slave ship” ironing boards and aprons

What is it with some white South Africans' penchant for living in an a-historical bubble? Gumtree, the South African Craigslist, is running an ad for an apartment in Randburg, a former white suburb of Johannesburg (with about 30% black residents) to which only "young white professionals" are invited to apply; then people who should know better (journalists,...

Monday, April 7th, 2014

Weekend in Stellenbosch

On Sunday, walking past the Exclusive Books store, it was interesting to see Kees van der Waal’s new edited text, Winelands, Work and Wealth: Transformations in the Dwars Valley prominently displayed in the window. I found it...

Monday, March 17th, 2014

#WhiteHistoryMonth: Leather from Human Skin in 1880s Philadelphia

Time and again, somehow narratives of slavery miraculously seem to always absolve the northern states of the United States. Having recently watched "12 years a slave" (which I did not find violent at all), I was a...

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

#WhiteHistoryMonth: Canada’s Art History

In 1786, François Malépart de Beaucourt, a painter in New France (later Quebec), completed a portrait of a woman he owned. Though Canada’s slave-owning history is often whitewashed, it exists in documents such as the painting Portrait...

Sunday, March 9th, 2014

Steve McQueen and the Dutch

The Best Picture win for 12 Years A Slave in the 2014 Academy Awards last weekend has not gone by unnoticed in the Netherlands. Not because of the thematic of the film but because ‘our Steve McQueen’--as...

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

How much is an African body worth? Ask Theresa May

December 1, 1834, slavery was abolished in the Cape Colony. Around the world, people are watching, often aghast, more often with clenched jaws and more, Twelve Years a Slave, and then talking, or not, about the back-then....