Earlier this week on my regular social media run, I came across this status update on Facebook: “I wonder if makin [sic] death threats on these asian traders will really address anythn [sic], the commotion on radio is just misleading everyone.” Immediately, a story started forming tentacles in front of my eyes; “sinophobes!”, I exclaimed to myself. […]
“Content is king,” say the marketers, and even racist bloggers are aware of the main principle driving traffic to a new website. That’s why a group of rightwing bloggers and activists behind the Facebook page Resistenza Nazionale and the blog Identità.com have launched a very special news aggregator: Tutti i crimini degli immigrati (“All the immigrants’ […]
A little over a week ago we covered the release of Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway, the online faux development campaign calling on Africans to donate radiators to Norway. Since Radi-Aid’s music video debuted on November 16, its popularity has far exceeded the expectations of its creators, the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH). […]
South African photographer Scott Williams is the second guest in our new weekly series. He has, he says, masqueraded as a freelance photographer during his lunchtimes and after-hours for some eight years. “I love to document the unseen, positive part of the Cape Town hip hop scene. The ‘underground’ (a dirty word), as it were. […]
Oh dear. The new nation of South Sudan is already sprouting some early teething troubles about media freedom. Apparently, President Salva Kiir Mayardit (above) “handed over his beloved beautiful elder daughter,” one Adu Mayardit, to her husband in a wedding ceremony held in the Catholic Cathedral at Rajaf. One would usually imagine that this would […]
Millions of Muslims from all over the world are currently gathered in Mecca for the Hajj, a pilgrimage that must be made by every Muslim who is financially and physically able at least once in their lifetime. However, this year’s Hajj follows a tumultuous series of uprisings throughout Africa and Southwest Asia, and even the very […]
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 […]
Suren Pillay, Cape Town Guest Blogger The World Cup had just ended, and there were stories in the newspapers, telling us that foreign nationals were going to be killed as soon as the event was over. These stories immediately mobilized many of us in civil society, and it even mobilized the state into action. The […]
Now that District 9 is out on DVD and given the fact that it was on a lot of people’s ‘Best Films of 2009″ lists, is a good excuse to talk about its depiction of its Nigerian villains as unrepentant cannibals again. Recently I reread Ato Quayson’s take on “District 9,” especially the portrayal how […]
The New York Times has a depressing story about the tense relationship between Muslim immigrants from West Africa and African-American in a poor section of the Bronx. Resentment, mistrust, post-9/11 Islamophobia and just plain ignorance, are some of the factors at the heart of the dispute, which in some cases has turned violent. (In the […]
