I don’t care much for Cape Town group Freshlyground’s muzak. But you can’t deny the cleverness of the video for their new single, “Chicken to Change.” They recruited the puppets–especially Robert Mugabe–from the intermittently funny, online South African satirical news show ZANews. And they called Mugabe a chicken. Then Zimbabwe’s humorless immigration authorities banned Freshlyground from visiting that country. And now the Internets is taking care of the rest.

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.