Africa Is a Country

The official Canadian view of South Africa

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The official Canadian view of South Africa

By
Tom Devriendt

The Canadian High Commission to South Africa, probably meaning well or deliberately unaware of the emptiness of rainbow metaphors, is looking for photographs capturing “the Rainbow Nation”. They’re working with the Johannesburg Bailey Seippel Gallery on this. The photographer’s entries will have to display “multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-racial South Africa”.

Like it’s still the 1990s.

Meanwhile, as a reader reminds us, the Canadian effort is at least an improvement on what you see at the South African High Commission to Canada in Ottawa:

…whereas the South African High Commission to Canada has glass cabinets containing dolls in ethnic costume that look like something from the days of the Tomlinson Commission. Maybe the Canadians can donate them some of the rainbow photos…

Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.