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

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

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?