Africa Is a Country

We are angels, victims of everybody

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

We are angels, victims of everybody

By
Binyavanga Wainaina

Looking inside ourselves and working on the dark hearts of our colonial crap.

The writer Binyavanga Wainaina.

I am a Gujarathi Kenyan. I never ever ever criticize Kenyan Gujrathis. I am a Yoruba African. Yoruba Africans have never ever done a bad thing ever. Not One. I am an Igbo African. I cannot share in public my real anger about Igbo political leaders. I am an African intellectual who is silent when my King talks genocidal shit. I am a Gikuyu. We are angels, angels! Victims of everybody.

In fact everybody else is fucked up. I am a white South African – I have nothing to reconsider – if u ask me if I do, I will emigrate. And somehow we all collectively believe that our intellectuals and writers will be at the forefront of looking inside ourselves and working on the dark hearts of our colonial crap.

I am a White American author with power. If you brown American writers do not queue up behind our singular opinion of Charlie Hebdo – you are not loyal citizens and the powers are watching you. I am a Black South African – all the rest of you are why I am fucked. It was not apartheid. It was you. I am a Tanzanian African. Kenyans are beasts working too hard to undermine us. We prefer working for Afrikaner farmers – who by the way we give large tracts of land. All this is what animates much of our Facebook.

Further Reading

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.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.