A terrifying vision of South Africa’s future
If South Africa’s Left can’t find a way to channel popular discontentment into the building of mass progressive movements, it will instead morph into anarchy, nativism and, inevitably, authoritarianism.
6357 Article(s) by:
Fatima B. Derby
Fatima B. Derby is a Ghanaian feminist writer and queer activist.
South Africa’s fatigued, narcissistic nation-building discourse
Springbok rugby projects itself as progress, but preserves the way things are in the popular consciousness of South Africans.
Appeasing disgruntled critics
Israel’s success in getting observer status at the African Union is also a sign of the growing lack of interest among African leaders in the Palestinian issue altogether.
Who will start another fire?
An interview with Kate Gondwe, Founder and President of Dedza Films, on a groundbreaking distribution initiative committed to supporting the next wave of emerging filmmakers and communities.
Análise da gestão da COVID-19
Em Angola, o governo de Presidente Lourenço não conseguiu resolver a pandemia de COVID-19 devido a corrupção e incompetência.
Nighttime in Nairobi
Africa Is a Country Radio continues its season focused on African club culture. Our next stop is Nairobi with Kenyan journalist and radio programmer Bill Odidi. Listen on Worldwide FM.
Postfeminism is only for wealthy Nigerian women
To have—or, at least, claim—a sense of self that is “already empowered” or happily unencumbered by power relations, requires a fair bit of material privilege.
What is whiteness in North Africa?
What happens when we take the study of whiteness from settler colonial contexts into the postcolony?
What is Black Conservatism in South Africa
South African politics remain fertile ground for new orientations: mainly by black conservatives.
The longest shadow
We tell our stories when we are ready. This story is about the child sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of Anglican priests in South Africa.
On failed states and the pitfalls of Western commentary
The tendency of Western commentators to dress up African tragedies in the patronizing logic of relativism.
Mobilizing in disorder
Post the looting and failed insurrection, what would it mean for the South African left to undertake a populist political strategy? And should it look to South America for inspiration? A long read.
When the spirits of the ancestors call you back
A homage to a true pan-African athlete-activist, Lee Evans, who at the Olympics Games in 1968 broke the 400-meter world record and embarked on a life of political activism.
Abnormal rugby in an abnormal society
The British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa, in the middle of a pandemic, exposes the professional sports system for what it is.
Decolonize this
To undo the misrepresentation of women of color in global media, we need a historically grounded solidarity.
In the company of coronavirus
What literature can teach us about what happens when the chain that connects human beings to nature is broken.
The most humanistic socialist of our generation
The mathematician Edwin Madunagu, 75 years old in 2021, is one of Nigeria’s foremost socialist intellectuals. Here, his friend Biodun Jeyifo, the literary scholar, pays tribute to him.
What is the value of pan-Africanism for psychology?
How psychologists can and should become advocates for African and African feminist critiques of academia and of society.
South Africa’s gaping wounds
If there is no material justice and investment in healing the generations of harm enacted onto South Africans, the rot in the country’s wounds will overcome them.
Rage as love under duress
To riff off James Baldwin, there will be a fire next time in South Africa. The embers and kindling are in place. What matters is what South Africans do between this fire and the next.