The revolution will not be posted
Is a Facebook-led social media movement enough to change a country? The case of Angola.
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Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
The magic man
Chris Blackwell’s long-awaited autobiography shows him as a romantic rogue; a risk taker whose life compass has been an open mind and gift to hear and see slightly into the future.
How to think about colonialism
Contemporary approaches to the legacy of colonialism tend to narrowly emphasize political agency as the solution to Africa’s problems. But agency is configured through historically particular relations of which we are not sole authors.
More than just a flag
South Africa’s apartheid flag has been declared hate speech by a top court. But while courts are important and their judgments matter, racism is a long and internationally entrenched social phenomenon that cannot be undone via judicial processes.
Anti-imperialism for the ruling class
Although the material basis for today’s non-alignment movement stems from the constraints imposed on the developing world by American economic primacy, counterbalancing Western encirclement need not mean a pivot East.
Resistance is a continuous endeavor
For more than 75 years, Palestinians have organized for a liberated future. Today, as resistance against Israeli apartheid intensifies, unity and revolutionary optimism has become the main infrastructure of struggle.
Paradise forgotten
While there is much to mourn about the passing of legendary American singer and actor Harry Belafonte, we should hold a place for his bold statement-album against apartheid South Africa.
Sudan’s counter-revolution
Since 2019’s revolution, the Sudanese elite and its international backers suppressed popular democratic energies. Although military in-fighting rages on, the accumulated experiences over the past three years has ensured that the resistance cannot be easily broken.
The two Africas
In the latest controversies about race and ancient Egypt, both the warring ‘North Africans as white’ and ‘black Africans as Afrocentrists’ camps find refuge in the empty-yet-powerful discourse of precolonial excellence.
A vote of no confidence
Although calling for the cancellation of Nigeria’s February elections is counterintuitive, the truth is that they were marred by fraud, voter suppression, technical glitches and vote-buying.
Where is Amazigh studies?
It is burgeoning field that intersects with Arabic, Francophone, Middle Eastern and African studies. But why is Amazigh Studies absent in Anglophone academia?
God tax the king
The British royal family has tried to shake off its colonial past. But its long reign over these wrongs was succeeded by a new form of plunder, exacted today by Britain’s tax haven empire.
The lesson of the turtle and the dove
The South African musician known as Madosini passed away in 2022. She was one of the last of a generation who learnt to play traditional Xhosa instruments, in so doing sharing the spirituality, dignity, and joy of Xhosa culture through her inimitable song.
Reading List: Sheila Collins
American civil rights activist George Houser was also active in Africa’s anti-colonial struggle. To write his biography, Sheila Collins widely read 20th century African political history.
The empire of words
The fiction of Senegalese writer and filmmaker Khady Sylla not only used speech to create worlds and ways of being in the world, but used speech as a world and a character in its own right.
Where everyone can go together
The struggle in Israel-Palestine lacks a sense of inclusivity, like in South Africa, that aims to take over and transform the state into a democracy for all its citizens.