The low bar for African elections
Angola is Exhibit 1,000,003 on how and why the West judge some elections “free and fair,” and others not.
6445 Article(s) by:
Ladan Osman
Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden (2019) and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (2015). She lives in Brooklyn.
The Worker with a Pen
In his life and books, Alex La Guma struggled for a society in which all people could find their humanity, argues his friend Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
Voting in Angola
After an 11-year wait to vote in my own country, the whole thing took 3 minutes. One week later I’m still waiting to hear who won.
The dark and white side of conservation
How easily white landowners in Kenya can utilize the trope of “the maddened land invader” to conjure global support for an unequal land system.
Uganda’s Bonfire Youth
A group of young Ugandans employ poetry and storytelling to speak out against state repression, corruption and abuse of power.
Despacito Will Not Save Us
The hit song and its production reflect everything that is wrong with the music industry and how it exploits the cultural production of communities of color.
Algeria’s Black Fear
In much Algerian discourse, including by its human rights NGO’s, black Africans are pathologized as disease carriers.
Jeffrey Gettleman’s tired tome
Jeffrey Gettleman was until recently the East Africa correspondent for The New York Times. He left Africans a memoir, ‘Love, Africa.’
Black Fire
When Cape Jazz found a perfect mix with R&B, fusion and pop.
New ways of being Nigerian
There is a worrisome, undue accent on ethnic and sub-ethnic affiliations deserving scrutiny in Nigeria. Until
How the Nigerian Left imploded
It is difficult to find a credible Left political party or tendency within or outside the existing mainstream political structure in Nigeria.
What about human rights for ‘non-humans’
Human rights cannot offer a framework for humanizing the non-human savage – the non-human black body – because it is not designed to do so.
Next time you see the Mediterranean
The number of African migrants who have lost their lives in the Mediterranean is a tragedy, shamefully under-analyzed over the past 20 years.
Elections, amnesia and impunity in Kenya
Peace narratives cover up the need to address historical injustice and end a culture of impunity dating back to the days of Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta and continuing via his son, President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The winner takes all
Paul Kagame has won with more than 90 percent of the vote in 3 successive presidential elections in Rwanda.
Encountering the promised land
The story of the Rastafari community who moved to their promised land of Ethiopia on land granted by Haile Selassie in the late 1950s as thanks for diaspora’s support during the Italian occupation.
What about those Kenyans who could not vote?
Whoever wins the election, must protect refugees agains forced repatriation by the state or spontaneous attacks from partisan electoral violence.
The crisis of the party-state in South Africa
Improving socio-economic conditions may prove to be the precondition for fighting corruption.
The world of photographer Osaretin Ugiagbe
A Nigerian immigrant to the Bronx, New York, Osaretin Ugiagbe documents the lives of his friends and strangers on the streets.
A place to call home
A black woman, born in Cape Town, returns to the city to buy a house where she will hopefully retire.