Gangs and activists
What does it mean when a community takes justice into its own hands? Revisiting the case of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) in Cape Town.
6442 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.
Mali: Les dieux sont tombés sur la tête
As the death toll from political unrest rises in Mali, what’s behind the conflict and how is it likely to end?
Kenya’s electoral authoritarianism
The former Chief Justice of Kenya on why only a popular movement to defend the constitution can counter corruption and inequality.
Law and disorder
France’s history of violence policing left a legacy of law and disorder, targeting dissidents, in its former colonies.
Remembering Levina Mukasa
The death of a University of Dar es Salaam student 30 years ago and sexual harassment in Tanzanian higher education now.
The mechanism of contagion in racism
How race came to function as fuel to an exploitative economic system. Take the case of South Africa.
Ça chauffe à Bamako de
The heat is on in Bamako. The political crisis in Mali is moving so fast, by the time we publish, things have moved on. Here’s a good backgrounder.
Black Atlantic Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter protests build on a long history of anti-racist solidarity and struggle across the Atlantic.
We are all brothers
Protestors in Algeria, the US, and elsewhere must begin to imagine what a new, grassroots Third-Worldism of the 21st century may look like.
The new ‘invisible enemy’
Anti-racism and political contagion from Save Darfur to Black Lives Matter.
A debased tradition
What continuities can be drawn from the murder of Ahmed Timol in apartheid Johannesburg to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis?
Face-me-I-face-you
The irony of preaching social distancing to those living in close urban dwellings in Lagos exposes the crass nature of class disparities in Nigeria.
Nothing to write home about
For all the PR, Kenya does not pose a serious threat to the five veto-holding permanent members on the UN Security Council.
Moving forward while standing still
Reflecting on the 60th anniversary of Somalia’s Independence with Fouzia Warsame, one of the country’s most prominent academics.
Feminists organizing offline in Africa
On the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) based in Kenya.
The Che Guevara of the Cape Flats
Ashley Kriel, murdered on 9 July 1987, embodied a kind of politics that people feel are missing from South African politics today: tireless commitment and sacrifice.
A plagued history of Kampala
The parallels between COVID-19 and the 1910s in Kampala, when the colonial regime used a series of plagues to cut Ugandans out of the capital city.
Ubaguzi wa vijana na mapambano ya kijamii
Vijana masikini wa jiji la Nairobi wanachukuliwa kama wahalifu kwa ajili ya vurugu za mfumo ambazo zinawanyima ajira, haki na uhuru.
Most of the friends I grew up with are dead
How poor urban youth in Nairobi are criminalized by systemic violence that denies them jobs, justice, and freedoms.
Society as we know it
The hashtag movement #WeAreTired highlights that rape is an epidemic in Nigeria, but nobody in power wants to tackle it.