To remember selectively
How partisanship distorts the construction and narration of public memory about historical events, especially the resistance against apartheid.
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.
South Africa’s one-sided lockdown: coercing the poor, coddling the rich?
The Ramaphosa Presidency has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but the compensating measures that accompany it are inadequate to protect much of the population.
Talking about trees
Capturing the absurdity of everyday life in Sudan under, now ousted President, Omar al Bashir.
Will COVID-19 keep out of Africa?
While COVID-19 hasn’t yet hit African cities as hard as those in the global North, it will eventually likely penetrate deep into the countryside where the most vulnerable live and where health facilities are rudimentary.
I mourn in deafening silence
Are the international community and the African Union really powerless to stop the fratricidal war in Cameroon, or are they just indifferent?
Destroying public trust during a pandemic
Few things are going on as normal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, political dysfunction in Lesotho continues, with negative ramifications for Basotho.
Tales of a civilized slavery
Black Brazilians have to fight official and popular narratives hiding the country’s brutal and violent legacy of slavery.
Collective action, “liberation,” and Tanzania’s working poor
How can a fragmented and precarious working class unite against exploitative labor relations and, in the process, transform them?
Praying through the pandemic
Pentecostalism in Nigeria preaches that prayer, not political action, is the solution to COVID-19.
Reading List: Dionne Searcey
The author and journalist shares a reading list from her time as The New York Times’ Bureau Chief for West Africa.
The need for a people-driven response to the coronavirus pandemic
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, African governments should stop seeing non-governmental actors as a threat to their own legitimacy.
The devil coronavirus
With their government obsessed more with control of information than COVID-19 itself, Tanzanians are bracing for the worst.
The world has lost a giant of development economics
Thandika Mkandawire (1940-2020) bravely stood up for social policies and the developmental state.
Death’s new rules
Coronavirus will force all of us to grapple with a new sense of mortality.
A jaula de aço do Presidente João Lourenço
Preocupado em atrair investimentos estrangeiros e combater à corrupção ao administrar uma divisão no partido no poder, o presidente angolano João Lourenço ignora o seu aliado mais forte: a sociedade civil jovem.
President João Lourenço’s iron cage
Preoccupied with attracting foreign investment and fighting corruption while managing a split in the ruling party, the Angolan president João Lourenço ignores his strongest ally: youthful civil society.
At the limits of inequality discourse
Race reductionism is stunting the possibility for radical change in an ever unequal South Africa.
The mythical black voter
Black Americans are not a unified voting bloc, and it is time to start paying attention.
The virus of whiteness
COVID-19 has been used to justify xenophobia and anti-Asian racism, but a white South African woman’s hoarding behavior illustrates the global anti-black and anti-poor response to crises.
A clear pathway out of the current crisis in Guinea
Guinea, more than ever, needs an inclusive debate not only on the function of the state, but also on the nature of our institutions and therefore the very state of the republic.