Revisiting Sweden’s colonial past
The image of a benevolent, preternaturally anti-racist “good old Sweden,” spreading its perfect democracy around the world, is fiction.
6428 Article(s) by:
Nathan Chiume
Nathan Chiume is an Africa analyst and consultant.
My New York Times column about Cape Town
The author wrote a column about racial and class inequalities in the city where he lived. The usual backlash by those in power followed.
Moonshine Roots Music and Fela Kuti
Valerie June admires Fela Kuti, Ali Farka Toure, Miriam Makeba and a Nigerian blues singer she once heard in her car, but can’t remember their name.
A window into South Africa’s jazz history
The first full color photographs of the vibrant, underground jazz scene that flourished in South Africa in the 1960s.
File under: Dutch Liberalism
No, there’s is not a vigorous debate on blackface and racism in the Netherlands. Instead it’s the usual duplicity of Dutch liberals.
Canada’s “Somali Problem”
Racism against Somali Canadians is a real problem. It is present not only on the right, but the left as well.
Africa and the Future
An interview with Achille Mbembe, including on the consequences of global capitalism on the continent.
Nkrumah’s team is going to the World Cup
A short history of football, nation building and the consolidation of pan-African solidarity in 1960s Ghana.
Uploading Revolution in Senegal
A new film makes the case that a combination of hip-hop, new media technology, globalization and youth energy inspired Y’en a Marre.
The Big Boss
Stephen Keshi’s success as Nigeria’s national men’s soccer team coach, will perhaps encourage more African countries to look closer to home for coaching salvation.
Morbid nostalgia
What’s wrong with the ‘Africa’ journalism of Aidan Hartley, a staple in rightwing UK media like ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The Daily Mail.”
Who gets the last laugh, again?
There is something out there that we can identify as “really” European or “really” African, is essentially what the ancestry testing industry is selling.
‘Tribal’ Reality Television
A Dutch TV channel created a fictive African ‘tribe’ for a reality TV show about ‘Africa.’ It employed an actual Namibian ethnic group to do the job. When will this end?
If This Is Banter
The Newcastle United defender, Steven Taylor, is another no-nonsense (racist) English centre-half.
Weekend Music Break 61
Your weekly collection of new tunes and videos -- this week from Zambia, Ghana, Jamaica, Mali, South Africa and the Netherlands, but first: Congo. This year's Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (SKIFF), which took place in Goma in July, had as its theme "Agizo ya Lumumba -- Justice". The festival's program included film screenings and dance/media/music workshops around the Justice theme and the following video by the same title, featuring Doris, Dak2, Black Man, DMD, BIN-G, Babu, Wanny S-king, Dj Couleur, M-Chris, Nathan, Jobson Madibo, Darsana, Fal-G, Gaius Kowene and Willy Ston, is a great product of that.
What happened to Mbuyisa Makhubo?
A youth activist that came to prominence in the 1976 student uprising in South Africa has been missing since 1978.
Trailers are mini movies
Netta Kornberg watches movie trailers, so you don’t have to. This edition: ‘Mr. Pip,’ ‘Captain Phillips’ and ’12 Years A Slave.’
Julius Malema’s EFF and the South African Left
It is not often that analysts of diametrically opposed ideological tastes in South Africa agree, except about Julius Malema.
Hollywood Pelé
The news that a major studio is bankrolling a film about the Brazilian Pele, contender for greatest player of all time.
The New Yorker and the Mercenaries
An open letter to the New Yorker over its approving coverage of mercenary-activity-for-humanitarian-intervention, despite its record of failure in Central Africa.