Bua Komanisi
Despite its proud history, the South African Communist Party has recently taken a backseat in South African politics. Understanding its roots helps us understand how it got here and what it will take to be rejuvenated.
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Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
Forms of woundedness
The intergenerational traumas of an anti-Black world in August Wilson’s Fences are only too familiar to South Africans.
Where the spirits conquer her
The Senegalese director, Safi Faye’s classic 1996 film, Mossane, is a love tragedy and a spiritual quest in Sereer land.
Western media is missing the point
The excessive reporting of the interplay between non-African powers in the Sahel—however crucial it may be to understand regional dynamics—betrays a Western-centric bias in international news coverage.
“Black African” may be oxymoronic
For many African immigrants in the United States, being seen as Black doesn’t necessarily equate to seeing oneself as Black.
Group therapy
South African jazz drummer Tumi Mogorosi’s latest project is a call to black people to share the questions that render our condition one of deep ache.
The colonial wounds of Senegal’s girlchild
In ‘Black Girl’ (1966) and ‘Cuties’ (2020), M’Bissine T. Diop is a cautionary figure who warns of colonialism’s wounds and afterlives for Black girl belonging in the present day.
Reading List: Hugo ka Canham
On the publication of his book on black life on the margins, the South African author reflects on work that expand the meaning of being black on the world.
Who is benefiting here?
The UKs deportation pact with Rwanda is being likened to a “human trafficking deal.” It reflects the state of Rwandan politics.
You couldn’t breathe until the trees were gone
A new film by documentarians Sara Newens and Mina T. Son shows yet another way in which nature is enlisted to marginalize Black communities.
The temptation of a simple story
In light of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Africans again grapple with the histories of Soviet—and then Russian—connections.
The influence of the middle class
With the working classes down and out, it is arguably the middle classes that will play the more decisive role in African politics going forward.
Hands off Africa
It is high time that the devastating impact of foreign intervention in Africa be taken as seriously as those in Europe.
Stop paying attention to Jonathan Jansen
The South African professor is under fire for suggesting life under apartheid was better than life under democracy. Stop giving him so much airtime.
Dreams of freedom
A historical novel by Sudanese writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin narrates an unusual love story between a slave and a princess.
Those who make homes in dark buildings
In his new book ‘The Blinded City,’ Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon takes readers into inner city Johannesburg not as it was or could be, but as it is.
Dreams of highfalutin philosophies
If an author writes with empathy, precision and authenticity about experiences foreign to their own, they’re a good writer and not a cultural appropriator.
Taper salam
For African women passing through Morocco en route to Europe, begging on the streets becomes a way to support themselves, but also reinforces humiliation and shame.
A picture’s worth
Mabel Cetu is considered South Africa’s first Black woman photojournalist and documented the everyday lives of Black communities in the 1950s.
A brief history of five elections in Angola
The specter of Angola’s 1992 elections continues to impact the country’s democratic process.