Transient literatures and maps
During apartheid, literary magazine ‘Staffrider’ flourished from its ability to represent multiple social visions. However, it struggled to achieve the same in democratic South Africa.
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Roshan Cader
Roshan Cader is a commissioning editor at Wits University Press in Johannesburg.
Laughing through despair
Faced with many crises, including unemployment and a rising cost of living, Angolans are turning to memes to express their political discontent.
Where is Angola?
A Netflix series about Queen Njinga, one of Africa’s most historically significant rulers, should be cause for much celebration. But the resulting production largely disregarded what Angolans themselves think of their country’s history and culture.
Onde está Angola?
Uma série da Netflix sobre a Rainha Njinga, uma das governantes historicamente mais importantes da África, deve ser motivo de muita comemoração. Mas a produção resultante desconsiderou amplamente o que os próprios angolanos pensam sobre a história e a cultura de seu país.
Sweet beauty
In Senegal, women’s bodies are weaponized as political objects in electoral battles.
Memory and forgetting
Almost 30 years since South Africa’s first democratic elections, apartheid can sometimes seem like a distant past. However, three new films interrupt both the temptation to forget and to selectively remember.
Projecting radicalism
Noni Jabavu was one of South Africa’s most trailblazing writers. Her commitment to elite ambivalence makes it difficult to hail her as a black feminist icon.
Sierra Leone decides
What’s at stake in Sierra Leone’s elections on June 24? We discuss on this episode of the Africa Is a Country podcast.
Old habits die hard
The conflict in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique is entering its sixth year. To combat it, the government should address the underlying local grievances that are driving people toward it.
Who is Addis Ababa for?
The planned demolition of one of Ethiopia’s most vibrant cultural centers forms part of an urban planning trend where African cities are re-designed to serve elites.
Inventing our own fictions
For Binyavanga Wainaina, writing about Africa means to to write honestly, benching any attempts to categorize our lived experiences in language that could never accommodate them.
To honor my father
On Father’s Day, an ode to Namballa Keïta, a nurse, soldier, and seemingly ordinary man, who worked tirelessly to promote education in newly independent Mali.
Mandela’s Black Marxism
Nelson Mandela is deified everywhere. But typically missing is an account of his early years, when he insisted that Marxism be responsive to South African conditions.
The bittersweet pursuit of liberation
Ismay Milford’s new book takes us into the world of anticolonialism, giving us a rich account of the struggles of a cohort of activists from east and central Africa.
Pat Robertson’s Africa
The ultra-conservative American televangelist Pat Robertson has died. As poisonous as his influence on American politics was, Robertson’s legacy in Africa is even more cynical.
The wounds that burst open
Writer, filmmaker and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga entwines the troubled story of herself and her country Zimbabwe in the book of essays, ‘Black and Female.’