The beautiful month
We are exploring the culture and history of the World Cup for the next month while the tournament goes on.
505 Articles by:
Sean Jacobs
Sean Jacobs, Founder and Editor of Africa is a Country, is on the faculty of The New School and a Shuttleworth Fellow.
Sergio Ramos and the Egyptians
Sergio Ramos’ injury to Mohamed Salah in the 2018 UEFA Champion’s League final set him up for a world of insults from Egyptian football fans.
Social media and political violence in Cape Town
Reporting on protests in poor communities where the mainstream media lacks, social media picks up the slack. This isn’t always a good thing.
No more caricatures
Engaging seriously with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s life could help us understand how South Africa got where it is and where it’s going.
We have new clothes
For months, we have been threatening to launch a new website. Well, now it’s here!
Drake’s Plan
The plot of Drake’s music video for “God’s Plan” is him giving him out money to the poor. What was he trying to say?
South Africa’s Transition from Zuma to Ramaphosa
Jacob Zuma’s nearly decade long regime competed with Thabo Mbeki as the worst presidency of South Africa’s short post-apartheid order.
How to subvert the Hollywood Western
An interview with the South African director and writer of ‘Five Fingers for Marseilles,’ a Western set in that country, and starring an all black cast.
Future so bright
All things equal, we should have a new website within the next couple of weeks.
Zimbabwe Coup Music Edition
Ten post-independence, pre-coup struggle songs that critiqued ZANU-PF under Mugabe and imagined a leadership change and different political culture.
The Interregnum in Zimbabwe
I write this quick note as an outsider (and well aware of my physical distance from
The Youths
When I was a youth, each January 8, the African National Congress, then the dominant liberation
Somalia, People of Football
A film about the separate, and often connected, journeys of two Somali footballers, also refugees, to make it as footballers.
Weekend Special, No.1976
Happy Father's Day. This was the week of June 16th--the commemoration of the 1976 Soweto Uprising,
Zambians don’t deserve their self serving politicians
Put on “Gang Signs & Prayer,” the debut studio album of Stormzy (Government Name: Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo, Jr.), as this is going to be a long Weekend Special.
“We Are All Many Things”
South African creatives of Muslim background interact matter-of-factly with their social identity. An interview with playwright and novelist Nadia Davids.
Weekend Special, No. 1211
(1) Identity politics is neoliberalism, as Adolph Reed once said. And it delivers like clockwork. The hip hop
Weekend Special
We're bringing back Weekend Special. Borrowing its title from a song by the late Brenda Fassie,
Art in dark times
Interview with historian Dan Magaziner about his new book, The Art of Life in South Africa, about one of the few art schools training black art teachers under Apartheid.
Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961)
“Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity” (Lumumba, 1960)