A cinema of dissent
Burkinabe filmmaker Idrissa Ouédraogo was a singular talent in African cinema. His films championed marginalized people and cultures.
Ancestors
A wild fig grows in Rowan Street
Professor Sampie Terreblanche, who passed away at 84 on February 17, 2018, was one of South Africa's foremost political economists.
Hugh Masekela’s musical modernism
Masekela wanted to craft a sound that avoided “world music” caricature while not simply mimicking the American Bebop he was so enamored of.
A man of the Namibian people
Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, who died at 92 on 9 June 2017, was one of the founders of Namibia's modern liberation movement that led the fight for political independence.
The great opus of “Small Bobby”
Ranjith Kally (1925-2017), a legendary photographer, documented South African Indian life in famed magazine Drum.
If Africa is a country, then Fidel Castro is one of our national heroes
On 25 November 2016, Fidel Castro passed away. To many Africans Fidel was a hero, playing a central role in their liberation from colonialism.
The Greatest Of All Time
The author, also named Muhammad, on what having a black hero meant during his childhood in Apartheid South Africa.
Malick Sidibé: Directing Light
Amy Sall (Sunu Journal), Candace Keller (Michigan State), Drew Thompson (Bard), curator Thato Mogotsi and Cherif Keita, reflect on Malick Sidibé's impact.
Maestro Sidibé
The author, also a photographer, writes about receiving the sad news that Malick Sidibé, the Malian master photographer, has died, at the age of 80.
The Radical Historian
Martin Legassick (1940-2016) was key to revisionist tradition among South African historians that made connections between apartheid and post-war capitalism.
In honor of Rose Lomathinda Chibambo
Rose Chilambo was a prominent leader in the fight against British colonialism and the first woman cabinet minister in independent Malawi.
An ode in memory of Chimusoro Sam Moyo
The feminist Bella Matabanadzho remembers Zimbabwean academic and activist Sam Moyo carrying his "intellectual smarts with so much ease."
The Permanent Exile
The Pan-Africanist intellectual and journalist Bennie Bunsee (79) passed away on October 10th in Cape Town,
George Houser: US ally of African liberation struggles
An ally of a who’s who of revolutionaries like Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Oliver Tambo, and Kenneth Kaunda.
A homage to historian Terence Ranger
In Terence Ranger, politics and history, nationalism and scholarship, intersected in ways rarely seen. Zimbabwe and Africa, will forever be in his debt.
The Latin American Idol
How a Mexican show helped to construct a patchy and ill-defined “Latin American” identity.
Ali Mazrui and Me
A fateful meeting with Mazrui, the famed Kenyan historian and broadcaster.
The Historic Legacy of Ivor Wilks
A historian of Ghana, Ivor Wilks was crucial to the founding of African history as an academic discipline in the late 1950s and to its development over subsequent decades.
Obituary: Nadine Gordimer
My first introduction to Comrade Nadine was through her writing during my student activist days in
When Maya Angelou lived in Egypt and Ghana
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a group of African Americans artists and intellectuals moved to Ghana as part of attempts to redefine their relationship to citizenship in the U.S. as well as their African identities.