The specter of Mannetjies Roux
An encounter on a cross continental flight with white South African men and their ways, by Robina Marks, a black woman and South Africa’s ambassador in Benin.
Culture
Another essentializing moment?
Sadly since Stuart Hall wrote about race as a social, historical, and political category in the 1980s racial categories have re-ossified into apparently inarguable natural forms.
Don’t be fooled by a catchy tune
How the international soundtrack to Black Lives Matter critiques the present by reworking the past.
Farther on from Zion
To consider Bob Marley today demands we look back across distance to the place and age that brought him to us.
Movement of Jah people
This week on AIAC Talk, we reflect on Bob Marley, the “last rock star” and the first artist of world music on the anniversary of his death. Watch it Tuesday on Youtube.
The problem with South African football
South Africa failed to qualify for the 2022 African Cup of Nations in Cameroon and has failed to qualify for the World Cup since 2002. What else can their long suffering fans endure?
Ethiopian women making movies
The presence of successful female writers, directors, and producers set Ethiopia's film industry apart from Hollywood, Bollywood, and the rest of world cinema.
Decolonizing humanity
The political philosopher Achille Mbembe’s latest book asks us to emerge from the enclosure of race.
The impossibility of the black intellectual
Stuart Hall, the British-Jamaican cultural theorist, would have been open to and pragmatic about the ideas of the younger generations of anti-racists now in the making.
Gikuyu in Catalonia
The loss of African languages, their link with identity, and their role in forging decolonial futures.
Do Africans need Karl Marx?
The day before Marx’s birthday, AIAC talk considers his legacy, and debates whether his ideas are still relevant. Watch the show Tuesday on our YouTube channel.
If you want to get the West’s attention, talk about the Holocaust
Then make the intimate connection between the horror unleashed on Europe's Jews and the preceding centuries of atrocities perpetrated by the "Enlightened" West on those they colonized and enslaved.
A mal interpretation of Cape Flats nightlife
Amy Jephta and Ephraim Gordon have written and directed a noir TV series that evokes nostalgia and the tension and violence of Cape Town’s nightlife.
Songs of freedom
This month on Africa Is a Country Radio we wrap up our seasonal theme of port cities, and make a stop in Dakar, Senegal. Listen on Worldwide FM or Mixcloud.
The many lives of Nawal El Saadawi
El Sadaawi died on March 21, 2021. Her complex and evolving positions mean there is more than one version of her to commemorate.
The decline of Liberia in black internationalism
Historically, Liberia ignited the imagination of black people across the globe. Then it stopped. What happened, and can it be reversed?
WhatsApp and anti-capitalism: should you stay or should you go?
Facebook and its “family” of services are a one-way street towards greater integration, data exploitation, and erosions of privacy by an increasingly monopolistic company.
More widespread than we think
Today's social movements rely on tech collectives to organize safely. But few know the history of other technologies used by earlier liberation movements.
Football and empire
AIAC Talk this week: the historical entanglement of South African football with English football, and what that tells us about politics and sport. Watch it on our YouTube channel.
A disturbing story
In this interview with Rasna Warah, journalist Michela Wrong debunks the myth of Rwanda as a model developmental state and a poster child for Western aid.