Making meaning in Johannesburg
Documenting an urban housing crisis and how tens of thousands of informal workers and unemployed people struggle to reshape Johannesburg.
Culture
The land doesn’t lie
Safi Faye's 1976 film, 'A Farmer's Love Letter,' exposes the gap between the post-colonial state and the concerns of ordinary people.
The legacies of their many shaykhs
Indigenous traditions possess the greatest potential for developing robust civic values and identity in Africa.
How knowledge makes a discourse true
Mainstream discourses about Aamajiranci, northern Nigeria’s Qur'anic schooling system, expose the power politics of knowledge in postcolonial societies.
The limits of the cop drama
A bleak new television drama, ‘Donkerbos,’ explores secrets in small town South Africa, but fails to offer alternatives to the tropes of good vs evil.
How to make sense of Khoisan revivalism
Khoisan Consciousness is sweeping across South Africa. Exploring multiple perspectives is vital to make sense of it.
Consumed by numbers
The "follow-back" economy of Nigerian Twitter represents a struggle for recognition in a vastly unequal and status-obsessed society.
To create or to perish
The last film of underappreciated Senegalese director, Khady Sylla dealt with mental health. It is worth revisiting it now for its groundbreaking portrayal of depression suffered by two women friends.
The revenge of the subalterns
The second 'Black Panther' film is a fierce critique of the West's (neo)colonial adventures in Africa and the Americas.
Mothers and mothering
Director Alice Diop’s 'Saint Omer' is preoccupied with what binds women together, the traumas that are inherited, shared and possibly overcome.
Reading Fanon in Algeria, reading Algeria beyond Fanon
Fanon Studies has stubbornly failed to consider how Algeria may illuminate Frantz Fanon’s theoretical commitments.
The pleasures of African popular culture
An anthology brings together 27 international scholars to deepen our understanding of popular culture on the African continent.
Writing whiteness, writing America
What happens when black and brown authors write about white people? Although novels by Chinelo Okparanta and Mohsin Hamid tread into this risky unknown, they do not go far enough.
A fundamental reimagining of who we are
The future of Stellenbosch University does not depend on whether white people there can transcend individual stereotypes and prejudice. It depends on whether they can articulate anti-racism as a genuine political position.
The balancing act of being African and an artist
In the documentary film 'Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra,' the director is in complete control of his artistic vision.
After we have grown too tired of jumping
The Ghanaian game, Ampe, is an education in Blackness and womanhood.
Character assassin
Author RW Johnson's latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders.
The gods of liberation
The imperative to tell the untold stories of Zimbabwean freedom fighters during that country’s liberation war, especially their engagement with spirituality.
Selling fencing as freedom
What happens when companies start to sell the idea of a frictionless consumption that helps people at the same time?
The value of holding on as we imagine an escape
As Iran withstands one of its greatest existential challenges, its men's national team would be forced to carry the weight of a nation’s despair on the field.