Mission betrayed
The New Apartheid, a new book by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, seeks to define a generational mission in South Africa. Instead, it shrouds our existing one in complete opacity.
Culture
Performing Angolaness
In contemporary Angola, the gap between the public discourse on culture and the on-the-ground reality of the arts and culture sector is deepening.
The class contradictions of scholar activism
The radical politics of the professional middle classes—too often found full of rhetoric, but short on action—are explored in Leo Zeilig’s new novel, The World Turned Upside Down.
Beyond the boundary
South African cricket is currently the subject of TRC-style hearings into the racism and nepotism in the game. It makes for riveting TV, but focuses too much on individual instances of racism and discrimination.
Disentangling memory from truth
In the collective consciousness of global football, Zaire and Haiti—which both qualified for the 1974 World Cup—are remembered for their dismal performance. But is this legacy justified?
Probing the depths of the CIA’s misdeeds in Africa
The CIA committed many crimes in the early days of post-independence Africa. But is it fair to call their interference “recolonization”?
Africans and the creation of the modern world
Europe would have been a marginal player in world history without Africa's natural resources and centuries of cheap African labor.
Growing pains
For all the grief Afropunk gets, including its commercialization and appetite for expansion, it still manages to bring people, mostly black, together over two days for a pretty great party.
Some kind of personal comfort
Kyle Shepherd’s new music blooms brightly from out of the shadow of pandemic and considers what it means to be South African, African, and human.
The cry of Black worldlessness
Poet Mongane Wally Serote’s 40-year lament, still haunts Black South Africans: “it is only in our memory that this is our land.” The land haunts our memory, and, in turn, we haunt the land’s memory.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s skepticisms
Abdulrazak Gurnah's novels offer a skepticism against the cultural politics of packaging African stories for global circulation and consumption.
But, first we’ll take this W
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature win raises questions about the role of the LitNobel and how they construct what we think of and buy as African literature.
A matter that defies tears
Wọle Ṣoyinka's new novel examines a country caught in the crosshairs of unimaginable events.
Bono’s vanity
This #ThrowbackThursday piece from 2007 on Vanity Fair's famous "Africa" issue, makes for fun, at times depressing, reading of the debates we hopefully left behind.
Louder in Lagos
Africa Is a Country Radio continues its season focused on African club culture. Our next stop is Lagos. Listen here and on Worldwide FM.
The opacity of Fanon
This week on AIAC Talk, we speak with Leswin Laubscher and Derek Hook about the phenomenology of Franz Fanon and the ways he is understood throughout different eras of time.
We don’t need no education
Colonial and post-colonial governments in Kenya have worked to separate education from access to culture and information. It is an outdated model.
As we lose our fear
The Mathare Social Justice Centre mounts a photography exhibition on police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Kenya’s capital.
African cinema into the future
In the era of market-driven streaming, what are the pitfalls and potentials for African cinema?
Alpha Condé, undone
Fashion creates spectacle. What can we learn from the images from Guinea's recent coup d’état?