Mobilizing in disorder
Post the looting and failed insurrection, what would it mean for the South African left to undertake a populist political strategy? And should it look to South America for inspiration? A long read.
Politics
South Africa’s gaping wounds
If there is no material justice and investment in healing the generations of harm enacted onto South Africans, the rot in the country's wounds will overcome them.
Rage as love under duress
To riff off James Baldwin, there will be a fire next time in South Africa. The embers and kindling are in place. What matters is what South Africans do between this fire and the next.
Unions in crisis
Has the trade union form outlived its usefulness for workers?
IRL: In Real Life
For the first time ever, Sean and Will broadcast live in person together, from Cape Town, South Africa.
The mother of all failures
In Angola, President Lourenço's government failed to address COVID-19 due to corruption and incompetence.
The lessons of history
Three years on, the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), initiated by Kenya's President, Uhuru Kenyatta, with former opposition leader, Raila Odinga, feels like an elite pact with no popular support.
One Zambia, one nation
How Kenneth Kaunda was instrumental in guiding Zambia through its formative years in the absence of war or mass atrocities that blighted many of its neighbors.
KK and the USA
The less well-known, and complicated, story of Kenneth Kaunda’s central role in relations between Zambia and the United States.
The EFF will not bring the change South Africans need
Approaching local elections, beyond its spectacles of defiance and never-ending episodes of controversy, what do the politics of the Economic Freedom Fighters have to offer?
Time for an agriculture Green New Deal in South Africa
Land reform should focus on justice and social transformation, not on creating a new class of black commercial farm owners.
What happened to Ethiopia?
The ongoing displacement and killings of minorities and the ongoing war in Tigray—labeled by the federal government as enforcing law and order—are disturbing. It can't go on.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Encounter with Karl Marx
Nkrumah’s written works and speeches reveal a selective encounter and appropriation of tools—in this case from Marxist thought—that were translated through Nkrumah’s traveling theory.
A different picture of the struggle
Oral histories conducted with women involved in South Africa’s liberation struggle offer us startlingly candid portraits of youth activism.
Where do just ideas come from
Exploring Senegal’s early post-colonial history, to make sense of the unhappiness with the government of incumbent president Macky Sall.
Kwame Nkrumah and Israel
Israel projected itself as a plucky postcolonial nation. Many African nations and leaders bought into it. Israel's occupation of the Sinai in 1967 changed that.
Accra to Bandung, Addis to Beijing
On AIAC Talk this week, we are tackling Africa’s long and evolving relationship with Asia. Watch it live Tuesday on YouTube.
Another neoliberal Spring
Now that we have had time to process it: Uganda's January 2021 elections were a key step in the country's long transformation towards a fully fledged neoliberal society.
The making and unmaking of permanent minorities
Mahmood Mamdani’s new book asks how communities that have been enemies can heal. But does it succeed?
Managing the city like the military
Nairobi is already witnessing the sidelining of democratic institutions. Now a new city management agency is further excluding the public.