A terrifying vision of South Africa’s future
If South Africa’s Left can’t find a way to channel popular discontentment into the building of mass progressive movements, it will instead morph into anarchy, nativism and, inevitably, authoritarianism.
Politics
South Africa’s fatigued, narcissistic nation-building discourse
Springbok rugby projects itself as progress, but preserves the way things are in the popular consciousness of South Africans.
Appeasing disgruntled critics
Israel’s success in getting observer status at the African Union is also a sign of the growing lack of interest among African leaders in the Palestinian issue altogether.
Análise da gestão da COVID-19
Em Angola, o governo de Presidente Lourenço não conseguiu resolver a pandemia de COVID-19 devido a corrupção e incompetência.
What is Black Conservatism in South Africa
South African politics remain fertile ground for new orientations: mainly by black conservatives.
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.
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.