Marketplace of failure
South Africa’s pivot to electricity markets will be socially regressive, whether green or not.
South Africa
Coming home
In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.
Imaginary homelands
A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.
Imperialism does not localize
In 1973, Josie Fanon interviewed then-ANC president Oliver Tambo about Israel and apartheid South Africa. Originally printed in French, it is now available in English for the first time.
L’impérialisme ne localise pas
En 1973, Josie Fanon a interviewé Oliver Tambo, alors président de l’ANC, à propos d’Israël et de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Il est désormais disponible pour la première fois depuis sa publication originale.
Pretty girl from Soweto
In South Africa, a popular beauty contest is revealing the specter of ultranationalism and anti-blackness.
Food wars
The theft dispute between Onezwa Mbola and Nara Smith reveals the consumerist undertones behind content for women in the online creative economy.
Chasing shadows
A docuseries about the Springbok rugby team invites us to examine the enduring legacy of Rainbowism in South Africa.
Born coloured, not born free
Jazz bassist Benjamin Jeptha’s latest project interrogates the meaning of Creole identity in South Africa, thirty years after the end of white-minority rule.
The genuine goema captain of Cape Town
The musician Mac McKenzie, who passed away in April 2024, helped pioneer a sound that captured the Mother City’s Creole heritage.
What to do about the South African economy?
Some progressive economists argue that a bigger budget deficit is the solution to the country’s socio-economic woes. But it isn’t that straightforward.
Between two evils
After losing its parliamentary majority for the first time, the African National Congress is scrambling to form a coalition government. The options are bleak.
Direct action gets the goods
In 1985, black students at the University of Houston led a campaign for divestment from apartheid South Africa.
Just us voting?
The Just Us Under A Tree podcast returns to analyze all the legal drama building up to South Africa’s general election.
The limits of self-professed hypocrisy
In 'Revolutionaries’ House,' Nthikeng Mohlele explores the moral decay within South African politics through a disaffected politician tortured by his personal indiscretions.
Born of struggle
What an amapiano song tells us about post-apartheid South Africa.
An unfinished project
Christian theology was appropriated to play an integral role in the justifying apartheid’s racist ideology. Black theologians resisted through a theology of the oppressed.
Born free?
South Africa, thirty-years after 1994.
Border politics
Right-wing populists in South Africa have started copying their American counterparts by calling for a border wall.
Speaking as one African to another
South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Robert Sobukwe is often understood as a black nationalist. So what should we make of his close friendship with a white liberal?