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.
South Africa
South Africa’s fatigued and narcissistic nation-building discourse
Springbok rugby projects itself as progress, but preserves the way things are in the popular consciousness of South Africans.
What is Black Conservatism in South Africa
South African politics remain fertile ground for new orientations: mainly conservative and black.
The longest shadow
We tell our stories when we are ready. This story is about the child sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of Anglican priests in South Africa.
Another hero falls
Eric “Bucs” Damons existed beyond the frame of the narrow scope of the elite South African sporting narrative.
Unions in crisis
Has the trade union form outlived its usefulness for workers?
Can we reclaim football from below?
The mafia-style control of South African football, from the Premier Soccer League on down, means a dearth of development and enduring loss for the national team.
Life as young black men in Johannesburg
The South African rap duo, Stiff Pap’s art is of the internet age: Their debut, TUFF TIME$, is at once unmistakably authentic, and entirely new.
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.
My fellow Africans
On the next AIAC Talk, we talk with several AIAC fellows about their work. Tuesday on Youtube.
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.
Trapped by history
Mexican American director John Gutierrez new film, set in Cape Town, South Africa, touches on colonialism, displacement, and man’s complicated relationship with nature.
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?
Writing is a cultural weapon
South African and Palestinian poets on the shared experiences of Apartheid and resistance. This week on AIAC Talk. Watch it Tuesday on Youtube.
The specter of Mannetjies Roux
An encounter on a cross continental flight with white South African men and their ways, by Robina Marks, a black woman and South Africa’s ambassador in Benin.
The problem with South African football
South Africa failed to qualify for the 2022 African Cup of Nations in Cameroon and has failed to qualify for the World Cup since 2002. What else can their long suffering fans endure?
The strongman’s vision of democracy
Former South African President Jacob Zuma’s various rationalizations and obstructions for his crimes make for good drama. But they also reveal Zuma’s aversion to the rule of law.
The new movement against apartheid
There is a lesson in the struggle for South African freedom: South Africans seeking solidarity understood they were speaking to specific audiences, not to an undifferentiated global community, and they strove to meet people where they were.
The demobilization of the South African masses
What do we know about the potential for new kinds of social movements in South Africa?