Unchain my art
The system to pay out royalties to musicians in South Africa says a lot about the racial inequalities in the local industry.
South Africa
Don’t cede the streets
#FeesMustFall was the most serious challenge to the post-apartheid political order, but didn’t connect to broader working-class struggles. Now, despite police brutality, students are beginning to make those linkages.
Abandoning racial language
If we stop using terms to describe race at all, we risk undermining our struggle to eliminate racism.
South African history through new ears
Is the future of podcasting a show featuring isiZulu retellings of 19th-century African life combined with an original soundscape composed with a revolutionary ethos?
People are the state
What would happen if people could transform state policy based on the principle of social justice? The AIDS struggle in South Africa has some lessons.
The Xhosa literary revival
The writer Mphuthumi Ntabeni's new novel explores the deep history of colonialism and resistance in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Police killings: how does South Africa compare?
An examination of South African statistics reveal that the police are substantially more violent than those in the US or Canada.
The cultural resilience of a creole city
On this month’s AIAC Radio we head to Cape Town to understand how this creole city's musical culture resisted containment throughout history. Listen on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.
The poet of colouredness and exile
Dennis Brutus described Arthur Nortje as “perhaps the best South African poet of our time.”
What is learning for?
The ideal South African is not the citizen but the consumer, and this is impressed upon children immediately when some are sent to private schools.
Upsetting color and its representations
What is one particular place when represented photographically?
Who is afraid of Robert Sobukwe?
AIAC Talk explores the life, thought and legacy of the pan-Africanist and anti-apartheid revolutionary, Robert Sobukwe.
Hamba Kahle Sibongile Khumalo
South African singer Sibongile Khumalo (1957-2021) was a musical giant. She also launched her own label and advocated for women's rights.
The death of an exceptional woman
The cruel and lonely COVID-19 death of the South African land and rural women’s activist, Siza Ngubane.
The afterlives of indenture
South Africa's history of indentured labor leaves behind a legacy of violence against women among the country's South Asian population.
More morbid symptoms
Much of what passes for politics these days is actually just anti-politics: not a function of too much politicization, but a severe lack of it.
The tragic delusions of white exceptionalism
At another historical inflection point, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized white Americans’ delusions as the property of the West more broadly.
The problem with generalizations
Despite the media's wish for a neat story, the African continent's response to COVID-19 is all over the map.