Vintage Cru
The Johannesburg-based crew challenges the status quo in South Africa with dance.
South Africa
To Be Young, Angry and Black
The face of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa is young-ish and black. Their
To Come Back from Qunu
Our correspondent, attending the funeral of Nelson Mandela, the founder of post-apartheid South Africa, reflects on Madiba's legacy for his own children.
Nelson Mandela and the Dutch
The mainstream view is that the Netherlands was a staunch supporter of South Africa's liberation movement? The story is a bit more complicated.
Burying Comrade Nelson Mandela
For some of us, the official celebrations are missing a crucial element: Celebrating Nelson Mandela as a figure of armed struggle and the liberation movement.
The two mutually irreconcilable Nelson Mandelas
Both Nelson Mandela’s historical role in the South African transition to democracy and his own management of his legacy paved the way for vacuous treatments of his life.
The Woolworths ‘Tribute’ to Nelson Mandela
Are corporate entities really well intentioned in celebrating Mandela the freedom fighter or are they merely using these tributes to position their brands on the right side of history?
Poster art that challenged apartheid
The African Activist Archive Project website contains posters from the African solidarity movement from the 1950s to the 1990s.
We embarrassed Nelson Mandela
For the author, watching memorials for Mandela, South Africans have lost their ability to generate theater, the theater of the mass event.
The day Jacob Zuma lost control of the ANC?
At an event meant to celebrate Nelson Mandela's life, Jacob Zuma was not only embarrassed by the crowd (they booed him multiple times), by those on stage.
Should the Left celebrate Nelson Mandela?
The Mandela who needs celebrating is the Mandela who, if he was not Lenin, never pretended to be something else.
The people need a new myth
The Brother Moves On is not anti-ANC. Their new music rather speaks to the ideals of the liberation movement and asks if this is what we fought for.
The triumphant end of Africa’s liberation struggle
The one individual the African continent was unanimously proud and infinitely grateful of, was Nelson Mandela.
Madiba: I Remember
The writer, originally from Cape Town, remembers Nelson Mandela's impact on his life.
The loser mentality of white South Africans
On the rather extraordinary claim that white South Africans have been politically and economically marginalized since the inception of majority rule in 1994.
Street Photography in Johannesburg: Akinbode Akinbiyi
I love the way that Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi works. I mean his approach to photography
My Own Private Mangaung
Heard about Mangaung? No, not the site of the 1912 founding of the ANC nor last
My New York Times column about Cape Town
The author wrote a column about racial and class inequalities in the city where he lived. The usual backlash by those in power followed.
Morbid nostalgia
What's wrong with the 'Africa' journalism of Aidan Hartley, a staple in rightwing UK media like 'The Spectator' and 'The Daily Mail."
Julius Malema’s EFF and the South African Left
It is not often that analysts of diametrically opposed ideological tastes in South Africa agree, except about Julius Malema.