South Africa
Cape Town’s make-believe politics
Cape Town remains one of the most racially and economically segregated cities in South Africa, and there aren’t many signs of things getting better.
Benetton Politics
The made-upness and the shallowness of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa's vision of a non-racial future.
JM Coetzee’s Cricketing Life
The news that J.M. Coetzee had contributed to a book entitled "Australia: Story of a Cricket Country" rankled the author, a committed Coetzeephile, slightly.
Steve Biko’s Son
Nkosinati Biko on a close and present relationship with his father that is unusual for children in general and for the children of activists in particular.
Colonial Fantasies
Just a sample: A "Heart of Darkness"-themed ship, Tarzan in South Africa and a travelogue on the Congo River.
Oprah’s expensive South African education
The talk show host started a private school for girls in South Africa. Shocker: it mostly makes things worse.
Cape Town is ‘the most dangerous’ city in Africa
A Mexican research group has listed the world's most dangerous cities based on homicide rates. South Africa's cities finish tops.
Nelson Mandela and the ANC
Nelson Mandela has always elicited divergent, incorrect and unrealistic reactions among his detractors and supporters.
Afrikaner Bloods
Factual media reporting on how South African relationships and attitudes, especially between blacks and whites, evolve are hard to come by.
Remember Caster Semenya
The story of Caster Semenya was always a story of a Black African woman, and was equally always the story of a Black woman.
An acute deficiency in generosity
Some journalism and "analysis" about postapartheid South Africa by outsiders amounts to hysteria dressed up as analyses.
Africa’s oldest liberation movement is 100 years old
Does South Africa's ruling ANC still fight for the same values it championed 100 years ago?
The Year of Frantz Fanon
What gives Fanon's thinking its force and power is the air of indestructibility and the inexhaustible silo of humanity which it houses, argues Achille Mbembe.
Helen Zille’s ‘AIDS Gestapo’
The leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance makes offensive remarks about AIDS, then smears her critics, AIDS activists and journalists, as Nazis.