South Africa

How democracy is lived
From nationalism, we have passed to chauvinism, and finally to racism. Why are South Africa's middle classes not mobilizing against xenophobia.

Traffic Report
Ahead of every World Cup or Olympics, sensational media reports of sex trafficking and prostitution are never borne out by facts.

The Liberation of Afrikaans
A new film - and play - want to mainstream Afrikaans' creole origins; a historical reality odds with Afrikaner nationalist visions of language.

Cape Town Styling
The postponed revolution of South African fashion blogger Malibongwe Tyilo.

Skin Deep Politics
The question as to whether a coloured can become leader of South Africa's ruling party and even, more remotely, president of the country.




Everyone Gets a Vuvuzela
This plastic instrument will generate controversy where it will sound, carrying along to the new continents the singular experience that was the World Cup in South Africa.

More than Graceland
Often lost in narratives of oppression and exile, is that the 1960s and 1970s were also an exceptionally vibrant, creative era for South Africa music too.

Out of Here
I am spending the opening weeks of the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa. I have tickets to a few games. The main aim is to be among football people.

Blue Balls
When white South Africans do ordinary things, like travel to a black neighborhood, they're showered with platitudes. This is not reserved for their black country fellows.

Renunciation and redemption
The deadly serious games of J M Coetzee's novel about the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, 'Disgrace.'