S is for Samora Machel
We asked about a dozen Africa Is a Country contributors what their favorite books of 2012 were. Here are their picks.
Search Result(s) for: “apartheid”
Sleepwalking into fascism
That reactionary politics today lack a mass character is what makes them so dangerous.
The doctor from District Six
The University of Edinburgh will award an honorary doctorate to Joe Schaffers, a working-class educator from Cape Town, South Africa. It will be a new benchmark for this tradition.
No shortcuts
The Conference of the Left was not a solution to the crisis of the South African left, but an opening. What follows must be built differently from what came before.
Born coloured, not born free
Jazz bassist Benjamin Jeptha’s latest project interrogates the meaning of Creole identity in South Africa, thirty years after the end of white-minority rule.
Gangsters as people’s champions
In a country like South Africa where government trust is low, gangsters and criminals who provide assistance to their communities are seen as the people’s champions.
Elon Musk’s South African fantasy
Musk’s outrage over land reform in South Africa isn’t about fairness — it’s about fueling right-wing paranoia and preserving economic privilege.
Projecting radicalism
Noni Jabavu was one of South Africa’s most trailblazing writers. Her commitment to elite ambivalence makes it difficult to hail her as a black feminist icon.
Don’t mobilize, organize
To rebuild, the South African left must realize that there are no shortcuts to power.
Selling fencing as freedom
What happens when companies start to sell the idea of a frictionless consumption that helps people at the same time?
Against the youth fetish in politics
Politics is about effectiveness, and casting youth as a political subject (rather than simply a demographic), is a bad way to do politics.
Never again should be for anybody
South African writer, publisher and curator Zukiswa Wanner explains why she is surrendering her 2020 Goethe Medaille.
The myth of the apolitical commission
In response to the Johannesburg fire disaster, the South African government has announced a ‘politically free’ commission of inquiry. But there is no such thing.
Learning Zulu
The author, a German journalist new to South Africa, writes about her first impressions and experiences, especially with local whites; so different from anything she knew or experienced before.
Back in the USSR
In 1978, exiled South African writer and leftist Alex La Guma traveled to the Soviet Union and wrote a book about it. A new, critical annotated edition is out now.
A cinema for (some of) the people
South African film production house kykNET's dominance skews storytelling on the country's screens.
The post Trump fortunes of South Africa’s white nationalists
South Africa's white nationalists are finally in the spotlight, thanks to Donald Trump. Nobody likes what they see.
Detritus of revolution
Nthikeng Mohlele’s novel Small Things (2013) provides a rejoinder to J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), depicting a black man’s perspective on the failures of South Africa’s transition.
On conspiracy theories
A resurgent conspiracy theory that Nelson Mandela died in 1985 reveals the growing hopelessness in South Africa that rampant inequality is irreversible.
Three Books on Nelson Mandela
The American public radio network, NPR, asked me, in anticipation of Nelson Mandela's birthday, to recommend 3 books its listeners could read on his life and legacy.