Cape Town: Beautiful Ugly
The city's past and its predilections render neat formulations like Creole city and European city equally hollow.
Search Result(s) for: “apartheid”
Writing Windhoek
Namibian literature is a subject that usually draws a blank look and those deeply involved face many frustrations.
Performing Society’s Provocations
Comedian Mpho "Popps" Modikoane is the spokesman of South Africa's "Born Frees."
Thirty years after Cuito Cuanavale
A series of photos documenting the contemporary state of the site of perhaps the most decisive battle in the liberation of Southern Africa.
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.
A story of love in the time of the constitution
The relationship of South African former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela with her daughter is a perfect metaphor for the state of the country's politics.
Limping towards irrelevance
How can South Africa's biggest trade union federation, Cosatu, remain relevant in the face of declining membership and a failing formal economy?
Rearranging the furniture in Stellenbosch
The vigorous disruption by social movements and artists of the thuggish racialized mythmaking that dominates Stellenbosch’s cultural memory.
The argument over J.M. Coetzee
J M Coetzee, South Africa's most decorated and celebrated writer, gets the country's literary scholars and biographers, all worked up.
Who’s Been Sleeping in My House
On prime time television in South Africa, the country is often a place without a past.
A black boy with blue eyes
Introducing the South African writer, K. Sello Duiker's novel 'Thirteen Cents' to US audiences.
Buckingham Palace
District Six was the start of a really vibrant, none racial South African and that’s why it had to die.
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."
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.
The most important African country to the U.S.
What came across as recognition of Africa Is a Country from a US State Department official, was more a case of speaking too fast.
Who is Dulcie September?
The author stars as the famed South African activist in a new play. Dulcie September was murdered by a conspiracy of South African and French death squads.
Chris Martin’s Brain
Coldplay’s “Paradise” music video is set in South Africa. The video is mostly is an antiquated perception of the country held by many in the West.