Reading List: Benjamin Talton
The writer, a historian, on scholarly texts, novels, and memoirs that he consulted in writing a political biography of US congressman Mickey Leland and his solidarity politics in Africa.
Search Result(s) for: “apartheid”
A ditch to climb
In South Africa, the political class use foreign nationals as scapegoats to obfuscate their role in reproducing inequality. But immigrants are part of the excluded.
Reading List: T.J. Tallie
Among the books historian Tallie has on his reading list is one about the food of the American Old South — “ . . . a forgotten Little Africa but nobody speaks of it that way.”
The world has lost a giant of development economics
Thandika Mkandawire (1940-2020) bravely stood up for social policies and the developmental state.
Tales of a civilized slavery
Black Brazilians have to fight official and popular narratives hiding the country's brutal and violent legacy of slavery.
South Africa’s one-sided lockdown: coercing the poor, coddling the rich?
The Ramaphosa Presidency has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but the compensating measures that accompany it are inadequate to protect much of the population.
Leave us alone
Breeze Yoko's mural highlights three African political icons: Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral and Kwame Nkrumah.
Paying the ultimate price
COVID-19 is teaching us lessons we should have learned from the HIV epidemic.
Eric Garner in Palestine
Activists in the occupied territories reinvent the Freedom Rides of 1960s America and in the process link US and Palestinian struggles for liberation.
The class character of police violence
Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?
Bok van Blerk’s Darkest Africa
Bok van Blerk's new music video mines familiar racist tropes of starving, diseased children in a war-torn African country saved by a blonde heroine and her white male companion.
What are courts for?
Why courts should not become a country’s sole moral arbiter, how the coronavirus impacted judicial processes in India and South Africa, and more.
Dear David Chang
A plea for foodie celebrities like Chang, the host of a popular Netflix show, to take African cuisine seriously.
Testing Negative and Other Stories
Here for your reading list: 10 things I have read quickly, seen or watched, listened to, been forwarded, did not really have the time to think about properly.
Rankin does South Africa
British fashion photographer Rankin sets out on 'his own personal journey' to understand South Africa. The result is actually quite good.
A nowhere space
In an agreement between the EU and African countries, refugees held at sea in the Mediterranean cannot claim rights to asylum. They are forever in limbo.
The First Afrikaners
The first group of people who called themselves Afrikaners were Orlams people, who would be called coloured in South Africa today.
West Africa just can’t get a break
My latest roundup of happenings that couldn't get the full standalone post treatment.
The Two Sudans
During the Cold War, Khartoum was very successful at frustrating solidarity by other Africans for South Sudan's independence struggle.