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.
Apartheid
Music is the weapon
During Christmas 1980, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba performed at a concert in Lesotho that deeply challenged and disturbed South Africa’s apartheid regime. The record of that concert is being reissued.
Jennifer Davis: Fearless and visionary
Davis, who died at 84 on October 15th, was a prominent leader of the anti-apartheid movement in the US and an analytical thinker and visionary.
The virtual reality of Walter Sisulu
While Sisulu's political career is less celebrated than Nelson Mandela, it was as remarkable.
“Converting Eviction”
A reflection—by one of the group’s artists—on a Swiss-South African art project exploring eviction and extraction.
The mysterious ways of The Black Jacobins
C.L.R. James' book about the Haitian Revolution, had an impact far beyond the Caribbean.
Chester Williams and the making of modern South African rugby
Williams, the only black South African player in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, was a complex figure in complex times. He deserves to be remembered as such.
The Erasure of Dulcie September
South African activist Dulcie September would have turned 84 today had she not been assassinated in March 1988. The podcast series They Killed Dulcie revisits the murder and her legacy.
Poverty, inequality and virtuousness in South Africa
The inadequacy of charity in tackling the legacies of apartheid and colonialism.
A meditation on home
A new memoir by South African-American Stephanie Urdang offers a remarkable and feminist view of love, longing and revolutionary struggle.
When is it antisemitic to criticize Israel?
The bases on which Israel's supporters believe it is subject to unfair criticism, are eerily similar to the rationalizations of apartheid South Africa's defenders in the 1970s and 80s.
Accountability for Apartheid?
The legacy of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission twenty-one years later.
The spear of the nation
Apartheid propaganda, white media and Afrikaner nationalists painted Verwoerd's killer as crazy, but Dimitri Tsafendas was a committed political activist.
Albert Luthuli, MLK and global human rights
Albert Luthuli was ANC President when South Africa's biggest liberation movement turned to armed struggle. He's been the subject of much conjecture. What did he actually think about political violence?
What happened on Bird Island
The pain caused by the South African Apartheid government has been widely recorded. But we may not have heard the half of it.
Flight of the Boers
South Africa's lead anti-land reform organization is cultivating its relationship with the international far right.
No platform for Apartheid
30 years ago, free speech advocates were more willing to tolerate far-right voices than oppose them. It's now happening again.
Searching for white genocide in South Africa
The plight of white South Africans has clearly become the flavor of the month on the far-right.
Hendrik Verwoerd in Jerusalem
The "two state solution" for Israel and Palestine will be the culmination of the same political vision that motivated apartheid South Africa.
Inheritances of our fathers
History reminds us that the past is not something that can or should be left behind. Rather, we are morally obliged to keep reflecting on them.