Township Life Has Never Looked So Glam
Solange Knowles is the second major UK or American artist to shoot a music video in Cape Town in so many months.
Journalism
Malawian Twitter is not a gentle place
By far the best place to follow Malawian news and politics is social media app, Twitter. It can be relied upon to be the very first place where Malawi’s breaking news gets to the rest of us.
The trouble with South Africa’s middle class
In South Africa, there was more activity in solidarity with Pussy Riot than with the Marikana miners killed by police in August 2012.
This sea shall be uprooted
Makoko, in Lagos, with over 100, 000 residents, is viewed as a shantytown. There’s more to it. This is the destruction of a community.
Lesotho gets the Kristof Treatment
Nicholas Kristof believes his journalism must contain a familiar entity from Western society – a white American – to make the content accessible to his readers.
The Legacy of Nat Nakasa
Nat Nakasa was an ambitious journalist who had the cold fortune of being born black in 20th century South Africa.
A Room Adrift in London
This thing about a boat on The Thames named for the one Joseph Conrad sailed up the River Congo before writing Heart of Darkness.
The New York Times goes to Zimbabwe
American media should focus on the real political struggles in Zimbabwe and not think that the government of national unity has brought Zimbabwe out of a period of violent political conflict.
New Media and Activism in Africa
The limitations of working in the online space, given the small percentages of people with online access (despite the expansion of mobile technology).
Christine Lagarde cares for Niger
Journalists rarely ask the IMF chief technocrat to consider whether or not she gives any kind of a shit about the people who are getting screwed by her "austerity" agenda.
The New Yorker on violence against lesbians in South Africa
How does an American publication write critically about a country without running the risk of reifying sexual and racial stereotypes?
An ode to Benni McCarthy
Watching a 34 year old Benni McCarthy back in South Africa with Orlando Pirates, leave many observers with a lingering feeling that he could have achieved so much more.
Lesotho votes today
The coverage of Lesotho's 2012 elections don't move beyond superficialities and actually delve into the complexities of local politics.
Pinkwashing South Africa
The positive media surrounding ‘Cape Town as a gay paradise’ obscures far more complex realities.
Blackwater’s “Rwanda”
The fantasies of Blackwater, the Michigan firm of mercenaries and as contractor to imperial powers. Also, how it employs Africa as a rhetorical device to get more business.
First as tragedy, then as farce
What is it with the conviction, held primarily in the West, that you can save yourself and the world (well, usually Africans) by shopping?