• Sisonke Msimang

The Jacob Zuma years were especially damaging for re-introducing South Africans to political leaders who did not fear shame.

• António Tomás

The glut of books on Fanon serve as a guide for reading him through the challenges of our present. But they also reveal the extent to which reading Fanon today is not such a straightforward operation.

• Bhakti Shringarpure

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's perturbing review of Maya Jasanoff's travelogue of going up the Congo River as she's accompanied by Joseph Conrad's novel, 'Heart of Darkness."

• Lucien van der Walt
• Peter Cole

A new history of a radical union that profoundly impacted Southern African politics.

• Shaista Amod
• Tim Fish Hodgson

The systemic challenges faced by black South Africans in even getting onto the field to play cricket in the first place.

• Lily Saint

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel, 'Americanah,' was the 2017 choice for the “One Book, One New York” campaign. Is the campaign necessarily a good thing?

• Dan Magaziner

How does it differ from straight-forward history? What are the limits and possibilities of the genre? 

• Sisonke Msimang

A brief history of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, stanning and the trap of #blackgirlmagic.

• Nadia Davids

South African creatives of Muslim background interact matter-of-factly with their social identity. An interview with playwright and novelist Nadia Davids.

• Meredith Terretta

France would rather play puppeteer than transparently acknowledge its role in first shaping — and now underhandedly curating — its colonial past.

• Oumar Ba

The Central African Republic has become shorthand for “failed postcolonial African state,” basically the prototype of a country in permanent crisis.

• Joan Hambidge

Zoë Wicomb's fellow South African, JM Coetzee once wrote: "For years we have been waiting to see what the literature of post-apartheid South Africa will look like. Now Zoe Wicomb delivers the goods."

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Interview with historian Dan Magaziner about his new book, The Art of Life in South Africa, about one of the few art schools training black art teachers under Apartheid.

• Simone Haysom

Two books tell complex and illuminating stories of how crime and corruption play out at the street level in the country's cities.

• Elliot Ross

We asked our editorial group, some contributors and friends to let us know what they would rate as their best hardcover they read this calendar year.

• Herman Wasserman

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.

• Steve Howard

In his memoir, the sociologist Steve Howard writes about experiencing Ramadan in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

• Louise Matsakis

The majority of African migrants move between countries on the continent.

• Lara Pawson

• Lara Pawson