Africa Is a Country

Photo of the Day: Irony arrives to Brazil

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Photo of the Day: Irony arrives to Brazil

By
Boima Tucker

In today’s news, the mainstream Brazilian media try their hardest to illustrate that protests against, and calls for impeachment of sitting Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff (for her proximity to the Petrobras scandal), are not solely from the disgruntled “white elite” (one commenter said that the protests looked like a World Cup matches — another that the protests were just a scheme to unload all the overstocked Brazilian National Team gear after their disastrous exit from the tournament.)

Now, we here at Africa is a Country are aware that the media tends to sensationalize racial and social divides in Brazil, however we couldn’t help point out that with just a touch of irony, one lucky contestant (I mean c’mon…) was able to gain his fifteen minutes, by answering the call to fulfill the Brazilian media’s wildest fantasies.

Translation: “White elite against Dilma”

Further Reading

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.