Facepalm: Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore’s “Africa”
We have no illusions about Sandler having a responsibility to create smart cinema.
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Golda Gatsey
Golda Gatsey is a freelance writer and customer relationship manager.
In the middle of the desert
African refugees walk to Jerusalem in mass protest against indefinite detention by the Israeli state.
Black Brazilian
“Brazilian” is not a race and life in Brazil is still black and white. Black people hardly benefit from Brazilian-ness.
Vintage Cru
The Johannesburg-based crew challenges the status quo in South Africa with dance.
An Interactive Study Map of African States
History professsor Laura Mitchell developed this interactive map for her students for a map quiz and for the rest of us dispel the notion that Africa is a country. Go on, do the exercise.
To Be Young, Angry and Black
The face of Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa is young-ish and black. Their "redistribute now" missive has earned both valid and lazy criticism. Their tone is perceived by many to be "dangerous" and "irrational". For Ramphele, the red-beret clad young man from Rustenburg should have been less respectful towards her. For he is "young, angry and black". The faceless trope deprives him of agency; he is driven by dangerous impulses and anger; he is one within an uncontrollable mass, predestined to produce instability. He is a threat. In a country that oscillates between the haze of Rainbow Nation-ism and the reality of economic exclusion – “young, angry and black” is a good scarecrow.
A short film about African migrants in Barcelona
How does one hold on to a deeply rooted sense of self, a cultural identity, and make new paths to adapt and make new forms of home?
Somali first, Muslim second, gay third
The melodic world alive in the work of Somali author Diriye Osman.
The DRC: A country only imagined without agency
Can European film producers narrate African pasts without reducing these to just European historical developments?
Shake My Head Mandela “Moments”
We collected a ton of odd (including flat out racist and objectionable) media that circulated on social media and by journalists in the last few days about Mandela’s passing.
To Come Back from Qunu
Our correspondent, attending the funeral of Nelson Mandela, the founder of post-apartheid South Africa, reflects on Madiba’s legacy for his own children.
An interview with Ghanaian artist Sarkodie in the lead-up to his new album
Few rappers on the continent have been as prolific as Sarkodie this year. The Ghanaian emcee
A wayward couple in Dakar
Martin Scorsese digitally restores Djibril Diop Mambéty’s masterpiece Touki Bouki.
The donkey that carried the cloud on its back
A Kenyan film asks in order to evolve, what part of ourselves do we keep and what part do we leave behind.
Nelson Mandela and the Dutch
The mainstream view is that the Netherlands was a staunch supporter of South Africa’s liberation movement? The story is a bit more complicated.
The Last Founding Father of African Decolonization
It is not hard to understand the iconic status of Nelson Mandela and the overflow of emotion his death has provoked in the Pan-African world.
Burying Comrade Nelson Mandela
For some of us, the official celebrations are missing a crucial element: Celebrating Nelson Mandela as a figure of armed struggle and the liberation movement.
The Mandela Legacy
Madiba’s example of forgiveness, reconciliation, and humility are inseparable from his unwavering commitment to combat white supremacy, and promote equality and justice. That commitment, conveyed in his leadership, provided a beacon to the negotiations to replace apartheid with democracy. We saw it flash bright at CODESA after De Klerk used his closing remarks on the opening day of the CODESA negotiations to complain that the ANC had not abandoned its armed struggle, even as the parties were now gathered around the negotiating table. Mandela had already given his closing remarks and De Klerk was to have been the last speaker of the day. But an incensed Mandela insisted on returning to the podium where he castigated De Klerk so vehemently that two decades later De Klerk is still licking his wounds: “Even the head of an illegitimate, discredited, minority regime as his, has certain moral standards to uphold … he has abused his position because he hoped that I would not reply. He was completely mistaken.” Mandela went on to remind the audience that the armed struggle was suspended to give negotiations a chance and that it was one of the agenda points for the negotiations begun that day.
South African Jazz for Nelson Mandela
A playlist of jazz tunes dedicated to South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela.
The two mutually irreconcilable Nelson Mandelas
Both Nelson Mandela’s historical role in the South African transition to democracy and his own management of his legacy paved the way for vacuous treatments of his life.