The forgotten founding figure of African nationalism
Nokutela Dube wasn’t just the wife of John Dube, one of the founders of the continent’s oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress.
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Golda Gatsey
Golda Gatsey is a freelance writer and customer relationship manager.
Lilian Thuram’s burden
Why should black players have the burden of calling out racism, while white players don’t feel compelled to do the same?
Weekend Music Break 62
10 new music videos from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenya, Mali, Burundi (via Belgium), South Africa and Nigeria
L’Afrique Est Un Pays
Dutty Artz and Africa Is a Country co-present the EP, “L’Afrique Est Un Pays,” as a gift to Africa is a Country readers. For a limited time you can download the EP by liking our Facebook page.
My Own Private Mangaung
Heard about Mangaung? No, not the site of the 1912 founding of the ANC nor last year’s ANC Conference. The real Mangaung. The prison. Mangaung Prison, run by G4S, is the world’s second largest private prison in the world. G4S is proud of that. They’re not so proud of last month’s allegations, revealed by Ruth Hopkins of the Wits Justice Project, of gross, brutal and widespread torture, forced anti-psychotics and shock therapy, and general anarchy and chaos on the part of the staff.
Revisiting Sweden’s colonial past
The image of a benevolent, preternaturally anti-racist “good old Sweden,” spreading its perfect democracy around the world, is fiction.
My New York Times column about Cape Town
The author wrote a column about racial and class inequalities in the city where he lived. The usual backlash by those in power followed.
Moonshine Roots Music and Fela Kuti
Valerie June admires Fela Kuti, Ali Farka Toure, Miriam Makeba and a Nigerian blues singer she once heard in her car, but can’t remember their name.
A window into South Africa’s jazz history
The first full color photographs of the vibrant, underground jazz scene that flourished in South Africa in the 1960s.
File under: Dutch Liberalism
No, there’s is not a vigorous debate on blackface and racism in the Netherlands. Instead it’s the usual duplicity of Dutch liberals.
Canada’s “Somali Problem”
Racism against Somali Canadians is a real problem. It is present not only on the right, but the left as well.
Africa and the Future
An interview with Achille Mbembe, including on the consequences of global capitalism on the continent.
Nkrumah’s team is going to the World Cup
A short history of football, nation building and the consolidation of pan-African solidarity in 1960s Ghana.
Uploading Revolution in Senegal
A new film makes the case that a combination of hip-hop, new media technology, globalization and youth energy inspired Y’en a Marre.
The Big Boss
Stephen Keshi’s success as Nigeria’s national men’s soccer team coach, will perhaps encourage more African countries to look closer to home for coaching salvation.
Morbid nostalgia
What’s wrong with the ‘Africa’ journalism of Aidan Hartley, a staple in rightwing UK media like ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The Daily Mail.”
Who gets the last laugh, again?
There is something out there that we can identify as “really” European or “really” African, is essentially what the ancestry testing industry is selling.
‘Tribal’ Reality Television
A Dutch TV channel created a fictive African ‘tribe’ for a reality TV show about ‘Africa.’ It employed an actual Namibian ethnic group to do the job. When will this end?
If This Is Banter
The Newcastle United defender, Steven Taylor, is another no-nonsense (racist) English centre-half.
Weekend Music Break 61
Your weekly collection of new tunes and videos -- this week from Zambia, Ghana, Jamaica, Mali, South Africa and the Netherlands, but first: Congo. This year's Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (SKIFF), which took place in Goma in July, had as its theme "Agizo ya Lumumba -- Justice". The festival's program included film screenings and dance/media/music workshops around the Justice theme and the following video by the same title, featuring Doris, Dak2, Black Man, DMD, BIN-G, Babu, Wanny S-king, Dj Couleur, M-Chris, Nathan, Jobson Madibo, Darsana, Fal-G, Gaius Kowene and Willy Ston, is a great product of that.