Reading List: Zikhona Valela
The author of ‘Now You Know How Mapetla Died,’ a book on the murder of a leading Black Consciousness leader, writes about her research.
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Golda Gatsey
Golda Gatsey is a freelance writer and customer relationship manager.
Emancipation that costs servitude
Filmmaker Khady Sylla amplifies the voices of and gives visibility to the domestic workers tending to the homes of Africa’s middle classes.
Outside the field of African art
Asking whether white people should curate African art anymore, may be outdated. Instead we should ask: what is African art now and does the category matter anymore?
The people have spoken
In its first few years, the magazine ‘Révolution Africaine’ opened possibilities for Franco-Algerian cooperation. It was then co-opted by the state.
The vanguard of Black American transnationalism in Zimbabwe
Tommie Sankange was the first black American public figure permanently residing in Zimbabwe who was not a missionary. Why don’t we know more about her?
Why is Egyptian social media against black pharaohs?
The notion that black people were kings in Ancient Egypt is generating a social media backlash. Understanding the racialized legacy of Egyptology can explain why.
A country of spectacular stories
A few days after Nigeria’s presidential elections, with a disputed winner declared, here are some initial conclusions and prospects.
The dust, towers and false promises of modern Ethiopia
Successive Ethiopian governments have continued a ‘modernizing’ project that not only offers people false dreams, but actively dislocates them from the things that gave them purpose in the past.
Porters of colonial legacies
By looking through the lenses of Brussels’ diverse youth, ‘The Porters’ questions the ways Belgium fails to deal with its colonial past.
One of the great events in global labor history
2023 marks 50 years since the Durban Strikes. It doesn’t fit neatly fit into mainstream accounts of the struggle against South African apartheid.
Multipolarity vs universality
On the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, neither the West or Russia can clearly explain how exactly the rest of humanity, especially Africans, wins from their respective preferred outcomes.
The age of the Obidients
Peter Obi, one of the three main candidates for Nigerian president, is neither a savior nor a socialist, but his candidacy and his supporters have enlivened Nigerian elections.
Stories as refuge
Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga chronicles life, death, return and grief in her story collection, ‘Igifu.’
Ignore and rule
What do Europeans do when they hear the war waged by the government of Ethiopia has killed more people than the war in Ukraine?
Reading List: Lesley Nicole Braun
Anyone who has attempted to describe dance in writing knows how difficult it is. These books on dance on the continent and the diaspora gets close.
Faith in native consciousness
The writings of Ugandan lawyer David Mpanga are both literary and legalistic, rooted in African conceptions of storytelling and self-determination.
Bua Komanisi
Despite its proud history, the South African Communist Party has recently taken a backseat in South African politics. Understanding its roots helps us understand how it got here and what it will take to be rejuvenated.
Forms of woundedness
The intergenerational traumas of an anti-Black world in August Wilson’s Fences are only too familiar to South Africans.
Where the spirits conquer her
The Senegalese director, Safi Faye’s classic 1996 film, Mossane, is a love tragedy and a spiritual quest in Sereer land.
Western media is missing the point
The excessive reporting of the interplay between non-African powers in the Sahel—however crucial it may be to understand regional dynamics—betrays a Western-centric bias in international news coverage.