What to do about South Africa’s flailing economy
Any deviation from economic orthodoxy in South Africa is made coterminous with the most extreme cases, like Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
6429 Article(s) by:
Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
The disastrous road of private prisons
Kenya’s prisons are in serious need of reform. Opening the door to private interests is not the solution.
How did objects come to be in museums and who is entitled to own them?
The curators of the Weltkulturen museum of ethnography in Frankfurt, Germany trace the origins of objects that ended up in their collections, and ask if they were: COLLECTED. BOUGHT. LOOTED?
The Sheck Wes story
Harlem rapper Sheck Wes’s star rises in the shadow of Dapper Dan and Cheikh Amadou Bamba.
The film about nowhere
Invisible City [Kakuma], a film about Kenya’s largest refugee camps, seems keen on making a point but is anchored on unsteady ground (with some shitty translation).
Fanon’s fugitive archive
‘Alienation and Freedom,’ a massive collection of Frantz Fanon’s works, reveals his intellectual and political motivations, but also proves him enigmatic and inscrutable as ever.
How many immigrants live in South Africa?
The UN and South Africa’s Statistics Service are exaggerating immigrant numbers and playing with people’s lives in South Africa.
Meditations on Paul Biya’s Reelection in Cameroon
The Biya regime’s grip on power has been exposed more than ever before. It is revolting to watch.
A terrible failure to protect school girls in Liberia
The privatizing and deregulating education in Liberia as much as white saviorism should take the blame for the sexual violence under an NGO’s watch.
Africa rising? A historical perspective
African demographic growth is expected to continue unabated over the next century. How should poverty reduction be addressed on the continent?
Has Africa’s May ’68 been forgotten?
In 1968, France witnessed an extraordinary student uprising which changed politics. Morocco and Senegal did too, but we seldom talk about it.
Two trips to Juba
Youth activism and the politics of violence in South Sudan.
Arundhati Roy in Johannesburg—An essay on essays
In a world of fake news, shallow analysis and torrid pontificating, combining empirical evidence with emotive expression, is what give Roy’s essays legs.
Exile, Return, Home?
Many will read Sisonke Msimang’s new memoir for its musings on exile and home, but it is also a political telling of the complicated South African transition.
Zimbabwean Twitter is shifting politics
Fasting and prayer don’t determine election results; and two, social media has profoundly changed the political landscape.
Silent Aid
The time is ripe to ask not “does aid work,” but “how does aid work?”
Why we’re losing the fight against TB
The global response to a disease that largely effects the most marginalized populations of poorer countries shows a basic lack of respect for human rights on the part of international institutions.
The school hairstyle protest in Soweto
When black students at an elite school in South Africa’s capital protested over how teachers treated them over their hair, everyone noticed. It’s not the same in township schools.
When Melania Trump went to Africa
Pith helmets and jodhpurs aside, Melania Trump went to four African countries to promote her “Be Best” education initiative. What’s that about?
Decolonizing streets
The renaming of streets is an important urban decolonial practice.