Musically, Congo is the mothership
The documentary, Rumba Kings, offers a commendable and tireless argument for both an intangible cultural heritage case and a centering of the Congolese way.
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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.
Haiti’s fire this time
On this week’s AIAC Talk: Haiti is not down on its luck, it is deliberately under-developed by Western powers.
African indigenous religions and queer dignity
Colonialism should take a lot of blame for anti-queer attitudes in Africa. But missing is a frank engagement with how African indigenous cultures also fuel anti-queer attitudes.
Sudanese women on the front lines of the resistance
Sudanese women took part in the revolution in large numbers for the same reasons they are now part of the resistance against this treacherous coup: Their human rights are at stake.
Darra
The writer, from Cape Town, reflects on the life of her working class father, who like her friends’ fathers worked tough jobs for low pay and hid his vulnerabilities.
Criminal justice for the rising middle class
A new book on policing in South Africa wants to go beyond the usual call for reform. But adapting literature tuned for reform to the task of abolition is a difficult needle to thread.
Power to the People
This week’s episode of AIAC Talk is a replay of the launch of the latest issue of Amandla! magazine, a South African publication advancing radical left perspectives for change.
Qu’est-il advenu des accaparements de terres en Afrique?
Plus d’une décennie après la vague mondiale d’acquisitions de terres à grande échelle, elles ont toujours des conséquences néfastes pour ceux qui dépendent de la terre comme fondement de leur vie.
The second Scramble for Africa
How the International Union for Conservation of Nature Congress continues be a farce, and perpetuates a fake conservation in Africa: basically the interests are just commerce.
A journey to Harar
In Mexican-Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir’s Faya Dayi, khat is more than an important export product in a capitalist economy; she captures khat’s roles and meanings in everyday Harari life.
Who is the Black man?
The Jamaican born filmmaker, Lebert Bethune, who was close to Malcolm X, made two films that deftly explored Black identity at the end of the 1960s.
The Lord’s Chief Justice
Mogoeng Mogoeng, South Africa’s chief justice from 2011 to 2021, is midwifing the conservative turn in South Africa’s public life. From retirement, he may also eye public office.
The lives of refugees
Somali refugees in Kenya are held hostage by political disagreements between their governments. Under international law, Kenya has a duty to protect them.
Late nights in Lisboa
In our final episode of “Clubbing on the Continent,” Africa Is a Country Radio heads to Lisbon, Portugal.
Organize or starve!
Instead of voting for the bankrupt ANC or DA, South Africans could do better with social movement candidates in upcoming local elections.
Mission betrayed
The New Apartheid, a new book by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, seeks to define a generational mission in South Africa. Instead, it shrouds our existing one in complete opacity.
Sankara lives!
This week on AIAC Talk we discuss the start of Thomas Sankara’s assassination trial, which confirms that for many Burkinabes, his spirit very much lives on.
Performing Angolaness
In contemporary Angola, the gap between the public discourse on culture and the on-the-ground reality of the arts and culture sector is deepening.
The class contradictions of scholar activism
The radical politics of the professional middle classes—too often found full of rhetoric, but short on action—are explored in Leo Zeilig’s new novel, The World Turned Upside Down.
Reimagining local government in South Africa
If re-municipalization—returning a privatized service to local public control—is to work in South Africa, we need other forms of social contracting between municipalities and citizens.