The second lives of zombie monuments
How do we deal with the unfinished business of the past? Cape Town has a surprisingly poetic answer.
6427 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.
Journalism: The essential non-essential
COVID-19 re-affirmed journalism is a public good, yet as newsrooms collapse, journalism is in danger.
The soul is dialectic
Drummer Asher Gamedze’s new album is a groundbreaking body of work in the musical trajectory of South African jazz.
Revisiting the Brixton struggle
Leila Hassan and Farouk Dhondy worked at the UK publication Race Today that chronicled the early 1980s struggles against racism there.
Essential workers
When a young Ethiopian, Haile Gerima, made a film about the exploitative nature of American college sports and the role of Black athletes in society.
The mark of the former colonizer
What explains this reluctance to discuss the permanence of symbols honoring slave traders and colonialists in the public spaces in both France and its former colonies?
Gangs and activists
What does it mean when a community takes justice into its own hands? Revisiting the case of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) in Cape Town.
Mali: Les dieux sont tombés sur la tête
As the death toll from political unrest rises in Mali, what’s behind the conflict and how is it likely to end?
Kenya’s electoral authoritarianism
The former Chief Justice of Kenya on why only a popular movement to defend the constitution can counter corruption and inequality.
Law and disorder
France’s history of violence policing left a legacy of law and disorder, targeting dissidents, in its former colonies.
Remembering Levina Mukasa
The death of a University of Dar es Salaam student 30 years ago and sexual harassment in Tanzanian higher education now.
The mechanism of contagion in racism
How race came to function as fuel to an exploitative economic system. Take the case of South Africa.
Ça chauffe à Bamako de
The heat is on in Bamako. The political crisis in Mali is moving so fast, by the time we publish, things have moved on. Here’s a good backgrounder.
Black Atlantic Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter protests build on a long history of anti-racist solidarity and struggle across the Atlantic.
We are all brothers
Protestors in Algeria, the US, and elsewhere must begin to imagine what a new, grassroots Third-Worldism of the 21st century may look like.
The new ‘invisible enemy’
Anti-racism and political contagion from Save Darfur to Black Lives Matter.
A debased tradition
What continuities can be drawn from the murder of Ahmed Timol in apartheid Johannesburg to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis?
Face-me-I-face-you
The irony of preaching social distancing to those living in close urban dwellings in Lagos exposes the crass nature of class disparities in Nigeria.
Nothing to write home about
For all the PR, Kenya does not pose a serious threat to the five veto-holding permanent members on the UN Security Council.
Moving forward while standing still
Reflecting on the 60th anniversary of Somalia’s Independence with Fouzia Warsame, one of the country’s most prominent academics.