Democracy needs dissent
In a ruling party-dominated Tanzania, opposition parties are flawed but remain critically important.
6428 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.
Afro football fever
Football historian and broadcaster David Goldblatt’s new, encyclopedic book of football opens with a chapter on Africa. Here we republish an excerpt.
The “China virus”
The coronavirus COVID-19, just like Ebola, reminds us what happens when crisis ignite deep-rooted stereotypes. Yet viruses, or any disease for that matter, do not see color. Nor do they recognize states borders and ethnic enclaves.
Young South Africans are set up for failure
With 7.9 million young South Africans out of work or with very little education or training opportunities, who looks out for their aspirations?
We wear the masks
The TV series “Watchmen” deserves credit for how it put unsung elements of black history into mainstream culture.
Zimbabwe’s forgotten football history
Zimbabwe’s national football was under black control decades before independence—but the colonial legacy of racial segregation still haunts.
Impounded sandwiches
One major historical function of the police in South Africa remains: to manage the poor.
The legend of flying Africans
The film Uncut Gems, Black American identity politics, and the narrative appeal of Ethiopian beginnings.
Family politics and the supernatural
A new documentary film tells a tale of everyday class, religious, and educational contestations around land in Kenya.
Point of order
How Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters drive political conversations in South Africa.
Decolonization’s borders
Recent restrictions on refugees—and the limited protests against them—reflect the degree to which many South Africans see “xenophobia” as legitimate hate.
Au nom du roi, des roitelets et de la divine providence
Rémanences autoritaire, oligarchique et mâlecentrée de l’espace politique camerounais.
In the name of the king
Authoritarianism, oligarchy, and patriarchy governs the Cameroonian political landscape.
A ditch to climb
In South Africa, the political class use foreign nationals as scapegoats to obfuscate their role in reproducing inequality. But immigrants are part of the excluded.
A people cannot bid farewell to their history
Remembering Marcelino dos Santos, founder of Frelimo and the former Vice President of the People’s Republic of Mozambique.
Twitter and a new criminal type
What might the fascination in displaying and seeing the body of “the criminal” tell us about South Africa today?
Reading List: Benjamin Talton
The writer, a historian, on scholarly texts, novels, and memoirs that he consulted in writing a political biography of US congressman Mickey Leland and his solidarity politics in Africa.
The mysterious death of a UN Secretary-General
Revisiting the events that led to the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld, a key UN official in the decolonization of Africa during the Cold War.
A Green New Deal for South African workers?
COSATU, South Africa’s largest trade union federation, has a plan to simultaneously tackle climate change and unemployment.
The end of the CFA franc?
Are plans for ‘reform’ of West African currency, fueled by anticolonial sentiment, merely ‘rebranding’ the status quo?