What’s the point of opposition politics in Southern Africa?
Opposition parties, inequality, and the politics of failure in the Southern African region.
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.
Why, despite it all, I’m still a fan of the Springboks
We should not let the achievements of a multiracial Springbok rugby team, led by its first black captain, be commodified and commercialized in the service of neoliberalism.
Cold sweats and furtive listening in Angola
Historian Marissa Moorman wrote an important book about radio and modern state power.
Chester Williams: pioneer of excellence
The late Springbok rugby wing’s legacy needs to be sustained, and the hope that he represented is perhaps more critical than ever.
The people’s movement in Algeria, eight months on
November 1, 2019, is the 65th anniversary of the War of Liberation against French colonialism. The ongoing protests in Algeria is expected to enter a new phase: civil resistance.
Burkina Faso: Nothing will be as it was before
October 30 marks the 5th anniversary of the start of Burkina Faso’s October 2014 insurrection. We revisit and assess those events.
Kenya’s mobile money revolution
Mobile-phone-based, person-to-person payment and money transfer systems are innovative—but are they really good for poverty reduction and development?
Towards a working-class environmentalism for South Africa
It’s going take a fully democratic anti-capitalist movement to fight climate change. The case of South Africa shows how long we have to go.
Try being a woman playing soccer in Sudan
The guardians of women’s femininity and virtue and their use of public space come up against a women’s football team in the Sudanese capital.
In praise of disruption
A conversation with the founding editor of Bakwa Magazine—created to amplify new writing from Cameroon and from the African diaspora.
What kind of ancestor do you want to become?
Medical anthropologist Julie Livingston argues that the conditions of capitalist modernity in which we live are not sustainable and are leading to increased rather than lessened inequality.
Troubling times in Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso’s security crisis and its new status quo of permanent military intervention will test the resilience of its political institutions.
The imperial legacy in scholarship
What censorship about articles in a French journal tells us about the state of France-Africa relations, imperial legacies and the impact these have on the production of knowledge about Francophone Africa.
African migration and the charade of ‘return to safety’
The UNHCR and African Union’s policy of returning migrants to their countries of origin, suggests that Africans should be grateful to just stay alive, and are only—theoretically—entitled to anything beyond that on their own continent.
The façade of liberal democracy
To actively combat rightwing extremism, we need to leave behind the fiction that liberals will inoculate western societies from fascism.
Cape Verde’s culture of recalcitrance
The island nation’s celebrated political system was never a gift bestowed, but seized through sheer agency and hard-fought autonomy.
Reading John Mbiti from Uganda
The late Mbiti is praised for indigenizing Christianity. However, his veneration of “African” tradition also served as theological justification for authoritarian rule.
The poverty of poor economics
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics experiment on the poor, but their research doesn’t solve poverty.
The voice of the Republic’s forgotten
The film BACK UP! and important conversations about state violence, racism, global imperialism, and, crucially, the internal workings of social movements.
“Converting Eviction”
A reflection—by one of the group’s artists—on a Swiss-South African art project exploring eviction and extraction.