The Year of Blackface in the Netherlands
Interview with Verene Shepherd, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on People of African Descent.
Politics
Boss Player
The Newscaster Komla Dumor loved sports, basketball (he had skills), and, above all, the beautiful game. He especially loved his Ghana's Black Stars.
The Prisoner and his Pin-up Girl
Apartheid's prisons tolerated 'National Geographic; For Nelson Mandela, who knew better, it was porn.
Nigeria’s Gay Problems
Nigeria's governing class declares its disdain for any form or likeness of homosexuality or the rights of gay people.
Nelson Mandela and how we talk about the state in Africa
It may be better to ask what Nelson Mandela's leadership means for how we assess the state in Africa.
Ghanaians Like Catchphrases
From the entertaining, mundane and sometimes depressing events and revelations, five of the most important lessons we learned from this year.
In the middle of the desert
African refugees walk to Jerusalem in mass protest against indefinite detention by the Israeli state.
Black Brazilian
“Brazilian” is not a race and life in Brazil is still black and white. Black people hardly benefit from Brazilian-ness.
The DRC: A country only imagined without agency
Can European film producers narrate African pasts without reducing these to just European historical developments?
Shake My Head Mandela “Moments”
We collected a ton of odd (including flat out racist and objectionable) media that circulated on social media and by journalists in the last few days about Mandela's passing.
To Come Back from Qunu
Our correspondent, attending the funeral of Nelson Mandela, the founder of post-apartheid South Africa, reflects on Madiba's legacy for his own children.
Nelson Mandela and the Dutch
The mainstream view is that the Netherlands was a staunch supporter of South Africa's liberation movement? The story is a bit more complicated.
The Last Founding Father of African Decolonization
It is not hard to understand the iconic status of Nelson Mandela and the overflow of emotion his death has provoked in the Pan-African world.
Burying Comrade Nelson Mandela
For some of us, the official celebrations are missing a crucial element: Celebrating Nelson Mandela as a figure of armed struggle and the liberation movement.
The two mutually irreconcilable Nelson Mandelas
Both Nelson Mandela’s historical role in the South African transition to democracy and his own management of his legacy paved the way for vacuous treatments of his life.
Why aren’t we discussing Nelson Mandela’s politics?
As much as the world wants to deify Mandela, to do so in the abstract with no reference to his actual politics is absurd.
Poster art that challenged apartheid
The African Activist Archive Project website contains posters from the African solidarity movement from the 1950s to the 1990s.
The day Jacob Zuma lost control of the ANC?
At an event meant to celebrate Nelson Mandela's life, Jacob Zuma was not only embarrassed by the crowd (they booed him multiple times), by those on stage.