The price of survival
South Africa’s municipalities are collapsing under a neoliberal model that treats water, electricity, and sanitation as commodities to be sold rather than rights to be guaranteed.
South Africa
The heart of the South African film industry
A debut feature set on the Cape Flats turns a familiar crime premise into a quiet study of fatherhood, masculinity, and survival. But its limited reach reveals the deeper problems facing South African film.
More commerce than chaos
In Johannesburg’s Jeppe precinct, what looks like disorder is in fact a dense, transnational system of trade, labor, and survival at the heart of the global economy.
Where are the politics of Bafana Bafana?
While most sports in South Africa are inseparable from the national political imagination, men's football manages to stay relatively removed.
The boys are back in town
Bafana Bafana’s resurgence has been forged where South African football always lives — between brilliance and the bizarre.
Mapping Johannesburg’s wounds
In his latest exhibition, Khanya Zibaya charts the psychic and spatial terrain of a city where homelessness, decay, and human resilience sit uneasily together.
The golden light of Pops Mohamed
From Actonville to global stages, Pops Mohamed blended tradition, futurism, and faith — leaving behind a musical archive as luminous as the spirit he carried.
Davido’s jacket
Davido’s appearance at 'Amapiano’s biggest concert' turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
Empty riddles
Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.
Who cares about African heritage?
While the world debates restitution, Africa’s own heritage institutions are collapsing. The question is no longer who took our past, but who is keeping it alive.
Whose transition is it anyway?
Africa’s first G20 presidency could mark a turning point for the continent — or simply another performance of green-washed extraction led by mining elites.
The invention of foreigners
From indirect rule to Operation Dudula, the lines dividing citizen from stranger trace back to the way empire organized identity and labor.
When solidarity becomes spectacle
Francesca Albanese’s visit to South Africa exposed a truth we prefer not to face: that our moral witness has hardened into ritual. We watch, we clap, we call it solidarity.
Zoë Wicomb’s local universalisms
The passing of the pioneering South African writer and critic leaves behind a body of work that challenged racial mythologies, unsettled identity politics, and grounded transhistorical vision in the particulars of place.
Drip is temporary
The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.
Making space for the ordinary
MADEYOULOOK’s 'Dinokana' debuted at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Now back home, Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho reflect on sound, place, and why their work is always meant for South African audiences first.
Rethinking the boundaries of blackness
South Africa’s visual culture reveals that its racial categories were never fixed, while the history of indenture complicates the terms of solidarity and exclusion.
Reading List: Olufemi Terry
What does it mean to imagine a city with no fixed essence, only shifting histories and unstable forms of power?
The mourning of a man, the mirror of a nation
Charlie Kirk was not a household name in South Africa. Yet, as evidenced by the local outpouring of grief that followed his death, South Africans must confront the truth: his ideas were already at home.
Back on track
A Johannesburg-Cape Town high-speed line could turn apartheid’s corridors of extraction into a green spine of connection, industry, and justice.