Abolition across the Atlantic
Why are South Africans not in the streets against police brutality like Americans are? It has less to do with the internet or middle classes. South Africans are captured by punitive logics. Break that.
South Africa
Global finance and charity killed African healthcare
What happened to the once universally accepted idea of healthcare for all?
The class character of police violence
Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?
Ivan Vladislavic and Muhammad Ali
How do white South African writers confront the country's as well as their own pasts?
What are courts for?
Why courts should not become a country’s sole moral arbiter, how the coronavirus impacted judicial processes in India and South Africa, and more.
Working-class whiteness vs. the apartheid state
How did South Africa’s white working class—those close to the politicized black workforce—experience the reform of apartheid?
Ending the polarization around South Africa’s lockdown
In South Africa, we are not in a situation where we need to choose between saving lives and protecting livelihoods. It is far worse. We are in danger of losing both.
It has no place
COVID-19 exposes the continued inability of most white South Africans to critically reflect on privilege or engage constructively about the handling of the pandemic.
The picture is a beginning
There’s a certain humanity in the work of late South African photographer Santu Mofokeng in how he approached his subjects and the politics of representation.
Masks off
The revival of an elite technocratic rationality is starting to undo South Africa's lockdown, now in its second month.
How to steal a country
Rehad Desai's film celebrates the investigative journalists who expose the corruption of Zuma's regime in South Africa, comes with a depressing note: To date, no one has gone to jail.
Mandela and the Others
What can we learn from the 256 hours of audio recordings of the 1964 Rivonia Trial's proceedings?
‘Queen Sono’ and Netflix’s future in Africa
Queen Sono may be Netflix’s most popular series, but it may not be the right home for the new wave of African film and television.
Reclaiming digital platforms for African feminists
The Hub of Loving Action in Africa (HOLAA), promotes conversations about African experiences with sex and sexuality.
The real pandemic
The South African government's COVID-19 "rescue plan" is an opportunity to rethink its economic model, if it can break with market orthodoxy.
Home is the space
From exile, bassist and composer, Johnny Mbizo Dyani (1945-1986), explored and promoted the folk music traditions of South Africa.
Unpacking South Africa’s COVID-19 “rescue package”
South Africa's R50bn ($26bn) rescue package is 10% of its GDP. It is a major step forward, but some warning lights are flashing.
Solidarity under quarantine
Nelson Mandela's life teaches us that being quarantined is not the end of politics, but for the regeneration of politics.
Out of sight
In South Africa, social distancing to bring down COVID-19 infections takes a decidedly local shape. In a racialized society, it manifests primarily as white melancholia and black Afro-pessimism.
To remember selectively
How partisanship distorts the construction and narration of public memory about historical events, especially the resistance against apartheid.