A meditation on home
A new memoir by South African-American Stephanie Urdang offers a remarkable and feminist view of love, longing and revolutionary struggle.
14 Articles by:
Melissa Levin
Melissa Levin, from South Africa, lectures in African Studies at New College, University of Toronto.
Where were you when Chris Hani was killed?
Chris Hani, a prominent ANC and Communist Party leader, was murdered on April 10, 1993, by white racists. The writer remembers hearing the news.
What happened to Mbuyisa Makhubo?
A youth activist that came to prominence in the 1976 student uprising in South Africa has been missing since 1978.
Long Walk to Toronto
This boi pic of Nelson Mandela feels like it was picked at random from the Wikipedia version of Mandela’s autobiography.
Little Stan Greenberg is Dead
South African political party, the DA, pivots its election campaign around claiming Nelson Mandela. Who came up with this?
Peter Beinart went to South Africa
Somebody tell Beinart support for Palestinians is not support for Muslims over Jews in the ruling party. It’s for an occupied people over a repressive state.
Canada and the cover of whiteness
Canadian immigration – while discouraging Roma from applying for refugee status – welcomes the worst of Apartheid South Africa’s perpetrators.
Hope Floats
The Globe and Mail’s opinion page promotes outmoded and discredited ideas about modernization about African development.
The Vershtunkende Toronto Zoo
‘Vershtunkende’ is a Yiddish adjective loosely translated as ‘darned,’ ‘exasperating’, ‘maliciously idiotic’. It is not a nice word to use for either a person or thing.
First as tragedy, then as farce
What is it with the conviction, held primarily in the West, that you can save yourself and the world (well, usually Africans) by shopping?
Benetton Politics
The made-upness and the shallowness of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa’s vision of a non-racial future.
Steve Biko’s Son
Nkosinati Biko on a close and present relationship with his father that is unusual for children in general and for the children of activists in particular.
Nelson Mandela and the ANC
Nelson Mandela has always elicited divergent, incorrect and unrealistic reactions among his detractors and supporters.
An acute deficiency in generosity
Some journalism and “analysis” about postapartheid South Africa by outsiders amounts to hysteria dressed up as analyses.