What Happened to the African Renaissance?
Last week’s assaults on the tombs of saints, scholars and prominent ancestors in Timbuktu punctuated a long, leaden moment in Mali's crisis.
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Madala Kunene for all seasons
Kunene’s compositions don’t necessarily have a benchmark to conform to, but instead reveal the continuous state of transcendence his music takes.
Friday Bonus Music Break, N°16
Above is how people keep warm in Johannesburg winters. And below is what you hope to bounce to during long summer nights.
Desmond Tutu, the Patron Saint of Longboard Skateboarders
Shameless self-promotion: “Board Games” is a short documentary video I did for my friend Kent Lingeveldt who runs the independent Alpha Longboards company. I just showed up at his workshop when he told me to, followed him where he told me to, and drank coffee when he told me to. The video is “a day […]
The abundance of black fashion
Senegalese designer, Adama Paris, organizer of Dakar Fashion Week, gives her opinion on the representation of African designs and designers in the fashion industry.
Utopia Unstuck
Africa-focused sci-fi films redirects science fiction so that it becomes a fissure in which new subjects can be seen and heard. One question, however, is who makes these films.
John Terry’s African Alibi
We British like nothing more than a nice inquiry. The exorbitant jail terms meted out to last year’s rioters (whether actual or merely theoretical) are commonly supposed to have been a great disappointment to us all, a sad sign of a milksop rights-obsessed “democracy” that no longer has the stomach to chasten its miscreants with anything approaching the […]
The Legacy of Nat Nakasa
Nat Nakasa was an ambitious journalist who had the cold fortune of being born black in 20th century South Africa.
Bathers at Sea Point: Photographs by Antoinette Engel
Antoinette Engel, a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Cape Town (and a friend of this blog) took these images of bathers at Sea Point last year. We found them on the 75 photography website and asked to see the rest of the series.
The Reincarnation of Rockland Palace
A part of Harlem's ballroom scene gets a makeover and a much needed funding injection and international exposure.
There Are Women in Botswana
It’s not even news that women and children leads AIDS activism in places like Botswana, except when it’s scanted. So, here’s a primer.
Nha morna, nha Terra
The songs that savor the writer Olufemi Terry's travels through the islands of Cape Verde.