Music video for the Cape Town band, The Plastics. They worked with Gordon Raphael, who also produces for The Strokes. The story goes that they just emailed him and told him they loved his work, as a long shot. Raphael had seen another South African band, BLK JKS, perform in New York City and liked them enough […]

* Philip Gourevitch, of The New Yorker, probably still healing from the mauling he got over his admiration for Paul Kagame (and probably regretting losing his cool), decides it’s may be better to write about Rwanda’s national cycling team for the magazine. (Hint: It’s Tour de France month so let’s publish a piece about Africans […]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHK308_MTiU&w=600&h=373] A satirical film made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1986. Worth seeing again.  It should also be the dvd you pop in at your colonial-themed wedding.

No it’s not a protest. It’s PR for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. To get you to come and study there. The singers are from the University Choir and it’s in that classic new South African public space, a shopping mall. Someone’s already conjuring up metaphors about rainbows […]

By Dan Moshenberg Did you hear about Malawi Spring? It started Wednesday, July 20. Thousands of people filled the streets of the capital Lilongwe, the commercial capital Blantyre, the northern city of Mzuzu, and elsewhere. Police are accused of having killed protesters, protesters are accused of having looted. According to the Western press, the streets […]

Before moving down from Maseru to Cape Town in 2008 and exploring the Cape’s hip hop scene, Core Wreckah was already heavily involved in Lesotho’s capital hip hop scene. When we saw him plugging his new song ‘Reverb’ here and there on the web, we thought it a good moment to throw him 5 questions […]

We plugged Kinshasa-born Gracias not too long ago. This is the video for Mon€y, another track from his new EP.

Journalist/photographer Chris Parkinson, who lives in Johannesburg, has shot this short film about car spinning in the city. Invited by a fellow photographer, who is also a spinner, he headed out to Nasrec, a racing track on the edge of Soweto. “What I loved about the event is that it seemed to be completely mixed, […]

There’s so much going on in these 8 minutes of rap by Akala, we can only suggest you take the occasion’s title on its word: Fire In The Booth. Via Mikko Kapanen.

The documentary “Dear Mandela,” about three young leaders of a shack dwellers movement in Durban, South Africa, is finally here. The film will premiere at Durban International Film Festival–the first screening is on the 26th July. According to filmmakers, Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza, the film will also embark on a national tour in South […]

South Africa’s first democratic president is 93 years old today. The artwork is a collaboration between the two Dutch artists Anton Corbijn and Berend Strik. (Via: ZAM Magazine) * It would be appropriate to click through to our February 11, 2010 post “Songs for Nelson Mandela” (on the 10th anniversary of Mandela’s release of Mandela). […]