We cannot reform ourselves out of the times we are in
To end racism, we will have to change the structures from which it draws its mandate, and get rid of liberal and right-wing politicians who give it oxygen while we are being asphyxiated.
Politics
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.
The lesser of two evils
In Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, a partial COVID-19 lockdown has increased domestic violence, but women are not turning to shelters.
Whiteness in Southern Africa
Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa from the 1930s to the 1990s, particularly the region’s white workers and white poor and their relationship with white-ruled states.
Creating colonial Portugal in Africa
How colonial Portugal, to project the idea of a multi-continental and multiracial country, initiated a drive to encourage white settlement in Angola and Mozambique.
Uncovering ‘undesirable whites’ in the colonial archive
Can African scholars write different histories about settler societies—especially as Africans or Africanist scholars based in Africa or in the diaspora? The case of Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) is instructive.
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?
White mineworkers at Zambian Independence
Why did white mineworkers on the Zambian Copperbelt not seriously resist decolonization?
The cover up
A Kenyan investigative journalist reflects on the capture of a genocidaire in Paris after 26 years on the run and its significance to the families of the victims left in his wake.
Predisposed to chaos
What do we gain by exposing the material shortcomings of African health systems?
Financing Africa’s COVID-19 response
We need swift, bold, and decisive action on debt relief and monetary creation in Africa in order to face the coronavirus crisis and prevent many ordinary Africans from paying with their lives.
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.
Masks off
The revival of an elite technocratic rationality is starting to undo South Africa's lockdown, now in its second month.
The most powerful man in Nigeria
The legacy of Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, who died from COVID-19, helps us understand how powerful and yet constrained Nigeria's Presidency is.
China and Africa: A trial by pandemic?
Recent racist incidents in China are just a manifestation of deeply rooted attitudes vis-à-vis "blackness" in China that predate and will outlive COVID-19.
The tools for defeating quackery
Why we need randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to find the best ways to treat COVID-19.
Kenya’s prison industrial complex
The fundamental flaws in President Uhuru Kenyatta's plan to make jails profitable.
The irrelevance of NGOs in Tanzania
NGOs have been notably absent in the fight against COVID-19, despite claims they exist solely to ensure accountability and transparency by government.
Paying the ultimate price
COVID-19 is teaching us lessons we should have learned from the HIV epidemic.