Cape Town’s make-believe politics
Cape Town remains one of the most racially and economically segregated cities in South Africa, and there aren’t many signs of things getting better.
Politics
The Two Sudans
On July 6 2011, the world’s diplomatic elite flocked to one of the globe’s most underdeveloped regions to bask in the warm glow of the birth of a new nation. That South Sudan’s struggle for independence had claimed the lives of an estimated 2million people, and that the majority of its inaugural citizens had been […]
Angolan Solutions
Rafael Marques de Morais, despite being labeled a foreign agent by the Angolan state, has always insisted that Angolans need to resolve their own problems.
Benetton Politics
The made-upness and the shallowness of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa's vision of a non-racial future.
JM Coetzee’s Cricketing Life
The news that J.M. Coetzee had contributed to a book entitled "Australia: Story of a Cricket Country" rankled the author, a committed Coetzeephile, slightly.
Ranking the Chattering Classes
The politics of lists like the "Top Thirty Think Tanks in sub-Saharan Africa."
The CIA’s Charles Taylor Revelation
Recent revelations, which have always been suspected, have strengthened the United States’ role in the Liberian civil war, adding fuel to claims of American intervention in Liberia since its founding as a Western style nation-state.
Benetton Politics
South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, usually very slick and media savvy, have really outdone themselves with a new campaign by its youth wing. Fresh out of leader Helen Zille’s troublesome ‘AIDS Gestapo’ views and calling the ever disgruntled musician Simphiwe Dana a “Professional Black” on Twitter, the DA now give us this poster, above.
Nelson Mandela and the ANC
Nelson Mandela has always elicited divergent, incorrect and unrealistic reactions among his detractors and supporters.
Dissatisfied young people
Chika Unigwe has been at the forefront of solidarity efforts in support of the #OccupyNigeria protests. Tom Devriendt spoke to her.
Women and rural gentrification in Ethiopia
Ethiopia forcibly relocates rural populations, often at gunpoint and never with any consultation, so the land can become "more productive."
Photographing Liberia
The latest entrant to our series where we ask photographers to talk to us about their five favorite images, is Glenna Gordon.
Afrikaner Bloods
Factual media reporting on how South African relationships and attitudes, especially between blacks and whites, evolve are hard to come by.
Martin Luther King Jnr.’s Day
Before he died, most Americans had very negative views of Martin Luther King Jnr., or were ignorant about his aims. They still are.
The West is no longer the motor of history
The possibility of a new politics emerging from the new left social movements to reconfigure the nation state.
The Mbalax President
The legendary Senegalese singer is running for president. Not everyone takes him seriously.
#OccupyNigeria
Most Nigerians don’t trust their government and overpaid public representatives with taxpayers’ money. So, they rose up.
An acute deficiency in generosity
Some journalism and "analysis" about postapartheid South Africa by outsiders amounts to hysteria dressed up as analyses.
Africa’s oldest liberation movement is 100 years old
Does South Africa's ruling ANC still fight for the same values it championed 100 years ago?
The Hall of Shame
We couldn't resist including a post with some of the lowlights of 2011.