“We Are All Many Things”
South African creatives of Muslim background interact matter-of-factly with their social identity. An interview with playwright and novelist Nadia Davids.
South Africa
Irregular boundaries
First class cricket in South Africa, once a white man's preserve, is now technically open to all, but it is a game of money, dazzle, dancing girls and quick results.
Is South African trade unionism at a turning point?
Does the gradual increase in the number of strikes indicate that a new wave of offensive strikes has begun? Or is it just a short-lived revival among a depressing long wave of defensive strikes?
We are all Helen Zille
Or, why the West thinks that colonialism was not all bad.
The roots of the current crisis in South Africa
The ways in which state elites and the private sector have found ways to swindle the poor.
The uncompromising Zoë Wicomb
Zoë Wicomb's fellow South African, JM Coetzee once wrote: "For years we have been waiting to see what the literature of post-apartheid South Africa will look like. Now Zoe Wicomb delivers the goods."
Art in dark times
Interview with historian Dan Magaziner about his new book, The Art of Life in South Africa, about one of the few art schools training black art teachers under Apartheid.
Africa’s First Lady
Winnie was everything Africans - and African women in particular - were not supposed to be.
Cape Town’s art fair
Art players and enthusiasts from around the world and down the street will coalesce at the Cape International Convention Centre 17-19 February for the latest staging of the Cape Town Art Fair. Now in its 5th iteration, the fair’s gallery participation and audiences have grown as the global interest in African art has blossomed. This […]
Pan-Africanism was Peter Abrahams’ Country
Peter Abrahams lived pan-Africanism (in South Africa, Britain and Jamaica) and remained brave enough to challenge those within it.
Crime in South Africa
Two books tell complex and illuminating stories of how crime and corruption play out at the street level in the country's cities.
“I will become a straight girl”
Almost four out of five men in South Africa surveyed had raped their first victim before the age of twenty.
The grapes of wrath
“For me personally, it seems as if modern day slavery is practiced on many farms, and the farmworker is almost viewed as ‘the property’ of the employer.” These words are not mine, but those of a prominent member of the wine industry, and they represent the culmination of a long and arduous research into the […]
Inheritances of our fathers
History reminds us that the past is not something that can or should be left behind. Rather, we are morally obliged to keep reflecting on them.
Memory of the Present
Dominant culture in South Africa benignly recall slavery as part of a vaguely picturesque past that left us with beautiful colonial houses, award-winning wines and tourism.
Shutdown — on the death of compromise in South Africa
We are in a new phase, one that is characterised by a rejection of compromise as a tactic for managing democratic intercourse.
Transnational eugenics
Few works sufficiently recognize the truly transnational character of the eugenics movement, and how colonial Africa served as the launching pad for it.
Policing black women’s hair
The policing of black hair often begins at a very young age, in the most subtle and intimate spaces, long before you get to school.
The turn to book burning in South Africa
A political culture, often facilitated by social media, has emerged that many people experience as authoritarian and bullying.
Beyond the usual South African reporting on “Africa”
Journalism on and about the continent tends to veer between the extremes of neglect or stereotype on the one end, and touristic exoticism on the other.