Last Saturday, a rugby playoff match in South Africa was switched from the white suburbs of Pretoria to a stadium in Soweto. The move was required because the stadium in Pretoria was needed for the soccer World Cup. Organizers FIFA would not allow the pitch to be turned into a swamp by hard running rugby […]
[slideshow] South African corporates has always been on the side of right. Literally. Take this recent case study:
The deadly serious games of J M Coetzee's novel about the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, 'Disgrace.'
How do we make sense of the current direction of the ANC, described yesterday by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as purveyors of “gutter politics.” There’s a lot of sound and fury and nonsense passing as analysis. Much of it is focused on Julius Malema, now sent to ANC “political school” for rehabilitation run by a convicted […]
Alexandra Fuller highlights the deeply ingrained sociological, economic, and political problems that still persist in South Africa as a result of apartheid.
The artist Andrew Putter make use of the past to construct images of how we might live together in the future.
[slideshow] From new work by Cape Town-based photographer Araminta de Clarmont. A photo series on ikrwala (young Xhosa initiates) posing in new clothes–symbolizing their status as “new men”–after returning from initiation school. De Clarmont photographed the young men, who all still attend high school, in the classrooms where they get a formal education: “… As […]
Apparently on a Chicago TV station. Let’s hope this a spoof. Otherwise it explains this kind of thing and the kinds of rubbish being reported about the 2010 World Cup. Remember it’s controversial and it is in South America, which is a country. The people are brown and they play soccer, right? Via Deadspin. — […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GWdGfKXK3U&w=500&h=307] A 9-minute excerpt from a new short video documentary (20 minutes in all) about the South African artist Thando Mama. (The film is directed by German filmmakers Thorolf Lipp and Tobias Wendl. The bulk of Lipp and Wendl’s film work focuses on African subjects; check out their Youtube page.) If you’re unfamiliar with Mama’s […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGpikgxn-VM&w=480&h=295#13m00s] Al Jazeera’s media criticism TV program “The Listening Post” has a useful analysis of the South African media’s reporting of the murder of the white supremacist, Eugene Terreblanche, by two farmworkers, one a 15 year old, after a wage dispute. (Not everyone is keeping a cool head; the British tabloids now report the race […]
Things I have read quickly, seen or watched, listened to, been forwarded, did not really have the time to think about properly, here for your reading pleasure: * On Freedom Day, last Tuesday, South Africa’s government released this picture of the country’s president, Jacob Zuma, taking an Aids test. He tested negative. (The test was […]
British fashion photographer Rankin sets out on 'his own personal journey' to understand South Africa. The result is actually quite good.
The first group of people who called themselves Afrikaners were Orlams people, who would be called coloured in South Africa today.
The Social Justice, Gender and Health Reading Group, The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and The Center for the Humanities present: Remembering E.H. Carr and the Case for a New History in South Africa Zackie Achmat Tuesday May 4th, 6:30pm, Room 6402 Venue: CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
[vodpod id=Video.3322857&w=450&h=370&fv=] Priceless footage of 1980s Community Arts Project in Durban, which, according to one of the founders, artist Bruno Brincat, was “… an idealistic arts project that was ahead of its time and got nixed by the apartheid authorities.”
Binyavanga Wainaina and Teju Cole are among those on a panel discussing the historic 2010 World Cup to be held in South Africa; the first time on the continent.
An Evening with Shelley Barry Wednesday, April 28, 2o1o At the next disTHIS!, South African filmmaker Shelley Barry will share a mixture of old, new and works-in-progress. Shelley, a wheelchair user as a result of taxi violence in her native country in 1996, made her frst film in 2003 while on a film scholarship in […]
How much do young South Africans, especially college students, know about their history? Not much, if these videos are any indication.
Jacob Boersema, a Dutch PhD student who works on Afrikaner identity in postapartheid South Africa, recently told me about a new film, “Black Butterflies,” about the life of Ingrid Jonker, the late Afrikaans poet (she committed suicide in 1965), whose work gained renewed interest after Nelson Mandela read one of her poems during his inaugural […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB238bOfbIk&w=480&h=295] This clip of an incoherent, rambling politician ran on South African TV a few weeks ago.