After the World Cup is gone
The book, “Africa’s World Cup,” is a valuable source for thinking more deeply about the meanings and legacies of the 2010 edition of the competition hosted in South Africa.
508 Articles by:
Sean Henry Jacobs
Sean Henry Jacobs is publisher of Africa is a Country and on the tenured faculty of The New School. He edits the substack, Eleven Named People.
After Mandela
Nelson Mandela would recognize himself in young protesters for whom freedom has been postponed and view South Africa’s government as an obstacle.
Rick Ross is a Country
Rick Ross has since deleted a tweet about landing “in the beautiful country of Africa.” He deserved all the scorn. He’s been to three African countries already and should know.
The new and improved Africa is a Country is here
After weeks of promising you a new design, we’re back with a brand-new and improved blog. This is a big day for us.
Africa is a Country is getting a makeover
If you wondering what this stripped down design on the blog is all about, we're getting
The BBC’s standards of journalism when it comes to South Africa
Read it here. The piece is by longtime foreign correspondent John Simpson. The main claims of the
VICE and the “new journalism model”*
The business of journalism as we know is in trouble and there's a scramble for a "new journalism model,” with VICE.com held up as the latest prototype (see here, here and here). I am not so sure VICE is the new journalism--it's partnership with "old media" (CNN, HBO) is old fashioned, it mostly produces sponsored content (nothing new there), owns an advertising agency and makes nice with Rupert Murdoch. Of course, VICE’s style represents something fresh. With its diversity of topics and irreverence, it is a vast improvement on the talking heads of cable news. But, there is also much to dislike about Vice.
The new “Celebrity Map of Africa”
It’s not just Euro-Americans who want to save Africa. Celebrities and entertainers from Asia and Eastern Europe want in too.
Two index fingers
Our weekly update post of things we did not blog about includes a derby goal, a film about the Williams sisters and the passing of a major 20th century South African intellectual.
Yes, some Africans admire Margaret Thatcher
We were wrong. Some Africans do like Margaret Thatcher. Here’s a gallery of 10 of them.
Roger Ebert was the business
There are other film critics who are intellectual–like Stuart Klawans at The Nation, Armond White (he was good once) and Stanley Kaufmann at The New Republic–but they lacked Ebert’s accessibility and heart. (Ebert, by the way, had an acute sense of the racial political economy in US cinema, as Richard Prince blogged at The Root). Ebert, who traveled to Apartheid South Africa as a young man, also reviewed a lot of African films.
Hair politics and other Weekend Specials
With this, I am bringing back Weekend Special for all those things we don’t have the time to blog about or say more than the required 140 characters on Twitter.
Margaret Thatcher est morte
Margaret Thatcher put to rest the essentialist fallacy that women are inherently more moral than men.
Friday Jazz Breaks
I haven't done this type of music break (i.e. all jazz) in a while. But before
The story of a lost white boy
The story of Happy Sindane, the lost white boy, who put a lie to South Africa’s rainbow shibboleths.
Ben Affleck makes the DRC cool again
The New York Times, in its infinite wisdom (it comes with being The New York Times),