The new kid on the block
Admit you didn’t expect the Economic Freedom Fighters or EFF, a breakaway from the ANC, to do so well in South Africa’s latest elections.
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.
Fumana isazisi sakho. Bhalisa. Vota.*
I came across this image taken by a press photographer in May 1990 after one of the
Chris Hani’s political legacy
Chris Hani should not be made into an ideal type or used to settle political scores in the present.
Happy Africans
Pharrell Williams’s pop hit, “Happy,” is infectious and feel good. But what is it all about really?
Instagramming Africa
An interview with Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, founders of the Instagram project, Everyday Africa.
#WhiteHistoryMonth
Every February here schools, McDonald's, television, corporations, the advertising industry, celebrate Black History Month. The whole thing is a charade. That black people don't get a break from police brutality, red lining, profiling or plain neglect, doesn't matter. In 20o7, Gary Younge (he is an ally) suggested that what we needed was a White History Month. So, dear readers--in the service of good sense, this year March is the inaugural White History Month on Africa is a Country. Yes, we're a few days late, we know, but good things take time sometime. Stay tuned.
Give that man a Bells
There's a commercial for Bell's, a popular South African whisky ("Give that man a Bells"), that
The ‘Born Free Generation’
The Fader (yes, they're still around) has been putting up a series of posts from Johannesburg (Obey You Collective: South Africa) that focuses on "artists, trail-blazers, and bright young talents from South Africa." (The series is paid for by soft drink company Coco Cola.) Much of it seems to be filmed around the part of the city marketed as Maboneng. In the latest instalment, they published an interview with Tarryn Alberts, part of dance crew, V.I.N.T.A.G.E. (If you remember, Zach Rosen interviewed them for AIAC, here). Anyway, the interview includes this illuminating passage about the Catch 22 for young black people after Apartheid:
“Happy Africans”
It's unclear how big the Gun Owners of America are (the NRA predominates in the numbers
The closest thing to real life
The documentary film. “Zoran and his African Tigers,” shows how harsh and unforgiving international football can be.
The “Apartheid-era Robin Hood”
I wrote a long piece on Zola Mahobe, a Soweto businessman who died last December (two
Little Steven’s South African Adventure
The making of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album was controversial. But it seems we didn’t know the half of it if Steven Van Zandt is to be believed.
How to come out as an African
When Binyavanga Wainaina, came out as gay recently, he wanted that news to appear in African-owned media and not be misrepresented in Euro-American media.
Boss Player
The BBC news presenter Komla Dumor, who passed away this weekend from cardiac arrest, was an
The Black Manager
Can you name at least ten at least 10 black football managers who are in charge of club teams in the top leagues; and by top, we mean Europe.
File Under: Mahmood Mamdani on South Africa’s much vaunted Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Because the (South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission) focused on perpetrators and overlooked the beneficiaries of mass violations of rights abuses – such as the pass laws and forced expulsions – it allowed the vast majority of white South Africans to go away thinking that they had little to do with these atrocities. Indeed, most did learn nothing new. The alternative would have been for the TRC to show white South Africans that no matter what their political views – whether they were for, against or indifferent to apartheid – they were all its beneficiaries, whether it was a matter of the residential areas where they lived, the jobs they held, the schools they went to, the taxes they did or did not pay, or the cheap labour they employed.