Stop paying attention to Jonathan Jansen
The South African professor is under fire for suggesting life under apartheid was better than life under democracy. Stop giving him so much airtime.
South Africa
Those who make homes in dark buildings
In his new book ‘The Blinded City,’ Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon takes readers into inner city Johannesburg not as it was or could be, but as it is.
Dreams of highfalutin philosophies
If an author writes with empathy, precision and authenticity about experiences foreign to their own, they're a good writer and not a cultural appropriator.
A picture’s worth
Mabel Cetu is considered South Africa's first Black woman photojournalist and documented the everyday lives of Black communities in the 1950s.
Apartheid nostalgia
South Africans agree that redistribution and economic security are urgent. But will they arrive via a deepening of democracy and public accountability, or a return to authoritarianism?
Everything the government does
On the South African Department of Tourism's pending sponsorship deal with Premier League football club, Tottenham Hotspur.
Milk in the Upington sun
Fear of the future, longing for the past: the new story in South African politics.
Making meaning in Johannesburg
Documenting an urban housing crisis and how tens of thousands of informal workers and unemployed people struggle to reshape Johannesburg.
Amilcar Cabral and the South Africans
Amilcar Cabral’s influence stretched far beyond the Portuguese colonies, profoundly influencing the political struggle in South Africa, past and present.
The limits of the cop drama
A bleak new television drama, ‘Donkerbos,’ explores secrets in small town South Africa, but fails to offer alternatives to the tropes of good vs evil.
How to make sense of Khoisan revivalism
Khoisan Consciousness is sweeping across South Africa. Exploring multiple perspectives is vital to make sense of it.
A fundamental reimagining of who we are
The future of Stellenbosch University does not depend on whether white people there can transcend individual stereotypes and prejudice. It depends on whether they can articulate anti-racism as a genuine political position.
What needs to fall to what needs to rise
The video playlist from our one-day symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the Marikana massacre—funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—is now on YouTube.
Character assassin
Author RW Johnson's latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders.
Selling fencing as freedom
What happens when companies start to sell the idea of a frictionless consumption that helps people at the same time?
The Cape Colony
The campaign to separate South Africa's Western Cape from the rest of the country is not only a symptom of white privilege, but also of the myth that the province is better run.
Through the lens of queer Indian South Africans
Queer Indians are largely invisible in South Africa's LGBT discourse. But representation is not enough, we need political transformation and multi-racial class solidarity.
Don’t mobilize, organize
To rebuild, the South African left must realize that there are no shortcuts to power.
Royal succession in the age of social media
New Zulu king Misuzulu's strategy for ensuring the relevance of his monarchy copies from the Windsors in Britain: use the media.
What’s wrong with the South African Institute of Race Relations?
Surveys on race by South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations (IRR) are deeply flawed and cynically used. Its influence on mainstream politics is significant and dangerous.