Platinum Dreams
Anglo American’s boardrooms at 44 Main Street, Joburg, and Carlton House Terrace, London, are lovely – far lovelier than its mineshafts in Rustenburg. This is business as usual. In a sweeping analysis of corporate social responsibility, from the colonial philanthropy of the Oppenheimers to BEE, Dinah Rajak hunts the elusive ghost of empowerment. What follows […]
The Rise Of Somali Capital
The increasingly visible presence of the Somali community in Nairobi during a period in which Kenya is undergoing its most severe political tests only serves to expose new ethnic and regional fissures. Parselelo Kantai looks at the rise of Somali diaspora capital, and argues that ethnic capital mobilised at both an individual and communal level (the […]
The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary
Asef Bayat A traveller to Middle Eastern cities, Tehran, Cairo or Rabat cannot help observing the peculiar ways in which poor children stroll in the streets to sell their products, women occupying public spaces of the sidewalk to market vegetables or fruits, and thousands of men having turned public thoroughfares into brisk and busy bazaars. […]
Juba ‘I will make my life here’
The metronomes of ancient history, the legacy of war, the wavering prosperity of peace, impending independence and inter-ethnic tensions beat the rhythms of Juba – the new capital of Southern Sudan. Billy Kahora reports. All day and night in July mangoes plop into the Nile flowing past Juba. Every late afternoon, Eastern European men employed […]