All That is Solid Melts into PR
Mark Fisher, author of the book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? and the blogger known as k-punk, speaks to Bongani Kona about the social, economic and cultural totality of late capitalism, the pervasive cynicism in which we seem to be mired, the omnipresence of PR and the possibility of countering it all by re-igniting a belief in […]
Operation Protective Edge
by Paul Wessels. The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, Philip Weiss (Eds) Nation Books, 2011 On Thursday 24 July 2014 I held a readathon of the abridged version of the “Goldstone Report”, at Rhodes University. I sold it as a Mandela Week event to get […]
Undoing the Spell
by Ben Verghese. Many of the dominant narratives of the partition focus on events in 1947 – easy-to-caricature leaders, the two-nation theory and the birth of Pakistan. How then do we find ways to duly speak of one land mass being forcibly carved up; of the multiple peoples displaced; of the umpteen lives lost, and uncountable, […]
The Undeveloped Intellectual in Zombie-land
by Ibrahim Farghali. This is Rakha’s second novel after his début, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal: Strange Incidents from History in the City of Mars, in which he addressed the identity crisis created in Egyptian society by Wahhabism, which was imported into the country by Egyptians who went to work in Saudi Arabia in the […]
Breaking the Rules Beautifully
by Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire. “Breaking the rules attracts implications, Jennifer.” I overhear British writer and feminist Sara Maitland delivering these warning shots to Jennifer Makumbi. Makumbi has chosen to publish her debut novel on the continent and the snub felt by the publishing industry in the West has probably become more pronounced as Kwani?, a Kenyan […]