The Tyelera Moment
by Thabo Jijana On December 13, 2016, in Salem Party Club v Salem Community, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of 152 land claimants representing a community of amaXhosa who’d been dispossessed over a century ago by the 1820 British settlers and their descendants. While the court victory has been rightfully celebrated as […]
The Invention of Africa by Franco & T.P.OK Jazz
– Ntone Edjabe A few years ago, while researching the political history of Congo/Zaire/Congo via the country’s music archive, particularly through the output of Luambo Makiadi aka Franco, we turned to the legendary record collection of “Jumbo” Donald Vanrenen – a scholar of late-style rumba and early soukouss (a sound he helped construct via various A&R gigs […]
TO REFUSE THAT WHICH HAS BEEN REFUSED TO YOU
Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman sit down to talk about the temporal and traditional in the age of refusal – of movement, of citizenship. They offer up a different way of thinking, a pathway to another understanding of community as well as the possibility of harnessing fugitivity as a creative empowering strategy*. Saidiya Hartman: One […]
They Won’t Go When I Go
A Manifesto/ Mediation on State of Black Archives in America and throughout the Diaspora by Harmony Holiday The ashes a black mother scattered into the lap of a seemingly indifferent police chief, her daughter’s remains in ash and shackle, the ashes of her daughter who had been killed in jail either by neglect or force, […]
THINGS THAT GO IN AND OUT OF THE BODY
How can we think about bodies and circulation without deferring to the dominant binary of western discourse on the so-called “refugee crisis”, which is central to both contemporary European politics and how the early 21st century will be remembered. On one side is the openly racist discourse that underpins the border policies responsible for thousands […]