Radical Rudeness
[hr] By Paula Akugizibwe[hr] In Seeing, Jose Saramago’s novel about the death of democracy, citizens in the capital city of an unnamed country calmly disengage from the ritual of elections, in which they have lost faith. The state retaliates by sealing off the city and withdrawing all public services, and in response residents organise themselves […]
Pan African Activism Meets Mamdanisation
[hr] Theory and practice have been butting heads at Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research, resulting in graduate students decrying the “authoritarian” leadership style of its director, public intellectual and crusader for the decolonisation of higher education, Mahmood Mamdani. Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire chronicles the machinations of a protracted struggle against perceived creeping neoliberalism. [hr] On […]
Third Transition
[hr] Shoks Mzolo and Bongani Kona trace the path of South Africa’s transformation from a criminal apartheid state to a criminal neoliberal state, where a handful of old-monied white capitalists still turn the screws and call the shots, while a newly monied black bourgeoisie stands to attention. The authors examine the knowns and unknowns of […]
SOMEWHERE NEAR THE BEGINNING OF THE MATCH
By Abdourahman A. Waberi* (translated by Carolyn Shread). A small coastal town on the southern shore of the Red Sea, one market evening. There’s a crowd in the main square, deep in darkness, in this market town that lives by the rhythm of night tides and moonlight. The monsoon is at the city gates, herding its […]
A Black Writer Must Write About Sex
By Danny Laferiere America owes an enormous amount to Third World youth. I’m just not talking about historical debt (slavery, the rape of natural resources, the balance of payments, etc); there’s sexual debt too. Everything we’ve been promised by magazines, posters, the movies, television. America is a happy hunting ground, that’s what gets beaten into our […]