Beasts of No Nation
Whether immigrating, emigrating or just passing through, Africans suffer among the greatest indignities of cross-border travel, abroad and on the continent. Paula Akugizibwe recounts how the hand-me-down tools of divide and rule perpetuate the abuse. Historical clarity is the talk of the week at the 20th commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda. Where did the vision of division come […]
The cosmic lives and afterlives of Zebulon Dread
by Achal Prabhala Part 1: Elliot Josephs Elliot Josephs was born in 1958 to an ordinarily dysfunctional family in Kensington, a working-class coloured neighbourhood between Maitland and Goodwood in Cape Town. When he was four, his parents, who worked as labourers in the city, were allotted a home in Bonteheuwel, in the Cape Flats, to […]
Obi’s Nightmare
by Jamón y Queso translated by David Shook This comic also appears in the Chronic (July 2014). The edition gives focus to graphic stories and blends illustrations, photography, written analysis, infographics, interviews, letters and more to speak of everyday complexities in the Africa in which we live. Contributors include Binyawanga Wainaina, Native […]
It’s only a matter of acceleration now
by Binyavanga Wainaina 1. I am about to interview Youssou N’Dour. I am sitting in the office of his TV station. 2. This week in Dakar, you learned to manage your breathing swimming in the water of the Atlantic, the lifeguard showed you how he spends his whole day at the tiny stony beach near […]
Not only our land but also our souls
Andile Mngxitama challenges historical and contemporary rhetoric that positions land theft in the realm of material dispossession. He asks us to plumb deeper to discover the narrative of loss that is the black experience*. In 1997, just three years into ‘democracy’, South African church leaders gathered in Johannesburg for a ‘Church Land Conference’. The children […]