The End of Elections
by Paula Akugizibwe Jose Saramago’s Seeing is no Arab spring. Revolutionary rhetoric is merely seasoning to the brew of drama stirred up by a government after residents of its capital city paralyse the democratic system by casting an avalanche of blank votes. Politicians are perplexed by this deplorable disregard for democracy. A cascade of […]
A Brief History of Throwing Shit
by Rustum Kozain. Shit, muck, drek, kak. Faecal matter. We humans have a complicated relationship with our shit, one that dates back to long before Freud. Consider Francois Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel. The birth of Gargantua is confused with his mother’s bowel movement after she has gorged herself on tripe: birth and decay, life and shit. […]
“Nice Nice” Will Get You Nowhere
Boniface Mwangi is a Kenyan photographer who pulls no punches in using art as activism. During the 2007 post-election skirmishes he took thousands of photos and in 2009 he founded Picha Mtaani, a street exhibition held in towns across Kenya, showcasing the photographs to audiences beyond Nairobi. In 2013, Mwangi launched Occupy Parliament and the […]
A Brief History of Presidential Libraries
by Stacy Hardy Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and George Pompidou were friends at École Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer in Paris. They were in love with liberty. They met in the library to read African-American poets of the Harlem Renaissance and French Symbolist poets. Once president, Senghor began to build his own library – a […]
Will the Centre Hold?
In South Africa’s platinum belt, life and politics are as hard-scrabble as the earth on which they are contested: natural resources and poverty are plentiful, and support for the ruling ANC is in short supply following the brutal events at Marikana. Kwanele Sosibo travels through the launch of the Economic Freedom Fighters and confronts the […]