The Warm Up
The xenophobic violence sweeping many communities in the past weeks is not a sudden phenomena. Victims and an alleged instigator date the origins of this wave to March, in a township of Pretoria, writes Kwanele Sosibo. 18 March, Atteridgeville Do you know about what is happening in Rosslyn? I can tell you now that […]
Once There Were Humans
In the hills above Kingston, Jamaica Annie Paul unpacks some baggage in a rare interview with Peter Abrahams, the South African-born writer and ardent Pan-Africanist. According to Nigerian critic Olu Oguibe, the South African-born novelist and essayist Peter Abrahams is “one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, though few people know it. […]
Les Saignantes
A young woman, beautiful, 20-something, is fucking an old man. She fucks him like a rubber doll. Her hands are on his thighs. His mouth is open. The scene unfolds in rapid cuts. The woman: circling, incessant motion. Her tits. Her arse. The man. His face is sweating. The camera […]
The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary
Asef Bayat A traveller to Middle Eastern cities, Tehran, Cairo or Rabat cannot help observing the peculiar ways in which poor children stroll in the streets to sell their products, women occupying public spaces of the sidewalk to market vegetables or fruits, and thousands of men having turned public thoroughfares into brisk and busy bazaars. […]
A New Consciousness
Itumeleng oa Mahabane A man walks down a street. His shoulders are hunched together in a gesture designed to keep out the cold. Except it is not cold. It is overcast and there is a slight breeze. The semblance of cold is harder than the cold itself. The pavement is littered with stubbornly immobile […]