“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
Cover:
Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Cityscapes 7: Futurity (Africa Centre for Cities, December 2015)
The seventh edition of Cityscapes is framed around the rubric of “futurity”.
What will tomorrow be like?
It will be more urbanised. It will also, agree various contributors, bear the imprimatur of China. “Whatever the case, China has, for now, become a far more prominent actor than others in the future-making of Africa,” asserts philosopher Achille Mbembe in an anchoring essay, “to the point where Africa is now not only a planetary question … but also and more specifically a Chinese question.” Contributors Philip Harrison, Yan Yang, Tanya Pampalone and Mary Anne Fitzgerald expand and complicate this assertion.
