Melodious Thunk
By Chimurenga / September 5, 2023
Everyone in the neighbourhood knew him. Walking to the shops, kids called out, Hey, Monk, howya doin? Where ya bin, Monk? and he mumbled something back, stopping to shake hands or just sway back and forth on the sidewalk.
CHIMURENGA@20: AZANIA SALUTES TOSH
By Chimurenga / July 27, 2022
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the death of Bantu Steve Biko, a stunned and outraged Azania heard that the Vampire had martyred Peter Tosh.
CHIMURENGA@20: ONCE THERE WERE HUMANS
By Chimurenga / July 18, 2022
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.
CHIMURENGA@20: STICKFIGHTING DAYS
By Chimurenga / June 17, 2022
Everyone knows I’m a two-stick man. But, I’m not ready to go up against Markham again just yet. Or any of the other top stickfighters. I’ve been trying some new moves. I feel close to a breakthrough in terms of technique. But it’s not quite there
In conversation with Omoseye Bolaji
By Chimurenga / June 7, 2022
In the Free State, the most important and pivotal figure in local black literature has been OMOSEYE BOLAJI. Pule Lechesa spoke with him about his awards, general grassroots writing in the Free State, and Black Writing in general.
CHIMURENGA@20: WHEN YOU KILL US, WE RULE!
By Chimurenga / June 7, 2022
In 1996, Keziah Jones visited Kalakuta Republic every day for a week to interview Fela Anikulapo Kuti. On the fifth day, after waiting six hours, Keziah got to speak with Fela, who he remarked kept you in “constant and direct eye contact” and spoke “in short bursts of baritone.”
CHIMURENGA@20: THE WARM-UP
By Chimurenga / April 19, 2022
The xenophobic violence that swept through many communities in South Africa in 2008 was not a sudden phenomenon. Victims and an alleged instigator date the origins of this wave to a township in Pretoria, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
CHIMURENGA@20: A Silent Way – Routes of South African Jazz, 1946-1978
By Chimurenga / March 22, 2022
Where to begin? Which silences? There are many.
CHIMURENGA@20: Talkin’ ‘bout Survival – The Repatriation of Reggae
By Chimurenga / March 3, 2022
Where Apartheid and broadcasters divided South Africans culturally, here comes bongo natty dread to motivate U-N-I-T-Y.
MEDITATIONS ON JIMI HENDRIX
By Chimurenga / December 9, 2021
by Greg Tate
All roads lead to Jimi Hendrix.
Koltan Kills Kids
By Chimurenga / October 19, 2021
By Tsuba Ka 23 (Dominique Malaquais, Mowoso, Kongo Astronauts)
Out of Sight
By Chimurenga / October 19, 2021
A short story by Yambo Ouologuem adapted from the French by Dominique Malaquais and Ntone Edjabe.
SEXING AFRICA, AGAIN – POP AS POLITICS: WATCH IT TONIGHT ON HBO
By Chimurenga / October 18, 2021
By Dominique Malaquais
The Franc-maçonnerie Suite
By Chimurenga / October 18, 2021
by Henri Kala-Lobe and Dominique Malaquais
PAINT THE WHITE HOUSE BLACK – A CALL TO ARMS
By Chimurenga / October 18, 2021
By Dominique Malaquais
The poetics of Futbol
By Chimurenga / July 19, 2021
The Touch It would have to be a bird, stilled on a […]
POVERTY IS OLDER THAN OPULENCE
By Chimurenga / January 12, 2021
Diego Maradona is the man who exploded the shame of the entire world in June 1986, in an historic dribble during a match between Argentina and England.
CHIMURENGA@20: THE BARD OF BLOEMFONTEIN
By Chimurenga / October 5, 2020
Achal Prabhala goes to the heart of the Free State literary renaissance with the “deliberately mysterious and prodigiously talented” Omoseye Bolaji.
THIRD CLASS CITY
By Chimurenga / October 5, 2020
South Africa thinks that India owes it one for putting Gandhi through revolution school; India thinks South Africa owes it for sending him over to show the natives how it’s done.
Ibadan, Soutin and the Puzzle of Bower’s Tower
By Chimurenga / September 15, 2020
The jingle would survive the event, as the poetry of a battle-cry outlives a war, but that eventuality belonged in the future.
Chimurenga 16 – The Chimurenga Chronicle (October 2011)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
A once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present.
Chimurenga 15 – The Curriculum Is Everything (June 2010)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it.
Chimurenga 14 – Everyone Has Their Indian (April 2009)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
This issue features words and images on the Third World project and links, real and imagined, between Africa and South Asia.
Chimurenga 12/13 – Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber (Double-Issue March 2008)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
A double-take on sci-fi and speculative writing from the African world, collectively titled “Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber” after a dub mix by King Tubby.
Chimurenga 5 – Head/Body(&Tools)/Corpses (April 2004)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
An issue inspired by the life and work of Bessie Head. Including previously unpublished works by Head, and featuring new writing and art by Jean Claude Fignole,
Chimurenga 6 – Orphans of Fanon (October 2004)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
A series of conversations, real and imagined, on the “pitfalls of national consciousness” by Mustapha Benfodil, Achille Mbembe, Charles Mudede,
Chimurenga 7 – Kaapstad! (and Jozi, the night Moses died) (July 2005)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
A collection of musings – in words, images and sounds – from beneath the processed skin of Cape Town, by Gabeba Baderoon, Sandile Dikeni, Julian Jonker,
Chimurenga 8 – We’re All Nigerian! (December 2005)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
An exploration of a love-hate, admiration-envy, awe-disappointment relationship with “Nigerianess”; Features the “last interview”
Chimurenga 9 – Conversations in Luanda, and Other Graphic Stories (June 2006)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
For this one we trawled the globe for ink artists/wordists to give us their perspectives on love, life and the multiverse.
Chimurenga 10 – Futbol, Politricks and Ostentatious Cripples (December 2006)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
We scope the stadia, markets, ngandas and banlieues to spotlight narratives of love, hate and the wide and deep spectrum of emotions and affiliations that the game of football generates.
Chimurenga 11 – Conversations with Poets Who Refuse to Speak (July 2007)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
This issue is about silence, disappearing oneself as act. Though it’s often one of abdication, could it be defiance, resistance even?
Chimurenga 2 – Dis-Covering Home [run nigga run] (July 2002)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
Home, lost and found. Takes by Mahmood Mamdani, Julian Jonker, Henk Rossouw, Binyavanga Wainaina, Gaston Zossou, Haile Gerima,
Chimurenga 3 – Biko in Parliament (November 2002)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
“Mandela was not the only head of state taken in by Koagne. Le king kept snapshots of himself with many a man of power, among them Mobutu Sese Seko and Denis Sassou Nguesso […]
Chimurenga 4 – Black Gays & Mugabes (May 2003)
By Chimurenga / September 3, 2020
On desire and its discontents. Featuring a new adaptation of Yambo Ouologuem erotica, and new works by Kopano Ratele, Kalamu ya Salaam, Gael Reagon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zackie Achmat,
The Trajectory of a Street Photographer
By Chronic / January 20, 2020
My quest for an explanation for this omission in my history education made me appreciate the magnitude of the crime… for the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. – Santu Mofokeng
HOW THE WEST WAS LOST
By Chimurenga / November 6, 2019
If one thinks about it the whole thing goes back to amaQheya; the cultural proletariat… a proletariat with a cultural history that has taught it to be careful of an African existence…
Colossal KOUROUMA
By Chimurenga / September 13, 2019
What could have happened in his head to take literally this type of injunction quite common in lands of Africa? A sense of the word given? The desire to take seriously the hopes of children who usually have little voice? Mystery.
Who invented truth
By Chimurenga / May 27, 2019
Tired of truth, I am. And metanarratives and more truth and post colonies.
A Day in the Life of Idi Amin
By Chimurenga / May 27, 2019
The hot dry breeze is lazy. It glides languorously collecting odd bits of paper, they tease the ground, threaten to take flight, tease the ground.
DISCOVERING HOME
By Chimurenga / May 26, 2019
by Binyavanga Wainaina(Winner of The Caine Prize 2002) Cape Town – June, […]
The Most Authentic Real Black Africanest Togo Soccer team Story
By Chimurenga / May 25, 2019
by Binyavanga Wainaina (photographs by Philippe Niorthe) I meet Alex at breakfast […]