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Yes, the BBC sent the snooty John Simpson to South Africa to do a bit of parachute journalism and be led around by the white "rights" group Afriforum (since when are they are a credible source?) to come up with this insulting question: "Do white people have a future in South Africa?" Read it here. The [...]
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Given South Africa's stated commitment to multilingualism, you might not think that a requirement from one of the country's universities that its students learn an indigenous African language would raise much alarm. Yet alarm has nonetheless been the reaction from a few unexpected quarters to the University of KwaZulu-Natal's announcement that all first-year students enrolled [...]
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Memory Gumbo is a mother, an "ordinary woman", living in Harare, Zimbabwe. Tsitsi Dangarembga is an internationally recognized writer and filmmaker, living in Harare as well. Both agree on at least one thing: That "No to loitering," sold to the public as a 'crackdown' on sex workers, has nothing to do with sex workers. In [...]
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*By Jimmy Kainja* Last week we had a public holiday in Malawi. May 14 is "Kamuzu Day," when the nation celebrates the life of its founding president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda whose autocratic rule lasted between 1964 and 1994. The day has been there since Kamuzu's reign, during which it was celebrated as his birthday. This despite [...]
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"There are no foreclosed destinies, only deserted responsabilities" has become one of the mottos of the collective of Senegalese singers and journalists known as Y'En A Marre ("Enough is enough" in French). In the wake of the 2012 presidential elections, the group gained international recognition for leading the charge against then President Abdoulaye Wade, who [...]
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Okwui Enwezor described the ephemera of Africa that arrived in European docks as "strange cargo": as it was unloaded from ship to warehouse by longshoremen, as it was bid on, sold, and displayed in wealthy homes, lost and rediscovered, each object shaped European visions of Africa. 'Africa' as we imagine it now, was shaped by [...]
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Tony Allen's forthcoming book Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat (Duke University Press, September 2013): "Tony Allen is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the rhythmic engine of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Conversational, inviting, and packed with telling anecdotes, Allen's memoir is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the [...]
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Gata Misteriosa and Lee Bass (the Mozambican-Portuguese-Ghanaian-German duo who go by the name of Gato Preto) dropped this new video for "Pirao" last night: no longer strictly kuduro, not yet sure what to call it, but right in time for our weekend special of ten. Janka and the Bubu Gang (Sierro Leone via Brooklyn) also surprised [...]
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With the gutting of foreign coverage by most U.S. newspapers and the need to populate infinite Web space with content, a new creature has emerged: the foreign affairs blogger. Max Fisher, who hosts the Washington Post's WorldViews page, is a leading exemplar of the species. Fisher's newsy nuggets are often low-priority zeitgeist items that may [...]
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Imagine you're a 17 year old middle class Dutch girl. You just cycled home from another boring day at school. Trapped in the conventional humdrum of the day, you are deprived of the stirring type of high school tales that you often watch. Back home, you switch on the TV and stumble upon a rerun [...]
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