South Africa
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Land in South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2022)
In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine export 33%… Continue reading
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South Africa: Let them have a ridiculously large luminous flag
The ANC has destroyed or severely damaged the post office, the national airline, the railways, the electricity system and some of our most crucial hospitals. It was recently announced that the deterioration of the country’s network of weather stations has reached a critical point. Many public buildings, as well as other infrastructure, have been abandoned… Continue reading
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Another assassination in Durban
Last night, just before 8pm, Nokuthula Mabaso was assassinated at the eKhenana Commune in Cato Manor, Durban. She was shot six times, four times in the back, and died in the arms of her comrades. She is the second leader in the commune to be assassinated. Ayanda Ngila’s life was taken on 8 March. Continue reading
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‘It’s not the notes, it’s how they’re played’
Setting goals is one thing; meeting them sometimes another. But pianist Sibusiso “Mash” Mashiloane vowed in 2017 he would release an album a year until 2023 – and number six, Music From My People, has just landed. Conceived on a much grander scale than its predecessors, it involves 17 other musicians and brings together his music… Continue reading
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South Africa: Fugitive collaborations in art and jazz
Friday, 21 January 2022 — New Frame South African jazz artists tend to immerse themselves in art spaces other than music. It is a visual and musical communing across forms that meet not only in artistry, but also in politics. ‘Painting a Melody’. (Illustration by Anastasya Eliseeva) By: Percy Mabandu Continue reading
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Long Read | Home and exile, freedom and loss
Mandla Langa and Mphuthumi Ntabeni’s new novels, The Lost Language of the Soul and The Wanderers, intersect in their reflections on the lives of Umkhonto weSizwe freedom fighters. Continue reading
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Photo-Shopped History: Editing Out Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Support for Palestine
Rewriting history – essentially negating the historical relations between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the ongoing struggle to free Palestine – serves the interests of mainstream Western media and their acolytes. Continue reading
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Love on Fire
DIMAKATSO SEDITE Dimakatso Sedite was born in Bloemfontein in 1969. She trained as a research psychologist and has worked in the areas of child rights, livelihoods and HIV/AIDS. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in several anthologies, journals and writer blogs. She was a joint winner of the 2019 Dalro poetry prize. Yellow Shade… Continue reading
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The bleak shelter of Yellow Shade
The asymmetrical chair and the table cloth sitting skew in the Sam Nhlengethwa lithograph (My Grandmother’s Kitchen in the 60’s) on the cover of Yellow Shade (Deep South) are apt metaphors for how Dimakatso Sedite represents black life. Scenes are off-kilter and co-ordinates are out of place. Her poems are set in townships — the post-apocalyptic townships of… Continue reading
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Go to hell, Shell
Shell is responsible for more of the human-generated emissions that are accelerating the climate crisis than most countries. However, until recently, it was not, like states, required to abide by the Paris Accord. In May this year, a Dutch court changed that and compelled Shell to cut its emissions by 45% from 2019 levels by… Continue reading
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South Africa: Trouble in the promised land
The socialist commune Abahlali baseMjondolo built from the eKhenana land occupation in Durban has won international admiration and solidarity, but it now faces a new wave of repression. Continue reading
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South Africa: All of them must go!
It seems likely that the elections on Monday will bring significant change to how many of our cities are ruled. All the surveys show that millions of South Africans hold local government in contempt, that a significant number of former ANC supporters will not be able to bring themselves to vote for a party that… Continue reading
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Where Flowers Find No Peace Enough to Grow: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2021)
23 September 2021 — Tricontinental Milwa Mnyaluza ‘George’ Pemba (South Africa), New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, 1977. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research. On 13 July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopteda landmark resolution on the prevalence of racism and for the creation of an independent mechanism made Continue reading
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Likely Assassination of UN Chief by US, British and South African Intelligence Happened 60 Years Ago Today
Former President Harry Truman told reporters two days after Dag Hammarskjöld’s death on Sept. 18, 1961 that the U.N. secretary-general “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’” Continue reading
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South Africa: Not even the dead
South Africa is one of the most violent countries on the planet. We have the highest rate of rape recorded anywhere in the world. The murder rate here is the 10th highest in the world, as is the rate of suicide. Continue reading
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Marikana: The Struggle for Breath and Dignity
“We are dying slowly in Marikana,” says Bongani Mpofu, 31, who lives in the North West province mining town’s Maditlokwa shack settlement. “The carbon monoxide that comes from underground by way of ventilators that are positioned in the veld blows in the direction of the community. Continue reading
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‘Flowers’ for founder of the ‘theatre of resistance’
Inspired by a specific play in the 1970s, Maishe Maponya decided to write and stage works of his own. He would later go on to collaborate with, and inspire, many others, even beyond South Africa’s borders. Continue reading
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South Africa: The dangerous collapse of non-racialism
Transcending the colonial fabrication of race is a radical idea. Now, as opportunists whip up hatred, South Africa needs to restore this emancipatory horizon. Continue reading
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Johannesburg in decay
Johannesburg – Joburg, Jozi, eGoli, eRhawutini, Gauteng, Maboneng – is a city of gold, lights, barbed wire, jazz, the sun setting into lava, the burnt orange of aloes in flower against dry grass, a great university, men with guns, shopping malls, the sudden malachite of parakeets on the wing above the city forest and the… Continue reading
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South Africa: Blame for May Day’s bare whimper
May Day 2021 has come and gone, without much of a whimper, let alone a bang. And it is the novel coronavirus that is only marginally responsible. Because there would not have been much of a bang even without the pandemic. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 