African Liberation Day has been numbed down to feel-good festivities and colourful clothing, but we must not forget it is a day upon which the path for liberation was declared
Africa Day
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
What does Africa really want?
As we celebrate yet another Africa Day, the question of what Africa really wants (and or what Africans, wherever they are, want) cannot be avoided. This question is forever lingering, and it becomes sharpened when Africa interacts with the rest of the world. The question must be confronted or posed directly especially given the fuzzy […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Are we trapped in conversation?
With black consciousness thick in the air, old comrades smiling knowingly at each other, and images of the late Strini Moodley projected in front of us, those of us too young to be dynamic rebels against apartheid sensed a whiff of what it might have felt like to be at a secret activist meeting. The […]
Posted inGeneral
Do we need Africa Day?
This post is in response to the recent Community of Mandela Rhodes Scholars (CMRS) “Conversations for Change” sessions held throughout the country in May. As a platform for constructive interdisciplinary debate and intellectual enquiry, the sessions sought to bring together academic institutions, public intellectuals, social activists, students, and community members with the intention of facilitating […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The Zuma portrait and black (male) sexuality
While delivering a keynote address at a conference focusing on Africa in the town of Swanwick in the UK Midlands on Saturday May 26 2012, I asked my audience what news coming out of my country or out of Africa they were aware of at this time. My audience was not aware of the exciting […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Dear Africa
I love you. Not the kind of love that Cardies sells on Valentine’s Day, but in that fraught and knotted way that grips my gut and won’t let go, that tangled mess of love and fear, guilt and longing that characterises all those relationships that mark us most deeply, the ones that truly shape who […]