Damon Galgut joins a distinguished line of South African authors, who are grappling with the complex dynamics of the country’s white community in their writing.
Umkhonto we Sizwe army veterans stand to attention during the 75th birthday celebrations of the governing ANC in 2017.
EFE-EPA/Cornell Turiki
The dismantling of the liberation armies and that of the apartheid state was managed badly. It left in its wake thousands of angry veterans who felt betrayed.
Winnie Mandela was among key targets for disinformation by apartheid police.
Mujahid Safodien/AFP via Getty Images
A secret plan to destabilise the new democratic government reveals the failed ambitions of the apartheid state security apparatus and confirms what is known about the brutality of the period.
South African cricketer Quinton De Kock and team captain Temba Bavuma make their way out to bat in a T20 World Cup match against Australia.
Photo by Gareth Copley-ICC/ICC via Getty Images
It’s important to guard against empty gestures. Taking the knee represents a start. But on its own it won’t bring meaningful change to the lives of black people.
Braamfontein in central Johannesburg has benefited from the city’s urban renewal programme in recent times.
EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook
The city’s government wanted the wealthy and overwhelmingly white areas of the city to subsidise the development of the poor and overwhelmingly black areas.
Comments like Frost’s demonstrate ignorance towards the many structural inequities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and other marginalised peoples, in Australia.
A protest against racial injustice and police violence in Spain.
Josep LAGO / AFP) (Photo by JOSEP LAGO/AFP
A transnational movement for racial justice requires a sensitivity to the specific, local conditions in which race and racism touch the everyday lives of people.
South African president and leader of the ruling ANC Cyril Ramaphosa.
Michele Spatari/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The ANC did not create most of the patterns for which it is blamed. But it has done far too little to change them and often seems happy simply to live with them.
US President Richard Nixon’s decision to end the US promise to convert dollars into gold changed the global financial system.
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Nixon’s decision left the IMF without a clearly defined role. Under the leadership of the industrialised countries, it began to fashion a new more intrusive and ideological role.
South African Communist Party members have held key positions in the ANC-led governments.
EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook
Ben & Jerry’s decision to no longer sell ice cream in the occupied territories comes as Israel continues to lose the support of a group of Americans who once were stalwart allies.
The archbishop’s willingness to listen to those of a different viewpoint and his staunch opposition to violence made him a pivotal figure in the end of Apartheid in South Africa.
Milo Pillay (The Sun newspaper 1951).
National Library of South Africa
An exploration of Pillay’s life dispels the notion of weightlifters and body builders as lacking political agency. His legacy created opportunities for other sports people.
The late Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo helped create the new South African National Anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
Bongiwe Mchunu/ANA
Mzilikazi Khumalo was a brilliant linguist with a stellar career in music. These achievements are extraordinary considering the obstacles he faced throughout his career.
Many black South Africans live in appalling conditions with no running water or electricity 27 years into democracy.
Anders Pettersson/Getty Images
The new governing elite mistakenly believes that the goal of a democratic South Africa is simply to extend to everyone what whites enjoyed under apartheid.
Nelson Mandela at the commemoration of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in 1994.
Georges MERILLON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The suggestion that Mandela single-handedly achieved democracy is as intellectually threadbare as the charge that he was centrally responsible for the failure to transform South Africa.
Activists mark National Reparations Day in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 2019.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
As the US debates reparations for descendants of slavery, cases in Africa help illustrate the limits of programs focused solely in financial restitution.
Human Rights Watch says Israeli action amounts apartheid in certain areas. But what does that really mean?
A demonstration in Red Square (since renamed Freedom Square) in the Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg, South Africa, 6th April 1952.
Photo by Jurgen Schadeberg/Getty Images
When the Truth and Reconciliation was mandated to investigate human rights violations from March 1960, that left twelve years of apartheid rule unexplored.