South African president Cyril Ramaphosa (L) is congratulated by leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi (R) after being elected president of South Africa during the swearing in of new members of the National Assembly.
Nic Bothma
The failure of the 2021 post-election deal is a missed opportunity for the African National Congress and Inkatha to work together.
Black labourers extracting sludge.
on a mine near Johannesburg at the height of apartheid in the 1980s.
David Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
The life story of Mandlenkosi Makhoba represents the losers in the new South Africa, showing how inequality is produced and reproduced generationally.
Veteran South African politician Mangosuthu Buthelezi addressing parliament in 2019.
EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma
Mangosuthu Buthelezi deserves better than being dismissed as an apartheid stooge. But he deserves little praise as an advocate for human rights and civil liberties.
Helen Zille’s return to the top echelons of the Democratic Alliance has been slammed as an attempt to make the party white again.
EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma
The Democratic Alliance’s problems can be traced back to the politicisation of race, which has persisted even after the dawn of democracy in 1994.
The Berlin Wall symbolised the Cold War divide between the capitalist West and communist Soviet Union.
EPA-EFE/Omer Messinger
Marking the end of the Cold War offers the chance to reflect on the changes and continuities in African politics and international relations since 1989.
Inkosi Mhlabunzima Maphumulo, right, with Dali Mpofu and Winnie Mandela in 1989.
Thobekile Maphumulo Family Papers, Author provided (No reuse)
Colonialism and apartheid sought to make traditional leaders accountable to white officials by tying them to land.
Harold Wolpe showed how poor rural areas subsidised low wages of migrant workers’ wages.
Shutterstock
During the apartheid period in South Africa – 1948 to 1994 – a lively intellectual culture of opposition emerged on some of the country’s university campuses and within the broader anti-apartheid movement…
Communities in South Africa’s North West Province are embroiled in battles with chiefs over land.
EPA/Jon Hrusa
South Africa has made progress towards interrupting the looting of land by chiefs, state officials and mining capital.
Mangosutho Buthelezi in parliament.
EPA/Mark Wessels
Mangosuthu Buthelezi carries extensive accountability for the sectarianism that characterised politics in South Africa before 1994.
North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo (centre) before the announcement that his province is being taken over by national government.
EPA-EFE/STR
The chaos visiting South Africa’s North-West province shows that ordinary people in rural areas have got a raw deal from ruling party.
Jacob Zuma.
Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
The obituary of the Zuma administration can be summed up with its ethos: grab as much and as fast as you can.