An opportunity to abolish Africa’s false divide

by Naefa Khan-Crookes, Business Day

NORTH Africa has been portrayed as distinct from the rest of Africa, a clever divide-and-rule technique. Frantz Fanon, writing half a century ago, succinctly encapsulated this phenomenon when he wrote : "Africa is divided into Black and White and the names that are substituted — Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara — do not manage to hide this latent racism. It is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco- Latin civilisation. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilised — in a word, savage."

Revolution Comes Like a Thief in the Night

by Richard Pithouse, LibCom

Life, ordinary life, is meant to follow certain rhythms. We grow, seasons change and we assume new positions in the world. When you have finished being a child you put away childish things and move on to the next stage of life. But there is a multitude of people in this world who cannot build a home, marry and care for their children and aging parents. There is a multitude of people who are growing older as they remain stuck in an exhausting limbo, perhaps just managing to scrape together the rent for a backyard shack by selling tomatoes or cell phone chargers on some street.