The Fire this time

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

In 1963 James Baldwin prefaced and ended The Fire Next Time, two essays on race in America, with a lyric from a song composed by Africans enslaved in America: ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time!’ In the Christian reading of Genesis God ‘set the rainbow in the cloud’ as a sign of a divine covenant that the elect, chosen to survive the flood that had cleansed the world of human evil, would never again have to confront the rising waters. But those who turned from the path of righteousness would, in a moment of final reckoning, perish in fire.

So Over The Rainbow, Rugby & Reconciliation

By Fezokuhle Mthonti and Ntombizikhona Valela, The Con\

There is a popular refrain that can be heard in the recent student movements across the country: “Sixole kanjani?” It is an invocation of words that were said all too often by black people during apartheid. “How can we possibly forgive this?” “How can we possibly move past this point?” Except this time, we had to project it into the future tense: where will black people find the supposedly endless repositories of forgiveness that will help us deal with this exact moment?