Against the ropes, Sisonke Boxing Club fights on
Despite little recognition of its value to the young fighters who use it to stay off the mean streets outside, this small academy is punching way above its weight.
Kampala is an inspiring incubator for global sounds
Alongside its Boutiq Studio in the Ugandan capital, the Hakuna Kulala label is attracting artists and producers from around the world and electrifying the electronic music scene.
Fighting for queer life to be visible and just
Though queers enjoy some legal protections in certain parts of Africa, more often they are persecuted and their existence decried or denied. The fight for their rights needs a global stage.
The slow violence of sugar
South Africa’s obesity and diabetes epidemics today can be traced to an accumulation of violence over time, starting on the early sugar plantations of colonial Natal.
Happy Jele has given ‘The Ghost’ much to smile about
The Orlando Pirates captain may have reached one of the most significant milestones any player could hope for, but as a self-confessed achiever he has more dreams he wants to realise.
Editor's Pick
S6 Episode 2: Eco-justice | The Left and the climate emergency
An activist paid the ultimate price for resisting a mine digging for profit on her doorstep, but her neighbours fight on. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Left is getting the climate emergency wrong.
Eradicating pit toilets is but a first step
These dangerous and insanitary latrines at schools should be replaced by clean and safe bathrooms that also cater to the needs of girls who’ve reached puberty.
Posters celebrate 100 years of Paulo Freire
A poster exhibition featuring illustrations, collages, drawing and photographs by artists from seven countries honours the educator’s centenary.
Remembering Mdazo: a ‘neat, friendly warrior’
Assassinated Numsa organiser Malibongwe Mdazo survived many attempts on his life but never gave up fighting for workers. He was a comrade to many, a brother, husband and father too.
Two perpetrators, two ways to face up to complicity
Joao Rodrigues and Paul Erasmus both worked for the apartheid regime and died this year. But while Rodrigues was litigious and tight-lipped, Erasmus tried to help victims’ families.
S6 Episode 1: Revisiting 9/11 with Mahmood Mamdani | Kyle Shepherd
Global thinker Mahmood Mamdani helps make sense of two decades of the so-called War on Terror. And Kyle Shepherd explains why his response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a solo piano album.
Podcasts
S6 Episode 2: Eco-justice | The Left and the climate emergency
An activist paid the ultimate price for resisting a mine digging for profit on her doorstep, but her neighbours fight on. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Left is getting the climate emergency wrong.
S6 Episode 1: Revisiting 9/11 with Mahmood Mamdani | Kyle Shepherd
Global thinker Mahmood Mamdani helps make sense of two decades of the so-called War on Terror. And Kyle Shepherd explains why his response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a solo piano album.
Mixtape 49: Golden clouds
Charles Leonard made this mixtape under his lemon tree, celebrating Lee “Scratch” Perry, Charlie Watts, Mahotella Queen Nobesuthu Mbadu and several other musicians who have recently died.
News
For many SA women, home is hell
Gender-based violence often takes place at home or in intimate relationships, taking a traumatic toll on victims, their families and friends.
The invisible women of Wolseley
The police refused to open missing person’s cases for two of the three women who disappeared in the Western Cape town, only for them to be found at a makeshift burial site.
Nick Hudson and Panda are wrong about vaccines
Believing them is deadly as Covid-19 vaccines are working in South Africa – and here’s the proof.
‘You can’t buy much with R350 but it helped’
The Covid-19 social relief of distress grant has helped impoverished families buy much-needed food, but it is too little to provide other essentials.
Nowhere to turn for abused bakery workers
After being chased away for asking for minimum wage, Gqeberha bakers who endured racism turned first to the CCMA, then to a political party, then to a union. None helped.
Silicosis payouts are ‘symbolic justice’ for miners
The Tshiamiso Trust has begun paying out workers who contracted silicosis and TB in South Africa’s gold mines, but the amounts are paltry against what they have lost to poor health over the years.
Struggling special-needs school dealt a double blow
The Golden Steps school in KwaZulu-Natal lost not only its computer room and kitchen, but also some of its children’s means to communicate and learn a skill that grants them independence.
South Africa’s next Covid-19 frontiers
The challenges of the pandemic are not new, but the country and the continent still face a long road to adequate vaccination and getting coronavirus infections under control.
Victory for low-cost housing activists in Sea Point
When Elizabeth Gqoboka first saw the ocean from the promenade, she knew she wanted to live there. Decades later, affordable housing will come to the area, thanks to the efforts of activists.
Features
Sharp Read | SA’s revolutionary people’s culture
In tracing the legacies of South Africa’s struggle artists, Lebogang Lance Nawa’s weighty anthology offers a glimpse into the lived experience of cultural creators.
Indian farmers aim to topple Modi at state level
The ongoing farmers’ agitation has unified farmers of all castes and religions, creating a new political challenge to Narenda Modi’s party in the upcoming state elections.
Black Community Programmes: from ideas to action
The Black Consciousness Movement was committed to praxis, to theory and action. Steve Biko and his comrades devised programmes that justified their ideas and improved people’s lives.
Book Review | Black and feminist in SA
Poetry and art combine in a collection of 20 essays edited by Desiree Lewis and Gabeba Baderoon to shine a light on the ideas and work of women in southern Africa.
Cartoon | A shameful heritage
In this week’s cartoon, relentless gender-based violence scars the daily lives of South African women.
Culture
Desert winds blow through Azu Tiwaline’s work
The musician found a new sound in the silence and space of Tunisia’s el-Djerid region, resulting in an album that is ‘organic, minimal and natural’.
In a US war on China, Australia would suffer
In Text Messages this week, fiction and reality blur as Aukus increases the possibility of a real-life confrontation as seen in the second film adaption of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach.
Inquisitive show seeds its ideas in the viewer
An exhibition by Sisipho Ngodwana and Sinazo Chiya presents an expansive inquiry into being, engaging with questions rather than resolving them.
Makoanyane’s historic figurines made digital
This colonial-era Lesotho artist carved sculptures that were so close a depiction of their reality that they could well have been mistaken for machine-made reproductions.
Music in space, music in place
Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru, known as KMRU, uses field recordings to create new sonic worlds that make people more keenly aware of their own environments.
Derrick Nxumalo’s art finds humour in paradise
Widely collected in South Africa and internationally, the artworks the KwaZulu-Natal visual artist creates are a layered critique of degradation and hope.
Sharp Read | Losing ground in the promised land
Damon Galgut’s use of irony in his Booker Prize-nominated new novel, The Promise, toes the line between the ironic and the allegorical in masterful fashion.
Sport
Long Read | The slow decline of West Indies cricket
Reigning supreme in the 1970s through to 1995 with Test play that kept the world spellbound, the island nations’ cricketers are now unlikely to reach those heights again.
Teaching life lessons through sport in Masiphumelele
A sports training programme is teaching young boys and girls to respect each other, whether it’s on the field or court, at home or in the violent streets of their impoverished township.
Fiddling with football while Djiboutians suffer
The regime in the small country stands accused of using the sport to curry favour with its young population instead of investing meaningfully in uplifting the nation.
Spaghetti, Spider-Man and teenage sensations
The finals of the US Open were one day but worlds apart, pitting youthful exuberance and hope against anguish and dead fish. But perhaps this says more about politics than tennis.
Raducanu, Fernandez and the record books
The teenage tennis players who stunned the world at the US Open smashed record after record in their spectacular run to the final match of the women’s Grand Slam.
Mohammed Siraj silences the critics and trolls
India’s feisty pace bowler has made rapid progress since starting to make his mark in 2016, but it’s been a hard journey and he is still learning to let his performance on the pitch speak for itself.
Royal AM saga is a right royal mess
Critics of the Premier Soccer League say it is allowing money to break all the rules, playing favourites and silencing those who dare to question it.
Sport’s fairness vs inclusivity debate rages on
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard put the spotlight firmly on the issue when she became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Olympics.
Dale Steyn made me fall in love with fast bowling
Seeing the legendary cricketer in action as a young child provided the necessary fire in the writer’s belly to pursue a career as a pace bowler, even as he was being advised against it.
Editorial and Analysis
Australia, UK and US signed a nuclear arms deal
Though touted as a security partnership, the pact between the three nations smacks of an attempt to build pressure against China, threatening the stability of the Indo-Pacific.
Fear Inc – The prison we have lived in since 9/11
The cynical ‘War on Terror’ that started after al-Qaeda’s attacks on the US has claimed almost one million lives and eroded democracy and civil liberties throughout the world.
ANC’s norm now is that the people shall not govern
The ruling party’s top-down approach to governance, especially at municipal level, is arrogant, entitled and expresses its contempt for the needs and desires of citizens.