Those who make homes in dark buildings
In his new book ‘The Blinded City,’ Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon takes readers into inner city Johannesburg not as it was or could be, but as it is.
7 Articles by:
Paul T. Clarke
Paul T. Clarke is a PhD candidate in African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Making meaning in Johannesburg
Documenting an urban housing crisis and how tens of thousands of informal workers and unemployed people struggle to reshape Johannesburg.
Criminal justice for the rising middle class
A new book on policing in South Africa wants to go beyond the usual call for reform. But adapting literature tuned for reform to the task of abolition is a difficult needle to thread.
Police killings: how does South Africa compare?
An examination of South African statistics reveal that the police are substantially more violent than those in the US or Canada.
Abolition across the Atlantic
Why are South Africans not in the streets against police brutality like Americans are? It has less to do with the internet or middle classes. South Africans are captured by punitive logics. Break that.
Twitter and a new criminal type
What might the fascination in displaying and seeing the body of “the criminal” tell us about South Africa today?
Do we really need prisons and police?
Can policing deliver justice in South Africa? The short answer to that question has been, decidedly, no.