I write this quick note as an outsider (and well aware of my physical distance from events). I am writing this on the eve of the promised impeachment Tuesday of President Robert Mugabe by his own party's MP's. Despite the fact that I went to share the optimism of many Zimbabweans who marched on Saturday, longing to have some catharsis for the end of Mugabe's 37 years of mismanagement and repression, what is obvious is that the ruling ZANU-PF party and the military are managing this process. Whatever they or we want to call it: a coup or merely "targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes." It is now a week since the tanks rolled into Harare. Here's the rub: For the military and ZANU-PF this is not the end of one-party rule or of the military's control over life in Zimbabwe. No, for them this is an internal ZANU-PF matter.  They've made that clear so many times since last week. As the opposition politician, Tendai Bibi, summed it up to The New York Times: “This coup was the result of a disagreement between people eating at the same table, whereas most coups in Africa are done by people eating under the table and receiving crumbs.” When this is over, the military and ZANU-PF want Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Vice President fired by Mugabe, to become President. This is not about fresh elections. This is about strengthening the party ahead of elections and dealing with their opponents in the party, chiefly Grace Mugabe and her G40 group. Mnangagwa, who is a carbon copy of Mugabe, is touted as the "reform" candidate and everyone seem to buy into it (including the bankers and Western governments. They want "stability" first, remember). That's not how Zimbabweans remember or experience Mnangagwa, of course. He was the government minister in charge of the Fifth Bridge, the army unit, which indiscriminately killed up to 20,000 in 1983 in Matabaleland province, served under Mugabe all this time and was later named in a 2002 UN report about illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo and running violent gold syndicates. As for his style of rule, no less an authority than "The Socialist Worker," quoting a local activist," is right: “Mnangagwa is the Zanu PF hardman, the face of the Deep State — the junta that has ruled Zimbabwe for the last decade ...” This is also how Mugabe treated the "coup" -- as an internal party matter -- in his speech on Sunday night when he made what amounted to a "State of the Nation" address, mixing policy announcements (about unleashing entrepreneurialism) with pleas for party unity. It was like the last few days had not happened at all: That his own party had deserted him, called for his resignation, and expelled his wife (Mugabe's preferred successor) and her allies. So, now we have this strange sight: On the one hand, a military coup with the generals running things and, on the one hand, a president under house arrest refusing to go, who calls Cabinet meetings and preparing to preside over the party's congress next month. It's like he called their bluff and they're not sure what to do. There is also now unconfirmed reports that Mugabe and Mnangagwa may have met and "buried the hachet." (It's from the ruling party press so take that with a grain of salt, but it is telling.)  Then there are the masses of Zimbabweans. People are not sure whether they should celebrate the ouster of Mugabe or whether they're legitimizing the very people who effected Mugabe's rule until now. But it is not like Zimbabweans are naive: They must wonder what terrible forms of violence the army can unleash on them if they do go into the streets without permission. Remember, this is the army that use to pummel people into voting for ZANU-PF. But the army and ZANU-PF (and to some extent Mugabe), must also be worried how the people react. Luckily for them there is no organized opposition to channel and organize the people's pent up anger and emotion towards a truly revolutionary endpoint, as a Zimbabwean friend lamented last night. What if people go into the streets without the military's consent? Remember, Saturday's march was approved by the military. Which may explain why, in a press conference last night, the generals made it clear they wanted people to remain calm go on with their daily life and advised students not to protest -- in caps: "Students at the country's various institutions are encouraged to to be calm and to proceed with their educational programmes as scheduled. THEY NEED TO REMEMBER THAT ONE DAY OF EDUCATION LOST IS DIFFICULT TO RECOVER." As a friend reminded me, the military's fear is that if they don't control and manage the process, it might be spiral out of their control. So everything must be managed in language couched for "love of the nation" but that barely conceals the authoritarian impulses of the people managing this process. This is where we are: The objective conditions -- with the qualification that things are fluid and can go either way -- don't look like a sea change, but more like mostly-the-same-ZANU-PF led by Mnangagwa and a strong military, governing or believing its their right to continue to govern after the old man is gone. (ZANU-PF models itself after the Chinese Communist Party and basically believes that "Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun") And the military has always made it clear they won't salute anyone who has not fought in the liberation war which was in the 1970s. So the chances of an opposition candidate governing Zimbabwe is very remote. And I think for better or worse -- and I don't blame them and respect people's wishes of course -- a lot of Zimbabweans are either willfully blind to this state of affairs or they don't care about the objective conditions, they just want to -- after 37 years of personalized, violent rule by Mugabe -- will their wishes into being. At least they want to see him gone. The rest can wait for another time. I hope I am wrong.

When I was a youth, each January 8, the African National Congress, then the dominant liberation movement against apartheid, issued a statement to commemorate its founding and embolden its followers. They were a big deal. Every statement came with a theme in which they dedicated the year to some group (women, the “comrades”, the generic “people”).  A few times they may have declared “The Year of the Youth.”  South Africans were up against the apartheid state and needed all the help it could get. While the ANC was winning the propaganda war abroad, at home with most of our parents brow-beaten or too afraid of apartheid’s power, it was young people--in schools, on campuses—and with nothing to lose - who stepped up. Other liberation movements competed for youth loyalties with the ANC, but the Charterists--as ANC aligned movements were collectively known--captured young people’s imaginations most thoroughly. Many years later, we are free. Though some of those who were youth leaders have withdrawn from politics, a good many have settled into government jobs as ministerial advisors, spokespersons, party apparatchiks or tenderpreneurs. The ANC Youth League is now led by politically connected businessmen in their late 30s or by party loyalists; captured by the Guptas or deployed in increasingly factional and aggressive ANC succession battles. For a long time, most observers of South African public life dismissed the cohort of young people who were born in the 1990s - the “born-frees”.  There was a sense that they  lacked political consciousness because they were born into a society in which they no longer needed to fight so viscerally for their basic rights. As the years flew by after 1994, the ANC still issued January 8 statements, but nobody read them. As poor communities suffered at the hands of an ANC government whose police evicted them from already cramped and substandard housing, shut off their water, locked them up or murdered or shot at them when they protested, many people assumed that most young people simply wanted to shop.  Celebrity culture and consumer capitalism had replaced militancy. Or so it seemed. Then came Marikana in August 2012. Police killed thirty-four striking miners in the Northwest province; the media captured the scene and replayed it nightly on the news. Some expected mass protests or a revitalization of worker-led movements in response. This was not forthcoming. But, Marikana changed things. Instead of a Workers’ Party (which has disappointingly proved to be a non-starter), the enduring legacy of Marikana is the Economic Freedom Fighters, a party of young people formed in the wake of the tragedy. Its leader Julius Malema came from the ANC Youth League. Brash and opinionated, he had earlier pledged to kill to keep the country’s unpopular and corrupt President, Jacob Zuma, in power. But Malema had been expelled from the ANC, partly for publicly embarrassing President Zuma and the ANC’s national executive committee over the lack of racial and economic transformation and the violence of Marikana. Though some have derided the EFF and Malema for shock tactics and publicity stunts, inside Parliament (and for television and Youtube viewers) the EFF has emerged as a formidable foe for the ANC. The EFF clearly operates in the idiom of working class young people; its protests and putdowns of the ruling party are made for the social media age. Its red overalls are photogenic and Instagrammable and EFF MP’s quips funny and shareable. The EFF has also revitalized youth politics and may have signaled to young people--most with no memory of apartheid and for whom a black government equals power--to exercise their citizenship. Though protests are common in postapartheid South Africa--think the social movements around housing, water, electricity and, most significantly, AIDS that started in the late 1990s--it would be around higher education where the impetus for a new democratic politics would take form. Until university, public education is free in principle and government spending does not discriminate by race. However, little has been done to improve black primary and high schools schools characterized by overcrowding, no electricity or water supply and dilapidated infrastructure. Black high school students organized by organisations such as  Equal Education, have done much to shame the Minister of Basic Education and remind the government of its obligation. Though their campaigns have been creative, Equal Education never defined the mainstream news cycle in the way some of their older brothers and sisters at South Africa’s twenty-one universities would do in 2015 and 2016. University students not only made the connections between the ways colonialism and apartheid reproduce racial and class inequalities in South Africa, laid bare the ANC’s broken promises and exposed the negative effects of neoliberalism, but also magnified class differences and the failures of university administrations and curriculums to racially transform.  Ironically of course it took a rise in political organizing on formerly white universities to push these issues into the public domain – for years activists on mainly black campuses had been raising similar complaints. Still, the students were able to make vital connections to outsourcing on campuses and, crucially, began to agitate for free, public higher education. In what has since taken on mythical proportions, university students disrupted campuses, invented new vocabularies (“decolonization” for one) and opened debates about the nature, extent and compromises which characterized the political transition from apartheid. In the process, they became the most significant national, social movement since the end of apartheid. But also the first middle class black grouping to openly challenge the government and white business on a grand scale.  By the end of 2015, the country’s president Jacob Zuma caved in when he announced (at least temporarily) no future fee increases. The movement has since stalled due to a mix of political factors and reflecting the general stasis in South African politics, but its impact is still felt widely. I have followed much of this from afar--I have been living in the United States for the last 16 years--and noticed the changes on annual visits to South Africa and in interviews and interactions with some of these young leaders and activists.  (In mid-2015, for example, I was fortunate enough to interview some leaders of Rhodes Must Fall and Open Stellenbosch in Cape Town.) On my most recent visit to South Africa this year, I tagged along with my wife, a professor of politics at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, her colleague, and a group of her students on a study tour. The American students had studied South Africa’s early 1990s constitutional negotiations; for the South African students their protests attempt to undo what they consider the limits put on decolonization by those negotiations. Between visiting political landmarks in Cape Town and Johannesburg like the Apartheid Museum, the District 6 Museum and Robben Island, we also met with small groups of student activists in both places. The visiting students hung out socially with young people in Soweto, Braamfontein and central Cape Town. Some of the American students were involved with student government and anti-Trump protests back in New York City. I wanted to know what they made of South African young people. Like all of them, Maria Andrews, a dancer who also studied political science, was particularly taken by the South African experience and youth politics. Afterwards I asked her what she remembers about her interactions with South African young people. In her telling, the South Africans she met come across as decidedly postapartheid people. For them apartheid is ancient history. As far as they are concerned, the ANC shapes the reality that they confront. “My experiences with young South Africans revealed how aware they are of injustices and how vocal they are about the lack of social rights. Political rights have been given to all, but the social rights and deep institutional change is yet to come to fruition. Young South Africans are looking for something new in the political landscape and many of them are demanding change now in places very personal to them.” What Maria was describing was the opportunities and challenges presented by the crisis of postnationalist politics: what comes after the ANC and its alliance, now that their politics have run its course. The question is whether young South Africans  are up for it. It’s not yet clear to what extent these young people are still in thrall to the ANC’s  power (even the EFF flirts publicly with “returning” to the ANC, and many student leaders understandably find whites’ criticism of Zuma hard to stomach). Even for those quick to challenge the whiteness  of capital or the whiteness of universities, it can be hard to confront the fact that it is the ANC which has controlled the state for the last two decades. Despite the fact that the ANC haven’t done enough to use that power to improve the lives of the black majority, instead squandering it to enrich a small, politically connected clique and to implement neoliberal economic policies, the ANC “brand” still compels. And though some parlayed their experiences with Fees Must Fall into off-campus struggles (take Reclaim the City or Ndifuna Ukwazi’s housing struggles in Cape Town or putting violence against women and patriarchy firmly on the agenda), very few youth leaders can fully interrogate the relevance of their symbolic struggles to the wider population.  Finally, in their rush to adopt and mimic popular, overtly racialized discourses from elsewhere (especially the United States), they risk missing the rich vein of possibility to be mined from South Africa’s own history of building cross-class, cross-race and mass-based movements. The kids could still be alright.  Maybe.   * An edited version of this post appeared in the South African newspaper, City Press, as part of a partnership with Thought We Had Something Going.

Happy Father's Day. This was the week of June 16th--the commemoration of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, which gave impetus to the long last phase of the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. (If you're wondering about the contemporary incarnations of that revolt, look no further than #FeesMustFall, #RhodesMustFall, the Economic Freedom Fighters and groups like Equal Education and Reclaim the City.) Speaking of youth politics: Friday was also the birthday of the late poet Tupac Shakur (1971-1996). He would have been quite middle aged had he been alive: 46 years old. As I wrote in 2011, "... his intensity did not just appeal to just young people here in the United States, but also on the continent." And this time last week in 1980, Walter Rodney (Google: "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa") was assassinated by a pro-American black nationalist regime. As the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson said about Rodney's crime: "... all that him did wan' was fi set him people free." Speaking of pro-American regimes: We posted on Paul Kagame. That brought out the trolls on Twitter. Meanwhile, "fewer African students are coming to universities in South Africa due to xenophobia fears and long visa delays - and it could be affecting the future rating of [the country's] universities ..." From a friend in Britain about the Grenfell Tower fire in Central London that killed (by last count) 58 people; another 54 are presumed missing (and thus dead); mostly working class people, including a large number of African immigrants: "I have never seen such class anger on my TV since the Miners' Strike in 1984." As Linton Kwesi Johnson said (yes, him again): Inglun is a bitch. But as my friend continued: "The sympathy for the victims are cross class but its a class issue. Jeremy Corbyn's sensational electoral result has given working class people confidence--it's so obvious." On Corbyn's victory, I wrote an article for a South African newspaper, The Mail & Guardian, on what it all means beyond Britain, especially for Africans starved of political alternatives (it's behind a paywall). Here's an excerpt:

In contrast to the excitement around Corbyn, politics on the continent is largely stale, dominated by national liberation movements or legacy political parties (including communist, socialist or labour parties) that are long discredited, either rigging elections, suppressing voters, using violent tactics to silence critics, and in cases, where there are free and fair elections, to organize politics via patronage and influence trading (Nigeria), presenting voters with political parties that are ideologically indistinct (Kenya, Ghana) or taking voters for granted by assuming past achievements make them immune to losing office (the South African ANC). In most cases, the alternatives are clean-cut, personality-driven politics combining austerity with market reform.

... Corbyn’s draw, as the left American writer Bhaskar Sunkara wrote in Jacobin Magazine, was that he stood up for socialist ideas beyond simplistic populism and argued for them in public, despite ridicule from media and political-economic elites: “Labour’s surge confirms what the Left has long argued: people like an honest defense of public goods.”

In South Africa, for example, the ANC’s empty rhetoric of “radical economic transformation” combined with a vacuous Afropolitanism is looking more and more like a cover for looting the state. But South Africa also points to the most exciting possibilities for a new kind of politics. Perhaps the most profound takeaway for Africans from Corbyn and Labour’s showing last week is that after years of lip service to left programs, we now have evidence that a real commitment to such programs can mobilize previously apathetic or excluded constituencies. This is something that a combination of South African movements such as #FeesMustFall, left populist movements like the EFF, trade unions (the ones who broke away from Cosatu), the planned Workers’ Party and social movements like Reclaim the City, could rally around together for 2019.

‪Remember this description of Mobutu Sese Seko? "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake." It's been updated. BTW, this whole 'debate' about cultural appropriation is so much time wasting. Both 'sides.' Exhibit 1,000,0001. This is a good policy: to put condoms in South African schools. If you're a South African football fan, this is big news: "Finally, South Africa has beaten Nigeria in an official competitive match." But not everyone got the menu, like this South African football writer who can't distinguish between the weight of that competitive fixture and a friendly match. I give up. Is there anyone who actually believes South Africa's ruling party, the ANC, is suddenly serious about renaming South Africa? The curator and arts activist Valmont Layne has seen this playbook before: "The pattern seems to be 1. take a legitimate and emotive issue in the body politic (eg. economic transformation). 2. Save for an opportune moment to seed a controversy around it (eg. to reduce the heat from #Guptaleaks). 3. Plunder while the debate rages. 4. Repeat." Since he won't shamelessly self promote: Boima Tucker, our managing editor, made an album with his group, Kondi Band. Read it about here, here and here. It also comes with a music video of Boima wondering through Hong Kong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WF7dTtf4RU What will we do without Snoop Dogg. We'll even forgive him the "Coming to America" themed birthday parties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFVVvVLMr-E Finally, NPR ran an article about the popularity of Latin American telenovelas in Africa; about how it reflects aspirational culture on the continent; "... the Latin American telenovelas work in Africa because they feel authentic." Not so fast, according to a Brazilian friend of mine, the novelist Marilene Felinto (in an email): "Brazilian telenovelas are export products of Rede Globo Television, not only for Portuguese-speaking Africa, but also for Portugal, China, among other countries around the world. Rede Globo is the largest Latin American media conglomerate. Globo's telenovelas are experts in creating propaganda mechanisms that perpetuate, in the unconscious of Brazilian poor and middle classes, compliance with social exclusion and class discrimination. The telenovelas, which have high technical quality, are, ironically, another reason for the embarrassment of being Brazilian--not to mention what constrains us today: an illegitimate government, a coup d'état, retreat in social policies ... also promoted and supported by Rede Globo and other media conglomerates." HT's and shoutouts: Valmont Layne, Anakwa Dwamena, Marilene Felinto, Peter Dwyer, Abraham Zere and Dylan Valley.

(1) Identity politics is neoliberalism, as Adolph Reed once said. And it delivers like clockwork. The hip hop producer Sean Diddy Combs (he produced Biggie Smalls) opened a for profit charter school in Harlem where he was born. Because--as he said--he would rather do "something about" education than just complain about it. (And he chose to "do it" with a for-profit school that has "Capital" in its name. BTW, Diddy isn't the only celebrity that's in on the charter school movement. Even people like John Legend. Once you stopped chuckling, this sort of thing is further along in African countries (and elsewhere) than you think. In Liberia (they convinced the government; rapper Akon is kneedeep in this project), Uganda (where they've had some pushback), Kenya, and on a smaller scale in South Africa (the Spark Schools; most of the funding is private, but these initiatives are getting open support from the Democratic Alliance governed Western Cape province). Behind it are groups like Teach for All. The African outpost of the charter school movement get a lot of soft pedal coverage in publications like (obviously) The Economist. For a broad overview, we'd suggest revisiting Maria Hengeveld's interview with activists. (3)  Staying with identity politics in #othercountries: "Hillary is Queen, Bae, Beyoncé—you get it. Chelsea is the prodigy—2.0, if you will." I can't anymore. (4) In South Africa, a Nigerian migrant is suing the South African immigrant authorities and the police (South Africans, on balance, are notoriously xenophobic to other Africans). He was shot in the leg after they accused him of having weed on him. He was only charged 18 months later. The victim, Justin Ejimkonye, claimed he was shot because he did not want to pay a bribe. It is well past time someone did, but as Alison Tilley, a rights activist reminded me, this is not the first time someone sued the South Africans. (5) By now everyone knows about Helen Zille's defense of colonialism. Whites in South Africans say racist things on social media on the daily. Zille matters because she is the Premier (the equivalent of a governor of a state) of the Western Cape, one of South Africa's nine provinces. You can read Vito Laterza's analysis of Zille's remarks, including how she is emblematic of a global trend by rightwingers to say feel emboldened to say aloud what they've been feeling all along.  Some of have come to Zille's defense, including the usual "explanation" and "on the other hand"-ery of liberals. The most prominent, though, was Ferial Haffajee, one of the first black editors of a major South African newspaper (and now at Huffington Post South Africa), who defended Zille's "right" to be racist and offensive. The best response to Haffajee has been UCT law professor Pierre De Vos's response. It is important as it challenges "liberals" and their free speech absolutism. It may come across as a bit lawyerly and long. That's necessary. Read it. (6) More consequential than Zille's odious tweets about colonialism, has been how she and her party governs the Western Cape and Cape Town. Last week, the provincial government nixed a plan to build affordable housing on the edge of the city center for mostly domestic workers and gardeners serving their mostly white employers and for people being displaced by gentrification. The Cape Town City Council, run by Zille's party (the mayor blocked me on Twitter; surprise) is no better. On Human Rights Day, March 21, it sent in "the Red Ants" (an infamous council unit) to demolish shacks rebuilt after a fire in a squatter settlement outside Hout Bay, that place recently described by Omar of the Wire (Michael K Williams when doubles as a reporter for VICE) as what happens when "Malibu and the Hamptons had a baby." All this--I am from Cape Town--made me wonder whether this could be impetus for new solidarities in Western Cape between Africans and coloured working classes/lumpens as counter to divide-and-rule of the Democratic Alliance and the rank incompetence of the ANC as opposition? Nothing wrong with dreaming. (7) Near Johannesburg, South Africa, a white man bullied, threatened and abused a black woman over the actions of their children in a playpen at a popular restaurant chain. By now, you're mumbling "next" as this sort of thing is widespread in South Africa. In any case, this all happened at the Spur, a South African restaurant chain pretending to draw on Native American motifs.  Not everyone was surprised it happened there, given what that restaurant chain represents. As Busisiwe Deyi pointed out on this site in 2015: "Nothing about SPUR is Native North American except for its use of a Native American chief-like figure on its logo and Native American-esque names and themes. In truth, rather than Native American experience or culture, the imagery used by SPUR is that of the frontier US West and Southwest." It is worth rereading that post. (8) This (in the London Review of Books) by Adam Shatz on the "debate" around  Dana Schultz's painting "Open Casket" painting. On whether acts of "radical sympathy, and imaginative identification, are possible across racial lines." Also see Kara Walker's statement on Instagram. But it seems like we've been here before. Finally, it is worth remembering what Walter Benn Michaels argued a while back: "the point of the critique of capitalism is to get rid of poor people, not to make sure that they’re properly represented among the elite." (9) More #othercountries. This is an excellent take on the recent history of trade unions in the United States through the transformation of the Service Employees Industrial Union. I'd love to see an analysis like this on say unions in South Africa, Nigeria or Egypt. (10) Yes, this happened: "An annual African trade summit in California [in the United States; President: Donald Trump] had no African attendees this year after at least 60 people were denied visas." (11) VICE went and investigated extrajudicial killing in Kenya that are part and parcel of wildlife conservation. It is particularly good on knocking off Richard Leakey's halo (from how he is perceived/covered by elites/media in the west). Worth a read. (12) Then there are these clips of Paul Robeson and Eslanda Robeson from the film "Borderline" (1930), filmed in Switzerland. Just going to leave this here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgCZ7572OpU

(12) Finally, since I am a shameless self-promoter: Go and get this new book about boycott politics that I contributed to.

We're bringing back Weekend Special. Borrowing its title from a song by the late Brenda Fassie, this is basically a list of 10 (ten) things we couldn't publish; only shared on our social media (which we know some of you are not on); or that we rant about but did not have the time to write about properly. This is the revival. This edition just made the cut late Sunday night to qualify. In future, watch out for it on Sunday mornings. (1) First a rant. If you're an African war criminal you get dragged to the International Criminal Court or one of its tribunals. If you're a U.S. war criminal you get to "paint people whose bodies were broken by the illegal wars you started" (as anthropologist Maggie Dickinson pointed out on Twitter). People Magazine will publish an approving profile and soft focus images of you while Facebook statuses will gush over how cuddly you are now. And if you are a British war criminal, you get to consult Africans about "good governance" while you overcharge them for doing nothing that can be classed as any advice and get away with it every time. Oh, and you keep pushing your services as a peace envoy in the Middle East, when we know which side you're on. (2) The work of Cameroonian photographer Steve Mvondo. (3) Contributor and one of my former students Yael Even Or writes in The Tablet about whether an Israeli company rigged Zimbabwe's 2013 elections for Life President Robert Mugabe. (4) This mix by Sonny Abegaze. (5) We can't make up minds about CyHi The Prynce's "Nu Africa" with its lyrics about "... What if Jay and Bey went and bought some land in Egypt? / And Puffy put a stripper club off the sands of Kenya?" It also sounds and look like the street companion to the backpack favorite "Promise Land" by Nas and Damian Marley. (6) Former South African President Thabo Mbeki was quoted on the Mail & Guardian website as saying South Africans "attacking foreign nationals is not patriotic or revolutionary." Here's the problem: Attacks on other Africans in South Africa were just as common during his administration (in fact, the first major postapartheid xenophobic attacks happened when he became President) and he did very little about it. During one of the attacks he flew to Japan, took days to even respond, denied it was even xenophobia when it so clearly was and failed to comfort the victims.) More importantly, a simple Google search will show that under his 2 administrations the number of deportations went up considerably (some stats indicate deportations of mostly other Africans from South Africa nearly doubled during his tenure), making a mockery of his empty platitudes--especially his 'stature' as a Pan-Africanist of sorts now. (7) On the xenophobic violence in South Africa, we can recommend some reading from our archive--Sisonke Msimang, Achille Mbembe and Suren Pillay--and this by Dan Magaziner and I as well as something much older I wrote in 2008. (8) This interview featuring Jacobin Magazine editor Bhaskar Sunkara (they're our partners) on the crises in American politics and the opportunities it present for Left politics: (9)  We will say more on this in due course, but just to state here: South African political culture is at a low point; in the latest episodes some students (offshoots of the Rhodes Must Fall movement) demanded the visiting Ngugi wa Thiong'o "throw white people out" out of a lecture he delivered at the University of Cape Town. Another is the phenomenon of "paid twitter" that runs cover for ruling party politicians who fail to deliver to ordinary, mostly poor,  black South Africans. The latest is the social development minister, Bathabile Dlamini, whose ministry may fail to process welfare payments for about 17 million people whose only income are these monthly grants. (10) Finally, we want to see all the films of French-Senegalese filmmaker, Alice Diop. As Youtube user Kaïraba Cissé concludes (and we're paraphrase-translating) in the comments for this video, from November 2016, below: Alice Diop has talent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnmVK_YRRvU