south-africa

South Africa

Chief Boima interviews … Alec Lomami

This summer I’ve been hired as a freelancer for Iggy, MTV’s global music website. The site is aimed at young people to introduce them to the idea that pop music is a global phenomenon (if today’s tech savvy youth already didn’t know.) I get paid by Viacom every time I put something up there, but it’s a pretty quick moving stream of content, and posts tend to disappear rather quickly. I thought it would be good to run each one of my posts as a series over here on Africa is a Country.

On the Pain of Violent Men

TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence Let me start by saying that I feel very ambivalent about causing two workers to lose their source of income. It makes me uncomfortable to have deprived anyone of a wage in this time of crisis. ‘Getting someone fired’, more than a victory, makes me feel miserable, concerned, confused. There are […]

How to be a man

The simple fact that all forms of violence in South Africa have a male face tells us there’s something fundamentally wrong with ideas around manhood there.

Have some sympathy for the poor suffering bosses

Miners at multinational Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana in Rustenburg, South Africa, speaking to (South African) Sunday Times reporter Lucky Biyase: ‘Whenever we ask for a wage increase, these companies plead poverty and threaten us with retrenchments. This is because they don’t want to pay money to black people. Why work when you don’t get […]