Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
african historylatest news & developments
Afro soul star: Berita will be holding a special Workers’ Day performance at The Market Theatre.

Berita’s ‘Echoes of The Soul’: A meditation on migrant workers

Berita’s Workers’ Day performance becomes a powerful meditation on migration, memory and xenophobia in a nation built through labour, movement and forgotten solidarities

Topical: Chris Nyathi, left, and Oumi Ndaba in Nyasha Kadandara’s documentary Matabeleland about a
Zimbabwean immigrant’s journey home from South Africa to retrieve his father’s bones. Photo: Supplied

Whose Zimbabwe is it anyway?

Beautifully made and emotionally rich, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight exposes the uneasy truth of who gets to tell Zimbabwe’s story

Setting the scene: Dancers, choreographed by Luyanda Sidiya, in Dancing the Death Drill. Photos: Joburg Theatre

Dancing the Death Drill: A Resurrection of forgotten spirits

Dancing the Death Drill is more than theatre — it is a resurrection, a requiem and a haunting reminder of forgotten African history

In black and white: The Nkosi family circa 1942, in a photo taken on the steps of a church in Ferreirasdorp, Johannesburg. Morley Nkosi, author of the memoir The Way Home, is seated in the middle.

Exile in Cairo: Between the Nile and the struggle

Morley Nkosi recalls exile in Cairo, where cramped rooms, African solidarity and global politics shaped the uncertain journey to freedom

Ethiopia puts paid to Western perceptions that African people lack history and are incapable of poetry, philosophy and science. Photo: File

Ali Mazrui’s view on how Ethiopia solves the West’s ‘puzzle’ about Africa

Ethiopia puts paid to Western perceptions that African people lack history and are incapable of poetry, philosophy and science

Adekeye Adebajo’s book is an analysis of Africa, from the perspective of 30 years of study, which offers an overview of the decades since the fall of apartheid in 1994

A panoramic view of a continent

My latest book is an analysis of Africa, from the perspective of 30 years of study, which offers an overview of the decades since the fall of apartheid in 1994

(John McCann/M&G)

The impact of colonialism on contemporary African knowledge systems

Africans need to return to communalism and share knowledge to thrive together in the 21st century

Redemption song: Bob Marley on stage during the Viva Zimbabwe independence celebrations at Rufaro Stadium, Salisbury (later Harare), Zimbabwe, on 18 April 1980. Photo: William Campbell/Getty Images

Songs of freedom in a dancehall in Zimbabwe

Bass culture is as old as Zimbabwe itself

François Levaillant’s travel book became a huge bestseller centuries ago. Ian Glenn traces his engagement with the author

Non-fiction

History, politics, drugs, terrorists, cartoons, sport celebrities and memoirs … expand your knowledge over the Christmas period

Ten years on

Meet the slave shipwreck detective

A Senegalese researcher wants to find missing clues of slavery to piece together the history and future of his country

Ahead of anticipated change in immigration policy, government should consider the impact immigration legislation has on foreign direct investment and global skills transfer, says the author. (John McCann/M&G)

Scrap the borders that divide Africans

The continent was a place where people could always move freely, and this is what we must strive for, writes Achille Mbembe.

​New book revisits cricket and the colony in SA

​New book revisits cricket and the colony in SA

Cricket’s African history is painstakingly researched, but the prose could use more power and vivacity.

Twist memory and you distort identity

The truth of our past is being airbrushed out of our minds for the sake of nation-building.

Tales of a forgotten Africa

Tales of a forgotten Africa

African history must be taught with pride and passion.