Black Consciousness
latest news & developments
The names Robben Island refuses to let history forget
The Robben Island Museum's Wall of Remembrance is restoring the names and legacies of unsung apartheid-era political prisoners, including Black Consciousness activist Lusiba…
The Arc betrayed
The 1976 generation fought against Bantu Education for liberation, but their grandchildren, born after 1994, navigate a different landscape. This article explores whether the…
Right of Reply: Andile Mngxitama
We buried a young black man with heavy hearts. The two collected prizes drenched in the blood of a black man. That is what stands out in our minds when we see them. Justice for…
Andile Mngxitama’s inconsistency and the politics of denigration and opportunism
I remain close to the places where ordinary black life meets the police, the farmer, the mine and the state face to face. That ground has no patience for fashionable radicalism.…
Brics, the GNU and the erasure of African consciousness
The judiciary and legal academy entrenched the same exclusion. They protected the existing order through property law, constitutional abstraction and procedural sanctity. They…
Mashatile honours Mosiuoa Lekota as a giant who carried the torch of freedom
Known for speaking truth to power, Lekota’s contributions to democracy, education and social development have left an indelible mark on South Africa’s journey toward equality and…
The bassists who built Soweto’s distinct sound
The story of South African jazz-fusion is incomplete without the bassists whose innovations quietly carried the music forward
Gregory Maqoma’s ‘Genesis’ is not an ending
The renowned choreographer returns to the Baxter not as performer but architect, with Genesis, a daring meditation on beginnings, endings and Black consciousness
Bittersweet return to Robben Island
For decades, the island was a towering emblem of punishment—first for enslaved labourers and lepers under colonial rule and later for the anti-apartheid resisters who dared to…
Black consciousness: Liberate black people from ‘the zone of non-being’
Every person regardless of colour is affected by a system that debases blackness and elevates whiteness
The sonic soul of Steve Biko
Musicians have carried his ideology forward – but what would he make of today’s politics?
Rethinking Steve Biko’s black consciousness political philosophy post-liberation
Leveraging colour as a means of progress can have a paradoxical effect of self-incarceration
One Book, Two Takes: It’s a Continent
Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata’s impressive African history book by non-historians
Positive spaces can help Africans realise their own agency
We must leverage local knowledge and materials to develop an architecture uniquely suited to our needs and conditions
Farewell to Azania’s everyman literary icon Don Mattera
The poet, writer, artist and activist, who made rubbish of race, left his mark on all aspects of our lives