Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
national identitylatest news & developments
Lived reality: What happens when a country still knows how to worship its founding words but no longer knows how to enact them in ordinary public life? Photo: Susannah Stevens
US POLITICS

The Republic of the Replica

Our US correspondent recounts a chaotic 250th birthday celebration in Washington D.C., where a quest to see the Declaration of Independence and attend the national parade turned…

  • Michael Brian Lee
8 min read
Mother of the nation: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the mother who did what she could with what she had, became something more recognisable, a stand-in for a generation of women who stayed behind.
AFRICAN DOCUMENTARY FILM

Rewriting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela through the eyes of her grandchildren

Refusing neat conclusions, The Trials of Winnie Mandela invites viewers into an uncomfortable but necessary confrontation with history, legacy, and generational trauma

  • Lesego Chepape
6 min read
President Cyril Ramaphosa.(@PresidencyZA/X)
JAMES BALDWIN

The President and the Pulpit: What does a social compact even mean?

What constitutes national identity has to be understood against the ways that the social compact in South Africa contrasts with that of Western political theory

  • Elisha Kunene
11 min read