THE MYTH OF THE ARTIST AS A SPECIAL CITIZEN: ARTISTS ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE BRICKLAYER
The death of any 96-year-old is sad. The death of a 96-year-old artist who lived in a shack is even sadder. But sadness is not analysis, and grief is not policy. I feel we cannot be angry at Gayton McKenzie or the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. Condemning them after the death of Bra […]
The Awakening of the Sovereign Mind
—Merging Nietzschean Will to Power and Biko’s Black Consciousness to Remedy Post-Apartheid Decay— by Aubrey Somana Three decades into its democratic dispensation, South Africa finds itself trapped in an existential malaise. Beyond the quantifiable metrics of infrastructure collapse, state capture, systemic unemployment, and pervasive crime lies a deeper, more insidious malady: a crisis of agency. […]
CRITICAL MOMENTS IN RADICAL BLACK RESISTANCE: THE SEPTEMBER CHRONICLES
As part of our revolutionary tribute lecture to the Afrocentric grand master teacher, Dr Runoko Rashidi, on 14 August 2021, I published an excerpt focusing on the sparks of global Black rebellion that ignited during August. I maintained then—as I do now—that mapping these coordinates of liberation requires deep, specialised, and continuous study. What follows […]