Tweet By: Siphokazi Magadla* Angie Motshekga, the president of the Women’s League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, gave a game-changing response in November 2012 to questions regarding the failure of the women’s league to nominate a woman to be president of the ANC. The answer? –“we are not a feminist…
Tweet By: Mathe Mathe* When I first read the starting theme for this year, Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror came to mind. But I immediately pushed that song out of my mind with rebuttals such as: “You can’t possibly ever write about this because the BLF audience will think you have an obsession with…
Tweet By: Gcobani Qambela* “I want people to really understand the power of love and loving” – Jean Houston on Super Soul Sunday. I followed with rather surprised interest the American story and apparent controversy surrounding the gay marriage of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity member, Nathanael Gay to his partner Robert Brown, another man….
Tweet By: Siphokazi Magadla* In the past few weeks I have been raving to several friends on email, whatsapp, BBM, facebook and even at random dinner conversations about Melissa Harris-Perry’s book “Sister Citizen: shame, stereotypes, and black women in America/for colored girls who’ve considered politics when being strong isn’t enough” (2011). In this ambitious project Harris-Perry…
Tweet By: Gcobani Qambela* I recently watched the film “Savages” by director, Oliver Stone. The film, based on the novel by the same name by Don Winslow is centered around two young (white) male friends (Ben and Chon) who grow marijuana in Laguna Beach, California. They produce a particular potent strain of marijuana, which has…
Tweet By: Gcobani Qambela*, Bose Maposa** and Nadia Ahmadou*** Writing on “Birthdays, Legacies, Love, Leadership: Letter to Nelson Mandela” Esther Armah in the Huffington Post takes us to Philadelphia in 1996 where Winnie Madikizela Mandela was the keynote speaker at the Million Woman March. Armah notes that some White American liberal women questioned the legitimacy…
Tweet By: Amkelwa Mapatwana Much has been written about the events of the 16th of August 2012 at the Marikana/Lonmin mines in South Africa in the past few weeks. Many commentators have noted how the event revived key brutal misuse of power by the apartheid government against the then disenfranchised black South Africans at key events…
Tweet by Pumeza Mdangayi* Assata is quoted to have once said: “….black people will never be free unless black women participate in every aspect of our struggle, on every level of our struggle” If I was younger, ordinarily, at face value I would have agreed with this quote. In fact I nearly retweeted it on…
Tweet by Gcobani* To many people she is no more than a forgotten Twitter hashtag topic (#Lelona), but to a few she was a daughter, colleague and friend. To others she’s a careless girl who dared hitchike on South Africa’s dangerous and deadly roads, and yet to a few she’s testimony to the struggles of…
Tweet In a 2011 report[1], the United Nations (UN) counted internet access as a basic human right. However Vinton G. Cerf in the New York Times earlier this year noted that arguments to the effect that internet access is a basic human right “however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology is an enabler of…
