-
Arguing About Race in South Africa
In South Africa, a raging debate is under way about race, an issue that has never stopped simmering since the black-led government came to power, but which is mostly unattended and sometimes reaches the boiling point and, like now, boils over (not unlike in America since the end of slavery). The ingredient that sparked it…
-
The Night I Met Lena Horne
JOHANNESBURG—As I turned on the television on Tuesday morning, the first thing I heard were the lyrical tributes to Lena Horne by Dionne Warwick and Natalie Cole, both of whom talked about how she had taken them under her wing early in their budding singing careers. I couldn’t help but think about how she inspired me, albeit in a…
-
Haiti: When Words Fail, Let Hope Prevail
There are times when even those of us who make our living with words find ourselves saying, “Words fail.” And the devastation in Haiti is one of those times for me, as I correspond with friends who are finding out about dead or missing relatives. I gaze in disbelief at the pictures of once-elegant buildings…
-
Letter From Jo’burg
No sooner had I left my U.S. home and all its fractious politics that I ran into the same scenario thousands of miles away in my other home, South Africa. I came back to brutal opposition politics and a bubbling cauldron of dissent within the ruling party not unlike America’s Blue Dog Democrats. In South Africa, the ruling…
-
Cambridge, Mississippi, Circa 1959
I was lying in my hospital bed in Boston when I got an e-mail from someone making an oblique reference to the arrest of Skip Gates. I thought the writer was mistaken and wrote back saying, “But Skip is in China.” I couldn’t believe there was anything under the sun that would lead to Skip…
-
What Iran Can Learn from the Civil Rights Movement
I was struck when, in commenting on the unrest in Iran, Barack Obama invoked Martin Luther King, repeating the borrowed line that King made famous: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Because already, as I watched the demonstrations in Iran, my mind took me back to the days…
-
Zuma Rising
On Saturday, South Africa will roll out its red carpet and put on the dog, as only it can. If the past is anything to go by, there will be plenty of pageantry and poetry and a few staid speeches as big planes fly in salute over the old Union Buildings in Pretoria. It will…
-
South Africa Looks Forward
In scenes reminiscent of the historic, first all-race elections of 1994, South Africans of all ages and races pitched up at polling stations Wednesday, some as early as 3 a.m., for what many are calling a watershed moment in the 15-year history of the young democracy. The turnout is the highest since 1994, with 80…
-
The Other Jay-Z
Just who is the man about to become not only the president of South Africa, but the most powerful man on the continent? Most South Africans call him Jay Zed. Others call him by his clan name—Msholozi. And supporters wear T-shirts proclaiming him “100 percent Zulu boy.” His full name is Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, the…
-
South African Discomfort
I recently went to the venerable old Market Theater in an increasingly populated downtown Johannesburg. It had been all but abandoned after the end of apartheid. Now the city is coming back, and white people are coming back, and they (along with a healthy number of blacks) are coming back to the Market Theater. But…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
