The Love Island franchise has had a long running contentious history with its Black stars (or lack, thereof). It was just earlier this year that former Long Island UK star Yewande Biala addressed the micro-aggressions she faced on the show, relating to her name. So, when Love Island announced a new South African edition all…
It’s almost impossible to be a beautiful Black girl. A Black Lady Sketch Show playfully addresses the herculean task of Black girl beauty in the sketch, ‘Bad Bitch Support Group’. In this sketch Angela Bassett, Robin Thede, Laverne Cox, Amara La Negra and Gabrielle Dennis are a group of bad bitches who come together, in…
An earlier version of this article mistakenly cited Siv Ngesi as one of the stars of the campaign. However, we’d like to clarify they were one of the seeded influencers. It’s not an uncommon sight on South African Twitter to see cisgender heterosexual men adorning wigs and making a mockery of femmes for likes. It’s…
The decolonisation of art is a topic that needs to be paid more attention to with varying opinions on how to achieve it. From including African art in teaching syllabuses to holding exhibitions honouring African art and artefacts, decolonisation makes for a lengthy process. However, one of the first things we can aim to achieve…
Having found our way out of the peak of tabloid-gossip culture, much amends is still to be made to ensure the institution of the media never treats people the way Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan were treated ever again. Since then, a glacial shift with increasing momentum has been taking place. It started by a…
The end of 2020 saw the release of Masande Ntshanga’s third book; Native Life in the Third Millennium. Ntshanga is best known for his 2014 debut novel, The Reactive, for which he won the prestigious Betty Trask Award. The book was followed by his novel Triangulum (2019) in which science fiction merges with philosophy and…
*trigger warning: this article contains mention and discussion of sexual assault Just earlier this week, the National Prosecuting Authority dropped the rape case opened up against popular radio personalities DJ Fresh and Euphonik. The NPA decided to drop the case (which was opened in mid-January) after a review of the evidence, concluding that it was…
As much breath, depth and comfort I tend to find in the spaces of (re)memory and remembering, they are also thickly populated with disappointment and leaking holes and cracks that seem to filter out—more often than not—the work and presence of Black femmes where H/history and artistic cultural production is concerned. We often hear people…
History will always reveal who the saviours of every story are. Historians will reflect on how the rich could always count on the government to suit up and assume the position of knight when danger came their way. When the dangers seemed to pour down, even the animals had Noah to count on. For many…
When Britney’s sophomore album Oops!…I Did It Again came out in 2000, a year before P!NK’s Missundaztood sophomore album, I had barely just begun “big school” at seven years of age. Moving was an annual to every-two-years ritual for my family while I was growing up—so although I don’t quite remember the exact house we…
The struggle for recognition is an unyielding one. A struggle against an abstract foe with many faces, and institutional roots deep in various layers of oppression, with a distaste for the marginalised at its core. It is with every year’s award season that this struggle reveals a new face. Most recently, the Hollywood Foreign Press…
Somewhere in my mind lies a long list of things that seem improbable, or at least at some point seemed improbable. On that list is the idea that my world view would so firmly be guided by a sceptical attitude—eyes are peeled and everything is weighed and scrutinised. To be fair, the conditions of existing…
