African Longreads

Why Black Africans Are Becoming The Target Of Racist Attacks By Libya’s New Rulers

Contrary to what the African Union would have you believe, most people on the continent, including many potentates, were probably glad to see the back of the self-styled King of Kings. By the time of his overthrow, Col Muammar Gaddafi had become something of a sick joke — a veritable madman with grandiose visions of a United States of Africa, who had stoked murderous wars and insurrections across the continent. But following the spate of racially inspired atrocities committed by rebel forces in the wake of his ouster, for many of Libya’s black residents, it seems to be a case of: “The King is Dead. Long Live the King!”

Writer: Anonymous

Length: 1261 words

Source: The East African

Published: September 25th, 2011

Tanzania: Land of Constant Complaints

Since the beginnings of economic and political liberalization in the 1990s, the nation has charged forward; the print media is bold and vociferous in both of the national languages, English and Swahili—especially the latter. Paved roads connect every part of the country, reaching towns and villages previously cut off during the rains; cellphones are in evidence everywhere. The country is connected. It’s as if an engine turned on one day, and the once laid-back country, known as “the land of not yet,” woke up. So what are the complaints about? Or, as a slick, modern voice on the radio says in an angular Swahili, “Wapi ni beef?”

Writer: M.G. Vassanji

Length: 1463 words

Source: Macleans Magazine

Published: September 13, 2011

Love, Loss and All Points in Between

In 2003 Matar wrote a moving piece for Amnesty International about the effect his father’s disappearance had on him and his mother and elder brother, who still live in Cairo. Earlier this month he appeared alongside Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard in a high-profile Human Rights Watch event at the Royal Court. He does not shy away from the political implications of his story, but nor will he be defined by them. The horrors of Libya in the 1970s are the backdrop to the novel, not its core. Instead, at the heart of the book is a boy struggling to understand - and ultimately escape from - the claustrophobic society into which he was born. ”I would have liked to write a book that had nothing to do with politics,” he says. “I think ultimately I am a sensualist and an aesthete. I’m not really interested in politics, but politics was part of the canvas. I had to say something about it, otherwise all the different forces that are shaping these characters would be abstract.”

Writer: Stephen Moss

Length: 1433 words

Source: The Guardian

Published: June 29, 2006

Delta State At 20: The Making of a [Nigerian] State

Delta State has had a chequered history. It is by the grace of God and the perseverance with which the snail reached Noah’s ark that it was able to weather the initial storm that threatened its very existence and shook it to its foundation. Apart from the “normal” skirmishes between the Urhobo of Warri and the Itsekiri over the ownership of Warri, the state went through a seven-year war from 1997 to 2004, which left it devastated and stunted its growth. The Warri war, as it is popularly referred to, was sparked off by a controversy over the relocation of the headquarters of the newly created Warri South West Local Government from Ogbeh-Ijaw to Ogidigbe.

Writer: Anonymous

Length: 1029 words

Source: Tell Magazine

Published: August 30, 2011

Watching Rainbows at Jo’burg’s Newtown, A Mix of Defiant Cultures

This is Johannesburg’s premier cultural space, a result of recreation and interactions of diverse ideas over years in the city. For visitors to the city, Newtown is a big hit, especially because it offers fast insights into stuff that makes South Africa. In some ways, it is like Egypt’s Tahrir Square in Cairo’s downtown that was remodelled from Ismailia Square, or the Times Square of London. Lining the streets of this precinct are busy theatres where creative experiments never end, art studios and galleries; pubs, dance spaces, architectural marvels and neon lighting that radiates enthusiasm. On occasion, models show off the stuff they are made to wear; chefs put their varied cuisines on display.

Writer: Mwenda Wa Micheni
Length: 1139 words
Source: Business Daily Africa
Published: September 9, 2011

Interview with Nigerian Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Things began to fall apart at home,” go the first lines of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s acclaimed first novel, Purple Hibiscus, “when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the étagère.” The reference to Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece about colonialism destroying tradition, marks Adichie’s debt to her Igbo forebear but also signals her differing concerns. The sentence could perhaps be read to distill the larger ambitions of Adichie’s work thus far: to engage the themes that long defined African literature—the legacies of colonialism, the cause of nation-building—but to do so in a way expressive of a new generation’s ironic view of these questions, and in a way attuned to the intimate lives of her characters.

Writer: Joshua Jelly-Shapiro

Length: 2550 words

Source: The Believer

Published: January, 2009