LITERATURE - The African Mirror

Aug

27

2025

Sex workers in colonial Senegal were policed by France – book explores a racist history

LITERATURE

DESIRING Whiteness is an award-winning book by historian Caroline Séquin. It explores the intertwined histories of commercial sex work and racial politics in France and the French colonial empire, particularly in Senegal. We asked her five questions about her study. How was sex work regulated in France? A new system controlling commercial sex developed during Napoleon’s Consulate in the early 1800s. It was first implemented in Paris, then across France. Known as regulationism, it tolerated, rather than banned, commercial sex. But under specific conditions. It licensed brothels, so long as the women who sold sex (it was assumed men didn’t)…

Aug

16

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

Abdulrazak Gurnah: searching for signs of Zanzibar’s most famous writer, all I found was trinkets and tourists

LITERATURE

ZANZIBAR has long been an island of arrivals for traders, sailors, slaves and, more recently, waves of tourists. I arrived as a wedding guest and a reader of the Zanzibar-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, in search of the literary and emotional landscapes that shape his fiction. For a week, I was part of the tourist economy of this East African island, passively complicit in its curated pleasures. For all its beautiful images on social media, Zanzibar is a site of difficult memory. It was once a central node in the Indian Ocean slave trade, so its past is carved into the…

Aug

05

2025

By ALESSANDRO ARDUINO

Drones, disinformation and guns-for-hire are reshaping conflict in Africa: new book tracks the trends

LITERATURE

ALESSANDRO Arduino has researched Africa’s security affairs with a particular focus on the use of private military companies and other guns-for-hire across the continent. In his latest book, Money for Mayhem, Arduino examines how military privatisation intersects with international power dynamics. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews and firsthand data, he tracks actors from Russia, China and the Middle East to explore how they profit from instability across Africa. What war trends did you identify in your book? In Money for Mayhem, I chart the rise of mercenaries, private military companies and hackers-for-hire, alongside emerging technologies like armed drones. Nowhere does this…

Aug

02

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

A university bookshop in Ibadan tells the story of Nigeria’s rich publishing culture

LITERATURE

DRIVEN by a desire to explore Nigeria’s literary and cultural history beyond the metropolis of Lagos, I took a road trip to Ibadan, once the most important university town in the country. Ibadan, in Oyo State, was the first city in Nigeria to have a university set up in 1948. Ibadan is where the Mbari Club once gathered, an experimental space where Nigerian writers, artists and thinkers – among them Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Mabel Segun and South Africa’s Es'kia Mphahlele – met, debated and dreamed in the 1960s and 70s. It’s…

Jun

30

2025

By HEDLEY TWIDLE

5 great reads by South African writers from 30 years of real-life stories

LITERATURE

ACROSS three decades of democracy, South Africa has – like many places undergoing complex and uneven social change – seen an outpouring of remarkable nonfiction. The Interpreters is a new book that collects the work of 37 authors, all of it writing (plus some drawing) concerned with actual people, places and events. The anthology is the product of many years of reading and discussion between my co-editor Sean Christie (an experienced journalist and nonfiction author) and me (a writer and professor who teaches literature, including creative nonfiction). The book is a work of homage to the many strains of ambitious…

May

27

2025

By The African Mirror

Avhatakali Afrika Is Fifty!

HEADLINES, LITERATURE, EDITORS CHOICE

Avhatakali Netshisaulu was born on June 03, 1975. He grew up into a bubbly, intelligent, witty and focused individual. He was a goal driven young man, and in whatever he did, whether it was running the long distance races, his academic work, or his businesses, he excelled. When he was brutally taken away from us, the pain was immense. It was a pain shared by a shocked nation that rallied to assist and comfort us. What pained us even more was that in losing him, we also lost, at a public level, who he really was. He became the posterboy…

May

31

2025

By HANNAH J. DAWSON

Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years

LITERATURE

SOUTH Africa’s young people, aged 15 to 34, who make up more than 50% of the country’s working-age population, bear a disproportionate burden of unemployment. They have done so for more than a decade. Of this group, those aged 15-24 face the highest barriers to the job market, according to data from Statistics South Africa. The majority of these young people live in the townships and informal settlements. A new book, Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins, examines how young people in Zandspruit, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, make a life. Anthropologist Hannah Dawson…

May

13

2025

By MURRAY LEIBBRANDT; ANDA DAVID; RAWANE YASSER and VIMAL RANCHHOD

What causes inequality in African countries? New book traces a vicious cycle

LITERATURE

INEQUALITY is a problem that exists in various forms in sub-Saharan Africa. Inequality is created by, among other factors, where you are born and live. Alongside this, income, assets, and access to education and healthcare differ among and between populations. These inequalities reinforce each other. The result is persistent poverty, lack of social mobility across generations, increased exposure to climate change, and a lack of inclusive economic growth. Our recently published book Inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Multidimensional Perspectives and Future Challenges presents an overview of the current situation. It identifies the key dimensions, challenges and causes of inequalities in the…

Apr

05

2025

By IRVIN KINNES

Inside an urban terror network: book reveals how police finally cracked Pagad gang violence in Cape Town

LITERATURE

A campaign against gangsterism in Cape Town, South Africa led by the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) turned violent in the mid-1990s when a group known as Pagad G-Force began what became known as an urban terrorism campaign. Lives on the Line, written by security analyst David Africa, is the true story of the secret team in the country’s crime intelligence division that waged a six-year battle against the terror group – and won. The terror campaign was brought to a standstill in 2002. Criminology professor Irvin Kinnes sets out why it’s a riveting read, a bold tell-all account…

Mar

22

2025

By XOLISA GUZULA and ATHAMBILE MASOLA

What is apartheid? New book for young readers explains South Africa’s racist system

LITERATURE

A new book, Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid, has just been published in South Africa. Intended for young people but speaking to readers of all ages, the book explores what it was like living through this dark and racist period of segregation. It’s laden with graphics, illustrations and comic book-styled information. We asked its authors – literacies scholar Xolisa Guzula and historian Athambile Masola – more about their project. What is apartheid and how did it fit into the country’s history? Apartheid (an Afrikaans word which means “setting apart”) was a set of laws introduced by a…