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Editorial: Resilience surprises!
No full textIn contrast with the doom and gloom of many of the contributions published in a recent issue of New Agenda which marked 30 years of democracy in South Africa, this issue of New Agenda brings a close to the journal for 2024 with a series of articles that reflect and record the fortitude of our democracy, and the people’s determination to defend and preserve it. The Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) has made the unusual editorial decision of publishing in this issue a comprehensive three-part focus on a subject that has preoccupied us greatly over the past years – the relationship between corruption and democracy
Africa holds weak and strong cards: to deal with the challenges of poverty on the continent
No full textTwenty-five years ago, as a not-so-young economist, I worked as a diplomat for South Africa to promote trade and investment with Canada and the UK. We did not often meet with our African counterparts, as we were competitors, all trying to win over the same foreign investors and purchasers of our exports. In any event South Africa was not popular. It did not even get support from the rest of Africa when it bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games in Cape Town.One exception was in 2000, when Canada organised “Africa Direct” – a week-long early example of an “Africa plus one” event where a rich country (such as Japan,1 China,2 Russia, even Italy3) calls for an economic or diplomatic meeting with “Africa” (see Usman, 2023; Soule, 2021). The rich country sets the agenda and chooses the venue, and all the African delegations come, cap in hand
Ken jy My Hart?
Get PDFEk is een vanne twieling. Op ’n paa mâne val my suster op haa kop en daana begin sy fit. Epileptiese aanvalle soes die doktus ôs verduidelik et. Soe nou was sy die siek kint en ek die invisable, of soe het ek daao gevoel. As sy ’n fit gekry et moes ek by haa sit in case sy wee een kry. My ma-hulle’t dan tiê oppie stoep gedrink en gesels en ek’t yti kamevenster die kinnes en my niggies sien aeroplane-hokkie oppie pavement voorie hys sien speel, while ek my siste guard. Ek kan onhou. In primary skool. In stanerd vier. Dai jaar wassit op sy ergste. As sy oppie skool ’n toeval gekry et, dat ekkie net geworry dat sy sal dood gani, ma oek geworry ori kinnes wat ek moet regsien wat nog kans sien ve haa condition mock deur hulle gesigte te trek soes sy lyk as sy fight om asem te kry. Wanne sy fit, is haa brein oxygen deprived en kannit breindood cause. Hulle hettie dai gewietie en niemand herrit ve hulle ooit gesê nie, ma ek het gewiet. En ek’t nooit kans gekry om eers dit te onthou innie moment ie, want ek moes sieke maak sy’s op haa linke sy en haa tong probee sy nie afbyt ie. Soe ek moes focus en amal ytblock en ma die bysake virrie aftermath los. Dit was horrible en ek was daa. Deur alles, amper altyd. Ek was haa bodyguard
Life Goes on: Hard Bread and Lyricism on the Island of the Sponge Divers
Get PDFOn the Aegean island of Kalymnos they make hard bread. The koulouria baked each morning on Symi are rings of white dough coated with sesame seeds, crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, and stale by midday. But the distinctive bread of Kalymnos, krithini kouloura or paximadia, is a rusk made of tough barley flour fermented with anise and mastic, and slow- baked to an unrelenting hardness to last six months at sea. The people too have a reputation for being tough, divers especially. Much of the mountainous island is rock, and in the Kalymnian stories of sponge diving, there’s a special pride in qualities of extreme endurance. Since the divers had always been champions whose manhood was intimately linked to acts of daring, once the deep-sea diving suit they called the skafandro, the man-boat, became available in the mid-1860s, the modern dangers of the new diving tech were easily assimilated into an old code of heroism. Or at least this was how it seemed to the cultural anthropologist H. Russell Bernard when he studied the Kalymnian sponge fishing industry in the 1960s
Letter from the Editor
Get PDFDear readers, I present the first issue of WritingThreeSixty for 2024. It has been exciting work as the newly appointed Editor-in-Chief working alongside the new Editorial Board and producing this issue since the journal\u27s hiatus after the previous issue as a result of the Covid pandemic. The Editorial Board of WritingThreeSixty were overwhelmed by the support from our readers and the writers who have previously published their works in this journal which made this relaunch successful. The new Editorial Board has put together a collection of articles that respond to the theme of this issue, namely, the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in transforming the world of academia, scholarship, and the arts. Responses to the call for papers for the AI Special Issue interestingly show that most writers chose poetry as the medium used to respond to the theme for this issue. This issue also features other creative works and academic articles from talented writers across Africa. I hope you find it a pleasure to read the AI Special Issue Volume 7 Issue 1 and to participate in the conversation WritingThreeSixty is having with African creators, academics, and audiences abroad on the current issue
Houses on Fire: The Hauntologies of Sankomota
Get PDFThe following essay is part of a body of work titled Signal to Noise: sound and fury in (post)apartheid South Africa. These are a collection of creative nonfiction essays set against the backdrop of my involvement with a small, independent mobile recording studio based in Johannesburg between 1983 and 1997. The metaphor of a drowning signal, pushing through and making itself heard above the noise, resonates throughout the collection. The complexities of the political versus artistic nature of what we were involved with provide a setting for an anecdotal approach to what is part history, part biography, part memoir and part theoretical sonic exploration. The following essay falls into this approach and is constructed from memories enhanced by diaries, scrapbooks, shards of notes, lyrics, photos and conversations. These have been employed in reconstructing a narrative arc that covers the recording of the first album made by the band Sankomota, who were banned from entry into South Africa and were based in Maseru, mostly playing to audiences at one of the leading hotels. Sankomota, then called Uhuru, experienced extraordinary, almost metaphysical, peaks and troughs throughout their nearly thirty-year existence hence the hauntological device in the title. The record was also the first made in our fledgling mobile studio using newly affordable equipment that kickstarted many such do-it-yourself projects worldwide. This was the first in a steady stream of technologies that would eventually break the hegemony of mainstream record companies. In apartheid South Africa, this was hugely significant, as being able to sideline the censorship of state-owned media enterprises meant immense freedom in the kind of projects one came to consider. Savage incidents of force and brutality were still common then, and our small venture has to be seen in the context of broader unrest and suffering. Frank Leepa was an uncompromising survivor. His words and melodies still move and inspire a younger generation. 
The Jihadi Insurgency in Cabo Delgado: Ideology, Protagonists and Causes
Get PDFBased on fieldwork interviews with the internally displaced Muslims from the regions affected by the insurgency, such as Palma, Mocímboa da Praia, Macomia, Quissanga and others, this article unpacks the context, ideology and protagonists that gave rise and afforded sustenance to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado. After providing an overview of the historical trajectory of Islam in Mozambique, the article presents the ideological and historical underpinnings of the contemporary global jihadi movements, expanding into Africa and Mozambique. The article argues that for jihadism to take roots in any place, there should exist militant protagonists and the grievances that serve as emotional entry points for recruitment. Thus, the article examines the processes by which jihadi protagonists emerged in various communities and the grievances they articulated in order to provoke the insurgency against the State
RETRACTED: Spaces, Places, and Migration: Understanding and Strengthening Public Health-Care Provision in South Africa
Get PDFThis article has been published as a single-authored paper. However, since publication, the Editorial Team has found several similarities between this paper and another paper submitted to a different journal as a multi-authored paper. The Author has admitted failure to consult and credit other co-authors. Such failure to acknowledge co-authorship constitutes unethical practice and, as result, the Journal Editor has determined to retract the article. The retracted article will remain available online but each page will be watermarked to indicate that the article has been retracted