In the sweeping fashion of global development commitments, 2010 marks the year by which countries and health agencies worldwide have pledged to scale up their HIV/AIDS interventions “towards universal access” to treatment. In the more sobering reality of shifting donor priorities, funding shortfalls in 2010 may actually represent the beginning of a move away from universal access in the global HIV/AIDS response.
South Africans appear to have had their constitutional right to protest suspended during the 2010 World Cup, writes Jane Duncan, following a directive from the country’s police service (SAPS) to municipalities hosting matches. Skeptical of claims that the country does not have the capacity to police marches and the World Cup simultaneously, Duncan asks whether SAPS decision is motivated by ‘the need to remake South Africa’s brand in the international media as a land of peace, reconciliation and stability’, or if it reflects, more seriously, ‘an intensification of a recent trend towards suppressing the waves of protest action’ by the Zuma administration.
The World Cup is coming to Africa for the first time. The Cup will provide many opportunities to Africa and Africans; for example, Africa will have an opportunity to shine in the spotlight of world attention and forge a new post-post-colonial identity in the 21st century. The Cup also provides an opportunity for me to reflect on how my own identity has been caught up with Africa and soccer.
In the Mayan game of pitz, the first team sport in human history, two sets of players squared off in a ball court that could stretch as long as a football field. The object of the game was to use hips and elbows to keep the ball in the air and, if possible, get it through a hoop set high on a stone wall. The ball was roughly the size and heft of a human head. Indeed, given the sheer number of decapitations in the Popol Vuh, the sacred Mayan text that prominently features the game, scholars have not ruled out the possibility that the teams sometimes played with the heads of sacrificial victims. It’s also probable that, at the conclusion of the game, one team or the other fell en masse beneath the priests’ daggers.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is coming to Cape Town, the first to be held in Africa. But the anger of many South Africans is brewing. The righteous wrath stems from the continuing social rifts that divide this “rainbow nation” along racial lines. Sadly, xenophobia and extreme nationalism are also muffling the legitimate demands of the poor.
In this interview, I spoke with Dennis Brutus about his experiences as a poet and lifelong activist six months before his death in December 2009.
The South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus died on December 26. To celebrate his life, we feature this tribute by fellow poet Martin Espada.
It’s still there nestled in a box as a painful keepsake: the “none blacks” placard I stole as a toddler from the door of a café in Durban, where my mother — who easily passes for a European — met a white friend for coffee. “My four-year-old daughter did that for fun,” the café owner explained. “They know not to come here,” That wasn’t strictly true: the flapping kitchen door revealed a black woman wearing a hairnet, gloves, and an apron: less a human being than a human resource.
Corruption isn’t an issue that Jacob Zuma, the current president of the African National Congress — South Africa’s liberation party — is particularly enthusiastic about. Until prosecutors dropped charges in early April, Zuma stood accused of 18 counts of corruption, graft, fraud, and racketeering related to a rigged multibillion-dollar arms deal. He was alleged to have accepted 783 payments from French arms multinational Thint via his financial advisor Shabir Sheik, who was later convicted for graft, fraud, and corruption. Sheik has since emerged from prison, serving just 28 months of his 15-year term.
South Africa has entered the most difficult political period since the end of apartheid in 1994. At the heart of the crisis is the question of the future direction of the country.