What would a borderless world look like? It sounds like utopia but in his essay, South Africa-based Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbeme makes the realities of borders, restrictions and the right to move denied to most people in the world look far more surreal than the alternative. Mbembe identifies three freedoms in liberal thinking: freedom of movement, freedom of capital and freedom of services. Where are the people, he asks. People on the move are seen as a threat to order. The paradox of a...
What would a borderless world look like? It sounds like utopia but in his essay, South Africa-based Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbeme makes the realities...
We are shocked by the assassination of our Ghanaian colleague and investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein Suale. Suale was murdered on Wednesday 16 January, 2019 in Madina, Ghana. He was part of the Tiger Eye and the African Investigative Publishing Collective, both partner organisations of ZAM. He contributed immensely to efforts to sanitise governance in Ghana through his work that has exposed corruption, wrongdoing, conflict of interest, waste, maladministration and outright thievery in this West...
We are shocked by the assassination of our Ghanaian colleague and investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein Suale. Suale was murdered on Wednesday 16...
On Monday 17 December, 2018, our colleague Estacio Valoi and his team were arrested by the Mozambican army. When investigative journalist Estacio Valoi, known for his reports on plunder of natural resources in northern Mozambique, went to report on the situation in conflict-ridden and desperately poor Chitolo village, he and his team found the road blocked by soldiers upon their return. What followed was a day and night of terror for the team of three -with Valoi were USA-based lecturer and Amnesty...
On Monday 17 December, 2018, our colleague Estacio Valoi and his team were arrested by the Mozambican army. When investigative journalist Estacio Valoi,...
At first glance conservative Dutch politician Wybren van Haga and the left wing in the Netherlands have nothing in common. Not when it comes to fighting the global gap between rich and poor (Van Haga’s liberal VVD party, like the UK Tories and the US Republicans, wants that gap bigger); not when it comes to health and education (VVD, again like Tories and Republicans, wants less of that) and certainly not when it comes to migrants coming to the Netherlands. The Dutch left wing stands for...
At first glance conservative Dutch politician Wybren van Haga and the left wing in the Netherlands have nothing in common. Not when it comes to fighting...
The story begins: 'They found her lying on her bed. Washington Mbhozo’s body was on top of hers. He was naked and she was not. It was immediately obvious that she had killed him. She had lodged the knife firmly—expertly even—under his ribs. It had not been so difficult to find the soft spot and drive the knife upwards. Her boy cousins killed goats by slashing their necks—first fondling the pulse and then leaning into the animals. It was always such an intimate embrace. It had been the same when she...
The story begins: 'They found her lying on her bed. Washington Mbhozo’s body was on top of hers. He was naked and she was not. It was immediately obvious...
Twenty years ago, on the eve of International Aids Day, Simon Tseko Nkoli passed away. Simon was a political activist against apartheid and a campaigner for equal rights for LGBTI people. He was imprisoned in the 80s for his participation in protests against white suppression in South Africa. After his release in 1988 he launched the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW). This organisation played a pivotal role in the campaign for the inclusion of an 'equal rights clause' for...
Twenty years ago, on the eve of International Aids Day, Simon Tseko Nkoli passed away. Simon was a political activist against apartheid and a campaigner...
We want to talk about coffee. The reason for this is the Coffee Barometer 2018’s shocking conclusion that Fairtrade does not give farmers an extra penny. Or shocking? An investigation by African and Dutch journalists into practices in the cocoa industry, co-initiated and published by ZAM in 2013, came to the same conclusion. Interviews with 200 farmers in West Africa, supported by data research by Dutch colleagues, showed that Fairtrade was a rip-off of the western consumer, and no good – in some...
We want to talk about coffee. The reason for this is the Coffee Barometer 2018’s shocking conclusion that Fairtrade does not give farmers an extra penny....
On November 18, Lucia Raadschelders passed away in Johannesburg after a long battle with cancer. As a friend of ZAM, Lucia was instrumental in the collaboration between our organisation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF). In the early eighties, Lucia joined the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement and co-ordinated several youth and women’s campaigns. From 1987 she took part in Operation Vula, an underground ANC project aimed at the intensification of the struggle against apartheid. Running ‘safe...
On November 18, Lucia Raadschelders passed away in Johannesburg after a long battle with cancer. As a friend of ZAM, Lucia was instrumental in the...
Essay – In the late 1990s, Kiza Magendane and his uncle left their native country of Congo to start a new life elsewhere. Kiza ended up in the Netherlands, his uncle in South Africa. Nineteen years later they meet in Pretoria. 'Kiza, the South African dream does not exist.' I have landed. After ten years of Europe, I set foot on the African continent again. The customs lady at Johannesburg airport wants to know everything about the reason for my visit. Patiently I show my travel document and the...
Essay – In the late 1990s, Kiza Magendane and his uncle left their native country of Congo to start a new life elsewhere. Kiza ended up in the...
Where’s that brandy, folks, let us drink! In January 1995, I produced an item for Diogenes, the foreign affairs program of the Dutch VPRO television station. Lord Carrington had previously been portrayed in a series about people who had played a significant role in historical periods. This English politician had mediated in the Yugoslavian conflict. Now it was Botha’s turn, the former foreign minister of South Africa. The editor-in-chief called me in a bright state of excitement, his cut-out folder...
Where’s that brandy, folks, let us drink! In January 1995, I produced an item for Diogenes, the foreign affairs program of the Dutch VPRO television...
An early nineties whites-only pub in Ventersdorp, South Africa, a recent meeting of the neighbourhood watch in Pretoria, a conference of the Young Liberals in the Netherlands. What’s the difference? It was probably Uncle Boetie’s bottle of township homebrew that caused me to have such nightmares. First I dreamt that I was back in the early nineties, in Thirsty’s Pub & Grill Kroeg in Ventersdorp. This was already crazy since, being of darker hue, in real life I have only ever sneaked past Thirsty’s...
An early nineties whites-only pub in Ventersdorp, South Africa, a recent meeting of the neighbourhood watch in Pretoria, a conference of the Young...
African people who cross oceans in search for a better life are not desperate. They are hopeful. I used to be ashamed of television images of young African economic migrants, or so-called fortune seekers. In 2013, I was a first year student in Amsterdam. Just like today, the number of black students at the university could be counted on one hand. Like my fellow students, I had a Dutch digital ID, but our perceptions of the world differed enormously. While they were surrounded with successful people...
African people who cross oceans in search for a better life are not desperate. They are hopeful. I used to be ashamed of television images of young...
Much has already been said about President Trump’s fulminating tweet about land redistribution and 'large scale killings of farmers' in South Africa. His racially framed scaremongering, straight from the white supremacist playbook, played into the ‘white genocide’ lie as it ignored the existence of thousands of black victims of crime, including those black workers who still suffer abuse and exploitation on certain farms. The reactions of a handful of South African populist politicians were...
Much has already been said about President Trump’s fulminating tweet about land redistribution and 'large scale killings of farmers' in South Africa. His...
Revisiting the artist’s life and work Last year, a young South African artist at the Ekurhuleni city Thami Mnyele Art Awards ceremony asked, plaintively: “Who was this Thami Mnyele? We have never even seen his artwork.” We therefore welcome the latest edition of ZAM remembering South Africa’s revolutionary artist Thami Mnyele, South Africa |The artist who was not allowed to be , (31 July, 2018), 43 years after his death. For the same reason, though, we need to examine more deeply the assumptions...
Revisiting the artist’s life and work Last year, a young South African artist at the Ekurhuleni city Thami Mnyele Art Awards ceremony asked, plaintively:...
Sometimes it needs a report to arouse a sudden realisation: that European borders are now in Africa. Such is Expanding the fortress, published recently by the Trans National Institute (TNI) and the Dutch Stop Wapenhandel activist group. Okay, we knew that Europe is getting into agreements with African countries to keep those who seek a safe and better future at a distance. To be precise: in Africa. Dutch-Congolese writer and commentator Alphonse Muambi rightly observed in a recent tweet that...
Sometimes it needs a report to arouse a sudden realisation: that European borders are now in Africa. Such is Expanding the fortress, published recently...
According to Kallie Kriel ‘Apartheid was not a crime against humanity.’ The leader of Afriforum, a South African white interest group, made this statement last week in a radio interview. Just days before that, he had raised the alarm about a ‘genocide’ against ‘his’ people at Donald Trump’s White House. Reliable statistics tell us that an overwhelming majority of crime victims in South Africa are black. Asked why he had said that Apartheid had not been a crime against humanity, Kriel said ‘that not...
According to Kallie Kriel ‘Apartheid was not a crime against humanity.’ The leader of Afriforum, a South African white interest group, made this...
Read the full article in Dutch here . In the trenches of the corruption Sometimes things come to us via a detour. And sometimes it takes a while before you understand what these things are. When B. calls me from the Netherlands in early 2015, asking if I still remember such-and-such a friend from the anti-apartheid movement, a fellow activist from Amsterdam, I start reminiscing about the good old days, only to find that he is not in the mood. “He says somebody got killed. A comrade from Port...
Read the full article in Dutch here . In the trenches of the corruption Sometimes things come to us via a detour. And sometimes it takes a while before...
Read the full article in Dutch here . The Force against Zuma’s empire The increasingly loud and growing rebellion against Jacob Zuma's empire in South Africa is supported by a very powerful weapon: the Constitution of the country, once designed, after the demise of apartheid, under the supervision of Nelson Mandela. It is this Constitution that simply won’t allow Zuma and his government to get away with corruption and authoritarianism. In the war that, a la Star Wars, is now fought between a bad...
Read the full article in Dutch here . The Force against Zuma’s empire The increasingly loud and growing rebellion against Jacob Zuma's empire in South...
It’s always nice to be proven right, particularly when it is by actual in-depth research by a specialist investigator in the subject, whose credentials are beyond any doubt. It is however not so nice when the confirmation pertains to one's deepest darkest fears. In this case, the fear that favouring ‘clean’ mining products over ‘blood diamonds’ and other ‘conflict minerals’ may make things worse rather than better. Congolese members of the ZAM network had, for years, expressed doubts with regard to...
It’s always nice to be proven right, particularly when it is by actual in-depth research by a specialist investigator in the subject, whose credentials...
Read the full article in Dutch here . Zuma’s ‘pro poor’ masquerade Only a couple of weeks ago Pravin Gordhan, the former South African finance minister, explained to Evelyn Groenink how anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon predicted that the petty bourgeoisie in the post colony situation would position itself as populist champions. “They use ‘pro-poor’ slogans to take control of the state for their own greedy and power-hungry interests,” the minister said. “In reality, this is to the detriment of the...
Read the full article in Dutch here . Zuma’s ‘pro poor’ masquerade Only a couple of weeks ago Pravin Gordhan, the former South African finance minister,...
Read the full article in Dutch here . How the South African students movement was silenced At first the Cape of Good Hope had been no more than a ‘refreshment station’ for the Dutch VOC ships. Then Jan van Riebeeck planted a hedge of bitter almonds around his camp to keep out the 'natives' and it became a colony. Then the colonisers, in an attempt to remove aforementioned natives completely from their privileged existence, adopted the cruel system of internal exile and near-slavery that became...
Read the full article in Dutch here . How the South African students movement was silenced At first the Cape of Good Hope had been no more than a...
