Stories

An interview that I gave shortly after the #LongMarch2020 from Luxembourg to Strasbourg (March, 2020) for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan and other political prisoners incarcerated in Turkish jails.

In November (2019) I spent a fortnight in the two major Lebanese cities, Beirut and Tripoli, witnessing and participating in activities in and around the main revolutionary squares of these cities.

During the water crisis, the Kildare Road spring in Cape Town became one of those rare spaces where a diverse public came together in this deeply divided city. Text by Steven Robins with photographs by Sidney Luckett

Sidney Luckett, a lecturer and photographer based in South Africa, who wrote to us about the “natural resilience” of the Fynbos biome. To illustrate this, he provides stunning visuals of the Protea plants that emerged from the firestorm following felicitous rains. He warns, at the end, that such biomes are at risk of being overrun in the absence of “sound urban planning”.

“What we know today as South African photography emerged in 1948,” said the late Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian and world-renowned curator and art critic. He was referring to the emergence of Drum magazine, a magazine that gave urbanized black South Africans a platform to challenge the hegemonic representation of Africans in the print media. This essay is a critical examination of Enwezor’s claim that 1948 was the start of a unique South African (social) photography. The year 1948 was a significant year for the people of both South Africa and Palestine, and in discussing the role of photography in both countries, it will be impossible to avoid the name Susan Sontag (I return to her below). While 1948 was the beginning of political ‘catastrophe’ – for Palestinians, the Nakba, and black South Africans, Apartheid – both were forcibly displaced from their homes and dispossessed of their lands.

Personal reflections on my involvement with the United Democratic Front which was at the forefront of the resistance to the South African Apartheid state; the UDF was inspired by the vision of the Freedom Charter, a charter which was drawn up at a major conference (1955) of the ANC and it's allies: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”. This piece traces the rise and the demise of the UDF as well some suggestions of a way forward for the revival of this vision for ALL who live within the confines of the current South African state.