Handala, Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali's iconic shoeless refugee boy, reproduced on a wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in where Palestinians have been protesting the confiscation of their land for the expansion of a nearby Israeli settlement. In late July,...
cultural
The BDS movement at 7: Stronger, more widespread and more effective than ever | by Palestinian BDS National Committee
Seven years after the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was launched, the global BDS campaign has become stronger, more widespread, more effective and certainly more diverse than ever—a true cause for celebration...
A Festival of Resistance
first published in Mahala This was the third time I attended the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, now as a fourth year student at Rhodes University. The role that the festival plays for the town has become increasingly apparent as my own interests and work have...
The SPEAR – up whose arse? | by Allan Horowitz
The recent controversy about the artist Brett Murray's "The Spear" painting provoked furious verbal and other acrobatics. Those who opposed the public showing of the painting did so claiming not to be censoring an exposed penis per se, but to be objecting to the...
Book review: One Love, Ghoema beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival | Reviewed by Carol Martin
This is a spectacular, all-colour photography book, with an assortment of wide-angled and tilted camera effects that capture the rapture, tension, energies, and determination which Cape Carnival troupes experience both in rehearsals in their klopskamers and in...
Polygamy: A Freezing of Culture | by Mazibuko K. Jara
Some five years ago, the overwhelming majority of both rural and urban South Africans would have baulked at the idea of polygamy. However, it seems that polygamy has regained some legitimacy and currency. Together with President Zuma, celebrities such as the composer...
Revolutionizing Gender | by Mariela Castro and Gail Reed
Medicine, social conditions, culture and politics are inextricably bound as determinants of health and wellbeing. In Cuba, perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in the arduous struggle to consider non-discriminatory analysis of gender-sensitive components as...
The Spear | by Steven Robbins
BRETT Murray’s The Spear has generated an extraordinary amount of media and political commentary, social media twittering, marches and protests, including the defacing of the painting itself. The rage expressed by many in response to the depiction of the private parts...
The Spear: Enough and no more! | by ANC Today
ANC Today article says cheap offensive smut peddled as art doesn't add anything to advance civic liberties ENOUGH AND NO MORE! The artist, the gallery and the City Press editor "... propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a...




