For the Barkindji people, the Darling River has been a symbol of Aboriginal survival since colonial times. Now, the once busy NSW town of Wilcannia is in danger of losing its water.
Whose story are you telling? Neil Armfield’s The Secret River is a chronicle of colonialism.
The Sydney Theatre Company/Heidrun Löhr
The stage version of The Secret River gives us a deeper sense of our history. But can understanding the past from different perspectives help us confront the inequalities that linger in our present?
How to invent a national identity – and then sell it.
Map of the Sykes–Picot Agreement showing Eastern Turkey in Asia, Syria and Western Persia, and areas of control and influence agreed between the British and the French in May 1916.
Royal Geographical Society via Wikimedia Commons
The book contains major flaws, the chief of which is the lack of solid, supporting evidence. Brown claims that ‘Rhodes documented everything’ – which was not actually the case in this regard.
Christiane Taubira has battled for years to prove her right to represent French people, so she couldn’t stay silent when a controversial plan was hatched to strip some of their nationality.
The world according to the British empire.
Imperial Federation, Map of the World 1886; Wikimedia
We teach children about the birth and end of Empire, but miss out the violence of what happened in between.
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who died in 2013, wrote stories that offer students from all disciplines valuable insights about the world they want to fix one day.
EPA/Frank May
The Randlords left a big dilemma in their wake: contemporary South Africa is not sure whether to thank them for bringing civilisation, or to curse them for complicating future race relations.
Rhodes was an ardent white supremacist who believed Africans to be inferior. He intended his scholarships to be for white males only. This has since fallen away.
Young South Africans are angry with the failure of the country to deal with racism.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
The central thrust of Haffajee’s book is compelling. It argues that black South Africans, especially the new generation of young, black ‘born frees’ are obsessed with whiteness and white privilege.
Many universities in East and West Africa lost their autonomy during the 1980s and 1990s and became handmaidens of the state. What insights can their experiences offer for South Africa?
Gabriel Kenny, aged five, gets to grips with Mandarin characters as part of a US school program.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
There is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in schools – and this will see African languages bumped even further down the pecking order.
Workers in a bank watch as Occupy Wall Street protesters march in New York as part of the populist movement protesting economic inequality.
Reuters/Joshua Lott
The Marikana tragedy has indicated the violent nature of the struggles over resources and income shares. Inequality must be fought because it perpetuates social injustice.
The canonization of an 18th century Spanish priest is causing controversy given the suffering of Native Americans in California’s missions. But there’s a bigger issue at stake here for the church.
Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa and Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Utrecht University
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University