Promise and Peril: Mass Vaccination in Colonial Africa
How a yellow fever vaccine in French West Africa may have killed thousands
The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies
Facing a disproportionate death rate among Black people from COVID-19, President Trump shrugs: “What, me, worry?”
African Style Democracy?
Alarmingly a question being increasingly asked is whether democracy has failed in Africa, or similarly, whether democracy is unworkable or perhaps not suitable for Africa: this, given the fact that many African countries, which are supposedly democratic, are characterised by dreadful human rights abuses, ethnic conflicts, life presidents and economic ...
The Discarded and the Dignified – Part 6
From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”
Embodying the third
Returning to the beginning of this essay, I have tried to suggest how we might view the embodied rather than dissociated self state as part of the reconstruction of the third in the wake of trauma. In her discussion of the Gugaleto Seven case Gobodo-Madikizela (2013) described the ...
The Discarded and the Dignified – Parts 4 and 5
From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”
Witnessing as repair of the moral third
To imagine a way out of the binary of deserving and discarded requires envisioning a world governed by the third, in which our attachment to all beings as part of the whole is honored as real. That vision of social attachment is a condition ...
The Discarded and the Dignified – Parts 1 and 2
From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”
In this paper I make an effort to blend with my theoretical perspective some of my experience traveling in many parts of the world to places where my colleagues are struggling with the effects of violence and collective trauma either in the present or its aftermath. In addition to psychoanalytic ...
Egypt’s Constitutional Mess and Solutions from South Africa
Of the many important lessons the Egyptian people might take away from their 2014 constitutional referendum, three certainly stand out in stark relief: first, that the military owns the product of the plebiscite and must also own the political consequences; second, that no constitution or government will enjoy true legitimacy ...
The Booing of Zuma
The booing of South African President Jacob Zuma at the Mandela memorial gathering – this before a resplendent cast of visiting global dignitaries, around 60,000 audience members and millions of international television viewers – resonated through first the stadium that hosted the 2010 soccer world cup and then the country ...