28 years into apartheid and, crucially, more than three centuries into European settler colonialism at the southern tip of the African continent, thousands of Black African children and teenagers in Soweto, a township south of Johannesburg, initiated a movement.
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Amazing!!! Thank you @thefunambulist.bsky.social for showing love for the Wretched of the Earth. The most beautiful, revolutionary people of SOWETO
28 years into apartheid and, crucially, more than three centuries into European settler colonialism at the southern tip of the African continent, thousands of Black African children and teenagers in Soweto, a township south of Johannesburg, initiated a movement.
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💥 Our new issue "Fifty Years After Soweto" (May–June 2026) is going to be out in almost two weeks from now!
June 1976–2026: An anniversary issue on South(ern) African past, present, and future politics
Cover photo by Peter Magubane.
Preorder now!
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development is planned, and whether another way of sharing land, water, and risk is still possible."
"All of these changes shape the floods we now see, heavier and slower to fade."
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where capital, power, and monsoon rains all flow through the same valley, the current keeps changing, whether we want it or not. In contemporary Việt Nam, the question is not simply how to live “in harmony with nature,” but whose lives and landscapes are treated as expendable each time
The story of water therefore always takes me back to the history of migration here: waves of workers brought in for each new project, waves of families moved out when land is suddenly reclassified. In this shared ecosystem,
"Dikes, dams, industrial parks, and resettlement schemes divert not just rivers but people, turning some villages into reservoirs of cheap labor and others into sacrifice zones, allowed to flood so that cities and factories can stay dry.
and water while concentrating risk on rural communities. Floods worsened by dams and concrete reveal development as political choice, producing sacrifice zones where certain lives and ecologies are rendered expendable.
In this text, Ngọc Nâu begins with the rumors of her family’s land being reclaimed by the Vietnamese state to reflect on a history of state power reshaping Thái Nguyên through colonial extraction, socialist resettlement, and neoliberal industrialization. Each wave redistributes land, labor,
"The tree thus functions as a record of presence, belief and continuity, pointing to where people first rooted themselves and how they understood the land they would inhabit."
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"These discussions unfolded in three languages: Twi, Anlo-Eʋe, and English. In a surface clearance exercise that happened in July 2024, we expanded the path to a width of 7 feet—a width reflecting the ongoing motorization of the route as cargo tricycles travel up hill to collect harvested produce."
"In the immediate term, there was a real need among the aging farmers for a wider path, to ease daily commute to their farms. Yet we all knew that an endeavor of this kind would be a crucial step toward expanding the range of possible economies on the land."
"As a common piece of infrastructure that cut through separate farmlands, the path became a way to think collectively with the seven farmers implicated by it. The farmers, in order of ascent from Yaa-Aso, were Mr. Sakyi, Miss Nyadzor, Miss Sakyi, Mr. Amuzu, Mr. Mantey, Agya Kweku, and Mr Bekoe."
Through the making of paths, the observation of trees, and the reuse of laterite walls, he proposes “future records”: material and social practices that honor past uses while enabling non-extractive, locally grounded futures beyond anthropocentric and Eurocentric design models.
This text by Courage Dzidula Kpodo is based on his architecture thesis. It is centered on a five-acre land project he undertook in mountainous Ghana understood as a living record shaped by history, ecology, and collective labor.
its first king and founder. Contact with Muslim traders brought Islam to the land, and eventually, Arabic names such as Burhanuddin, Arifin and Alif became more popular. Islam also brought the Jawi alphabet (an Arab-Malay hybrid)..."
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such as Manggih (persimmon) or Karuntuang (woven bag). This is likely from the prevalent indigenous philosophy: “Nature is the teacher.” During the early years of Pagaruyung Kingdom, the only significant Minang kingdom recorded, it is assumed that people adopted Sanskrit names following Adityawarman
accomplish merantau: to seek knowledge and fortune through travel outside the community. When they return from merantau, men are expected to bring newly found wisdom to the clan. Before the era of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in Southeast Asia, typical Minang names were usually derived from nature,
"In Minang adat, ancestral properties—home, rice fields etc.—are passed down from mothers to daughters. Men’s role, on the other hand, is to become the family representatives and adat guardians. Because of this role and the fact that men are not custodians of inheritance, they are encouraged to
and survival, affirming the enduring belief that “Minang is change.”
"The Minang (short for Minangkabau) are an Austronesian ethnic group who inhabited the highlands of central Sumatra (today Indonesia’s second largest and most western main island) and the coastline facing the Indian Ocean."
In this text, Rusmailia Lenggogeni explores how the Minangkabau negotiate identity within a Java-centric Indonesian nation. Through adat, Islam, migration, and especially naming practices—from nature and Arabic to coded, Javanese-sounding forms—Minang names become tools of adaptation, resistance,
the State supports and strengthens these dynamics, care becomes closer and more democratic. But when centralization, bureaucracy, and distance from daily life prevail, even the best-designed projects begin to fracture."
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and bureaucratic corruption, and insists on the importance of the community health paradigm as an alternative.
"These models remind us that health is not born only in clinics, but in neighborhoods, in homes, and in everyday relationships—in the capacity of communities to organize themselves. When
a reality. Four decades later, when Venezuela begins to be presided by Hugo Chávez, many exchanges between the two countries—in particular around health—are implemented. In the following text, Lisbeth Moya González observes the crumbling of these state health systems under US sanctions
Thinking against State requires to consider some aspects that are less clear-cut than the repressive and/or neoliberal apparatuses—the most important of these aspects being public health. In post-revolution Cuba, bank headquarters are turned into hospitals and access to public health for all becomes
"Kanaky’s sovereignty depends on the realization of our aspirations and dreams. Kanaky is a country where children feel safe because adults will have worked to make this possible."
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—far from any purity politics that would equate the use of the colonial name as a betrayal of the liberation struggle.
"Mining in our mountains will no longer exist because schools will teach the new generation about farming, renewable energy, and recycling."
which we commissioned to Florenda Nirikani who was placed under house arrest by the French authorities during this revolt. Please note that we have kept the inconsistency of the country’s name (between “New Caledonia” and “Kanaky”) to respect the common use that many Kanak people have for both
The current moment sees the French State trying to find a model that could reassert its settler colonial and military interests in Kanaky–New Caledonia after the massive revolt of May-June 2024. It was important for us to have a contribution about what a stateless liberated Kanaky could look like,