The only thing that South Africans love talking about more than politics is music; especially hip-hop. This blog is concerned with all things South African – politics, history, music and culture; often analysed through the lens of data. One of the biggest parts of our culture is our music, and …
In the first part of this series, we took a tour through several songs released before 1980 which captured some aspect of South African history. In the second and final part of this series, we are going to take a look at songs released after 1980 that describe either specific …
Race is politics, and it’s been a while since I’ve put up a politics-related post. Even the recent twelfth cabinet reshuffle by our president was not enough to prompt me to write up something new since we’d seen all the mayhem and reckless disregard for the well-being of our …
Superlinear mostly focuses on politics but I also have a passion for South African music and history. What better way to combine these latter two passions than to create a (necessarily incomplete) list of South African songs that capture a piece of our history? Each song below describes a part …
Land. It’s one of the most divisive, emotional topics in South Africa. It’s also a complex topic and it’s one that is dearly in need of some facts behind it if we are to figure out how to navigate this issue as South Africans. With that in mind, I worked with …
South Africans are seething with anger at British PR firm, Bell Pottinger, for the part that the firm played in creating a racially divisive narrative on behalf of our president and the Gupta family, who the president allegedly has a corrupt relationship with. This article is about South Africans’ reactions …
The story of Coligny is the story of the tragic death of Faki Mosweu and the subsequent light that it shone on the raw wound that is South African race relations. South Africa recently experienced overlapping waves of protests, perhaps the most prominent of which was centered around the small farming …
The recent protest marches in response to President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet reshuffle (see initial responses to that here) represent the largest mass action by South Africans since 1994. Whether or not you support the marches depends on your interpretation of the agenda behind them. After sifting through roughly 800,000 tweets about the …
As our country faces unprecedented civil action against our president, I thought I’d write up an article to demonstrate to my white countrymen that we do in fact have a history of resistance to draw inspiration from when others try to undermine or deny our right to civil action. Some events …
Our president has put us all through an emotional wringer over the past week and our country does not deserve it. The rollercoaster ride started with the unceremonious recall of former (I say this with deep regret and worry for my country) finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, from an international roadshow intended to …
