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Kiri
@kirir.bsky.social
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Book launch: No Last Place to Rest — Coal Mining and Disposession in South Africa by Dineo Skosana

Date: 15 April 2025
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room (Wits, East Campus)
The Society, Work and Politics Institute, with Wits University Press, will launch of Dineo Skosana’s No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa. Skosana will be in conversation with Adv. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Ms Mbonwa, the launch will be chaired by Niren Tolsi. Tuesday 15 April 2025, 17:30 for 18:00 at the Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room (East Campus, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) RSVP: swop.wits@gmail.com
April 14, 2025 at 2:38 PM
kirir.bsky.social
Thanks to @pierredevos.bsky.social who was kind enough to speak to me on such short notice this week.

South Africa’s ConCourt will likely confirm that men in the country should be allowed to take their wives’ surnames.

Also spare a thought for North Americans and the SAVE Act.
Page 8 of The Continent (8 March 2025) Headline: Call me by her name Blurb: Two men are suing the state in a bid to force its bureaucracy into closer alignment with its values. When a woman marries a man in South Africa, she automatically gets her husband’s surname – unless she requests otherwise. A man cannot take his wife’s surname – not even to add it to his own for a new surname that hyphenates both. That’s unconstitutional, argued the lawyers representing two men from the city of Bloemfontein who tried to take on their spouses’ names, only to be refused by home affairs officials. One wanted to take his wife’s surname, the other tried to register a double-barrelled surname combining his and hers. Home affairs refused to do so, citing the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1992 which specifies name-change procedures only for married and divorced women. The Bloemfontein high court previously ruled for the men, saying the law discriminated against them on the basis of gender and was unconstitutional. But the court order will only take effect if it is confirmed by the Constitutional Court, which heard the case on Tuesday.
March 8, 2025 at 8:47 AM
kirir.bsky.social
Trevor Noah in ‘Born a Crime’: “Soweto was designed to be bombed — that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township had a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion…”
Text reads — Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood: “Soweto was designed to be bombed — that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township had a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone”
February 4, 2025 at 8:41 PM
kirir.bsky.social
Shona people eat muboora. With or without peanut butter in the recipe.
Pumpkin leaves cooked with cooked tomatoes and onions (image credit Milina Ndaruza via Pinterest)
January 31, 2025 at 9:42 AM
kirir.bsky.social
2025 energy: Miss Nairobi 1968. Courtesy of The Mohamed Amin Collection
Miss Nairobi 1968.
December 30, 2024 at 1:15 PM
kirir.bsky.social
Each year editors and contributors @thecontinent.org nominate their Africans of the Year. These are people who made the continent better. I picked Madeleine Fullard — the woman who won't let us forget. To me she’s more than a “gravedigger” as she once described herself.
Page 24 of issue 186 The Continent (Africans of the Year 2024 edition). It’s an illustration of a blonde wearing a black top by Nzilani Simu. Headline: The woman who won't let us forget Blurb: This self-described 'gravedigger' is collecting evidence of apartheid crimes - and giving rest to the dead. Body: South Africa is often described as a crime scene. Evidence of the brutality of the apartheid regime is scattered all over Southern Africa. Thirty years after the official end of apartheid, there are some who would prefer that certain parts of the country’s history, and where it intersects with the rest of the region, remain buried. Madeleine Fullard is not one of them. In September, Fullard was in Zimbabwe, exhuming the remains of 15 freedom fighters who died in exile. It was far from her first dig. She tweeted a picture of her team with the words: “Two countries, four cities, seven cemeteries, forty eight exhumations.” Fullard once described herself as a “gravedigger” to The Guardian. There’s more to it than that. The job of this self-described “obsessive tabulator of pre-1994 dead”, and former Truth and Reconciliation Commission researcher, is to find out what happened to people who disappeared between 1960 and 1994. In that era, South Africa was governed as a white supremacist state. It also engaged in widespread cross-border destabilisation tactics, including murdering anti-apartheid activists and freedom fighters abroad. Fullard seeks to recover the remains of the victims where possible. It is not an easy task. She follows strands of incomplete stories, fading memories and hearsay. It is even harder to find disintegrated bone fragments, often all that’s left of those hastily buried where they fell or were forgotten in a pauper’s grave. In many African cultures and traditions, a person who is not properly buried or grieved does not rest, nor does their family. Fullard and her team cannot bring apartheid victims back to life – but their difficult work can give some measure of closure.
December 14, 2024 at 1:58 PM
kirir.bsky.social
🇹🇿 Tanzania/ 🇿🇲 Zambia
December 7, 2024 at 11:51 AM
kirir.bsky.social
Policing borders is tough. The one between South Africa and Zimbabwe,which follows the median line of the Limpopo River, is especially hard. People move through it relatively freely through Beitbridge, just not in the way the African Union envisioned. open.substack.com/pub/continen...
Text reads: Authorities have long struggled to control movement across the Limpopo River. Successive South African administrations have tried, and mostly failed. The apartheid regime built an electrified fence along much of the border, and patrolled its 233km with men and dogs in an effort to keep out potential freedom fighters, some of whom were in exile in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania. When that didn’t work, they imported a pack of wolves – yes, wolves – from North America and bred them to hunt down insurgents. That failed, too. As it happens, wolves make terrible watchdogs, and they are now in an animal sanctuary in the Eastern Cape.
November 25, 2024 at 5:40 PM
kirir.bsky.social
Mustaaaaaaaaaard h/t Mastahgram on IG
November 25, 2024 at 8:29 AM
kirir.bsky.social
Name a TV show you're positive no one remembers but you.
November 22, 2024 at 11:52 AM
kirir.bsky.social
Türkiye’s “Year of Africa” plan launched in 2005. Since then, using cultural and diplomatic programmes, scholarships,
weapons and business deals, the country’s been working on being seen as Africa’s partner rather than yet another coloniser. It looks like it’s working.
November 13, 2024 at 12:09 PM
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Compare and contrast

Read @thecontinent.bsky.social
December 9, 2023 at 9:24 AM
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In this week’s @thecontinent.bsky.social I spoke to @pickeringrobyn.bsky.social and Dr Dipuo Kgotleng about hominin fossils in subspace.
A page from Issue 136 of The Continent. Headline reads: “Bones of contention” and the subheading reads: “The earthly remains of our most ancient ancestors have travelled to subspace - stuffed into the cargo pants of a rich astronaut. The stunt has divided South Africa's palaeoanthropological community, writes Kiri Rupiah.” Pictured is the collarbone fragment of Australopithecus sediba and finger bone of Homo naledi that went to subspace against the backdrop of the South African flag
September 23, 2023 at 8:16 AM
kirir.bsky.social
Reign check: Nkosinathi Mthethwa Nyambose of the king’s regiment at a ceremony, honouring King Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele Kingdom. In Zimbabwe, the state today acknowledges cultural traditions but does not offer kings elevated legal status.

Photo: Zinyange Auntony/AFP via Getty Images
September 18, 2023 at 8:51 AM
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Valid.
September 11, 2023 at 8:42 AM
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July 1, 2023 at 7:04 PM