Chris Roper

The Queue as Cathedral: On Sam Nhlengethwa's Waiting and the Liturgy of Stolen Hours After the exhibition. After the commute. Di energy drink le magwinya. After apartheid became a ghost that still eats at the table.

“Do you ever wonder what it costs, metabolically, to wake at 4 a.m. for twenty years? What it does to the body, the dream life, the capacity for imagination when every day begins in darkness and ends in exhaustion?”
open.substack.com/pub/nkhensan...

Changing place names is a complex issue in SA.
"Renaming a place brings new meaning to it, but it also, inevitably, erases meaning. Ultimately, someone is going to have to make a sacrifice. Renaming can be violent, or it can be reparative. What it can’t be is exclusionary."
t.co/FOFPVIw4nP

Taking the long way around (for Notes from a Small Planet - use logo) Climate journalist Leonie Joubert and the lonely work of creating agency among communities struggling to make sense of the effects of climate change.…

Not a wasted word in this piece. And a reminder of what lies at the core of good journalism - being in the world you write about. Which is something today’s resource strapped journalists longingly think of as a luxury, but should actually be an indispensable condition provided to them.

"They want to assert, simultaneously, that unambiguous laws govern all aspects of being, while acting as though ‘truth’ is whatever they want or need it to be at any given moment." newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

Another good bit, in case you need a prod to read "AI and the aesthetics of fascism." [link below]

"Despite all their absurdist posturing, [the right] struggle to come to terms with a contradictory world that does not conform to their pre-decided categories.

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

"Sartre’s injunction to remember that antisemites are primarily “amusing themselves” is true of most right wing discourse, no matter... how terrible. As such, the right are strongly averse to any sort of reality-testing." @garethwatkins.bsky.social newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

Hard to work out who the criminals are here. Right?

South Africa in talks with Russia over men ‘tricked’ into fighting in Ukraine Government says it received distress calls, as daughter of ex-president Jacob Zuma accused of luring men to frontline

The spokesperson for South Africa's president said the govt was in talks with Russia over bringing home 17 men allegedly tricked into fighting for Russia.

"They are facing grave, grave danger to their lives... the information that we have is that they were bungled into the Russian military forces."

the intensity of my anger at those who would criminalize the homeless — a population literally created by the greed and callousness of the ruling class — is very hard to contain. it was you who dismantled the safety net. if you don’t like the results, put it back

If you wondered why the hype machine shrieks.

“Nearly 500 AI unicorn companies now exist worldwide with a combined value of $2.7 trillion, with 100 of these billion-dollar firms established after 2023 alone.”

On the post-colonial, but also perhaps about the post-democracy.

“The posts and palaces and public places have been filled with buffoons, fools and clowns at various levels, offering a variety of services. Their function is to preach before the fetish the fiction of its perfection.” - Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie (2000)

CHRIS ROPER: The treasure behind a paywall There is a chasm between an argument in a news publication and how it lands on social media

This is a must-read by @chrisroper.bsky.social ... Well pleased that that paywall has been removed. I am a columnist and essayist for @businesslivesa.bsky.social but don't have access to the stable of publications. Strange how that works. www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/...

To be fair, you had a head start.

That’s why the @andrewhickey.500songs.com is such a great podcast. It implicitly acknowledges, and explicitly demonstrates, how desire works. You can never satisfy it, and that’s what makes it so worthwhile, and so enlivening.
If you love music - any music - it’s absolutely worth a listen.

Oh, I love the length. It’s like reading a book. He could go longer.

It’s way longer than a section! I’d say a Beach Boys epoch.

My weekly dose of humility. Thanks.

I’m probably the 500th South African to point this out to the superlative @andrewhickey.500songs.com podcast, but Ricky Fataar/Blondie Chaplin’s group was The Flames, not The Flame. (Hope I didn’t mishear) Is it weird to be so happy that he’s mentioning SAfricans? Hugh Masakela has featured, too.

"People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation."
Søren Kierkegaard, who could have been writing about the shrill demagogues of today.

I see Elon made the same Elongate joke. A rare plus for him.

Excellent.

Source unknown. Except in the sense of the pit of despair from whence it came.

More than 200 children, some as young as one, raped in Sudan, UNICEF says Report says rape is ‘being used as a tactic of war’ in violation of international law and and laws protecting children.

This is terrible. “UNICEF said at least 221 children, including boys, were raped by armed men” in Sudan.

aje.io/vswtia

I understand the feeling, but I don’t actually agree. I don’t think we can ship our problems out. It’s all part of a larger South African challenge. I dream of fixing it. (I know, I know. Foolishness.)

Trump orders U.S. to prioritize refugee resettlement of South Africans of European descent President Trump directed officials to prioritize the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa through the U.S. refugee program, which he suspended on his first day in office.

It’s all just a circus. “President Trump on Friday directed government officials to prioritize the resettlement of South Africans of European descent through the U.S. refugee program, which he suspended during his first day in office.” www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-o...

Zapiro always draws it starkly.

The Trump-Musk regime: State capture on steroids – The Mail & Guardian We have started out on a rocky road as the US president and his henchmen make Jacob Zuma look like an amateur

We’ve been there as South Africans. A thoughtful summation of US state capture. mg.co.za/thought-lead...

Trump vows to cut off aid to South Africa "South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY," Trump wrote.

If you look for oppressed whites, you’ll conjure them up. The orange panopticon sees all, albeit through a glass, crazily. And has now noticed South Africa. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Ha ha! Someone has done that.