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Challenging racism in South Africa and the US: Introducing the inaugural class of Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity

The Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity (AFRE), one of six interconnected Atlantic Fellows programs, which together create a global community to advance fairer, healthier, and more inclusive societies, has announced its inaugural 2018 class of fellows. They will begin a year-long program, expanding their work to challenge racism in the U.S. and South Africa and disrupt the rise of white nationalism and supremacy.

Composed of activists, lawyers, artists, scholars, advocates and other leaders, all accomplished in their work to end white supremacy and racism in the United States and South Africa, the fellows will take part in the first of 10 in a 10-year, $60-million program centered on exposing and ending racial discrimination and violence that dehumanize Black people and, ultimately, harm all people.

The inaugural cohort of fellows includes: Obenewa Amponsah, executive director, Africa Office, Harvard University Center for African Studies; Asanda Benya, lecturer, University of Cape Town; Devon Carbado, associate vice chancellor & professor of law, UCLA School of Law; Dara Cooper, national organizer, National Black Food and Justice Alliance; Marisa Franco, director, Mijente; Alicia Garza, special projects director, National Domestic Workers’ Alliance; Dallas Goldtooth, campaign organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network; Mary Hooks, co-director, Southerners On New Ground; Christopher John, chief institutional administrator, AFDA (The School of Creative Economies); Brian Kamanzi, Master of Science in Engineering Candidate, University of Cape Town; Kelly-Eve Koopman, director and co-creator, Coloured Mentality; Talila Lewis, co-founder and volunteer director, Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities (HEARD); Rukia Lumumba, founder, People’s Advocacy Institute; Ntombikanina Malinga, president & CEO, Sastela; Joel Modiri, lecturer, University of Pretoria; Neo Muyanga, composer-in-residence, Johannesburg International Mozart Festival & the National Arts Festival of South Africa; Marlon Peterson, president, The Precedential Group; Christopher Petrella, lecturer, American Cultural Studies & Associate Director of Equity and Diversity Programs, Bates College; Rasheedah Phillips, managing attorney, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia; Alberto Retana, president & CEO, Community Coalition; Rashad Robinson, executive director, Color of Change; Favianna Rodriguez, executive director, CultureStrike; Siyabonga Shange, youth pastor, Grace Family Church; Holiday Simmons, organizer & transgender rights activist and program manager, Generative Somatics; Michael Smith, executive director, MBK Alliance & director, Youth Opportunities Program, Obama Foundation; Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director, Equality Labs; Sarah Summers, co-creator, Coloured Mentality; Richard Wallace, deputy director, Workers Center for Racial Justice; Stha “Sthandiwe” Yeni, national coordinator, Tshintsha Amakhaya.

Author: Atlantic Philanthropies

Posted by: Gabaza Tiba

 

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entrepreneurship institutions political economy

Rethinking capitalism in Africa

Not long ago, during an afternoon spent lounging in Piazza di Spagna in Rome, I walked into a Frette store for the first time. A haughty sales assistant forbade me from taking pictures of beds made up in the elegant linens the luxe textile store is known for. I walked away with a catalogue as consolation. Later, the Stepford wife in me pored over creations in macramé lace, jacquard and sateen.

From the catalogue, I also learn that Frette merchants in Africa are to be found in Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Libya. Despite the snub to East Africa, this is not a surprising list. These are countries that have a critical mass of the kinds of people who might buy such exquisite threads. As more African economies thrive in this era of relatively stability and reasonably free markets, Frette will find even more customers on the continent.

Africa is said to be the ‘new frontier’. And in this frontier, one economic system holds sway: capitalism.

Continue reading “Rethinking capitalism in Africa”
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economic policy institutions travel Trudi's List

Renzi’s Renaissance – can the Italian leader save the economy?

WANDERING through the eternal city last month, having given up on receiving any useful guidance from my map or well-meaning locals to get me to where I was staying, I chanced upon Piazza Navona. On a sweltering Roman afternoon, there could be no happier accident.

The main fountain in this magnificent square, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, was commissioned by Giovanni Battista Pamphilj when he became Pope Innocent X. The ornate mansion on one side of the square, the Palazzo Pamphilj, was also built to mark the occasion.

In those days, a new pope soon launched a piazza-fontana-palazzo-chiesa-building frenzy. Monuments to this legacy dot the country’s main cities and towns. Here, a statue by Michelangelo commissioned by this pope; there, a mansion built in another’s honour.

The spoils of ascending to the highest post in the church went beyond displays of bling in the form of real estate and art. Mistresses, siblings and distant relatives would snap up positions in the church. The corrupt links between the papacy and private wealth were most flagrantly expressed in the dealings of families such as the Medicis and the Borgias.

Piazza Navona2_Trudi Makhaya

This is a world away from Italy’s current manifestation as a major eurozone democracy. But in another sense, the old themes are ever-present, with the country recently having to endure Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister. The curse of venal elites runs through the ages.

Continue reading “Renzi’s Renaissance – can the Italian leader save the economy?”
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institutions Rhodes Scholarship women

Legacy of Rhodes is not black and white

My thoughts on #Rhodesmustfall:

ONCE in a while, a little voice asks me: “What were you thinking?” It belongs to an inconstant ghost that might suddenly appear when I am having a good laugh over drinks with cherished friends I met at Oxford. Or while I listen to a young, ambitious woman at pains to demonstrate how she stacks up to the attributes of the ideal scholar as set out in Cecil John Rhodes’s will. Or when students at the University of Cape Town demand that #Rhodesmustfall. What was I thinking, filling out forms, rehearsing answers in front of the mirror, rounding up referrals?

But most of the time, when the pesky ghost is not with me, I am a proud Rhodes scholar, who continues to support the aims of the trust by giving some of my time to its local secretariat.

A black woman from Hammanskraal, I’m obviously not what the colonist had in mind when he wrote his will.

The rest is here: http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2015/03/17/legacy-of-rhodes-is-not-black-and-white

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institutions National Development Plan political economy

Shaking off SA’s babalas of extractive institutions

In today’s Business Day, I have a column reflecting on the institutional trap that we are stuck in:

FINANCE Minister Nhlanhla Nene quipped recently that we might be suffering from three deficits: the fiscal deficit, the trade deficit, and the trust deficit between government and business.
Our current institutional malaise extends beyond this. Indeed, a subgenre of journalism has developed for reporting spats between and within government institutions. There is also the growing schism between business and society. Consumers’ faith in business is tested by stories of anticompetitive behaviour, stratospheric executive compensation and white-collar crime.
Until recently, almost all of this would not have mattered to economists. The economy, according to the standard neoclassical view, was assumed to be made up of rational participants, with access to perfect information, seeking to maximise self-interest. The messy reality of interest groups, norms, beliefs and organisations did not figure in this equation.

For his efforts in developing the institutionalist perspective, Douglass North was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1993. In his acceptance speech, North emphasised the importance of understanding not just how markets operate, but also how they develop. This would enable the economic sciences to make better policy prescriptions.
For the rest of the article go here
For Douglass North’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech (Economic Performance Through Time) go here