Issue 545 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

September-October 2023

Decolonize now

What’s empire got to do with it? Everything.

From global inequality to our interactions with each other the impacts of colonialism are everywhere. It’s not just a matter of the past.

This edition explores how colonialism lives on, what it could mean to reckon with that and why it is essential to building a more just future.

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In this issue

The Big Story

The long goodbye

Confronting the impact of empire is not about getting stuck in the past, writes Amy Hall. It’s vital to how we build a better future.

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How Third Worldism was silenced

Kojo Koram charts the rise and fall of the anti-colonial New International Economic Order.

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Ain dun yet

Barbados took the plunge and ditched the British monarchy two years ago. Has anything really changed since? Amy Hall reports.

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The fight for reparations

The push for repair emanates from movements with a rich and varied history. Priya Lukka explores where we’ve come from and what could be ahead.

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Get up, pay up

Carlos Edill Berríos Polanco reports on the growing movement to get the Global North to cough up for its climate debt.

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‘Our culture is word of mouth’

Decolonizing Africa’s media means interrogating its form as well as its content. Patrick Gathara examines an initiative which tells narrative stories through live performance in Kenya, and asks what lessons it holds for the continent at large.

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How Modi hijacked the call to decolonize

Tarushi Aswani on how the Indian government is using the language of decolonization to promote its own form of rightwing nationalism.

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Currents

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Reasons to be cheerful

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Regulars

Letter from Shapajilla

Stephanie Boyd reports from an Amazonian village where traditional ways of life are changing with modern times.

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Country Profile: Yemen

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Cartoon History: Pirates of the Atlantic

David Lester and Marcus Rediker's graphic novel tells the story of three unlikely companions sold into servitude on a merchant ship and thrust into a voyage of rebellion. In this extract, African American fugitive John Gwin recalls a mutiny which established democracy onboard an imperial merchant ship.

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Temperature check

Could the age of artwash be coming to an end? Danny Chivers counts on the successes of the movement to kick the oil industry out of the UK's art and cultural scene.

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The Interview

The outspoken artist and architect speaks to Subi Shah about what gets her fired up.

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Southern Exposure

Mashad Jalalian captures a shot of a young nomad in Iran's north-eastern Razavi Khorasan region.

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Hall of Infamy: Kais Saied

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The Puzzler

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Agony Uncle

I was pushed out of my home due to rising rents. Now I worry I'm inflicting the same uprooting on others. What should I do? NI's in-house ethics advisor chips in.

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What if...we were not socialized to be monogamous?

Bethany Rielly asks us to end our judgments over multiple partners.

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Comment

View from India

Women are being short-changed, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick.

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View from Africa

Can the quest for peace in Europe bring calm at home?

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View from Brazil

Agribusiness backers in Congress scupper climate gains.

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Tragedy – or murder?

At least 500 people have drowned in the Mediterranean in a single incident, just the latest in increasingly normalized disasters. Yet in the Western political milieu, it made barely a ripple. Nanjala Nyabola asks why migration policies have become so deadly, and what it will take to change them.

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Features

Justice delayed is justice denied

Guatemala may have made progress in trying to hold people to account for abuses of power, but with so many tragic cases languishing in the courts, Mira Galanova explores what’s getting in the way of justice.

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From the archive: KK unbound

New Internationalist’s first ever issue, in March 1973, arrived amid escalating tensions in southern Africa, with Ian Smith’s white-ruled Rhodesia imposing a blockade on neighbouring Zambia. In an exclusive interview with David Martin for our magazine, Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda outlined his approach to foreign policy and political philosophy. In this extract Kaunda, who ruled Zambia from its independence in 1964 until 1991, also discusses why he imposed a one-party state.

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