Claire L Bell

After a year and half of being the white facilitator in Consciousness Café, a pop-up dialogue café in which people of all races, nations and cultures, come together to examine their own feelings – and consequently actions – on the topics of racism, privilege and injustice in South Africa, I started to wonder if an additional conversation was needed. I had noticed […]

Yesterday we held our 21st Consciousness Café event of 2016 at the Joburg Theatre’s Penthouse. We chose this space not only for its floor-to-ceiling views of the city, an inspiring backdrop for a Day of Reconciliation dialogue, but also because it has safe parking and a bus stop outside. It’s accessible to pretty much everybody. When […]

How do you react when you attend a public lecture in which an intellectual, journalist and influencer argues that the slogan ‘Fuck White People’ is an artistically beautiful form of protest? Do you clap? Offer a standing ovation? Roll your eyes? Mutter ‘fuck black intellectuals’ under your breath? It is something I’ve contemplated over the […]

Just over a year ago, Go Set a Watchman, the sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird , was published. I remember the furore with which it hit the world. Newspaper headlines were thick with the tale of how this old manuscript had been found in a safe by Harper Lee’s lawyer, how Lee was now frail […]

It’s a sleepy Saturday afternoon in Muizenberg. Outside the streets are empty, most people are at the beach. In the dining room of an old blue house, seven South African residents sit on wooden chairs arranged in a circle. Divide them according to the old South African labels, and they are black, coloured, white, white, […]