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The 1959 film “Come Back Africa,” Lionel Rogosin’s groundbreaking depiction of South Africa under apartheid, is playing at Film Forum from January 27 through February 2 in a newly restored 35mm print. Lionel Rogosin’s son Michael Rogosin, and Harry Belafonte and Robert Downey, Sr., talk about the film, which was very influential in their lives. The documentary “Sing Your Song,” about Harry Belafonte, is now playing at IFC Center.

Pieter-Dirk Uys and Jonathan Shapiro are satirists with different mediums, but a similar mission. Shapiro is a political cartoonist who publishes under the name Zapiro. Uys is a performer whose character Evita Bezuidenhout is billed as the most famous white woman in South Africa. Bob talks to the two about their work under apartheid, when their criticism of the government was as constant as it was ruthless.

Vusi Mahlasela - Two Birds

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo describes her efforts to get the government to investigate allegations that a U.S. multinational corporation was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of South Africans mining vanadium—a vital strategic mineral. When the EPA stonewalled, she blew the whistle. Her book No Fear: A Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA chronicles the ways the corporation used to retaliate against her, why the EPA cost her her career, and her efforts to bring protection to all federal employees facing discrimination and retribution from the government.

The Protection of State Information Bill has made it through the lower chamber of South Africa's ANC-controlled Parliament, causing alarm among journalists and high-profile South Africans including Nadine Gordimer, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela. While critics fear the bill's potential to turn back the clock on transparency and media freedom in the 17-year-old democracy, journalist Eusebius McKaiser trusts in the strength of the Constitutional Court to knock down this piece of legislation.

Deaf Center – Dial

Big things have been happening in South Africa since Bob went there last month. On November 10, the ruling ANC party suspended its high-profile young firebrand, Julius Malema, for five years. Then this past Tuesday—labeled "Black Tuesday" by protestors—Parliament passed the Protection of State Information Bill, which will allow the government to imprison anyone who discloses state secrets for up 25 years. The bill lacks any clause to protect whistleblowers who disclose secrets in the public interest.

Seventeen years after the fall of apartheid, South Africa's ANC government has failed to provide basic services to the people of South Africa. Andrew Meldrum of GlobalPost reported from southern Africa for almost three decades. He says he's afraid that the rhetoric of a young firebrand Julius Malema may speak to people's discontent and help usher in an era of real instability in South Africa. 

Blockhead – "Attack the Doctor"

Pieter-Dirk Uys and Jonathan Shapiro are satirists with different mediums, but a similar mission. Shapiro is a political cartoonist who publishes under the name Zapiro. Uys is a performer whose character Evita Bezuidenhout is billed as the most famous white woman in South Africa. Bob talks to the two about their work under apartheid, when their criticism of the government was as constant as it was ruthless.

Vusi Mahlasela – "Two Birds"

Under Apartheid rule, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was notorious as a megaphone of the ruling National Party. Now with three major TV channels and several radio stations broadcasting in 11 languages, the SABC continues to dominate the broadcast media market. With new media legislation in the pipeline, some are accusing the ANC government of employing the Apartheid-era control tactics. Bob talks to a smattering of journalists and media watchdogs on the ground in Johannesburg.

Sam Amidon – "Prodigal Son"

The celebration of contemporary African music, called Afrika21: The Showcase, is an unofficial CMJ Music Marathon showcase featuring DJ's and musicians from Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa.

This week major clashes erupted in South Africa over the future of the African National Congress, the country’s ruling party since the end of apartheid. New York Times reporter Alan Cowell and Franz Krüger, Director of the Wits Radio Academy in Johannesburg, join us to explain South Africa's political scene.

After years of training, double-amputee Oscar Pistorious achieved his dream this week, when South Africa's athletics federation selected him for the country's team in the track and field world championships. Pistorious — who was born without fibulae, or calf bone — achieved an Olympic qualifying time of 45.07 seconds for the 400-meter dash last month. But not everybody is rooting for him to succeed. Some critics are saying that Pistorious's prosthetic legs have unfairly boosted his performance in time trials.

First lady Michelle Obama continues her trip in South Africa today, after visiting former President Nelson Mandela. She headed to Soweto to give a keynote speech to the Young African Women Leaders Forum today. Tomorrow she will visit the prison cell Mandela lived for decades; and then addresses young people at the University of Cape Town. 

Peter Godwin, author of The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, discusses his new book and provides an update on the current situation in Zimbabwe.

South Africa has been held up as one of Africa’s most stable countries, but numerous allegations of political corruption and bribery, high crime and unemployment rates, and the deteriorating political climate in neighboring Zimbabwe may be threatening South Africa’s stability. Journalist  Charlayne Hunter-Gault discusses the current situation there.

Hear audio above, watch the full video here, and check out the slideshow below.

On Friday, The Brian Lehrer Show and It’s A Free Country called a meeting. The agenda: understanding revolution.  At a live event in the Greene Space, people with first-hand experience of revolution from all over the world gathered with interested audience members for an in-depth conversation about what happens after an uprising. Journalists, academics and policy experts were there to inform and be informed by those with their ears to the ground — and to offer advice to Egyptians in the midst of revolution.

Guests today include: 

• Benjamin Barber, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York think tank Demos and Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Rutgers University; 
• Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration; 
• Simon Schama, University Professor of art history and history at Columbia whose work focuses on revolutions; 
• Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian New Yorker and columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues; 
• Jeff Goodwin, professor of sociology at NYU and author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991;
• Youssef M. Ibrahim, an Egyptian and a former New York Times Middle East and European correspondent who served as the paper's Tehran bureau chief in 1978-1979; 

As well as Shinasi A. Rama, deputy director of the NYU Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy and one of the leaders of the Albanian student movement; Suketu Mehta, New York City-based journalist, professor of journalism at NYU, and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found; Neferti Tadiar, professor and chair of women's studies at Barnard College; Anne Nelson, adjunct associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University who's covered revolutions as a journalist in Central America; Omar Cheta, PhD candidate in the departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at NYU; Shiva Sarram, who was eight years old during the 1979 revolution in Iran and the founder of the Blossom Hill Foundation, which works with children affected by conflict.; Gladys Carbo-Flower, recording artist and witness to Cuba's revolution; Didi Ogude, a recent NYU graduate who was ten years old during South Africa's regime change in the nineties; Hesham El-Meligy, a Muslim-American community organizer from Staten Island; and Ali Al Sayed, Egyptian New Yorker and owner of Kabab Café in Little Egypt, Astoria, Queens.

Yoruba Richen, director of “Promised Land,” talks about her film, an inside look at land reform and racial reconciliation in the new South Africa. It follows the Mekgareng, an impoverished tribe removed from their land 40 years ago that petitioned the government in 1998 to reclaim the land, now owned by white farmers and developers. It also looks at the firestorm ignited in 2006 when the South African government forced a white farmer to give his land back to the descendants of the black owners were removed from it in the 1940s.

(Photo by Flickr user Axel Bührmann)

The 2010 World Cup is in full swing. And while the eyes of the world are trained on South Africa, not everyone in the host nation is sold on the event.

It's hard to imagine a band getting more exposure than by playing at the opening ceremony of the World Cup.  With the eyes of the world on South Africa last Thursday, the nation's own BLK JKS delivered what was arguably the best performance of the night.

At the ...