✣Highlights from the week online
We need to catch up with the global South Despite lazy assumptions, the postcolonial world is a trend-setter, suggests Peter Leithart on the First Things blog. “It’s not that the ‘global South’ has caught up with the parent countries,” says Leithart.
“In important respects, the post-colonies have surged ahead.” Economically, spiritually, culturally and politically, Africa is “home to characteristically contemporary forms of life”.
Leithart argues that the post-colonial world is also a political trendsetter: “‘Living politics’ in South Africa and elsewhere inspires direct action movements in the US and Europe,” he writes. “College activists used to wear Che T-shirts. Now it’s Mandela. Both, of course, are not northerners.”
