World Archives – The Kansas City Defender

South Africans Are Hunting Immigrants Door to Door With Machetes. It Made Them the Villain of the World Cup.

By Jon Jeter ● World Cup 2026 ● July 9, 2026

From Nairobi cab stands to Lagos livestreams, Africans who once sheltered the ANC’s revolutionaries are celebrating every defeat of South Africa’s national team, as mobs with machetes hunt immigrants door to door in Johannesburg and Durban to the chant of “abahambe,” they must leave. It is MAGA’s playbook and ICE’s manhunt run on African soil, colonial violence surviving its colonizers.

Latest in World

A Match by the Sea and an Amputated Dream

By Hassan Herzallah ● World ● July 7, 2026

In a Palestinian displacement camp by the sea, Hassan Herzallah and his friends built a volleyball court to steal back a feeling the genocide had taken. On its sideline sat an old friend who could no longer rise to play. This is the first piece The Defender has ever published from the ground in Gaza.

What to the World is the 4th of July?

By Ryan S. ● World ● July 3, 2026

On the eve of the semiquincentennial, we are republishing the speech I gave on July 4, 2020, at the Anti-Independence Day Rally in Westport, steps from a building that held Black people enslaved in its basement. Then we are going to talk about the cookout.

Kansas City Prepares to Launch America’s First Public Bus Mass Biometric Surveillance Program

By Ryan S. ● Technology & AI ● June 29, 2026

Kansas City wants to be the first city in the country to scan the face of every person who boards a public bus. The riders it would test the technology on are its poorest and its Blackest, and the company behind the cameras is a penny stock fronted by a man whose last company collapsed in fraud.

“More Like a White Man Than a Brother”: As Obama Opens His Monument, Kenya Reckons With His Legacy

By Jon Jeter ● World ● June 19, 2026

Eleven years ago the streets of Nairobi filled with song for their native son. This Juneteenth, as his $850 million Obama Presidential Center opens on Chicago’s South Side, Kenyans from the slums to the statehouse have reached the same verdict as much of Black America. They expected investment and got AFRICOM. They expected a brother and got a man more loyal to his mother’s country than his father’s.

An image of Arrow Head Stadium with a huge "Fifa World Cup 2026" sign.

Contrary to the Media’s Narrative, the World Cup Lifts Some Boats in Host Countries, But Sinks Many Others

By Jon Jeter & Mili Mansaray ● World Cup 2026 ● June 16, 2026

Black South Africans, Among Others, Say That They Were Left Holding the Bag After Hosting the Quadrennial Soccer Tournament in 2010.

Kansas City Consulted the Agency Running ICE Raids For Its World Cup Human Rights Plan

By Ryan S. ● World Cup 2026 ● June 4, 2026

Organizers from nine host cities previewed an independent readiness scorecard this morning, one scored not by officials but by the people who have to live with the result.

Kansas City: Inside America’s Nuclear Weapons Capital, As It Builds the Newest American Bomb

By Ryan S. ● Global Briefing ● May 6, 2026

For seventy-seven years, Kansas City has built most of nearly every American nuclear weapon. On May 7, the federal government will hold a hearing to ask if Kansas City consents to the next chapter.

The Trump Administration’s Extortion Plan to Harvest African Biological Data

By Jon Jeter ● Jon's Africa Column ● May 6, 2026

This is what colonization looks like in the biotech century. In the latest dispatch of the Plunder Papers, Defender Africa Correspondent Jon Jeter investigates America’s push to extract the cells, pathogens, and medical records of millions of Africans. Countries that refuse are told their HIV patients will die.

91 Years, 19 Grammys: The World’s Greatest Black Orchestra Comes Home to Kansas City

By Ryan S. ● Arts & Culture ● April 27, 2026

One of the greatest Black orchestras in American history returns to the city that birthed it Thursday night, on the eve of International Jazz Day. KC’s own Lonnie McFadden, Deborah Brown, and Charlton Johnson take the stage with them. The kind of show people will tell their grandchildren they were at.