If you’re anticipating Finland-based, South African Mustafa Maluka‘s New York solo show, “A Place So Foreign” at the Jack Tilton Gallery, his new work (“The Rhetoric of Sincerity / The Sincerity of Rhetoric”) is opening in Switzerland later this week.
* The photography of Bronwyn Lace (via Feizel Mamdoo).
* The short film project, 15 Malaysia. You can watch all the films online.
Probably the most insightful one-liner I’ve read about South Africa in a while.
From a piece by The Guardian’s South Africa correspondent, David Smith. It’s what a cynic told him about Apartheid and its legacy.
Read Smith’s take on recent events in South Africa, including the white refugee crises here.
It’s worth reading the comments on the piece, which confirms this insight.
Nigerian-born, Brooklyn writer, Teju Cole, writing in Nigeria’s NEXT newspaper:
Even making allowances for the fact that [District 9] is a fable, with strong elements of satire and allegory, the one-dimensionality of the Nigerian characters is striking.
The Nigerians live in District 9 with the prawns, and sell cat food to them (the prawns are cat food addicts) in exchange for weapons. In addition, the Nigerians run a prostitution ring (renting out their women for sex with the aliens) and occasionally murder prawns to use for juju.
In other words, the most violent and offensive clichés of Nollywood have been grafted onto the film, without the humanising, narrative context of Nollywood.
Rising Up Together’ is an exhibition of photographs taken during the apartheid era by veteran South African photographer Gille de Vlieg. The exhibition is currently running at the Durban Art Gallery in South Africa, until early October
Link.
If you’re in Washington D.C:
African poets Patricia Jabbeh Wesley and Gabeba Baderoon will give a joint reading at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art on September 19 as part of the annual Fall for the Book literature festival. Other featured writers include Terrance Hayes, Sherman Alexie and E. L. Doctorow.
I contributed a chapter to a new book, “South Africa and the Global Game: Football, Apartheid and Beyond” edited by football historians Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann. (It will also come out as an issue of the academic journal, “Soccer and Society”)
Here’s an excerpt from my contribution: ‘ “It Wasn’t that I did not like South African Football”: Media, History, and Biography’, which could have been written by countless of my peers:
The Social Justice, Gender, and Health Reading Group and The Center for Place Culture and Politics Present the 2009/10 Speaker Series:
Axes of Inequality: Race, Gender, Sexuality, AIDS, and Civil Society in Southern Africa
Fall 2009
Friday, October 9th, 4:15pm, Room C415A
Anne-Maria Makhulu (Duke)
Unplanned Community: The Struggle for the South African City
Thursday October 22nd, 6:15pm, Room C204/5
Nicoli Nattrass (University of Cape Town)
Cultural Obstacles to the Rollout of Antiretrovirals: Language, Region and the Backlash against AIDS Funding
Monday, November 2nd, 6:15pm, Room C198
Jonny Steinberg (Open Society Fellow)
Black Men and Colored Pills: Race, Masculinity and Antiretroviral Treatment in South Africa
Monday, November 16th, 6:15pm, Room C198
Elke Zuern (Sarah Lawrence)
Contentious Democracy: The Practice of Political and Economic Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Thursday, December 10th, 6:15pm, Skylight Auditorium
Norman Levy (University of Western Cape – retired)
Challenges of Co- Operative Governance
