CNN has a story on why despite South Africa’s progressive laws, lesbians and gays are still under attack there. The basic moral of the piece is that if you’re middle class, you can form your own safe, comfortable communities even if other middle class people want to discriminate against you. If you’re working class–and South Africa is a very social conservative country, with the working classes holding some objectionable views too–and gay, then you condemned to a more precarious life.
Working Class and Gay in South Africa
February 27, 2010 By 1 Comment
Conflict of Interest
February 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Foreign Policy’s website has this story: “David M. Crane, the former U.N. war crimes prosecutor for the Special Court in Sierra Leone, and his chief investigator, Alan A. White, indicted former Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor in 2003. Three months ago, their new firm CW Group International offered to sell legal services to the murderous military junta in Guinea … The company’s proposal included a Power Point presentation on how to convert a repressive military force into a defender of the people that obeys the laws of armed conflict. The proposal was ditched after Guinea’s accused war criminal and junta leader, Moussa Dadis Camara, was shot in an assassination attempt carried out by one of his own officers.”
Read the article and see the powerpoint slides here.
HT: Sonja Uwimana
Main Street (Johannesburg) TV
February 26, 2010 By 1 Comment
I am still not sure how I feel about Main Street Life, which is both a kind of video diary and a blog about a residential redevelopment in downtown Johannesburg called Main Street Life. Hotels, apartments, shops, galleries. We get to see how the place changes through the eyes of a middle class young man, Russell Grant, who is the first person to move into Main Street Life. Some people would call it gentrification (you hear the word “lifestyle” a lot). And the people are all beautiful and middle class. (Yes, they’re multiracial.) In the video above, Russell walks around his new neighborhood with his computer. Via Skype he is showing the neighborhood to Mpho, who lives in London, and “can’t wait to come back to Africa.”
Player President
February 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
If Die Antwoord can, Jacob Zuma can too.
The South African President gets into character by updating his wardrobe and has a new single with some nice beats. He also gets some help from his man Julius Malema. (I have replaced an image of the Zuma character with the video from the show.)
The Sound of South African House
February 24, 2010 By 1 Comment
Among the Savages
February 23, 2010 By 5 Comments
I asked journalist, filmmaker and photographer Pablo Mediavilla Costa, also one of my students at The New School, to give some perspective on the Spanish reality TV series, ‘Perdidos en la tribu’ (‘Lost in the tribe’) filmed, among others, in Namibia among the San (referred to by the derogatory Bushman in the series) and the Himba (that’s the Spanish cast members in Himba blackface above). In the host countries, the series has been criticized for its crude stereotypes and exploitation of the locals. I wanted to know from Pablo what the reception to the series has been inside Spain:
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China Pays for Mugabe’s Birthday Bash
February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Behind the Rainbow
February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
If you’re in the US tonight and you’re close to a TV, watch Egyptian filmmaker Jihan Al-Tahri’s documentary film, “Behind the Rainbow” (trailer above), about the years between the South African ANC’s unbanning in 1990, the taking of political power and its December 2007 conference when the disastrous Thabo Mbeki was unseated by Jacob Zuma as the party’s leader. It is an expansive film–and probably the definitive documentary–of the first decade or so of democratic rule in South Africa, at least of the developments within the ruling party.
I saw it when it first came out and take my word for it, it is worth the almost 2 hours. (Unlike with most other films, you can’t view it online).
