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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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.) ZA News
The Sound of South African House
February 24, 2010 By 1 Comment
DJ Mujava’s ‘Mugwanti/Sgwejegweje’ remixed in Germany. Via Ghetto Bassquake.
Among the Savages
February 23, 2010 By 6 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 […]
China Pays for Mugabe’s Birthday Bash
February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
China threw a birthday bash for Life President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The Washington Post
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 […]
