Tracy Morgan pretending to be Morgan Freeman at the ESPY Awards last week.
New Zealand
July 17, 2010 By 4 Comments
Just like new Zealand
It’s nice to see the odd
Black face now and again
* Haiku by Cape Town poet, Gus Ferguson, on the (not so new anymore) “Neighborhoods Market” (UPDATE: It’s actually the Neighborgoods Market) at the Old Biscuit Mill shop complex in gentrifying Woodstock, an inner city suburb of South Africa’s second city, Cape Town.
Africa on Film: Black Diamonds
July 16, 2010 By 5 Comments
Black Diamonds is a recently released short documentary by Dutch filmmaker, Saska Vredeveld (view the film here). The film offers an inside view of the personal lives of three black South African entrepreneurs, including the odd Felicia Mabuza-Suttle, the “Oprah of South Africa.” The film’s promotional material very mistakenly refers to these people as South Africa’s emerging middle class, while I would peg them more accurately as the new rich.
‘Enjoy Poverty’: Interview with Renzo Martens
July 16, 2010 By 3 Comments
A still from “Episode 3″ of Martens’ “Enjoy Poverty” Project.
Joe Penney, Guest Blogger
“It is now widely acknowledged that Africa, as an idea, a concept, has historically served, and continues to serve, as a polemical argument for the West’s desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the world,” Cameroonian academic Achille Mbembe wrote in 2001.[1]
Nowhere is this more evident than in representations of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A country the size of Western Europe with less paved roads than Ireland, the DRC has been immortalized as the “dark heart” of the “dark continent” since Joseph Conrad’s timeless 1899 novella. Yet contrary to mainstream perceptions, the countless descriptions of Congo emphasizing its obscurity and poverty against the whiteness and wealth of the West drive home a narrative that is more reflective of its proponents than its sub-Saharan subjects.
The Poors
July 16, 2010 By 2 Comments
The Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” site has also published Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly’s widely circulated series of a group of 450 poor whites shack dwellers living in a camp in Krugersdorp close to Johannesburg. As I suggested before I am not surprised at this. The number of poor whites are obviously quite small when compared to the number of black poor. The site quotes O’Reilly: “… Researchers now estimate some 450,000 whites, of a total white population of 4.5 million, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive.” But once the racial safety net for whites, in the past provided by the Apartheid state, wears off, they will increasingly get to experience how the majority of black people live in South Africa. And that there’s no reverse apartheid going on.
Here‘s a link to the series.
– Sean Jacobs
The Judge
July 15, 2010 By 1 Comment
HBO has selected the documentary, “Courting Justice”, by American filmmakers Ruth Cowan and Jane Thandi Lipman (Cowan created, and Lipman directed the film) as a competition finalist in the Martha’s Vineyard African-American film festival.
The film is about the experiences of female, especially black female judges, in South Africa’s highest courts (that’s Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Mandisa Maya in the picture above):
Stuff White People Do*
July 14, 2010 By 18 Comments
He’s back.
If you’re new to the discussion, here’s a brief recap: Kristof recently answered some of his reader’s questions, including one submitted by Texas in Africa (TIA) in which she asked why his columns about Africa seem to portray “black Africans as victims” and “white foreigners as their saviors.” His answer left a little lot to be desired (as Sean noted here), so he is back with another response, titled “Westerners on White Horses…”
Now, for some people this is great—at least he hasn’t gone all Alex Perry on us, right? Well, some people is not me. And, let’s be honest, who still reads TIME? Anyway, on to Kristof’s latest response.
Streets is Watching
July 14, 2010 By 3 Comments
Oh no she didn’t.
(Shakira gets asked about the origins of “Waka Waka” about 30 seconds into this press conference during the World Cup in South Africa.)
Seriously, who didn’t already know this song when they heard its reincarnation as “Waka Waka”? The very first time I heard it, I was nine, spending one of many family vacations in the motherland. And I won’t even tell you how long ago that was. I shouldn’t have to anyway, since Chief Boima covered this months ago, and traced the song back to its origin in Cameroon.
But what’s all that to Shakira and FIFA? They are, after all, engaging in yet another tried and true pastime: undermining African peoples’ intellectual and artistic rights. From an excellent post by Dibussi Tande:
Basil Davidson, R.I.P.
July 14, 2010 By 4 Comments
The great activist historian of Africa, Basil Davidson, passed away last week in the UK. BTW, if you’re wondering about his wider impact, most college students of introductory African history or African Studies courses in the West–particularly in the United States–would recognize Davidson from his 1980s documentary TV series “Africa” still favored by some of their professors.
Seriously, though, as activist Zackie Achmat wrote on his blog, Writing Rights, about Davidson’s impact on an earlier generation:
Basil Davidson’s work often romanticized pre-colonial Africa but without his work contemporary African studies would have taken generations to develop. … Reading Davidson’s work three decades ago was the equivalent of discovering a new continent of knowledge. Generations of activists who grew up fighting for freedom under apartheid developed an understanding of our continent that was different to the apartheid propaganda we learnt because of his scholarship.
It’s also worth reading journalist Victoria Brittain’s obituary “in “The Guardian” as well as a 1994 editorial by the UK Institute of Race Relations on the occasion of a special issue of the journal, Race & Class, on Davidson’s life work.
– Sean Jacobs
Lunch at the Elysee
July 14, 2010 By 1 Comment
Sarko has, yet again, got into hot water with its former French colonies in Africa.
Troops from France’s former French colonies are to march down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees during Bastille Day celebrations today to commemorate their own independence from Paris, circa 50 years ago.
