South African TV spot.
Cape Town Styling
August 6, 2010 By 3 Comments
This blog post introduces my man, Brett Davidson, as the latest core conspirator of Africa is a Country. I first met Brett, a journalist, radio producer and media educator, when we hired him to work as the head of Idasa’s radio project in the late 1990s. Brett born in Johannesburg, has lived in Cape Town for the last 10 years, and recently moved to New York. Here he interviews Cape Town blogger Malibongwe Tyilo.
The Ticket
August 5, 2010 By 1 Comment
Video of short sketch comedy scene with South African actors from a Dutch TV show. The setting is the 2010 World Cup.
– Sean Jacobs
Wole Soyinka has opinions
August 5, 2010 By 9 Comments
Photo Credit: Booksa
Wole Soyinka was arranged to be in “conversation” with Kopano Matlwa, the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature at the very pink Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town.
Outside, guests are ushered about by young men topped in very curious khaki-colored woven hats meant to “recall” pith-helmets (Sri Lanka’s Mount Lavinia Hotel has grown men do service in boxy white shorts, knee-socks, and actual white helmets).
Bruxelles, Ma Belle
August 4, 2010 By 6 Comments
I know we usually do music on Mondays and Fridays but some things just have to be shared. From Belgian rappers 13HOR and Daddy-K comes an ode to Brussels, a remix of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ ode to New York, “Empire State of Mind.” Say what you will about Brussels, but it’s where I was born and I still make it there from time to time so it holds a special place in my heart. And the video’s well done—I appreciate the shout-out to Matongé, and the cameos from some of the originators of hip-hop in Belgium, including Benny B (whose “Mais Vous Etes Fous” was all the rage back in the day).
Africa: The Final Frontier
August 4, 2010 By 2 Comments
If you can afford it, you can’t afford to be without it.
That would be the tagline for Spears Wealth Management Survey (WMS), a British magazine I had never heard of until yesterday, when I ran across this article, Flight Mischief. Seems their Caroline Phillips went traveling around the “hotspots” of East Africa via (what else?) helicopter to give us a glimpse of the good life. Here’s how she sets the scene:
Congo: The benefit of the doubt has expired
August 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
- The Eisenhower administration wrongly cast Patrice Lumumba as a proponent of Soviet ideology.
- the CIA provided Joseph Mobutu with the support he needed for a military coup.
- CIA Station Chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin, was a dirty scoundrel.
- A 1975 U.S. Senate committee (The Church Committee) investigated U.S. involvement in Lumumba’s murder but failed to uncover incriminating evidence due to inattention to detail.
The Security Guard
August 2, 2010 By 4 Comments
To call Jane Alexander’s “Yield”, a montage of her sculptures from 1997-2000, is to reduce the power of her work. The sculptures, arranged in one of the inner rooms of Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town (South Africa), include 1000 machetes, 1000 sickles, red industrial strength rubber gloves (the kind worn by people working with corrosive matter), and high-explosive anti-tank ammunition boxes from the Angola-South African war, and fifteen humanoid figures – two, three, four feet tall, some bearing perfectly formed hands, individually sculpted toes, and male (human) genitalia.
