Apparently it matters. (Click on the link to see full size.)
And Africa gets compared to other countries.
h/t Jacob Mundy and Steve Coplan.
Mandela in the Cross Hairs
October 14, 2010 By 2 Comments
By Neelika Jayawardane
A lesser man may relish, cultivate, and aid the construction of living icon-hood (see Out of Africa Redux). But in Conversations with Myself, the “sequel” to Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela reveals “anxiety about how his life as leader of the anti-apartheid struggle affected relatives”, insistent that the public should not, in fact, mistake him for a mythical hero:
One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of the earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying.
The book project began with an extraordinary mandate: “Take my personal archives, and do what you want with them,” says Bob Simon of 60 Minutes. Verne Harris, chief archivist at the Mandela Foundation was charged with presenting former president “warts and all”: Mandela told Harris, “You don’t have to protect me,” and to use material from personal notebooks without asking “Is this too personal … potentially embarrassing?”
Given such a mandate, what a pity that Yuill Damaso, whose re-mix of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulip” (1632)–in which the South African artist painted Mandela in flat planes of desert browns, dead and undergoing an autopsy–created such a fuss back in July this year: for doing a bad painting that was meant (in the artist’s own words) to get South Africans to see Mandela as a human being – warts and all.
They Shoot Tamikrest
October 13, 2010 By 2 Comments
“I well remember hearing my first Tinariwen songs. I was about five. After the death of my mother, my father was obliged to take me to live with my grown-up sister. One morning I was sitting in front of the house and this guy walked by singing a song by Inteyeden called ‘Imidiwan Kel Hoggar’ (‘My Friends the Hoggar People’). It went straight into my brain.” (Ousmane Ag Mossa, lead singer of Tamikrest)
Tamikrest (from Northern Mali) recently toured Europe where they recorded this session for They Shoot Music – Don’t They.
Africa on Film: Madagascar
October 13, 2010 By 3 Comments
Allison Swank
If you thought that a children’s film could escape the exaggerated eye roll of this cultural critic, then think again. I found the 2005 animated film Madagascar, to be as problematic as any live action adult flick – if not more – so simply for the fact that it’s promoting a “West and the rest” mentality in our young people.
Friday Links
October 8, 2010 By 1 Comment
Apparently President Lyndon Johnson, known for his support of Rhodesia (and paradoxically for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1965 in the United States), had a big part in the origins of modern humanitarianism in the United States. Writing in The New Yorker reporter Philip Gourevitch recounts an order from Johnson to his Undersecretary of State as images of starving, wasting children from the Biafran War competed with images of the American occupation in Vietnam: “Just get those nigger babies off my TV set.” The US then apparently contributed a couple of million dollars to help Biafran refugees, though way less than Britain and other relatively wealthy nations.
* The Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan is hosting the massive “Global Africa Arts Project” in November. It features the work over 100 artists working in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean.
* Link to pictures from the wedding of Congolese politician Mbusa Nyamwisi’s wedding in Kinshasa. Some bloggers (and twitterers) made a meal of it, but some people told me they’ve seen better in Lagos and I can vouch for the gaudiness of Johannesburg nouveau riche weddings.
* Twitterers in the Nigerian capital Abuja tweeted the #Nigeriaat50 bomb explosions during which eight people died. [Committee to Protect Journalists]
* In the DRC, “… [a] DR Congo rebel commander has been arrested on suspicion of leading raids on villages in the country’s east where 500 people were raped in late July and early August, the UN has said. UN headquarters in New York circulated an announcement by the UN peacekeeping force in Congo of the arrest of commander of a tribal Mai-Mai militia, known as Lieutenant Colonel Mayele, for alleged mass rapes.” [Al Jazeera English]
* Photographer Danny GoldbergGoldfield’s new book, “NYChildren: A child from every country. All in one city,” which includes profiles of African immigrant kids, will be launched at the International Center for Photography in Manhattan on October 22.
* I.B.M sees Africa as “the next growth frontier.” Link to puff piece on the The New York Times’ Bits Blog predicting projected profits in the region of US$1bn. per annum.
* The other CNN (that’s CNN International, not the one you see in the US) traveled to the house (slash museum) of photographer Alf Khumalo in Soweto. Oh, they also did a fluff piece on a South African arms dealer.
City One Minutes
October 8, 2010 By 4 Comments
When sleepless I often find myself browsing through time and space, moving from Johannesburg’s CBD to Ouagadougou’s boulangeries and back to Maputo’s fish market, watching the streets in Accra, Bamako and Cairo. Over at City One Minutes they’re steadily building a kaleidoscopic library of city lives – each life divided into twenty-four one minute portraits, each depicting one hour of the day. Every film is an impression of the city in which the artist lives or happens to be. And it’s not only African cities. Addictive. And you can join.
Krusty the Clown’s Activism
October 8, 2010 By 1 Comment
The opening episode of the new series of “The Simpsons” features a convoluted plotline where the character Krusty the Clown ends up in the Hague tried for war crimes. This is a clip from the episode. As the South African blogger Chris Roper summarizes it (in an equally convoluted blog post):
“[At The Hague] … Bart and Homer need to find some saving grace in Krusty’s past, and this turns out to be Krusty’s refusal to play Sun City in 1990. [Remember in the 1980s, to protest Apartheid, a number of US artists refused to play Sun City, the gambling resort built in the Bophuthatswana bantustan where whites could "mix" with blacks and pretend they're in Las Vegas.] Three days after his refusal, Nelson Mandela is freed from prison. This congruence of events leads to Krusty being pardoned, and released. …Krusty’s refusal to play Sun City [it turns out, is] not a political statement, but a protest about the kind of potato chips in his dressing room. Krusty makes his heroic statement (“I ain’t going to play Sun City”), and then turns to his band and says, “Vuvuzela me out of here”. The band swops their instruments for vuvuzelas, and the discordant sound of the World Cup serenades Krusty from the stage.”
Desmond Tutu embarks on life of well-earned dotage
October 7, 2010 By 2 Comments
Desmond Tutu, public intellectual, cleric, all round enemy-of-injustice, and professional granddad, departs the public stage today – his 79th birthday – for a life of well-earned dotage.
Die Antwoord is Badass
October 7, 2010 By 36 Comments
The South African group Die Antwoord has a new album coming out next week with a major American music label. You can’t but admire their hustle. Yesterday they debuted a new video for which they recruited a young black rapper called “Wanga,” allegedly a street kid they’ve known for years–flanked by black dancers in blond wigs–who rails against people coming to circumcise him and manages to offend gay people in the process. Here’s guest blogger Lily Saint take on them. I can already see the trolls going on how we’re too literal or not in on the joke–Sean.
