I strongly recommend reading the Chilean American writer, Ariel Dorfman’s Mandela Lecture–reproduced in The Nation Magazine in late January–that is also doubles as a review of Mandela’s new memoir “Conversations With A Myth.” (For one it gets the facts right.)
Here’s a sample:
From the trailer for The National Geographic’s “The Last Lions,” a film about a lioness in Botswana’s Okavanga Delta, that is nominated for the best documentary at The Academy Awards this year:
Africa. Here the ancient dramas of nature play themselve out … It’s the eternal dance of Africa.
And to top it off, the film is narrated by Jeremy Irons, Scar in “The Lion King.” I won’t mention the rousing chorus. Get me out of here.
Although this song about the esteemed Nelson Mandela by Trenton and Free Radical seems to hit all the right notes (shot around Cape Town it has guest spots by Ben Sharpa and local hip hop pioneer Emile XY) , it never quite took off when it was released last year. Why? Because it was drowned out by the World Cup noise or for some other reasons? We’ll leave that for you to decide.
Sean Jacobs
“The Uprising of Hangberg” is filmmaking at its incendiary best. Part agitprop piece, testimonies, campaign document, and popular history, the film recounts the violent events of September 2010 when municipal police on the orders of the Cape Town’s Democratic Alliance (DA)-run council invaded the favela on the edge of the Hangberg mountain in Houtbay, outside Cape Town. What transpired is now the common response by authorities in South Africa when the poor majority demand rights. Houtbay, for those trying to place it, situated on the southern edge of Cape Town, is a combination of declining fishing industry and a reservoir of cheap black and coloured labor on the one hand, and, on the other, white privilege. With scenes recalling Apartheid’s police state, cops stormed into houses, dragged out residents, shot people in the eyes and assaulted pensioners and pregnant women. The residents are mostly coloured and loyal to the DA. The city council’s spin doctors quickly framed events in the local, compliant, media. As reports from Hangberg filtered over local radio and on TV news, a template emerged: the Hangberg residents were illegal squatters, were living on a firebreak, most of them were criminals selling drugs (especially the Rastafarians amongst them), and the city and provincial government (personified by its “Iron Lady” Premier, Helen Zille) had residents’ best interests at heart. Filmmakers Aryan Kaganof and Dylan Valley, decided to drive out to Hangberg and film events. What they pieced together–with help from footage shot by local activists–puts a lie to mainstream propaganda. Affected residents also turned on the DA. So much so that the city, and the DA tried to astroturf the film (see also below) with little success. With local government elections looming in South Africa, it is unclear whether the events will cost the DA, but the film suggests it may portend a shift in local politics–especially coloured working class politics–in the town and perhaps further afield in the Western Cape province. I sent Dylan Valley a few questions.
Two AIAC favorites, Baloji and Blitz the Ambassador have been busy.
Andre Pinard is a friend and a neighbor. He works for Alloy ACCESS, “… the nation’s preeminent agency for global brands and organizations looking to understand and effectively reach multicultural millennials.” Their areas of expertise “… are African American, Hispanic and Urban-minded millennials.” He sent me this video on his idea of “The New Black.”
By the end of his career, Serge Ibaka, a Congolese basketball national who plays professional basketball for the Oklahoma Thunder in the American NBA League, will probably be best remembered for the antics in the video above. (For those who don’t watch TV this weekend was the NBA’s “All Star Weekend”–basically a big party for sponsors and marketers–and Ibaka competed in the “Slam Dunk Contest.” The eventual winner, Blake Griffin, was even more ridiculous.
Specific nuances and cultural references aside, this analysis by Indian writer Arundhati Roy of middle class ‘victim’ politics may apply to certain urban elites in many African countries, including some of their diasporas in the West:
You know, I keep saying this, the most successful secession movement … is the secession of the middle and upper classes to outer space. They have their own universe, their own andolan, their own Jessica Lal, their own media, their own controversies, and they’re disconnected from everything else.
