We were wondering whether the lurid tales of bestiality allegedly involving the King of Swaziland that are circulating on the internets — on Facebook and Scribd, among others, and apparently printed and handed out in the kingdom — would be picked up by the mainstream. Then the Southern Africa Report, the Johannesburg-based weekly political and economic analyses brief, ran a piece on recent economic and political developments in Swaziland; and for some strange reason, the writers chose to open with a direct reference to the aforementioned stories: [Read more...]
The business of selling beer
In the last two decades, SABMiller become one of the world’s biggest beermakers by buying domestic labels and marketing them locally. They’ve hired anthropologists, historians, and sociologists to help sell ‘local intimacy’ for 200 plus brands in 75 plus countries and demonstrated that regional branding can be competitive on a global scale. Their domesticating efforts in African, Asian, and Latin American markets have given the London-based multinational a reputation for daring. But now that SABMiller has launched the first ever commercial cassava-based beer with its subsidiary in Mozambique, there’s just one question—why is Impala Beer’s branding so bad?
The ‘safest option’ in Congo
For all the huffing and puffing in the West about the DRC’s cooked elections — President Joseph Kabila “polled” 49% and the Electoral Commission, stacked with Kabila cronies, “gave” opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi 32% of the vote — there’s a bottom line for elites. The Financial Times, in an editorial yesterday, gives it to us straight:
Britain funded this charade with £31m, the European Union with €47m, and the UN with $110m. They have all raised concerns. But the international community does not favour Mr Tshisekedi. Instead it is ready to choose the option perceived as safest: supporting the status quo.
Shameless Self Promotion
It’s that time of year again. The students in my required Media and Culture course at The New School (I have a day job yes) just uploaded their final projects–a short documentary or commentary piece (limit under 5 minutes)–online. Here’s one of them. Student Erik Luers debates the decision by mainstream media organizations to show (or inability to control the exhibition of) the gory images of the murder of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi:
Music Break. Ghostpoet
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
Mike Skinner playing keys in this “improvised” video for Ghostpoet makes perfect sense. The online audience at home voted from multiple choices options in real time. It included a yeti.
Wonder Woman can beat breast cancer
The Mozambican Associação da Luta Contra o Cancer (ALCC) enlists female superheroes to raise awareness around breast cancer. If you can’t read the small print copy: “Nobody’s immune to breast cancer. When we talk about breast cancer, there’s no women or superwomen. Everybody has to do the self-examination monthly. Fight with us against the enemy and, when in doubt, talk with your doctor.” The local Maputo branch of a multinational ad agency designed the campaign. Here’s a few:
Didier Drogba, Politician
Despite his brilliance as a footballer, a lot of people can’t take footballer Didier Drogba serious. For starters, what’s with that wet curl?
Celebrating African women filmmakers
Two recent high profile public events in London this year focused on female filmmakers working in African cinema. We can’t repeat the significance of this enough: This is high exposure for a demographic of the African film industry that is generally low on the radar.
New Films
This list is partly self-indulgent. It is also a way–hopefully weekly–for me to keep an online record of films I still would like to see. Here’s a few.
First up, Lotte Stoofs’s documentary film about the life of a landmark hotel in Beira, Mozambique:
The fear-riddled DNA
What was Egg Films thinking? This award-winning South African production house responsible for several corporate commercials and short films created this video for ‘The DNA project’, a local “not-for-profit company committed to advancing justice through the expanded use of DNA evidence in conjunction with a national DNA criminal intelligence database.” The Project prides itself on making this ad which, they say, “creates conversation,” because “it is paradoxical: a cigarette saves lives in a commercial where the lead woman dies.” If any conversation ensues at all, I’ve got a feeling it will not be about its intended message to “never disturb a crime scene,” but rather about its framing which feeds into a fear-riddled white South African state of mind.





