In Frelimo’s (Mozambique’s party in power since independence) official story of its liberation struggle and its socialist project after independence, many aspects get silenced. One among these are the re-education centers to “purify” the “compromised” that had not yet adhered to the values of the “new man” that Frelimo intended to create. Alleged criminals, traitors, […]
“Bon voyage” (“Have a nice trip”), a Swiss animated short movie by Fabio Friedli, seeks to convey how it feels to be an African asylum seeker in Switzerland, and it does so by capturing the experience in the simplest manner, with ballpoint pen and paper. Reactions to the movie show how divided the Swiss are […]
A story about “how ordinary people come together to do something extraordinary,” this is how the Actress and UN Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking, Mira Sorvino, introduces the work of four white Americans who send over 30,000 used bras to be sold in Mozambique by former sex slaves. The new CNN documentary “Mozambique or […]
“A young person with a university degree can’t sing, but a minister with a 6th grade education can legislate?,” Dama do Bling sang in her 2007 song “Sai,” a musical response to inquiries why, in spite of her law degree, she chose a career in the music industry. This statement is exemplary of Dama do […]
In case you thought kuduro—most recently discussed on this blog here, here, and here—is all that Angola’s music scene has to offer, you were wrong. Although Angolan death metal is nowhere near as popular as the dance and music style kuduro, it has a place in the nation’s fabric. Death metal is no less Angolan (and African) than […]
Promised Land is the title of the German photographer Gregor Zielke’s feature about the relocation of 700 families in Mozambique’s Tete province to make space for the Brazilian company Vale’s construction of the Southern Hemisphere’s second largest coalmine. The New York Times recently covered the plight of the people in Cateme following relocation. Gregor Zielke’s […]
Recent business reporting on newly discovered natural resources in Eastern and Southern Africa evokes a new frontier for explorers on the Indian Ocean: Mozambique, Kenya and Tanzania have become the center of an “energy boom” and thus, in the words of The Economist, the new “El Dorado,” the lost city of gold. This frontier fantasy […]
