Starting on April 1, South Africa’s public TV channel SABC3 has been running a weekly series called “I am Woman.” Every week, the show tries to follow the arc of a woman’s journey, the ways in which she comes to understand herself and the world by creating herself as the world and the world as herself. Imagine doing that without over-weaning ego or impossible humility, and you get the picture. The leap of faith is ultimately each woman’s discovery and invention of her own amazing and ordinary kind of humanity. Her discovery, and ours. If you don’t live in South Africa, you can also view the series online.
New public TV series from South Africa: “I am Woman”
May 19, 2012 By 2 Comments
Friday Music Break(s)
May 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
British based Nigerian rapper Modenine starts off our weekly Friday Music Break. Here’s four more.
The Unfinished Revolutions
May 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
by Guest Contributor Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie*
There is little doubt that we are witnessing a profound transformation of the political realities in the Arab world. At the same time, these changes are occurring during a remarkable historical moment. The global economy is more fragile than it has been for generations. The US Empire is in a state of partial withdrawal due to over-extension, growing anti-war sentiment domestically, and the adverse effects of the Great Recession. Unrest is not sporadic, isolated, and local, but rather continuous, widespread, and global. What is the nature of the Arab Revolution? Why did it start and where is it headed? Most important, what is the potential for the emergence of new forms of political democracy, social equality, and regional autonomy in the Arab world? Let me introduce my position by stating what the Arab Revolution is not.
Why We Loved Warda
May 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
Yesterday, 72 year old French-born Algerian-Lebanese songstress Warda Al-Jazairia passed away. Known just as Warda to her millions of beloved fans, she leaves behind a legacy comparable to such musical stars as Umm Kulthum. Warda died in Cairo, her adopted home since the 1970s. [Read more...]
Drogbacite
May 17, 2012 By 2 Comments
This weekend Chelsea play Bayern Munchen in the European Champions League final. One player whose contribution is likely to be decisive is the Ivorian Didier Drogba. Cup finals always end in triumph or disaster, and Drogba has made a habit of exaggerating those extremes, either scoring the winner or else missing a penalty or getting himself disastrously sent off. Above is a clip of Drogba doing the rounds of English chat shows. [Read more...]
‘Afropolitan Divas’ in London
May 17, 2012 By 2 Comments
The second Numbi of 2012 happened – with undeniable flamboyance – last Saturday, bringing a team of ‘Afropolitan divas’, and with them an influx of poetry and music from East Africa and elsewhere, to East London.
The Wisdom of Nawal el Saadawi
May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Earlier today on Twitter I summarized 80 year-old Egyptian feminist activist and writer Nawal el Saadawi’s comments in an interview published in the weekend edition of The Financial Times. The parts I did not tweet is about her flirting with the writer and her opening quote: “I was very good-looking when I was younger. This created a lot of problems for me. When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it’s easy.” Here, below, it is in storify form. (Oh, I messed up the numbers; there are just six of them). [Read more...]
#Hashtag Politics
May 16, 2012 By 1 Comment
Boima blogged here recently about UNICEF’s efforts to raise awareness about the drought in the Sahel; what he described as “a step in the right direction towards facilitating genuine empathy, and away from the sensationalistic portrayals that have come to define awareness campaigns.” Then there are campaigns like this one by the French Action contre la Faim (ACF or Action against Hunger). We don’t want to sound like a broken record, but here, unfortunately, we go again.
The Afrikaans struggle
May 16, 2012 By 5 Comments
Some random history: The Guardian yesterday published a short obituary of Bruce King, the British anti-apartheid campaigner–and also “an eminent geomorphologist (a scholar of landscapes) and a pioneer in the science of remote sensing.” Hamba Kahle Bruce King. The obituary, among others, makes reference to his marriage to his South African wife, Jamela Adams. It describes their wedding in “a Muslim ceremony in Cape Town” in 1964 in defiance of the Mixed Marriages Act. The couple left for England (presumably to have another ceremony there), and was then predictably refused entry back into South Africa. They then moved to Tanzania. But there’s this tidbit about their time in Tanzania: “Jamela broadcast in Afrikaans for the ANC radio station transmitting to South Africa.” I want to know more about that story.
Achille Mbembe at the Tate Modern
May 15, 2012 By 4 Comments
Over the last six months, the Tate Modern in London has held Topology: Spaces of Transformation, a series of ‘keynote conversations’ which have brought in an impressive array of international intellectuals. Previous events have tackled borders, edges, concepts of north-south, continuity and infinity. The subject of Saturday’s talk was to be no less huge, gathering David Harvey, Drucilla Cornell and Achille Mbembe to speak on ‘The Vast Space-Time of Revolutions Becoming’. Oscar Guardiola Rivera convened the event from a pair of noteworthy purple moccasins, immediately answering the title of his book What If Latin America Ruled the World (“we would all dance better”) then describing the speakers as ‘butterflies’ moving across the globe, ‘commanding’ the space they ‘hover’ above.
