A few of us are taking a break from daily blogging to enjoy what’s left of the northern summer, to transition into new jobs or catch up on offline relationships. BTW, there’s only so many times you can debate with people why we don’t care about Naomi Campbell’s diamonds.  See you after Labor Day (for non-US readers that after September 4th). That does not mean we won’t be active on Twitter. Check out our various Twitter feeds to the right.

Ahead of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, I had blogged about the proliferation of nonsensical press reports claiming 40 000 women would be trafficked into the country during that event.

Shortly after the tournament ended, NPR reported on the startling lack of incidences of trafficking, given all the scare-mongering.

Then yesterday I was amused to read a transcript of an exchange during a meeting of the South African Parliament’s Justice portfolio committee between MPs and a government official. The gist is: no trafficking happened during the World Cup. Here’s an extract:

Mr J Jeffery (ANC) asked if there were any trafficking instances that were detected and prosecuted during the 2010 World Cup.  Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that there were no trafficking cases that went to court.

The Chairperson said that there was a difference between detecting, and actually taking cases to court, and asked for an appropriate answer.  Ms Lekubo-Wilderson said that she was unsure of the position of the South African Police Services (SAPS), but that, if any crimes were detected, SAPS would have had to refer any cases to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for assessment. The Chairperson again asked if there were any cases of human trafficking detected. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that there were none detected through the courts.  Mr Jeffery said that this answer was not satisfactory. Detection of instances would be done through SAPS and the DSD. He asked if there had been any reports from police or social workers. The Chairperson asked if, as a matter of fact, there were any cases of human trafficking that had, up until now, been detected.

Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied that the Department of Labour had reported that this department had not detected any human trafficking, and DSD was busy compiling a report. The Chairperson interrupted and asked if it would be correct to say that to date, DOJ did not have any records of human trafficking. Ms Lekubo-Wilderson replied in the affirmative. The Chairperson said that the matter should be left at that point.

Of course the media left it long ago. Aside from that NPR report, there’s been widespread media silence. Not one single headline blaring “Our Overblown Sensationalism Proves Unfounded!”

Surprise surprise.

Gary has also been interviewed by Andrew Marr and The Socialist Review.

Here is an excerpt from the book.  I am reading it now. Gary writes about his ambivalence with identity politics and its uses and abuses after 9/11.  The writer Margaret Atwood tweeted that it is an “excellent” book. The early reviews are also encouraging: Bookbag called it ”thoughtful … incisive [and] accessible.”  There’s also a good review here.

– Sean Jacobs

One of the people I was excited to meet during my short World Cup trip to South Africa, was filmmaker Dylan Valley (rapper Lee Ursus introduced us). I was hoping to talk more to Dylan about his work, but football took precedence. Anyway Dylan has a new film out, “Afrikaaps,” on the neglected roots of the Afrikaans language (to the mainstream at least). Though the majority of Afrikaans speakers are not white, for most observers the language is synonymous with colonialism, Apartheid and white racism. And you can’t blame them. Afrikaner Nationalists and its allied media, cultural organizations, publishing industry, universities, school systems, etc., downplayed and degraded the fact that Afrikaans is a creole language since it was odds with their political project of racial purity and white domination. Postapartheid, some Afrikaners still hold on this exclusive vision. Valley’s film, which breaks with this history (btw, he is not the first), documents the similarly named stage production, “Afrikaaps,” which played festivals and earlier this year had a run at a leading Cape Town theater (here‘s a link to a review of the stage production and some rehearsal video). The stage production revolved around the a group of Cape Town-based artists, amongst them Jitsvinger, Bliksemstraal, Blaq Pearl, Emile YX, and Kyle Shepherd.

The result–a feature-length documentary–will premiere at this year’s Encounters International Documentary Film Festival in Cape Town and Johannesburg later this month (see the link for the schedule).

* My plan is to eventually interview director Dylan Valley once I have seen the film. I’ll keep AIAC readers updated.

– Sean Jacobs

I like Rox, the London-based half-Iranian, half-Jamaican musician. Here she is doing an acoustic version of one of her songs.

The new Africa is a Country co-conspirator, Brett Davidson, pointed me to the beautiful sounds of singer, Lindiwe Shuttle, born in Atlanta and based in Cape Town. This video is of a live performance of her song “Jungle Book” when she opened for Finlay Quaye in Cape Town in May this year. Sample her music here or  watch her talk about her music here.

Now for some history: Nowadays Atlanta rapper, Big Boi of Outkast, goes by the name of  Sir Lucious Left Foot.  He is saying that he is still doing the same thing, but don’t blame  me if I am not convinced and want more of that 90s countryfried music like 1993′s “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” (above) or “Git Out, Git Out.”

This is probably viral by now and does not need this blog. “Window Seat” (The Remix) by Erykah Badu and Rick Ross. Remember the original version? (I am not talking about the non-controversy around the video for the song, but the genius of the original song itself.)

Finally, on a somber note. My friend Suren Pillay sent me a notice of the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town’s August 19th inaugural Dulcie September Memorial Lecture.  If you have forgotten, Dulcie was the ANC activist murdered in broad daylight by South African death squad in Paris, France, in March 1988. (When in Paris a few years ago, I went and pay respect to Dulcie’s memory at the scene of the crime.) Having the event on August 19 carries some significance as Dulcie was born on August 20, 1937.  If you know me, I had to think about music. I remembered electronic music pioneer Jean Michel Marre’s homage to Dulcie, “September.” I had it on repeat for a whole day.  Go to the lecture if you’re in Cape Town. (The video is not embedded, so you can click on it and go watch over at Youtube.)

– Sean Jacobs

Woke up this morning with the sad news in my email inbox–from music journalist Gwen Ansell–that Ezra Ngcukana (b. 1954), the great Cape Flats jazz musician and a member of the Ngcukana jazz dynasty, had passed away. Ngcukana had been diabetic with high blood pressure. Ngcukana’s death is “… no doubt exacerbated by the sadness everybody in Cape Town is still feeling about Robbie Jansen. Ezra must have been devastated by that.”

The best tribute to Ngcukana’s genius I have seen (h/t: Suren Pillay) is this, posted earlier today, by the historian and photographer, John Edwin Mason, here .

– Sean Jacobs

These were apparently done in Mali in early 2010, but only posted online now. (We’ll debate what he chose to depict another day. Serious.)

Via We are Awesome.  h/t Monica Patterson

“I’ve kept some distance from the 50th anniversary,” my friend says, “because I’m being doubted.” A few days ago he went online to check his voter eligibility status. My friend was born in Côte d’Ivoire and has always been Ivorian, nothing else. He travels back to Côte d’Ivoire for Christmas or, recently, to bury his parents, on his valid Ivorian passport. One would think this made him eligible to vote, but the voter rolls are the domain of a different agency. For more than a decade people from the north of the country, or whose last name suggests they might be from the north, have had trouble getting registered to vote. My friend is from the north. Several times in the past few years he has come to the consulate in New York armed with his passport, his old identity cards, various notarized statements, to make his case to the election officers who have deployed across the country and its diaspora. Now the file status gets posted online but the process behind it is as murky as ever. This time my friend found his name on the latest provisional voter list, subject to some unspecified further confirmation. This is better than last year, when his application was turned down. Being of a stubborn nature, my friend took the time to press his case. Many others didn’t bother.

Now Côte d’Ivoire is turning 50 — it became independent on August 7, 1960 — and my friend, whom any African would recognize as obviously Ivorian by accent, physiognomy, body language, tastes and sense of humor, doesn’t feel eager to celebrate. His friend Auguste has been pressing the gang to gather but it won’t be an independence party as much as a summer gathering of the old crew. Most of them have been in the United States for a decade or more, and with families and jobs and moves they don’t see each other as often as they’d like. Many are still in the northeast but others have moved to Atlanta, to big houses with dens and decks and finished basements in diverse suburbs with good schools. Some are Americans now, so the question of voting back home no longer applies. Among the crew, arguments about origins and national status briefly simmered ten years ago but never stuck. After the 2002 civil war left the country split in two, with a dysfunctional national unity government of southern loyalists and northern rebels, those with close ties back home positioned themselves as they saw fit, supporting one or another party or claiming indifference. Since the elections were due in 2005 but have been postponed over and over ever since, any differences of political opinion have long given way to the general lassitude. In Côte d’Ivoire the government loyalists and former rebels have gained so much material advantage from the status quo that both are happy to prolong the procedural farce that results in voter rolls that are never finalized and election logistics that are never quite ready. The two big opposition parties, which emerged from the old ruling party that oversaw Côte d’Ivoire’s prosperity in the 1970s, are on the outside looking in. My friend and his crew grew up in that old order, got good educations and started careers as engineers and accountants just as things were falling apart. They left before things got worse. Those who stay involved don’t let the politics get in their way, and certainly not alter their friendships.

Lately, many in the crew have been spending more time in Côte d’Ivoire, some to pursue opportunities in the fluid economic situation there, others because their US immigration status is resolved and they can travel back and forth without anxiety. While Abidjan celebrates independence, a bunch will get together in Bassam, the old colonial capital and beach town that is just an hour’s drive down a long seaside road through the coconut palms, lined with small resorts and outdoor bars with thatched cabanas. Bassam has become a gathering place for the crew ever since one of them, the one from New Jersey who cast his lot early on with the president’s party, landed a sinecure as head of a future free-trade zone in Bassam that no one seems actually interested in implementing. With an office and car and nice house and so little to do that he’s uncomfortable — he’s a finagler, but he’s not lazy — he has welcomed his friends for open-ended visits, a kind of decompression chamber between their American lives and the needs of their extended families in Abidjan and the village, the sick relatives and funerals and nephews and nieces who need school fees and uniforms and sponsorship for foreign universities, since the local one barely functions anymore. In Bassam they are taking care of each other as well. The one who lives in the South Bronx, in a grimy apartment in a building with fights outside and chicken bones strewn in the stairwell, has been camped out in Bassam for months. He’s Muslim and doesn’t drink, and he’s enlisted the others in long, daily power-walks on the beach, a group of men in their late forties getting fit American-style, startling the vendors and the prostitutes.

They’re in Bassam now, those ones and the one from Atlanta who hosted the big New Years’ bash, and the one who came all the way from Abidjan to that party and then nearly got killed in the Haiti earthquake when he went to visit friends in the Ivorian UN contingent there, and others too. They send my friend text messages. He’ll be with the northeastern crowd at Auguste and Christine’s — they’ve moved out of Mattapan and into one of the suburbs behind Quincy. They won’t ignore the 50th anniversary of independence, but they won’t really observe it, either. “The Dioula have this expression,” my friend says. “Ton dougou, c’est là où c’est bon pour toi. Wherever things are going well for you, that’s your village.”

– Siddhartha Mitter

The G.O.A.T. Muhammed Ali interviewed on the British TV talk show, “Parkinson’s”back in 1971, about whether he would like to be President of the United States.

That’s the only way to explain the “career” of  the really bad rapper, Bangs (Sudan-born, Australian-based), that includes doing TV commercials, being mocked as “The 11th Hottest Rapper in the Game,” getting interviewed by hip hop journalists, and having a distribution deal.

Here‘s some background if you missed this mess.  And Bangs, who mimics 50 Cent (check his laugh), is in on the joke as we can see in his breakout video “Take U to the Movies,” from last year as well as in the video, above, for his latest effort.  Meet me on Facebook.

– Sean Jacobs