A lot of music we like don’t come from Africa. Like this one from Dengue Fever, the California-Cambodia combo: an Indonesian protest song “Gendjer Gendjer.” [Read more...]
Afro-Russians
April 7, 2011 By 3 Comments
Photographer Liz Johnson-Artur‘s images illustrates a piece by Sarah Bentley in the latest issue of Nigerian magazine, ARISE, on Russian nationals of mixed Russian and African descent. Those profiled in the piece mostly know each from the ‘black-Russian-Ukranian-Belorussian-Kazakh’ page on Kontakt (Russia’s version of Facebook). The community numbers between 40,000-70,000. The article notes, according to Russian SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, that a total of 14 people were victims of racist and neo-Nazi attacks in January 2011, three of whom died.
America has ‘blood on our hands’ in Congo
February 1, 2011 By 1 Comment
Author Adam Hochschild interviewed by PBS program, Need to Know, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. A conspiracy of American, Belgian and Congolese military and diplomatic operatives played a part in Lumumba’s murder. Last week The New York Times published an op-ed by Hochschild on this subject.
‘Boers and Bantus’
May 4, 2010 By 2 Comments
This is a find. A while back the “History” page of the Dutch TV channel, VPRO–one of my favorite sites–posted some classic video from a show, “Boeren en Bantoes” (Boers and Bantus) from a 1960 program by the famed (by Dutch standards) broadcaster, GBJ Hiltermann, about a visit to South Africa. (The program was posted to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.)
For much of the program Hiltermann makes a special pleading for Apartheid’s rulers and its supporters, recycles their propaganda and rationalizing the bantustans and white supremacy. For example, he talks of speaking to “negers” (negroes) who are “min of meer ontwikkeld en bepaald niet dom zijn” (more or less developed and don’t appear dumb). No surprises since historians would later uncover Hiltermann as a Nazi symphatizer. But “Boeren en Bantoes” is also remarkable for other reasons:
FW DE KLERK’S VERSION OF HISTORY
November 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Recently Guardian journalist Gary Younge reminded me of an interview he did with FW de Klerk, the ast Apartheid President of South Africa in 1999 while De Klerk was promoting his self-serving autobiography, “The Last Trek, A New Beginning.”It’s worth repeating Gary’s right-on take on De Klerk’s view of the end of the Cold War and Apartheid, now that De Klerk is traveling around the world picking up cheques to tell people how he liberated black South Africans (the crowds inviting him also believe that: on Monday next week he’ll speak at London’s National Liberal Club on “”The Impact of the Fall of the Berlin Wall on South Africa and the World”):
