World Soccer magazine explains Russian football’s anti-racism strategies: Anzhi Makhachkala have expressed their disappointment over an “idiotic” banana throwing incident involving recent signing Christopher Samba. The Congolese defender had a banana thrown at him from the stands after Sunday’s defeat to Lokomotiv in Moscow. Samba picked up the banana and threw it back. “I hope […]
Last week, the Spanish site, Periodismohumano, broke the news of the fifty-four men and women deported from Madrid to the Democratic Republic of Congo. After three years of struggle, hunger strikes, and protests, forty-three men and women were transferred from the CETI (a temporary processing center for immigrants) in Melilla to the CIE (the immigrants’ detention center) in Algeciras and finally to Aluche, the CEI in Madrid. It sounds like a dream come true: arrival on the Peninsula, with the hope of living freely in a country whose regulations prohibit random deportation to their country of origin.
The London film world (and its media) have been turned to the 2012 Berlinale. As film critics and journalists flock to Germany for the annual festival, complaints about the Teutonic cold are routine, as are the proclamations heralding a new masterpiece of world cinema. This year’s programme featured a few interesting releases by African directors.
It may be tempting to read Congolese-Belgian rapper Baloji’s music as a relatively straightforward exercise in “indigenizing” or localizing hip-hop, but the story of his transnational musical moorings — especially his ambivalence toward Congolese pop — complicates such an interpretation.
Recent work by Congolese artist Yves Sambu–bringing together his interest in contemporary sapeurs and cemeteries– is a a good antidote to the colorful portrayal of the ‘Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People’ we’re used to.
“What do they really know about us?” Fair question from Congolese artist LeslyMan. He could have added: do they still want to know about us now that the elections are over? Remember LeslyMan from last year’s collaboration with Lexxus.
With a few elections coming up next year, journalist Jina Moore already has the template down for covering them:
Ploughing through the blog’s archives to come up with a fair selection of ten videos for next week’s year-end lists, I wondered why we haven’t written about the Congolese Salaam Kivu All Stars. Things went well in Goma, Kivu during the elections last week. A year ago, youth and media organization Yole! Africa staged the […]
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 […]
Over the past week, it was hard to find an article published in a major international press outlet not looking at the build-up to today’s presidential elections through the lens of fear and/of violence. With the exception of a few, most foreign journalists didn’t make it outside of Kinshasa (citing logistical problems). People did get […]
