The proposed sale of the Africa Collection at The World Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands has sparked some interesting debates in Dutch media lately. Unfortunately some important questions and issues around this sale are not being discussed. Since the Dutch government is cutting the arts and the culture budget heavily, the museum has planned to […]
The big kick-off is nearly upon us. Just 11 months after that extraordinary Zambian triumph in Libreville, starting Saturday we have another month of football ahead as Africa’s top teams (and South Africa, there as hosts) fight it out to be Champions of Africa. We’ll be covering the tournament more intensively this time around, in […]
First released in 2003, Rappin’ Hood’s (real name: Antônio Luiz Junior) ‘Sou Negrão’ is one long tribute to the black Brazilian musicians who have contributed to the country’s 20th century music scene. The list of artists reads like a history lesson: Bezerra da Silva, Paulinho da Viola, Jorge Ben, Grande Otelo, João do Pulo, Raul […]
On Monday a new book on Malcolm X by the American intellectual and historian Manning Marable will come out. On Friday night Marable passed away. Though Marable, based until his passing at Columbia University, is less well-known outside the US, he started his career with a PhD dissertation on the South African political leader, John […]
… So much of Black History Month takes place in the passive voice. Leaders “get assassinated,” patrons “are refused” service, women “are ejected” from public transport. So the objects of racism are many but the subjects few. In removing the instigators, the historians remove the agency and, in the final reckoning, the historical responsibility … […]
The great activist historian of Africa, Basil Davidson, passed away last week in the UK. BTW, if you’re wondering about his wider impact, most college students of introductory African history or African Studies courses in the West–particularly in the United States–would recognize Davidson from his 1980s documentary TV series “Africa” still favored by some of […]
Guest post by Brussels-based anthropologist and, more importantly, Africa is a Country reader Tom Devriendt on a new graphic novel written and illustrated by a group of Congolese graphic artists taking stock of the half-century of DRC independence — Sean Jacobs. When asked in 2009 how he would celebrate Congo’s 50 years of Independence, Congolese […]
Striking series (via Herman Wasserman) of “… painted portraits of some of the prominent captains and leaders of the Griquas, the Orlam groups such as the Afrikaners, and other so-called bastard and Nama groups of the 18th and 19th century,” by of the artist Cobus van Bosch. (Under Apartheid, the bulk of the descendants of […]
