4550
9 mins read

April 15, 2014

#HistoryClass with Cheta Nwanze: A Short History of the Slave Trade

Henry Okelue suggested that today’s History Lesson be about Nigeria’s security agencies. Problem is, there’s paucity of verifiable information, so, we’ll go ahead with what was mapped out for today, which is about slavery, it’s effects on us, up until this day. And before some people chop my head off, it is not possible, in any way, to compress five centuries of history into a few paragraphs. The idea behind this is so that those who are interested will pick it up. Like I stated earlier, I committed to doing this once a week as a response to Nigeria’s removal of history from its school curriculum.

2787
2 mins read

March 12, 2014

#WhiteHistoryMonth: When Salazar met one of Lumumba’s murderers

António Oliveira Salazar founded Portugal’s New State dictatorship in 1933. Some historians like to argue over whether it was fascist or not. And these days, some Portuguese remember him fondly. He presided over the late colonial administrations in Portugal’s African colonies.

2154
2 mins read

January 13, 2014

Thanks to Eusébio, it’s common for European nations’ football fortunes to depend on African players today

Historian Eric Hobsbawn once wrote of the centrality of national soccer teams to national identity in Europe, that “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” And that allows it to represent a more inclusive image of the national idea, as in the case of France’s 1998 World Cup victory with a team dominated by black and Arab players. But it was Eusébio and his Mozambican, Cape Verdean and Angolan teammates that first gave a European country a different image of itself on the football field.

3831
5 mins read

October 3, 2013

“Democracy is the Best Form of Democracy”

Let’s say you’re a pirate and you want to design an embassy, which you would use to: a) reproduce the symbols of national sovereignty; b) while challenging ideas about public…..

2 mins read

December 19, 2012

Os Kuduristas: Hip as Nationalist Project

Let’s say you’re the son of a very wealthy political leader, from a country that was fighting a long war for independence in the 1970s (remember, that war that’s been…..

4 mins read

February 28, 2012

Reverse Colonization

NPR’s European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli filed this piece on Friday. Titled “Portuguese Seeking Opportunities in Former Colonies” it takes a breezy look at how the economic crisis in Portugal has sent…..

2 mins read

February 13, 2012

Introducing: Angolan singer Aline Frazão

Aline Frazão joins a long line of exceptional female voices from Angola. Belita Palma, Lourdes Van Dunem, and Dina Santos from the golden years of semba in the 1960s and 1970s, Nany and Clara Monteiro from the 1980s, as Gingas do Maculusso from the 1990s, and in the 2000s Yola Araujo, Yola Semedo and Perola.

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5 mins read

December 5, 2011

Translating Angola

Rhett McNeil’s translation of Portuguese novelist António Lobo Antunes’s “The Splendor of Portugal” received a lot of attention from the literary world when it was released earlier this fall. And…..