Between the relentless media coverage, the twitter deluge, the pronouncement by a South African judge (“This is a matter of great national importance”), and declarations by the South African President’s daughters about “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” you might be forgiven for thinking that–finally–some urgency about South Africa’s big issues was making national news. Were we talking about how to deal with the persistent racial and class inequality, joblessness, and a lack of government accountability? Not so much.
Interview: Director Frances Bodomo Talks About Her Film “Boneshaker” and African Globalization
“Boneshaker” — the latest film by Nuotama Frances Bodomo, a Ghanaian filmmaker based in New York City — follows a Ghanaian immigrant family taking a road trip to a Pentecostal church in Louisiana to cure their violent daughter. As the family journeys to a tent revival at the ends of the levee-less Louisiana delta, they discover the complications of trying to perform a traditional ritual away from home. Boneshaker is a short but ambitious film that focuses on feelings of homelessness, landlessness, and rootlessness that accompany migration. I spoke with Frances Bodomo at the start of the 2012 New York African Film Festival.
Debating Sexuality in South Africa
As @ekapa correctly noted in his comment on my post about “Homophobia as National Sport” in South Africa, “… depressing as this is its a symptom/result of the increasingly vocal and visible African and Coloured activists who are no longer willing to hide and suffer in silence but now demand the rights and protections set out in the South African constitution.“
So I am posting this excerpt from the excellent South African TV program, “The Big Debate.” Though the format encourages “conflict,” we get to see South Africans debate the relationship between sex and culture. In this clip (12 minutes long) they debate whether homosexuality is un-African. It will surprise you.
Homophobia as National Sport
This may make for depressing reading with your breakfast, but there’s nothing new about the entrenched homophobia in South Africa, a place where men rape lesbians to “correct” them, a government minister last month refused to open a state-funded exhibition featuring photographic images of intimacy between gay women (the image above is an example), and Jacob Zuma, the country’s president, once said that when he was growing up gay men would not have stood in front of him. “I would knock him out.”
MUSICAL BREAK / DRIEMANSKAP
The new video (posted on Youtube last week) for “Camago,” the first single off the Cape Town hip hop group‘s new album, “Igqabhukil’ Inyongo.” The song, in Xhosa, is “… about the importance of respecting and celebrating your culture and its traditions, even if you are a modern urban youth.” Reminds of Zulu Boy’s aesthetic and sound.

