Africa Is a Country

Postmodernism on Ice

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Postmodernism on Ice

By
Sean Jacobs

The Winter Olympics features a Russian skaters who dress in animal skin costumes to perform to an "Aboriginal Song." There's more.

Skaters from the Winter Olympics; not the ones in animal skins or the ones coached by a former Stasi informer (Zemistor, via Flickr CC).

So it turns out that tonight at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, in the pairs figure skating finals, Germany will be presented by Robin Szolkowy, whose father is Tanzanian (his mother is German), along with his Ukranian-born partner, Aliona Savchenko. Together they will perform a routine choreographed to the music of the film, “Out of Africa,” which, if you forgot, is based on a Danish writer‘s white colonial fantasy of Kenya.  And, to top it all, as a German friend informed me, Szolkowy and Savchenko’s coach, himself a championship skater, was an informant for the East German secret police. My head is spinning.

I won’t waste any comment on the Russian pair who put on animal skin costumes (think a Broadway fantasy like The Lion King) to perform their “Aboriginal Song.” Australian indigenous leaders objected, but they still continued. They just washed off their face paintings. That’s too easy.

Update: Overall, Szolkowy and Savchenko won the bronze medal for Germany in Vancouver. Domnina an Shabalin, the animal print pair, did not medal.

Further Reading

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.