I don’t care much for Cape Town group Freshlyground’s muzak. But you can’t deny the cleverness of the video for their new single, “Chicken to Change.” They recruited the puppets–especially Robert Mugabe–from the intermittently funny, online South African satirical news show ZANews. And they called Mugabe a chicken. Then Zimbabwe’s humorless immigration authorities banned Freshlyground from visiting that country. And now the Internets is taking care of the rest.

Further Reading

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.