Africa Is a Country Radio: Episode #1
Listen to Africa is a Country Radio every month on Groovalizacion. March's episode was the first
105 Article(s) by:
Africa Is a Country
From the Ministry of Information.
The Slave Ship Theme
The Cape Town company that designs and markets “slave ship” ironing boards and aprons.
Africa is a Country Radio
On Groovalizacion. The host is Chief Boima, from his new base in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (check out his first post from there). The format is a monthly round up of audio treats from around Africa and its diaspora with occasional commentary from the community of writers from Africasacountry.com. The first episode went out this afternoon.
The “wisdoms” of Akon
When the Senegalese-American singer Akon is not claiming to provide electricity around the continent, he gives interviews. The latest, to Larry King, is a train wreck because of Akon’s reactionary’s views. For those in the know, this is peak Akon.
The trouble with #WhiteHistoryMonth is that it is not history yet
Today, the theft of Aboriginal children – including babies taken from the birth table – is now more widespread than at any time during the last century. As of June last year, almost 14,000 Aboriginal children had been "removed". This is five times the number when Bringing Them Home was written. More than a third of all removed children are Aboriginal – from 3% of the population. At the present rate, this mass removal of Aboriginal children will result in a stolen generation of more than 3,300 children in the Northern Territory alone.
#CaptionThis: What was Madonna pointing at?
For some odd reason, last weekend, this striking black and white image by photographer Terry Kane of pop singer Madonna "tour(ing) a UN millennium village in Mtanga, Malawi, in 2007" illustrated a Financial Times book review of ‘The Tyranny of Experts’ by William Easterly and ‘The Idealist’, by Nina Munk. Madonna is not mentioned in the piece and the review rumbles on. You can read it here. In any case, we were struck more by the image and posted it on our Facebook page, where we asked readers to #captionthis. We promised that we'd feature a few on the blog, so here are some of them.
#WhiteHistoryMonth: When Marlon Brando brought up Native American rights at the Oscars
In March 1973, Marlon Brando won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in “The Godfather.” Before the live broadcast of the ceremony Brando indicated he would not turn up at the ceremony and refuse the prize if he won. He won. Brando had asked Shasheen Littlefeather, a Native American media activist, to go on stage and give a speech about the portrayal of Native people in Hollywood films. In this video you can see what happened at the ceremony. Basically Ms Littlefeather was not able to give the full speech (no surprises, some attendees in the audience booed her), but afterwards handed it out to journalists. Some media ran it in full the next day.
Debate: The future of the workers’ movement in South Africa
In May this year, South Africa will host its 5th general election since the advent of
Wangechi Mutu in conversation with Trevor Schoonmaker
Schoonmaker: When did you start to see work by African artists that you did respond to? Was that in New York? Mutu: In New York, ironically, you know, in the early ’90s. Richard Onyango, one of Kenya’s big painters, was one of the first shows I saw.
T.O. Molefe makes his New York Times debut
The website of the international edition of the The New York Times website debuted two dozen new “international” columnists this week. One of them is an AIAC contributor.
On the Journalistic Value of Internet Map Memes
At the Washington Post, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a complex issue, when color-coded in a way that reassured Americans of their innate Superiority over inferior Peoples, could always be relied upon to get way more Hits than any actual Reporting.
The #BullshitFiles: KLM offers flights to ‘the Dark Continent’
We're not making this up. It turns out Royal Dutch flagship carrier's KLM decision to hire
The Nobel Peace Prize: Totally irrelevant?
It is worth going through some of the dodgiest choices made by the Nobel committee in the time they’ve awarded the Peace Prize first in 1901.
Ghana’s Independence Era Through the Lens of S.K. Pobee
The photos below (click to enlarge), offering a glimpse into the joy and optimism of the
Making sense of the terror attacks in Kenya
Follow these sources (a mix from the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook, including from some mainstream media sources that aren’t that bad) to process the Nairobi mall terror attack.
When Ken Norton played Mandingo
Ken Norton, the champion professional boxer who died this week, also had a long, though not
The #Bullshit Files: Mindy Budgor, ‘the first female Maasai warrior’
Loads of our readers have been badgering us to blog about Mindy Budgor, a young white,
Office Talk No.1
Black Thought, Boots Riley (of the Coup), Jeru da Damaja, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, and others at Pan African Market, Long Street, Cape Town, 2001.
South Africa’s new youth underground?
“We’ve got Ferraris in Africa. What they gon’ say now?”, says one of the young people in a new video. Is that the ethics of South Africa’s young?
People are going to know who Bob Hewitt is
Bob Hewitt migrated from Australia to apartheid South Africa. There he became a champion in white tennis. He is also accused of abusing children whose families trusted him as their tennis coach.