Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 155

We are all Sudanese

A new film explores the perspectives of Sudanese-American artists navigating their relationships and responsibilities to the revolution back home.





Still from Revolution from Afar

How does it feel to engage with a national uprising beyond the territorial borders of the nation? What connects you? What impedes connection? Perhaps most importantly, what is at stake? Grappling with questions like this shaped Bentley Brown���s new film Revolution from Afar. The film explores how young Sudanese-American artists are navigating their relationship to Sudan, the multiple ways one might articulate a ���Sudanese-American��� position, and how both of these challenges relate to Sudan’s still ongoing political transition. In doing so, it wrestles with the complexities of engaging, as artists, in a conflictual relationship to the state. It also grapples with how today’s revolution fits into the longer narrative of Sudan’s political history. The artists��� reflections on these issues highlight new ideas about identity, diaspora, and third culture taking shape from afar. I had the opportunity to recently engage with Bentley about the film.

Zachary Mondesire

As Sudan continues to navigate its��political transitions, do you see this film playing a role in the broader project of memorializing the euphoria and maintaining the momentum of the 2018-19 uprising?

Bentley Brown

My first steps on the project were in response to the gaping hole in Western media attention toward the protests and Omar al-Bashir���s subsequent removal from his thirty-year-presidency in April 2019. I had grown up in neighboring Chad, where Bashir���s presidency was felt in a political and cultural sense. My first job out of university was working as an international election observer in Sudan���s south-bordering states Blue Nile and South Kordofan, where I witnessed firsthand the hegemonic domination Bashir���s party, the National Congress Party, held over the country. His ousting by popular uprising reflected a massive moment for not only Sudan but people on the verge of uprising elsewhere���even people in Chad began a small, but unsuccessful, call for Idriss Deby, another 30-year-president, to step down. How could Sudan���s uprising, one of the most significant events in recent global political history, not be given international attention?

That said, Revolution from Afar is interesting in that it is not explicitly a project to document the revolution in Sudan (I am thrilled to see so many activists and artists doing this already), but rather the psychological impact of the revolution���and the responsibility to be a part of it���felt by Sudanese-American artists physically cut off from it. I am specifically interested in these artists��� sense of belonging to Sudan while being ���third-culture kids��� of a sort, whose parents are from one country although they grew up in another. This was a sort of reverse of my own experience, having been born in America but moving as a child to Chad where my father worked as a doctor. Joining forces with Sudanese-American filmmaker Makkawi Atif Makkawi, who is responsible for all of the beautiful cinematography in the film (all the so-so shots are mine), we were really able to craft questions for discussion that gave this issue of third culture identity and belonging a central spotlight.

Still from Revolution from Afar



Zachary Mondesire

What compelled you about this younger generation of artists?

Bentley Brown

Several of the artists I knew from before. Ramey Dawoud, for example, had played the lead role in my 2013 film Faisal Goes West, through which I had met Oddisee as well. Eilaf Farajullah and I had been involved in the underground cinema and open mic scene in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, prior to moving back to the United States. I don���t even remember when I first got in touch with Khalid Albaih���I think we���ve seen each other in three, maybe four, countries now?

But the majority of people appearing in Revolution from Afar I met through the experience of making the film, which revolved around two summer 2019 gatherings of artists, one in New York City (the Stumbling Is Not Falling art exhibit organized by Khalid) and the other in Denver (the annual Sudanese-American Public Affairs Association). At the time of these gatherings ,Sudan���s future was very unclear, and bleak: the June 3rd massacre had been followed by a weeks-long internet blackout carried out by the Military Council in charge after Bashir���s, and Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf���s, removal from office. These artists spoke of the responsibility, and often guilt, they felt as artists using their platforms to spread messages of revolution, while others back in Sudan faced teargas, police brutality, and live ammunition. They asked questions of belonging���were they ���Sudanese enough��� to speak out about the revolution? Did they have a stake in Sudan���s future? When might they have a chance to go back, and should they go?

Zachary Mondesire

In the course of conceptualizing the film, how did you fit the experiences of their parents’ or earlier generations��� into the broader scheme of young people’s contentious relationships with the state?

Bentley Brown

While the artists��� parents hail from a range of backstories, a common through-line for most was that their families moved to the US at some point after Bashir���s rise to power in 1989. In some cases, this was done through a process such as the green card lottery, in other cases through political asylum or refugee status. Their parents exhibit varying degrees of political vocalness; some are not outwardly politically affiliated whereas others are outspoken writers or politicians. Generally speaking, however, all came to the US in pursuit of an idea of a better life, whether in a political or economic sense, and often this ambition was met with several generational and cultural walls���this is more or less the theme of Faisal Goes West. Even before the revolution picked up speed in late 2018, some of these artists had been revolutionary in their music, poetry, or illustrations for a while���consider, for example, Ramey Dawoud���s 2012 collaboration with Mosno Al-Moseeki ���System Down,��� or Khalid Albaih���s entire career as a political cartoonist. Almost all became increasingly revolutionary as protests surged in Sudan. In Revolution from Afar, the musician Sinkane speaks explicitly of his father���s influence on this process:

My dad was a politician in Sudan and he was a journalist as well. One of the reasons we live in the United States is because he wrote actively against the government in the seventies and eighties. When we moved to the United States and my dad was exiled, I remember he became this really calm person. He was always opinionated, but it subsided. I remember asking him in the 90s, “Why aren’t you so hardcore anymore? Why don’t you speak passionately about stuff?” And he was like, “I don’t want to put myself in a noose.” I was like, okay, I see the effects of being exiled on my father and our family. A couple years ago, he started writing again and it was the same kind of cutthroat, heavy-handed political commentary. And that’s when I realized something was going on, a couple years ago. In December, when the events at Atbara happened, I called my dad. He was like, “Something’s different,” and that’s when it really started hitting me.

Khadega Mohammed, whose poem about belonging is a motif throughout the film, recalls her father���s words after Bashir���s removal: ���I can’t believe I’m alive for this moment. Omar al-Bashir stole thirty years from us, Khadega. I’m really thinking of going back to Sudan now, because now we can reclaim it. We can reclaim that time he stole from us.���

I saw Sinkane perform at four shows over the course of a few months; at every show, he took a moment to engage the audience and talk about what was happening in Sudan. In the film, speaking to a crowd in Manhattan, he explained why he does this: ���My family and friends in Sudan are sacrificing every day. The least I can do is talk about it and say something to you guys and give you the opportunity to go on the internet and check this stuff out.���

I was again interested with what it felt like to be revolutionary in one���s art while physically not in Sudan. But this was now complicated by the fact that not only were these artists living outside Sudan, they had also grown up outside Sudan, as a result of their families��� moves. They were not well-versed in the minutiae of Sudanese marginalization politics of the past thirty years���but hey, neither were most people in Khartoum. But they were learning…fast. Did that take away from the agency they had to speak out? Did it diminish in any way the voice they were offering to the revolution? While some in Sudan objected (I recall a friend in Khartoum tweeting ���Can the Sudanese diaspora please shut the f— up?!���), this did not dampen the voice these artists chose to take up, and I found it very inspirational, and relevant in a way to my own sense of belonging to Chad despite living away, and despite, in terms of appearance and assumption, not always fitting in.

Still from Revolution from Afar



Zachary Mondesire

What did you hope to highlight by focusing on the Sudanese-American artist community in particular?

Bentley Brown

Focusing on the Sudanese-American artist community was a choice of scope. While there are some Sudanese diaspora artists in the film who might not identify with ���Sudanese-American,��� the majority did, and again I felt a connection to this hybridized identity, although in a flipped way: I moved from America to Chad around the same age many of the artists had moved from Sudan to America. The resulting third-culture identity, not entirely belonging in America but not entirely belonging in Sudan either, was a theme I wanted to discuss and the stories were stories I wanted to see in the global discourse. I felt that despite our current increased awareness of race, culture, and identity, we are still generally lacking any meaningful discussion of ���hybrid,��� ���bicultural,��� or ���multicultural��� identity.

While the first half of the film focuses on the artists��� experience with and response to the revolution in Sudan, there���s a shift in the second half of the film to questions around belonging, being ���Sudanese��� or ���American��� enough. In one scene from the film, Bayadir Mohamed Osman, a poet based in the Washington DC area, explains:

When I came to America at [age] 5, my parents forced English down me. I was helping everyone with their resumes–I still am. Doing everyone’s job applications, going to the doctor’s and translating for everybody. I didn’t even get a chance to learn Arabic as much as I could have, let alone, my tribal language, and that’s a bummer.

Ramey asks Bayadir if not speaking Arabic well makes her feel less Sudanese.

Bayadir: ���Do I feel less Sudanese? Yeah.���

Ramey: ���Or do you feel left out?���

Bayadir: ���Yeah I feel left out.���

Ramey: ���I don’t think you should though.���

Bayadir: ���But I’m literally left out. I get left out of the jokes, the history, the conversations, the politics. Even poetry, I can’t even appreciate the Arabic language poetry because it’s completely different.���

Maryam Ghazi, a poet from Houston, Texas, adds: ���We’re too American to be Sudanese, or too Sudanese to be American. If we want to try to be more Sudanese, we’re rejected because, say…I don’t speak Arabic super well. When I’m in Sudan, they call me an ���American.������

Ehab Eltayeb, activist based in Dallas, laughing: “Khawaja [white person]!”

Ramey: ���They call me ���Amriikaan,��� I hate it so much.���

Zanib, a musician based in Denver: ���I hate having to decide…either I’m Sudanese or American. I’m literally both. I tried to explain this to someone in Sudan. They’re like, ���No, you can’t be both.��� And I was like, but how? My parents are from Sudan and I was born here. So how is that not both? I don’t like to decide. If someone asks me, I’m both. I’m Sudanese, I’m American, I’m both equally.���

Zachary Mondesire

Was there a particular energy from this US-based community that resonated with the way the revolution unfolded in Khartoum that differed from, for example, Sudanese communities in the Gulf, London, or continental African cities?

Bentley Brown

During the revolution, I only met up with Sudanese diaspora in the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia, so my sample size is a bit limited. I remember Sudanese people walking up to me on a street full of Sudanese restaurants in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, asking me about the film and verbalizing support for the revolution. Several Sudanese friends in Saudi Arabia, as well as friends in Saudi Arabia from other nationalities, including Saudis, used the protests in Sudan as a proxy space to talk about issues they otherwise wouldn���t be able to. I was certainly guilty of this myself, having most recently lived in Saudi Arabia before moving to the US for my Ph.D., and realizing that so many of the issues that had become talking points against the NCP���such as the reduction of an extremely diverse Sudan to a singular ���Arab-Islamic��� identity as well as the exclusion of minority ethnic and religious groups from national discourse���had been off-limits while I was making films in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, another friend of mine of Sudanese background, but who has Saudi citizenship, is the only one I can recall who has been vehemently against the revolution. I vividly remember being speechless as we donned gloves and ate shrimp, and he told me about how ���stupid��� Sudanese people were for engaging in the uprising and how he���s been identifying more as Saudi recently. This last point is especially interesting, as Saudi Arabia is immensely diverse, yet people are generally referred to by one nationality, and that nationality is almost always determined at birth. Discussions of hybrid identity aren���t really given any light, and are sometimes looked down upon, such as in the case of tarsh al-bahar, ���vomit of the sea,��� a derogatory nickname for Jeddah���s diverse populations that have migrated to the area for centuries. That said, Sudanese friends growing up in Saudi Arabia have generally maintained a strong tie to the country, whereas those in the United Arab Emirates (such as poets Jaysus Zain and Altayeb ���Boggy��� Osama, both featured briefly in the film) have varying degrees of connection to UAE. Ehab, who grew up in the UAE before coming to the US, speaks at one point about how the UAE is a home even though he might not identify as being ���from��� there.

The prime difference between the Sudanese-American artists in the film and the communities in the Gulf to me is in their articulation of homeland as well as their perceived need to be visibly involved with the revolution in Sudan. At one point in our interviews, Makkawi and I asked participants if they felt they had agency in the revolution back in Sudan. Did they have a role in the country���s future? I was expecting the response to be split, but it turned out unanimous: Yes, we all have a role.

I find this point fascinating. Whose responsibility is Sudan���s future? People in Sudan? The Sudanese diaspora? Those in marginalized areas fighting for a better future? Sinkane offers an answer to this towards the end of the film:

What I’ve noticed is that the idea of what it is to be Sudanese has changed. And the acceptance of who it is that is Sudanese has changed. All of us did not grow up in Sudan, you know? It was very important for our parents to instill in us this idea that “You are Sudanese.” Regardless of what happens when you walk out this door, you are Sudanese. So we live a life of duality our entire life. For me, at least, it was really complicated and confusing. Since the revolution, all of that has started to go out the window. People are finally saying, “You know what? It’s cool if you are Sudanese and did not grow up in Sudan.” “It’s cool if you don’t practice Islam.” “It’s cool whatever sexual orientation you have.” ���You’re still Sudanese.��� Regardless of however we live our lives, we still are dealing with the oppression of being Sudanese, and it’s bringing us all together.

Zachary Mondesire

The moment when one of the young women from Darfur spoke up in the focus group struck me in particular. The story she told destabilized the typical narrative about the June massacre in Khartoum. She insisted that the violence���and the erasure of the violence���in Darfur, be included in the frame of how one might mourn the lives lost in the protracted struggle against the state. How did this moment shape how you narrativized the way communities engaged with the revolution from afar?

Bentley Brown

There is a moment in the film in which Hager Mohamedein, a PhD, student based in Pennsylvania who originally hails from Nyala in Darfur, shares a story of seeing a burned village and people, with open wounds, taking refuge. Eilaf, who has lived between Saudi Arabia, the US, and Sudan, apologizes for denying that massacre was carried out against people in Darfur. Myself too���I remember caravans of international aid trucks crossing at night through our town in central Chad to deliver supplies to refugees from Darfur crossing Chad���s eastern border���we had denied the gravity of the situation in Darfur for years, pointing to the presence of rebel groups and saying things like ���It���s more complicated than that,��� or, as Eilaf would: ���Oh, it’s just the media, it’s George Clooney trying to get press.��� It was a state of denial. In a moment that is completely unplanned, unscripted in any way, Eilaf apologizes to Hager and the two hug, in a symbol of healing that online festival-goers have often cited as the film���s most transformative moment. I admire both of them so much for their bravery in this moment, and I think it is an example of how we can look at other areas of crisis and trauma in today���s world. It���s as if these characters are saying, ���Hey, the world is still messed up, but I want you to know that I���m here for you.���

Still from Revolution from Afar



Zachary Mondesire

How might your film help those interested in learning about the revolution in Sudan think about the importance of, and momentum from, the uprisings in Atbara and elsewhere that preceded and led to the enormous sit-in in Khartoum?

Bentley Brown

One of the film���s visual motifs is a collection of videos taken mostly by cell phone during marches and protests in Khartoum, among them the ���Sit-In,��� or al-i���tisaam, also referred to by the nickname al-qiyaada, referring to the military headquarters next to it. I���ve included these videos���taken either by friends of mine or downloaded from public domain (YouTube) where many of them have gone viral���for a couple reasons.

One reason is that footage from the protests and marches is a very important document of the revolution���everything from the chants, to the alternating sadness and hope, to the military���s violence on the June 3rd Massacre���and are especially useful when Sinkane offers a summary of the revolutionary events to a crowd in New York towards the beginning of the film (an educational segment for newcomers to the Revolution). The second reason is centered around the film���s primary focus, which if you recall is not to document the Revolution but rather to sit with its characters and dive into the psyche of what it is like to be tied to this Revolution while unable to physically be there. In this sense, I am inviting the audience to imagine the power, the vibrancy, and the gravity of the Revolution in the minds of the artists featured in the film.

There is also an intentional contrast between protests at al-i���tisaam and those held by Sudanese diasporic organizations in America. The desire to replicate these protests in America says something about how much they inspired the diaspora (both Sudanese and Sudanese-Americans). Some viewers have commented that, at times, they couldn���t tell which protest was which.

I remember the first footage I saw from the Sit-In, recorded by friends Ahmad Mahmoud and Khalid Awad. People were carrying cement blocks to build a new country right outside the military headquarters. ���If we can���t have a state, then we���ll have to build one ourselves,��� I remember someone saying. It seemed both literal and metaphorical. Khalid Albaih and others will tell you the role of art, music and all kinds of creativity in the Sit-In; but to me, the Sit-In itself was a moment of very powerful art.

Zachary Mondesire

As a Black American myself, the artists’ verbal and musical borrowings from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and other registers that one might not only characterize as “Black” but perhaps particular to US Black communities, was also striking. As there was��much discussion of identity throughout the film, centered on competing racial ideologies (“Arab” and “African”) as well as the multiple linguistic and religious heritages of the now two Sudans, what did this film lead you to think about both ���Americanness��� and ���Blackness��� as implicit themes in Sudanese-American artistic expression?

Bentley Brown

How much time do you have? For starters, b/Blackness is a central topic among Sudanese diasporic circles, and it comes hand-in-hand with the discussion of belonging and fitting in faced by third culture kids.

At the Denver conference depicted in the film, we actually had a screening and Q&A for Faisal Goes West, a fictional story of a family moving from Sudan to Texas and hitting a wall financially and culturally. I had written Faisal���s character as this sort of hodgepodge of stories I���d heard from Sudanese friends adjusting to life in America, mixed with my own emotions and internalizations being a white kid moving as an 11 year old to Chad and doing everything I could to fit in. One of the questions Ramey and I received in the Q&A, which was our first time to do a Q&A together since the film���s original festival circuit in 2013, was from a Sudanese parent: ���How can our children avoid the rap culture they���re exposed to? It���s a big problem!��� This comment to me has racist underpinnings, and reflects what parents perceive as their children���s common assimilation into American Black culture. As part of our broader interviews, Khadega, Bayadir, and rapper G-Salih are debating whether identity is truly subjective at the end of the day. If you���re 1% Sudanese, can you claim to be Sudanese? What about being Arab? Black? Khadega responds to the questions with ���I don���t know bro. At the end of the day, we���re all black to the system, right?���

As the Black Lives Matter protests went ���mainstream��� this past summer, my timelines were flooded with people, both in and outside of Sudan, debating whether BLM was relevant to Sudan. The debate spread to Arabs in the Gulf and elsewhere, many of them quick to point out that Bilal in the early days of Islam was a freed slave, a symbol of justice and equality within Islam (and by some pretty liberal extensions, ���Arab��� culture). But if you have to reach back 1400 years to find an example of equality, is there really such a thing today? Omar al-Bashir���s freaking mantra was that Sudan is an ���Arab��� country. Why? Why does that even matter? It���s also hugely important that in Arabic ���Sudan��� more or less means ���land of the black people,��� as you���ll hear G-Salih rap in the film���s credits track, ���Sudan Cypher��� produced by Big Hass.

To me, ���white supremacy��� extends far beyond the idea of gun-toting KKK members to the basic assumption that ���white is right.��� I remember the feelings of emptiness returning from Chad to America where even relatives would speak about the ���Chadian��� parts of me in a negative light, as if they were somehow inferior by default. I perform whiteness all the time in America���I have to sound a sort of ���white academic��� to get by in my Ph.D. We haven���t even begun to dismantle colonialism and the cultural hierarchies established by it until we really ask ���What is whiteness?��� Is it just phenotypical appearance? Nope. It���s cultural, too. When The New York Times joins a long list of news outlets capitalizing ���B��� in Blackness as a nod to the histories erased by slavery, then they turn around and apply that to global black experience, how is that move not just as colonial and America-centric and oddly hegemonic as the mindset they were trying to correct? Even America���s discussions of intersectionality assume there are discrete, clearly defined identities to intersect. To me, it���s just intersectionalities of intersectionalities of intersectionalities.

On top of all this, ���Blackness��� has negative connotations in Arabic. If someone���s evil you say ���their heart is black.��� Virtually every country I���ve lived in has hierarchies of shadeism. My friend Abdelaziz stood out as a teenager in Chad for claiming that he could identify as everything slapped onto him: He���s Chadian, he���s African, he���s Arab, he���s of a certain tribe (Misseriya). From a young age, he saw no use in denying any of this. His approach was unique in Chad, where we otherwise looked up to Sudanese people as ���purer��� Arabic speakers, generally lighter-skinned, more culturally sophisticated. Many Sudanese people (though certainly not all, and their numbers are decreasing) look up to Arab countries such as Egypt or the Gulf for standards of beauty and culture. Sudanese people in the Gulf are generally treated as second-class citizens, albeit a notch higher than darker-skinned compatriots from places like Ethiopia, maybe Bangladesh. Racism is everywhere and we all internalize it in the very language we use. A film about third-culture identity among Sudanese-American artists revolves around b/Blackness by absolute necessity.

And this is not to mention the different connotations and understandings of blackness in Khartoum, for example, versus Blue Nile, South Kordofan, or Darfur. It doesn���t begin to address who sees themselves as black, and what does that mean for them? What does it mean when one does not see themselves as black, but the larger international community does? Who holds the agency in identification to begin with?

The hallucinatory bunker of the white right

The anti-Black Lives Matter backlash in South Africa highlights the growing ideological convergence between the far right and conservatives.





Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The tragic murder of Brendin Horner, a white farm manager who was killed by stock thieves in South Africa���s Free State province, has become a rallying cry for South Africa���s far-right. After two suspects were arrested for the murder, violence broke out at the magistrate court in the town of Senekal, as protesters attempted to seize the accused from their cells, set a police van on fire, and intimidated journalists.

Afrikaner nationalist organization Afriforum addressed the crowd, while other protesters held up signs with the phrase ���Boer Lives Matter.��� The protesters in Senekal were also joined by the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa���s official opposition party, which presents itself as a ���non-racial��� organization. While the party’s official statement on the event claims that farmers are subjected to a ���low-intensity war���, it downplayed the racist overtones and made sure to claim that a ���diverse group��� of members attended the courthouse.

This news story highlights an intensified convergence between Afrikaner nationalists and English-speaking (in short Anglo) mainstream conservatism in contemporary South Africa. This was made evident earlier this year in the cultural response against the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

After expressing his public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and calling for cricket South Africa to collectively do the same, fast bowler Lungi Ngidi experienced an online backlash from white reactionaries like former cricketers Pat Symcox and Boeta Dippenaar. Dippenaar claimed that BLM is a ���dangerous leftist movement���, that Ngidi should read ���Milton Friedman��� (a conservative American economist admired by white liberals) and ���All lives matter��� (the slogan popularized by supporters of Donald Trump and the police in the US.) Dippenaar added: ���If you want me to stand shoulder to shoulder with you Lungi, then stand shoulder to shoulder with me regarding farm attacks.���

Such arrogant, kneejerk dismissal of the lived experience of others is common in the conservative responses to anti-racist movements. But what is especially revealing is how Dippenaar connects free market libertarian Milton Friedman (who visited South Africa on the way from Pinochet���s Chile months before the Soweto uprising in 1976) with ���farm murders.���

The conspiratorial belief that white commercial farmers are being targeted for extermination is often associated with right-wing Afrikaner nationalist groups like Afriforum. However, such coded white nationalism and political paranoia is an increasingly evident theme in political spaces which purport to espouse ���non-racism��� and ���liberalism.���

For example, a series of ���stop farm murder��� rallies in July attracted the expected collection of apartheid nostalgists. But one of the speakers outside parliament in Cape Town included Sihle ��� Big Daddy Liberty��� Ngobese, a black online media personality who styles himself on black American political operatives like Candace Owens, reinforcing white conservatives’ beliefs that structural racism does not exist because a black person says so and that they are under siege from creeping socialism.

Ngobese also works for the South African Institute for Race Relations, a Johannesburg based think-tank which essentially functions as a domestic version of US Republican Party aligned organizations like the Heritage Foundation.�� On its website, the IRR claims to represent ���the silent majority����� and produces extensive op-eds and reports denouncing things like land reform, anti-fascist activism, the climate justice movement, and Black Lives Matter. It has a close relationship with the DA, including recently having former DA leader Helen Zille as a research fellow. An ardent convert to Canadian rightwing academic Jordan Peterson style paranoia about ���cultural Marxism���, Zille is notorious for making inflammatory statements online.

Zille is actively supported by a growing online echo chamber of podcasts, YouTube channels and social media accounts orientated around ���free speech��� or ���classic liberalism���.�� In practice, however, these spaces are a mix of Breitbart and Infowars style alt-right propaganda, half-baked McCarthyism and white identity politics. In a process that has been observed internationally, paranoid shared tropes around farms murder and ���cancel culture��� increasingly serve as gateway to expose right libertarians and conservatives to hardcore white nationalists and neo-fascists.

Since experiencing a 2019 decline in votes, and the highly embarrassing resignation of former party leader Mmusi Maimane amidst the exposure of institutional racism within the DA itself, the party has made a conscious pivot towards more reactionary politics.

Current leader John Steenhuizen claimed that ���farm murders are a national emergency���, and called for violence against white farmers to be declared a political hate crime. A blatant attempt to capitalize on a ���white lives matter��� backlash in the wake of the uprising in the US, his call was greeted online with enthusiasm by far-right activists.

Simultaneously, John Steenhuizen has made guest appearances on the podcast Jerm Warfare, ��which in the past has platformed the likes of Katie Hopkins and Proud Boys gang founder Gavin McInnes. It has also included local right-wingers such as Ernst Roets of Afriforum, Steve Hofmeyr, Dan Roodt and Sudilanders survivalist group leader Simon Roche, who was also part of the ���Unite The Rally��� in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Ideologically encouraged by the background chatter of organizations like the IRR, Steenhuizen seems to believe that his party’s future fortunes lie with Tucker Carlson style, dog-whistle white nationalism.

Colonialism and apartheid created a scared, authoritarian white settler culture that was both deeply racist and violently hostile towards democratic and egalitarian ideas. Christian National Education and military conscription instilled a fear of any politics towards the left of Ronald Regan, and saw personal non-conformity as a gateway to communism. The psychic laager of Apartheid taught whites to believe that they were threatened by both the ���swart gevaar��� (black peril) and rooi (red) gevaar.

These fears are sublimated within the paranoia around farm murders. Right-wing whites believe that they are simultaneously under attack from black people, and that this is motivated by a Marxist plot to steal and collectivize their lands. There is an entrenched belief that only white farmers can be truly productive, and hence violence against them is an orchestrated plot to destroy ���white, Christian civilization���. Of course, this concern with rural violence is not extended to the improvised and exploited black people who work on farms and face the greatest risk of criminal violence in rural South Africa.

Unlike the imaginary ���white genocide���, South African���s problems of massive racialized inequality and political maladministration, particularly under the disastrous presidency of Jacob Zuma, are very real. (The majority of victims of crime are poor, black South Africans.) As a result, many white conservatives are fearful of losing their status, wealth, and property. These socio-economic anxieties have been exploited by groups like Afriforum and an online space which have given a new, Trumpian supercharge to crude racism and white supremacist ideas.

By appealing to both the racial and property anxieties of white voters, the DA is attempting to infuse its mainstream conservatism with concepts derived from the far-right. This is not unpreceded, as the party infamously used a “Fight Back��� campaign to appeal to former National Party supporters in the late 1990s. However, Steenhuizen and his party may find that scapegoating ���reverse racism��� and ���communism��� obscures the DA���s actual weaknesses.

Rather than failing to appeal to the racial paranoia of whites, the DA���s political problems are caused by a combination of factors. Persistent in-fighting within the party ranks, ineffective governance in cities like Cape Town and its authoritarian and cruel treatment of the black poor are some of the key reasons why the party has failed to garner support across a wider social base.

In a year where the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the crisis of capitalism and contemporary political systems, the white right in South Africa has chosen to retreat to a hallucinatory imaginative bunker forged from 19th century colonial racism and 20th century red-baiting.

That such ideas are mobilized around the issue of racism in cricket and rugby, shows how popular culture is being used to amplify both white identity politics and reactionary fear-mongering. This is the latest mutation of white supremacist ideology in South Africa, with old racial paranoias given new expression by the right-wing culture wars.

A city on a hill

The viral sensation ���Jerusalema��� and its dance challenge reveals a deeper longing and desire to re-imagine the world.





Still from "Jerusalema" video.

Forever condemned as its ���heart of darkness,��� the world remains baffled as to how Africa has seemingly avoided the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier in the year, as the virus ravaged other parts of the world and prepared to make landfall on the continent, the projections were nothing short of severe. It was widely anticipated that Africa���s poor and overcrowded living conditions, the prevalence of other diseases like HIV and TB and its lack of well-resourced health systems would make for the deadliest viral path on the globe. Despite their touch of catastrophism, these predictions were not unreasonable given the evidence of despair elsewhere. What is strange, is the sense of perverse disappointment that this hasn���t been the case. Stranger still, that at the height of doom and gloom, little was done by way of international support to prevent the expected worst case outcomes.

On the flip side, the world is celebrating the lightness of this continent, albeit in the most cliched way���through its products of song and dance. Since the middle of this year, the gospel-inspired, South African house track ���Jerusalema��� by DJ and Producer Master KG featuring vocalist Nomcebo Zikode, has enraptured a global audience. What made it especially take-off was its evolution into the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge, prompted by a group of Angolan friends recording themselves with plates of food performing a variation of the line-dance to the song. Following that, similar clips of people dancing to the song have been shared from all over��� groups of ordinary people, nuns and priests, healthcare and other essential workers, police and soldiers, fuel attendants; you name it. Per the African Union, Jerusalema is ���a song that has transcended its national boundaries and the continent, and has people across the world dancing to its vibrant rhythm.���

The South African government made sure to co-opt the dance challenge, transforming what was a mostly spontaneous and uncoordinated phenomenon to a state-sponsored feel-good narrative. As President Cyril Ramaphosa announced South Africa���s move to its lowest level of COVID-19 lockdown, he urged all South Africans to participate in the dance challenge as part of Heritage Day celebrations which happened in late September. (The holiday itself has a curious history; it replaced Shaka Day and is mostly now an excuse to BBQ.) Suddenly, a country which had been a powder-keg of disaffection, traumatized at the injustices and suffering endured during lockdown yet divided on who was to blame, became united in cheerful performance as it seemed that at last things were back to normal. And for South Africans, ���normal��� means being able to repress the fact of normal being the problem; it means comfortably moving from being outraged about police brutality in June to applauding their renditions of the Jerusalema dance in September.

But perhaps Jerusalema is different, in that the hopefulness it expresses is not simply about a return to normal, but about a desire to go beyond it. The lyrics themselves (translated from isiZulu) include the lines, ���Jerusalem is my home, save me, take me with you���My place is not here, my kingdom is not here.��� Yet, the actually-existing city of Jerusalem, which means ���city of peace��� and is claimed by all of the Abrahamic faiths yet controlled by Israel, is anything but one.

There is a gap between the religious imagery invoked by the song and the state of religiously- motivated practice today, which makes the fact that Master KG himself isn���t particularly religious more telling of how the song speaks to a deeper yearning in the human condition, one beneath religious sentiment. And, when Zionists (not the South African version of African-inspired Christianity, but supporters of Israel) at one point tried to appropriate the message of the song as endorsing support for Israel, Palestine solidarity activists worked with Palestinian youth in Jerusalem and South African youth in Durban to produce two videos, which raised the profile of the African Palestinian community and solidarity between South Africa and Palestine. Young Palestinian activists including Janna Jihad and Ahed Tamimi sent video messages inviting Master KG to come to Palestine, and there have been a number of awareness-raising engagements with the artist and his management on the politics of the Palestinian struggle.

That Jerusalema as an idea represents a longing for more than has come before, perhaps could also explain the curious absence of Americans, from the dance challenge crazing the world right now (something writer Michelle Chikaonda pointed out on a recent episode of AIAC Talk).

It was the Massachusetts colonizer John Winthrop who inserted the vision of a new Jerusalem in the gospel of St Matthew into the image of the United States; the founding exceptionalism upon which it would forever conceive itself as a beacon of hope and progress for the rest of the world. As the United States now decidedly proves itself to be a failed state, it renders the majority of the world���who by force or coercion adopted its version of liberalism���failed as well, with the global inability to handle a pandemic the surest testament.

What then, is Jerusalema, if not the finest distillation of a global desire for another city on a hill? And not by simply turning to another great power as America���s ready replacement���China is not the world���s savior���but one that like the dance challenge itself believes in the possibility of collective subjectivity. Of course, this subjectivity can collapse into forms which are reactionary rather than emancipatory. As Zwide Ndwandwe writes, there is not much separating the rainbow nationalism of the kind uplifting South Africans through the dance challenge, and the xenophobia at the same time proliferating through social media demanding that the government #PutSouthAfricansFirst. It is not enough that there is widespread dissatisfaction about our society as it is underscored by a desire for something better���content must be given to what that better could possibly be.

In a recent episode of AIAC Talk partially devoted to talking through Malawi���s recent elections, Sean Jacobs and I addressed a question to the panelists which dwelled on how Malawi���s new leader, Lazarus Chakwera, is a theologian, one known to refer to citizens as being part of his ���flock.��� Our reason in asking this was to understand if this was a sign Malawi could possibly be headed toward more of the same demagogic and autocratic leadership that characterizes so much of the rest of the continent. Yet, in the eyes of Chikaonda and media scholar Jimmy Kainja, this fact about the new president was unremarkable���much as Malawi is a religious country, this is not why Chakwera was elected. In Kainja���s words, ���Malawi is a different place now.��� Its people have no time for the usual nonsense of the political class that they���ve endured since gaining independence, and now trust in their competence as citizens. It is this spirit of self-determination which enveloped Malawi and saw ordinary citizens play an active role in monitoring and overseeing the elections without foreign observers, and going so far as tracking and giving hourly updates on the flights carrying the ballots.

And it is that spirit of self-determination which is quietly sweeping throughout the continent as citizens respond to the crisis of global capitalism exacerbated by the pandemic. It���s easy to take an isolated look at the successful management of COVID-19 as a public health crisis on the continent, and think that the worst is over and Africa has impressed���but the truth is, we are only just beginning to grapple with the socio-economic fissures that COVID-19 laid bare and worsened. We are witnessing an ongoing wave of mobilization on the continent challenging the excesses of neoliberalism���in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. South Africa���s trade unions and social movements are preparing for a season of nation-wide strike action, ones bringing together the largest trade union federation (which is aligned with the ruling party, the African National Congress) and its closest competitor. Of course, these efforts might fail and no doubt governments will continue to use COVID-19 gathering restrictions as a pretext for repression.

But, the sense you get is that for the first time in a long time, there is belief that self-determination can only be understood as a collective achievement���of creating institutions in our society by guaranteeing the conditions of life for all. These are achievements that have to be fought for politically, and no matter how bad things get they won���t come from the benevolence of an outside actor. The fate of Africa is determined not by the state of the West or China, but only by its people themselves. Maybe, what is becoming stronger as we search for a new city on the hill, is the conviction that we are going to build it ourselves.

How we normalize racialism

In the first part of a two-part post, the author challenges conventional progressive approaches to ���race,��� finding them to be untenable with non-racialism.





Black Lives Matter Austria, woman holding a Black Lives Matter sign. Image credit Ivan Radic via Flickr CC.

It goes without saying that 2020 has been an eventful year, and not in a particularly good way. What began as the hopeful start to a new decade has devolved into an unprecedented health and economic disaster. Amid this calamity, the seemingly ever pervasive force that is racism has continued to animate discourse, not only in the usual hotbeds, such as the US and South Africa, but also across the globe. The clarion call of ���Black Lives Matter��� has become commonplace in every part of the world. Those who once considered the phrase divisive, due to a false belief that all lives matter under existing capitalism, can be found spouting views that seem indistinguishable from those espoused by the most prominent critical race theorists. Corporations that have historically profited, and continue to profit from systemic racism were quick to join the hashtag brigade pledging commitment to racial diversity and to tackle other ���racial��� problems.

This about-turn appears to be the logical conclusion of a recent, yet unfortunately common occurrence. In late May, George Floyd was murdered on camera by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, while a number of his fellow officers looked on. Floyd���s murder sparked a sustained wave of anger across the globe. Yet, what animated the discourse around this murder and other instances of state-sanctioned violence, was the seemingly racial dimension that drives the soul of American society. The unifying slogan became one of affirming and emphasizing that ���black��� lives matter.

This large and understandable focus on racism from all corners has had the unfortunate consequence of reproducing a distinct and even morally righteous, yet ultimately harmful racialism. This racialism can best be caricatured in the discourses of upwardly mobile, liberal, college educated professionals whose only social and professional currency is their racial identity and the victimhood that is associated with it. And not only race-hustlers unwittingly reproduce what is an ultimately harmful racialism. Even those with sober understandings of the legacy of racism and racialism and their relationship with capitalism can be found to treat races as ���real.��� An example of this is Kiasha Naidoo���s excellent ���The mechanism of contagion in racism,��� published recently at Africa Is a Country.

Naidoo���s piece highlights the pseudo-scientific nature of racism, its treatment of the other as a contagion and how this interacts with South African capitalism by producing a seemingly quixotic contradiction, of a system that both needs so-called black people while identifying their mere presence with the destruction of that social system. This is a necessary intervention in popular discourse, because far too often this rich materialist reading of history is discarded in favor of a convenient, but ultimately limited, idealist interpretation that treats racism as a mere extension of coloniality or whiteness, or in its more crude forms analogizing ���whiteness��� as a virus. As I���ve pointed out elsewhere, this idealism in conjunction with the capitalist imperative to accumulate can lead to the reproduction of the inequities that anti-racist idealists claim to be concerned with.

Unfortunately, Naidoo, like many other anti-capitalists who are rightfully concerned and outraged about our society’s collective attachment to racism, ends up failing to question the seeming facticity of race, and thus its legitimacy as a tool for both understanding and changing the world. This unfortunately reproduces very noxious and pervasive racialism. Due to its toxic normalcy, we have more reasons to reject not only racialism, but also race as a concept.

We live in a world in which race appears to be a normal feature of our society. Referring to oneself, others and even ideas and values in terms of race is ubiquitous. This results in a normalization of race, so while we end up rejecting the problematic of race, the thematic remains in place. While the idea of races as fixed biological groups distinct from each other due to a series of innate, inheritable traits is rejected, views of races as socially constructed groupings abound.

The value of these views, according to their proponents, is that we are able to reject the notion that racial groups are determined by biological traits and thus avoid harmful biological determinism. We can instead view races as groups who are socialized through formal and informal processes to view themselves as members of a particular racial group. What matters here is not that the races are biologically real, rather how we collectively and individually behave as if races refer to relatively fixed and identifiable groupings. Thus, if we consider and treat a certain group of people as belonging to race R, then R is a race that exists and must be treated both analytically and politically as real in order to confront whatever ails the collective belief may produce.

The social constructivist position is motivated by a set of what appear to be legitimate concern���chiefly, that a belief in race embedded in myriad social practices makes race manifest itself concretely in people���s lives. People have not only experienced great suffering because of racial coding, but also forged meaningful and long-lasting relationships as a result of it. The argument claims that in doing away with the language of race we risk a) downplaying the long lasting effects of racism, thus failing to deal with them as a society and b) we risk destroying the rich, and fragile communities and meaning that racialization has created.

The social constructivist view on race, however, fails on its own terms. While rejecting the biological basis of race, it ends up re-affirming these pseudo-scientific categories. This happens because the social aspect of race formation has historically relied on biological notions, and using them as a framework for our ���socialized races��� becomes a mere reproduction of biological racism. This can have clear implications for our response to social problems, such as COVID-19, for example. As it swept through Asia and Europe initially, it became commonplace to wonder whether ���black��� people had an inbuilt defense against the virus. Yet, within months, as it spread through countries with greater degrees of inequality���South Africa, the US, Brazil and the UK stand out in particular���the thinking shifted to outrage, because people erroneously referred to as ���black��� were not only more likely to get the coronavirus, but also more likely to die from it. If we were to adopt the social constructivist approach to understanding this alleged phenomenon, we would find ourselves in a paradox. We would at once have to claim that races are not biologically real, while simultaneously stressing the significance of race in understanding biological phenomena. And so, to claim that races are socially constructed but have no biological basis would be contradictory.

Social constructivism effectively wants to hold the privilege of rejecting biological racism, while remaining eternally attached to its conclusions, thus reproducing its effects in the real world. Although both these forms of racialism���or, as their proponents prefer, ���race-realism������are the more dominant approaches to race, there exist alternatives to an acceptance of race-thinking, namely anti-realist approaches.

Unfortunately, the more innovative anti-realist approaches���such as interactive constructionism���fail, as Phila Msimang points out. ��The alternative Msimang offers, via a defense of a softer minimalist account of race as a social kind, suffers from the same problems identified in a maximalist approach. In particular, while it rejects biological basis of race it must concede that features of racialization such as heritability, are dependent on understandings of human biology.

It is perfectly reasonable for us to reject the biological basis of race but attempts to maintain a world in which races are socially constructed are self-defeating. The aim may be to reject biological racism and racialism but, unfortunately, we cannot escape its logic. If we are to forge a world in which the remnants of racism are long gone, depending on its tools will only leave us trapped in a world of racialism.

What is needed now more than ever is a culture of rejecting racialism in any form, while remaining attentive to the social and material inequities that exist in our society. Because some of these inequities are rooted in the history of racism, supporting such a cultural shift is consistent with the aims of eradicating racism in our society.

A seca quando chove

No sul de Angola, para al��m do infind��vel ciclo de seca, a crise humanit��ria cresce por causa de raz��es n��o climatol��gicas.





Locals working on the reconstruction of a broken water canal in Humpata, Hu��la. Photo by Helder Alicerces Bahu, 2020.

For English click here.

No passado m��s de Fevereiro de 2020, as autoridades de Ondjiva, na prov��ncia do Cunene, no sul de Angola, divulgaram um aviso p��blico anunciando que a barragem local do Calueque atingira a sua capacidade m��xima, implicando um s��rio risco de inunda����o para as comunidades que vivem ao longo do rio Cunene a jusante. No mesmo m��s, chuvas na vizinha prov��ncia da Hu��la provocaram o transbordo do rio Caculuvar e deixaram isolados 21 mil habitantes da comuna de Humbe, devido aos danos causados ​​na estrada e na ponte que a ligava a Ondjiva.

Apesar desta introdu����o aqu��tica, n��o nos enganemos: a prov��ncia do Cunene, juntamente com as vizinhas Hu��la e Namibe, continua a sofrer um ciclo de seca de longa dura����o que afetou milhares de pessoas desde pelo menos 2012. Estimativas da UNICEF de Julho de 2019 apontam para 2.3 milh��es de pessoas afetadas, incluindo quase 500 mil crian��as menores de cinco anos, e 35% de gado morto. As comunidades mais afetadas t��m sido os pastores locais das ��reas mais remotas dessas prov��ncias, que dependem do acesso recorrente �� ��gua para suas atividades de pastoreio. Al��m do n��mero de mortes de humanos e animais, as not��cias ressaltam outras consequ��ncias do ciclo da seca: fome e inseguran��a alimentar, migra����o for��ada, aumento de surtos de doen��as, abandono escolar, conflito inter��tnico e assim por diante. Subsequentemente, v��rias ONGs e a Igreja Cat��lica exortaram o governo angolano a reconhecer a cat��strofe humanit��ria e declarar o estado de emerg��ncia, a fim de fornecer ajuda imediata e sustentada.

Assentamento em Salinas (Bentiaba, Namibe). Foto de Ruy Blanes, 2013.

Em resposta, ap��s a aprova����o no parlamento de um Plano de Emerg��ncia contra a Seca em Maio de 2019, com um pacote de USD $ 200 milh��es, o governo angolano est�� lentamente a desenvolver uma interven����o hidro-infraestrutural nas prov��ncias do sul, tanto com opera����es de pequena escala ��� por exemplo, reabilitando ou produzindo novos po��os e reservat��rios ��� e projetos de grande escala ��� por exemplo, o sistema de transfer��ncia de ��gua do rio Cunene para a regi��o do Cuamato. (Antes deste investimento, as principais infraestruturas hidrol��gicas e energ��ticas da regi��o eram ainda vest��gios de investimentos feitos no final do per��odo colonial (d��cada 1960) pelas autoridades portuguesas.)

O ���combate �� seca���, como �� frequentemente referido nos media locais, parece, assim, estar a avan��ar.

O sul de Angola �� tradicionalmente uma paisagem ��rida e des��rtica, onde a escassez de ��gua moldou os meios de subsist��ncia das comunidades locais durante s��culos, sem realmente prejudicar sua subsist��ncia. Este foi brilhantemente captado, por exemplo, pelo antrop��logo Ruy Duarte de Carvalho no seu livro Vou L�� Visitar Pastores (1999), onde descreveu como os pastores Kuvale da prov��ncia do Namibe realizavam os seus ciclos de transum��ncia em busca de ��gua entre 3 rios locais (Bero, Curoca, Cunene). Al��m disso, como vimos no par��grafo inicial, a esta����o das chuvas continua a alimentar os rios e os len����is fre��ticos. O que est�� a causar, ent��o, esta crise particularmente aguda neste preciso momento? O governo e os meios de comunica����o locais t��m usado o ���El Ni��o��� como justifica����o principal da situa����o e para enquadrar a resposta governamental como uma rea����o contra um ���fator externo���. No entanto, embora possamos de facto identificar um fen��meno climatol��gico mais abrangente que afetou a ��frica Austral nos ��ltimos anos, tamb��m �� verdade que existe outra ordem de raz��es que explica esta crise ambiental e humanit��ria.

Habitantes locais a desassorear uma chimpaca para consumo do gado e irriga����o, ao lado de uma fazenda. Foto de Helder Alicerces Bahu, 2020.

Em Novembro de 2019, a Amnistia Internacional publicou um relat��rio angustiante sobre a situa����o na regi��o dos Gambos (prov��ncia da Hu��la), onde o desenvolvimento de uma agro-ind��stria e pecu��ria comercial em grande escala patrocinada pelo Estado ocupou at�� dois ter��os (67%) das pastagens comunais locais na regi��o desde o fim da guerra civil em 2002, sem qualquer due process e atroplenado as pr��prias leis ambientais do pa��s. Este desenvolvimento provocou uma redu����o dr��stica das fontes de ��gua acess��veis para os pastores locais, levando-os a uma maior inseguran��a alimentar em tempos de seca. Mais especificamente, empurrou-os a vender suas vacas por pre��os m��nimos, a recorrer �� ingest��o de folhas silvestres (lombi), a queimar lenha para vender como carv��o a dezenas de quil��metros de suas casas. Os media locais tamb��m noticiaram casos de viol��ncia entre comunidades pastoris devido �� disputa por aqueles poucos recursos h��dricos dispon��veis. Nessa perspetiva, a seca decorre tanto de um ciclo clim��tico como da crescente neoliberaliza����o da paisagem rural no sul do pa��s.

Este tipo de desapropria����o n��o �� exclusivo dos Gambos: no Cunene, um conflito eclodiu em 2015, depois de o projeto agroindustrial ���Horizonte 2020��� ter sido autorizado a ocupar um per��metro de 85 ha nos munic��pios de Curoca e Ombadja, que usurpou as terras ancestrais e respetivos recursos ambientais. Em resposta, as comunidades locais mobilizaram-se e confrontaram os trabalhadores, colocando-se no caminho dos tratores, mas sem sucesso.

Este tipo de conflitos sobre o deslocamento da popula����o e acesso �� ��gua tem uma longa hist��ria. Como observaram v��rios historiadores, desde o final dos anos 1800, quando o Estado portugu��s ensaiava uma explora����o eficaz e em larga escala da regi��o atrav��s de campanhas de coloniza����o e desenvolvimento agr��rio, o acesso �� ��gua tornou-se uma fonte de conflito ��� como foi o caso not��rio das ���Guerras Mucubais��� em 1940-1, que resultou no massacre, pris��o e deporta����o de membros dessa etnia na regi��o de Gambos. Neste contexto, as investigadoras Elisete Marques da Silva (2003) e Cl��udia Castelo (2018) detalham como o uso do arame farpado se tornou uma t��cnica comum de usurpa����o e defesa territorial.

Tenda provis��ria Kuvale no Namibe. Foto de Ruy Blanes, 2013.

Em 2020, enquanto o ���combate �� seca��� continua, come��amos a ouvir relatos recorrentes sobre a falta de manuten����o das infraestruturas h��dricas e de desvio da ajuda financeira e material destinada �� popula����o local para uso privado de funcion��rios p��blicos. Ao mesmo tempo, as campanhas altamente cerimonializadas e divulgadas de distribui����o de alimentos promovidas pelas autoridades para apoiar as comunidades locais v��o cobrindo apenas alguns meses de subsist��ncia.

Rapidamente percebemos que as consequ��ncias dram��ticas do recente ciclo de seca fazem muito mais do que adicionar outra linha narrativa �� quest��o do desaparecimento dos estilos de vida pastoris e �� marginaliza����o social e econ��mica dos pastores por toda a ��frica devido a fatores ambientais. Elas exp��em uma arquitetura de preda����o governamental e privada de recursos ambientais, �� custa da dignidade humana e dos direitos humanos (ver, por exemplo, o caso do Samburu no norte do Qu��nia). Neste quadro, o ���combate �� seca��� assenta num paradoxo subjacente: �� dirigido pelas autoridades locais e nacionais com o objetivo de oferecer solu����es para os problemas que as pr��prias autoridades permitem, seja por omiss��o e falta de provis��o, seja atrav��s do patroc��nio de iniciativa privada sem o devido due process.

Ruy Llera Blanes, antrop��logo, professor associado na School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University.

Carolina Valente Cardoso, antrop��loga, investigadora na School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University.

Helder Alicerces Bahu, antrop��logo, professor no ISCED-Hu��la.

Claudio Fortuna, investigador do Centro de Estudos Africanos (UCAN, Luanda) Programa de Doutoramento em Antropologia Sociak, ISCTE-IUL (Lisboa).

Angola’s persistent drought

In southern Angola, a preventable humanitarian crisis deepens. The government bears much of the responsibility.





Locals attempting to unsilt a chimpaca swamp for the cattle to drink and for irrigation, next door to a fazenda. Photo by Helder Alicerces Bahu, 2020.

Para portugues clique aqui.

In February 2020, the authorities of Ondjiva, a small city in the southern province of Cunene, Angola, issued a public warning announcing that the local Calueque Dam had reached its maximum capacity, implying a serious risk of flooding for the communities living alongside the Cunene River downstream. In the same month, rains in the neighboring province of Hu��la caused an overflow of the Caculuvar River and left 21,000 inhabitants of the Humbe commune in isolation, due to the damage caused to the road and bridge that connects it to Ondjiva.

Despite this watery introduction, make no mistake: the Cunene province, along with neighboring Hu��la and Namibe, has and continues to experience a long-lasting drought cycle that has affected thousands of people since at least 2012. July 2019 estimates by UNICEF point to 2.3 million people affected (including almost 500,000 children under the age of five) and 35% of livestock dead. The most affected communities have been the local pastoralists of the remote areas of these provinces who rely on recurrent access to water for their herding activities. Beyond the human and animal death toll, reports from the field underscore other consequences of the drought cycle: hunger and food insecurity, forced migration, increased disease outbreaks, school abandonment, inter-ethnic conflict, and so on. Subsequently, several NGOs and the Catholic Church urged the Angolan government to recognize the humanitarian disaster and declare a state of emergency in order to provide immediate and sustained relief.

Kuvale provisional tent in Namibe. Photo by Ruy Blanes, 2013.

In response, after the approval in parliament of an emergency plan against drought in May 2019, with a package of USD $200 million, the Angolan government is slowly implementing a hydro infrastructural intervention in the southern provinces, with both small-scale operations���such as rehabilitating or producing new water holes and reservoirs���and large-scale projects in the form of a water transfer system from the Cunene River into the Cuamato region. (Prior to this moment, the main water and energy infrastructures in the region were the remnants of investments made in the late 1960s by the colonial Portuguese authorities).

Southern Angola is traditionally an arid and desert landscape, where water scarcity has shaped the livelihoods of local communities for centuries, without actually hampering their subsistence. This was brilliantly captured, for instance, by the anthropologist Ruy Duarte de Carvalho in his book Vou L�� Visitar Pastores (1999), where he described how Kuvale herders in the Namibe province performed their cycles of transhumance searching for water between three local rivers (the Bero, Curoka, and Cunene). Furthermore, as noted in the opening paragraph, the rainy season continues to feed the rivers and groundwaters. So, what is causing the particularly acute crisis now? The government and the local media have used the umbrella term ���El Ni��o��� as sole scapegoat to justify the situation and frame the governmental response as a reaction against an ���external factor.��� Although we can indeed identify a more overarching climatological phenomenon that has affected southern Africa in recent years, there are several other explanations for this environmental and humanitarian crisis.

Locals working on the reconstruction of a broken water canal in Humpata, Hu��la. Photo by Helder Alicerces Bahu, 2020.

In November 2019, Amnesty International published a harrowing report concerning the situation in the Gambos region (Hu��la province), where the installation of state-sponsored large-scale commercial cattle farming has taken up two-thirds (67%) of local communal grazing land in the region since the end of civil war in 2002, without any due process and overruling the country���s own environmental laws. This has led to a drastic reduction of open water sources for local herders, pushing them toward increased food insecurity in times of drought. More specifically, they are forced to sell their cattle for meager prices, resorting to eating wild leaves (lombi), burning wood to sell as coal dozens of kilometers away from their homes. Local media have also reported on cases of violence between herding communities due to disputes over scarce water resources. From this perspective, drought stems as much from a climate cycle as from the increasing effects of neoliberalism on the rural areas of southern Angola.

This kind of dispossession is not exclusive to Gambos: in Cunene, a conflict broke out in 2015, after the agro-industrial project ���Horizonte 2020��� was allowed to occupy a perimeter of 85ha in the Curoca and Ombadja municipalities, which usurped the communities��� ancestral lands and respective resources. Subsequently, the local communities mobilized and confronted the workers, standing in the way of the tractors, but to no avail.

Conflict over population displacement has a history that has involved water too. As several historians note, since the late 1800s, when the Portuguese state was rehearsing an effective and largescale exploitation of the region through settlement and agricultural development campaigns, access to water became a source of conflict. A famous case was the ���Mucubal Wars��� in 1940-1, which resulted in the massacre, imprisonment, and deportation of members of that ethnic group in the Gambos region. Scholars Elisete Marques da Silva (2003) and Cl��udia Castelo (2018) have detailed how the use of barbed wire became a common technique for territorial usurpation and defense.

Settlement in Salinas (Bentiaba, Namibe). Photo by Ruy Blanes, 2013.

In 2020, while the ���combat against drought��� (as the government���s emergency plan is often referred) continues, there are recurrent reports of lack of maintenance of the water infrastructure, and of the diversion of financial and material assistance for the local population into the hands of private officials. At the same time, the highly celebrated and publicized food distribution campaigns promoted by the authorities to support the local communities only offer a few months of subsistence.

The dramatic consequences of the recent drought cycle do much more than add to the elimination of pastoralist lifestyles, and the social and economic marginalization of pastoralists across Africa due to environmental factors. They expose an architecture of both governmental and private predation of environmental resources at the cost of human dignity and human rights (see also the case of the Samburu in northern Kenya).

In this framework, the ���combat against drought��� is based on an underlying paradox: it is directed by the local and national authorities to provide solutions to problems enabled by the same agents, either through omission and lack of provision, or through the sponsorship of private enterprise without due process.

The Black Bill Gates

Beyonce offered me escapism in my childhood. But now I see the contradictions and shortcomings in her claimed radicalness.





Still from Black Is King.

Beyonce���s more recent posturing as an emancipatory force in the global Black community has caused a stir in many circles. She has long been deemed an icon of her time for her record-breaking musical feats. Her recent offering, Black is King, sees her continue this tradition, in addition to openly embodying the role of radical global cultural leader. Black is King asserts in the American cultural imagination the idea of an Africa rich in talent, wealth and beauty. It offers a much-needed intervention to the use of problematic tropes that writers, such as Binyavanga Wainaina in his essay How to Write About Africa, have long complained about. The visual album���s release coincided with the global resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and its themes were felt to speak poignantly to the moment we are in. Beyonce���s representations of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) culture in ���Homecoming��� (as a headline act at Coachella), and the political subtext of ���Lemonade,��� are just some of the reasons why she is felt to be a radical cultural worker, especially in the global Black community, and even more so now.

However, between her history of questionable private performances, and her ties to labor exploitation in Sri Lanka through her IVY Park fashion brand, there remains a continued dissonance in the pro-Black cultural component of her work; a component that has garnered her the kind of political attention that gets her a reputation as an activist. This dissonance was once again seen in her decision to collaborate with Disney, a notoriously culturally exploitative corporation, in what she endearingly calls her ���love letter to Africa.��� Perhaps the air of suspicion that surrounded her latest release was in response to this confusion, one that accompanies many of her grand (expensive and profitable) political statements. That is because Beyonce has never stood in opposition to capitalism, instead calling herself a ���Black Bill Gates.��� So it is easy to see how incoherencies like Beyonce performing as a headline act at the Super Bowl in Black Panther inspired uniforms while the National Football League blackballs players such as Colin Kaepernick or Eric Reid who criticize American racism and the NFL���s complicity in it, are allowed to thrive. Instead, she foregoes ideological integrity in her ode, to offer an aesthetically pleasing, vaguely politically referential moment. It is too vague to even hold her ideologically accountable, and she now rarely gets interviewed anyway. This allows her to settle in a comfortable grey area, where fans are expected to celebrate her wealth with her, as she benefits from the continued speculations and projections about her politics.

As someone who was a girl child at the height of Destiny���s Child���s fame, Beyonce has played an instrumental role in my own life. Back in 2007, when ���first CD albums��� bore a more profound significance, Beyonce���s ���B-Day��� deluxe edition album took this prized milestone in my life. I had already been a fan, but the ���B-Day��� album dropping at the height of my pre-pubescent years is what cemented her place as a cultural icon in my world. As a long lover of music, Beyonce offered me representations of people who kind of looked like me, and doing things that felt so unattainable. I loved that Beyonce was cool, and Black, and beautiful and talented��� and rich. I wanted to be rich. Beyonce offered me an escapism in my childhood, a portal into a make-believe world where I was rich, American and happy���American being an important qualifier, as I was certain that the existence of a Black girl child dancing to ���Beautiful Liar��� somewhere in the Western Cape province of South Africa in 2007 was unimaginable to my kinfolk in the global North. I just knew it.

I knew what living in an already economically precarious country, clumsily constituted a mere 20-something years before meant: that mine was a role of resigning to the inundation of American culture, even where I was interacting with the work of creators who looked like me. But the resentment of feeling deeply invisible is something hard to shake off, and calls into question how I felt a deep yearning to be seen by the global North. Why? Because that is how imperialism works. Relying on an already fragile sense of nationalism, and a quietly brewing South African exceptionalism, I turned to America as the standard for our local cultural offerings. Discontented with how obvious resource depravity was in our entertainment world, I felt an even deeper despair at how hopeless it all felt.

The amazing thing about the cultural empire is how it fabricates sensibilities from experiences far removed from your own. In most of my childhood interactions with American culture, long before information was a click away, I felt my veneration of American culture chip away at my sensory experience. I felt that mine was that of being a mere member of a cultural commonwealth that reports to Hollywood to measure its own success.

Now, none of this is Beyonce���s fault; she is only one (very powerful) artist operating in an entertainment industry geared at profit making, and at the expense of many disempowered communities. That she relies on this regime and its affirmation of her talent and worth (sometimes literally) through accolades, coupled with her clear commercial ambitions, makes it difficult, however, to characterize what she does as radical. It is deeply satisfying to watch Beyonce do what she does, especially because she is so talented, but to conflate entertainment value with the kind of political merit needed for the role of radical cultural worker is ill advised.

When I look back at my Beyonce crazed 12-year-old self I see the confidence and fun her musical presence encouraged. But I also see the prevailing dominance and overrepresentation of Americanisms in my life, as well as how the absorption of an imperial sensory experience of the world lent itself to delusions and nurtured exceptionalisms that being born South African leaves you vulnerable to. This is why I see these contradictions and shortcomings in Beyonce���s claimed radicalness as a product of the imperial framework that her career sprouts from. These areas of concerns ought not be understood as oversights, but rather reflective of the demands of Hollywood and Beyonce���s own commercial interests. Her cultural impact is significant, and she is immensely talented, and appears to care deeply for Black people. But all of these things are rarely culturally actualized in a way that truly threatens the status quo of the American-led global entertainment industry.

The most wanted man

The legend of Nelson Mandela was built years before his lengthy jail sentence catapulted him to global fame.





Photo by Gregory Fullard on Unsplash

By the time he was released from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela���s name was closely identified with the African National Congress (ANC). He was South Africa���s���and the ANC���s���most famous political prisoner, not only in South Africa but worldwide. This fame is often thought to have developed in the 1970s, when the ANC and anti-apartheid movements around the world developed a campaign dedicated to his release.

But Mandela���s fame, and his symbolic status, truly came into being well before that, in fact when he was on the run from the South African authorities after the Treason Trial and before his arrest in 1962. A look back at the early 1960s suggests the Mandela legend gained a foothold in public consciousness long before his lengthy imprisonment. How did this happen, and how did Mandela himself contribute to the birth of that legend?

In the hostile and anti-black terrain of the early 1960s, while he was avoiding the apartheid security forces, Mandela became known as ���the Black Pimpernel,��� a reference to his ability to avoid capture, and even to leave the country, illegally, and to return, but to remain out of the police���s clutches.

Mandela and others had gone underground because they wanted to continue to pursue the struggle against apartheid while knowing that, in terms of the law at the time, most of what they were doing would be considered subversive and illegal. As Mandela reasoned, ���Under apartheid, a black man lived a shadowy life between legality and illegality, between openness and concealment. To be a black man in South Africa meant not to trust anything, which was not unlike living underground for one���s entire life.��� His time spent on the run was a concentrated reflection of the kind of life led by ordinary black people under apartheid, but it had a glamour not usually given to those whose illegality consisted of breaking the pass laws and other apartheid restrictions.

Although it is not clear when the ���Black Pimpernel��� sobriquet was first used, Mandela attributed it to the press of the time. The term conveys an image of the trickster figure, surreptitiously entering and exiting public life at will, and it became a symbolic fixture of his public image. Yet Mandela was, at this time, out of the public eye. How was it possible for him to build this public legend out of his absence from public life? Press interviews, reports, articles, and images of and about him in the period of his underground years (April 1961 to August 1962) suggest that there was more to the legend than simply the picture of a rebel. In the preceding decade, Mandela had enjoyed the attention of the media, notably of the black-readership Drum magazine. Photojournalists Peter Magubane and Alf Khumalo of Golden City Post, Drum and then Rand Daily Mail, J��rgen Schadeberg and other uncredited lensmen of Drum, had produced images of his earlier years, as when he was leading the Defiance Campaign of the mid-1950s. But the scale of media interest in him soared in his underground years, and against the background of an increasingly repressive state, a difficult time for political reportage.

One notable article appeared in New Age, a publication allied to the liberation movement. This profile of Mandela, published on�� July 13, 1961, traces his political career, going back to his student days at Fort Hare. Its tone is admiring, making references to his height, vitality, and clothing: ���He is a man alive with energy, a six footer whose well-cut suits fail to hide the broad chest and strong arms of an athlete.����� It is interesting that a political paper such as New Age would focus on the physical attributes of a public figure, yet in this it subverted the erasure of Mandela in the racialized public sphere of apartheid South Africa. This celebratory focus seems to be alive to the effect of appearance as a cue to public acclaim.

This affirming tone is evident in another New Age report, in its February 8, 1962 edition. The report concerns Mandela���s movements abroad. It is a striking example of how the ���Black Pimpernel��� idea functioned as a proxy for his growing legend. Entitled ���Nelson Mandela in Addis Ababa: will return on Completion of Tour,��� it gives an account of how Mandela eluded ���the police net thrown to catch him in the republic.��� By giving the names of prominent leaders of independent Africa, and treating them as Mandela���s peers, the article mediated public acceptance of Mandela���s leadership.

Peter Hazelhurst���s racy, action-packed report on Mandela in the Sunday Express of May 11, 1961, breathes life into the legend of the Black Pimpernel. The report, ���Hideout Interview with the Most Wanted Man: Native Leader says ���Violence is out���,��� featured a small picture of a smiling Mandela with the caption ���Man Under Cover.��� Depicted as dangerous by the state, Mandela, in his absent figure, inhabits the pages of Sunday Express as a conscientious and formidable opponent of the National Party government. Here was an action hero who gave assurances to white South Africans���the textual target of the report���of his lack of racial enmity. The report assures the reader his amiability and, more importantly, the significance of his voice in anti-apartheid politics and his reliability as a peace broker.

Though he was on the run and publicly absent, Mandela drew attention in ways that gainsaid his enemies��� intent to circumscribe his freedom. His underground years are not only about a political life under siege but also are reflective of the exceptional ways in which this life was rendered public. His relations with the press constituted a particular and remarkable way of being public without being openly available. Without the media, Mandela���s absence would not have gained the public traction it did. Using the media to announce his presence ironically called attention to his absence from public life. While in hiding, Mandela was absent in a double sense���already absent as a black person, yet he was also productively absent as a political activist with singularly strategic capacity to contest that absence by insisting on his presence in the public sphere.

This is an edited extract from Babel Unbound: Rage, Reason and Rethinking Public Life, edited by Lesley Cowling and Carolyn Hamilton, published by Wits University Press.

AIAC Talks: The global rise of the right-wing

This week, on AIAC Talk, guests Chelsea Stieber and Christopher McMichael talk growth of right-wing nationalist movements and their ideological roots. Stream it live Tuesday on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter.

What ideas influence the new right and how is it spreading around the world, including in Africa? This week on AIAC Talk we have Chelsea Stieber, a scholar of French and Francophone Studies, who will speak on the ideas that inspire today’s violent, white, right-wing populism, and how they draw inspiration from an obscure 1970s racist, apocalyptic novel from France, Camp of the Saints. This novel has been publicly quoted by Trump���s former advisor Steve Bannon, and by the openly racist US congressman Steve King among others. The book imagines a scenario where France is invaded by a group of South Asian migrants and its hero, a white Frenchmen, murders these migrants as well as their white allies. As Stieber wrote previously on Africa Is a Country, ���This fixation on the president���s predilections for TV screens and phone calls tends to mask the highly textual nature of Trumpism, and the script that informs it. Indeed, many of his aides and advisors love to read, but what they���re reading is a body of work that most educated Americans are entirely illiterate in.��� Camp of the Saints gives us a sense into his, and his aides and advisors, racist thinking.

Then, political scientist Christopher McMichael, from South Africa, will speak on the spread of right-wing ideas, conspiracy theories, and political movements on the continent, especially in South Africa where there is a significant white minority.

The tactic by right-wing and authoritarian leaders to confuse and obfuscate information for personal gain has gotten particular attention this week, as the public receives mixed messages about Donald Trump’s personal battle with COVID-19. It reminds us of the tendency of leaders on the African continent to give unreliable information on the status of their health, whether it was Ali Bongo who vanished for two months and reappeared after a stroke, Muhammadu Buhari���s annual medical checkups in the UK, or Paul Biya���s extended stays (for months on end) in a Swiss hotel. But as the photographer, Fati Abubakar, remarked on Twitter, ���I thought as Africans we had seen it all but this time America wins the Oscar for Drama, Suspense, Comedy, Tragedy. Even the sick President saga has outdone the African President stories ill health and lies with the classic mix of pomposity and pride.���

Stream the show Tuesday at 18:00 SAST, 16:00 GMT, and 12:00 EST on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Clips from last week���s episode are now archived. If you missed them, watch highlights from our discussion with writer Michelle Chikaonda and media scholar Jimmy Kainja on Malawi’s ���most interesting 24-months��� and the events that led up to its historic 2020 presidential elections. Also, watch our spirited discussion (here and here) with South African legal scholar Sohela Surajpal on reimagining what we mean by feminist justice.

All shows are archived in their entirety, and in podcast form on our Patreon page.

The global rise of the right-wing

On this week's episode of AIAC Talk we take a look at the growth of right-wing nationalist movements across the world and explore their ideological roots with guests Chelsea Steiber and Christopher McMichael. Stream it Tuesday on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter.





Image credit Tony Webster via Flickr (CC).

What ideas influence the new right and how is it spreading around the world, including in Africa? This week on AIAC Talk we have Chelsea Steiber, a scholar of French and Francophone Studies, who will speak on the ideas that inspire today’s violent, white, right-wing populism, and how they draw inspiration from an obscure 1970s racist, apocalyptic novel from France, Camp of the Saints. This novel has been publicly quoted by Trump���s former advisor Steve Bannon, and by the openly racist US congressman Steve King among others. The book imagines a scenario where France is invaded by a group of South Asian migrants and its hero, a white Frenchmen, murders these migrants as well as their white allies. As Steiber wrote previously on Africa Is a Country, ���This fixation on the president���s predilections for TV screens and phone calls tends to mask the highly textual nature of Trumpism, and the script that informs it. Indeed, many of his aides and advisors love to read, but what they���re reading is a body of work that most educated Americans are entirely illiterate in.��� Camp of the Saints gives us a sense into his, and his aides and advisors, racist thinking.

Then, political scientist Christopher McMichael, from South Africa, will speak on the spread of right-wing ideas, conspiracy theories, and political movements on the continent, especially in South Africa where there is a significant white minority.

The tactic by right-wing and authoritarian leaders to confuse and obfuscate information for personal gain has gotten particular attention this week, as the public receives mixed messages about Donald Trump’s personal battle with COVID-19. It reminds us of the tendency of leaders on the African continent to give unreliable information on the status of their health, whether it was Ali Bongo who vanished for two months and reappeared after a stroke, Muhammadu Buhari���s annual medical checkups in the UK, or Paul Biya���s extended stays (for months on end) in a Swiss hotel. But as the photographer, Fati Abubakar, remarked on Twitter, ���I thought as Africans we had seen it all but this time America wins the Oscar for Drama, Suspense, Comedy, Tragedy. Even the sick President saga has outdone the African President stories ill health and lies with the classic mix of pomposity and pride.���

Stream the show Tuesday at 18:00 SAST, 16:00 GMT, and 12:00 EST on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Clips from last week���s episode are now archived. If you missed them, watch highlights from our discussion with writer Michelle Chikaonda and media scholar Jimmy Kainja on Malawi’s ���most interesting 24-months��� and the events that led up to its historic 2020 presidential elections. Also, watch our spirited discussion (here and here) with South African legal scholar Sohela Surajpal on reimagining what we mean by feminist justice.

All shows are archived in their entirety, and in podcast form on our Patreon page.