Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 301

The turn to burning in South Africa

Image Credit: Dasen Thathiah (eNCA)

In October last year thousands of South African students marched on key sites of power – Parliament in Cape Town, the seat of government in Tshwane and the headquarters of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Johannesburg – under the banner of #FeesMustFall. The scale of this mobilization, which included students from elite and working class universities, was impressive. There was also impressive intellectual work undertaken in struggle.

The systemic under-funding of universities by the ANC government was directly confronted, as had been, in previous months, the racism that continues to fester in universities, along with the colonial logic that still characterizes much teaching and research. Moreover, the students quickly won considerable moral authority and support from trade unions, popular organizations, churches and some of the media. It was an extraordinary moment. There was a real possibility for students to constitute themselves as a significant political force and to forge mutually enabling solidarities with struggles in wider society.

This cycle of student politics has been a highly dynamic phenomenon. From the beginning there were significant differences within and between campuses in terms of the ideas and forms of organization that came to the fore. Nonetheless there are some general features that can be noted. Students at historically black universities have been waging struggles, often isolated and bitter, against exclusions since the end of Apartheid. But this was the moment at which these struggles arrived in elite and formerly white universities and, simultaneously, won their first sympathetic hearing in the elite public sphere.

Another general, if not universal, feature of the moment is that women and queer people have often been at the forefront of these struggles. Furthermore, engagement on social media became a significant dimension of student politics and there was a wholesale embrace of a certain kind of American political culture (safe spaces, discourse around ideas like privilege, intersectionality and micro-aggressions, etcetera). At the same time there was an often sharp generational break with the politics of the ANC and a turn to ideas and symbols gleaned from, in particular, Black Consciousness politics in South Africa in the 1970s and the contemporary global moment inaugurated by Black Lives Matter in the United States. Some of the features of the politics that emerged were, like the centrality of personal trauma, very similar to those described by Robin R.D.G. Kelly in the US.

A tremendous amount was achieved very quickly. But in most cases mass politics in terms of organization and mobilization – quickly collapsed. The reasons for this are complex. They certainly include repression, and the various interests and machinations that swiftly surround all effective popular organization. But they cannot be reduced to external factors. For one thing, acute conflicts emerged within the movement, with perhaps the most public being around questions of gender and gendered abuse.

It has been argued that the failure to elect leaders allowed for a version of the tyranny of structurelessness – perhaps exacerbated by an intersection between the students’ use of social media and the official media’s predilection for making sense of politics in terms of personal celebrity. It has also been argued that a certain kind of moralism was sometimes substituted for politics – politics in the sense of what, in the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, was called praxis.

In some circles a political culture, often facilitated by social media, emerged that many people experienced as authoritarian and bullying. A set of stock phrases were sometimes used to curtail discussion and to cast approbation on the character of people with independent or not yet fully formed ideas. A good number of people committed to the goals of the movement found that they did not feel comfortable in its spaces and, often feeling wounded, they retreated from active engagement. One of the new ideas that won some support in certain circles was a particular reading of American Afropessimist theory. In some interpretations, often articulated to a reading of Fanon largely based on a few statements in the opening chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, it was taken to mean that the new world could only arise on the ashes of the old.

There was a degree of absolutism at play. In some expressions it took a distinctly millenarian form. For some people talk about a conception of redemptive violence, or burning – rather than organization, mobilization and strategic action – came to be seen as the authentic radical posture. What was for some time only a form of discourse has now become a scattered practice in the sense that fires have been set – covertly rather than in riots – on some campuses.

Today, the remaining actively militant students are generally a small and divided minority on their respective campuses, often politically alienated from wider society and vulnerable to repression. There is frequently an attraction to forms of disruption that can be effected by small groups of people – some of which have extraordinarily effective public interventions and some of which have been largely alienating – rather than the labor of building organization, sustaining mobilization, forging alliances and engaging in strategic action over the long haul.

Image Credit: Dasen Thathiah (eNCA)

On Monday this week, students protested fees at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) on its campuses in Durban and Pietermaritzburg. There is a serious problem with political violence in this part of the country and the police are notoriously brutal. As has frequently been the case with regard to student protest over the last 20 years, as well other forms of popular protest organized autonomously from the ruling party, the police response was violent and sadistic. A student in Pietermaritzburg reported that the police had raped her.

On Tuesday night, a law library was set ablaze on the Durban campus. Though firefighters brought the fire under control there was significant destruction. Many students have been strongly and publicly critical of this action. But a few of the well-known figures to have emerged from the struggles last year condemned criticism of the library burning. It was suggested that one can’t simultaneously be in solidarity with oppressed people and opposed to the burning of the library. This is not a credible position. Burning a library is neither the only nor the most effective way to oppose repression and advance the student struggle.

In some cases the burning was celebrated on the grounds that the library contained colonial material. There is a reckless, and perhaps desperate, anti-intellectualism at work in this position. Where, after all, would C.L.R. James, Edward Said, V.Y. Mudimbe, Sylvia Wynter or the Subaltern Studies school have been without a colonial archive from and against which to develop their critique?

There is also a real risk that the turn to burning will set the stage for further repression, worsen divisions among students and further isolate students from possibilities for political support in wider society. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which is R2 billion in debt and in systemic crisis, it is far more likely to compound rather than resolve a set of already acute problems.

The turn to burning is not a sign of a productive new militancy. On the contrary it is symptomatic of the current weakness of the movement. If it is to recover its strength the movement will need to recover and sustain its capacity to organize and mobilize on a mass basis, to win as much of wider society as it can to its side, and to take effective strategic action.

In a national and global context in which the left is weak and right wing forces, of various kinds, are often the main beneficiaries of economic crisis the scale, tenacity and strategic innovation of the political work required to win real gains needs to be taken seriously.

The simplification of the meme or tweet that embraces the substitution of the fire or act of symbolic disruption, for politics qua politics for the sustained construction of popular and democratic counter-power will not serve us well.

Getting beyond the usual South African reporting on “Africa”

Beijing Olympics opening ceremony 2008. Image Credit: U.S. Army Flickr

It is still not uncommon to hear South Africans say that they’re going on a business trip or holiday “in Africa” – as if their own country lies on another continent. We could blame this attitude on our history. During Apartheid, South Africa was politically and socially isolated from the rest of the continent (South African Airways flights weren’t even allowed to land in any other African countries). But a certain mindset also developed as a result of the Apartheid ideology of exceptionalism – the notion that because  South Africa was “different” from other African countries, the same human rights of equality do not apply here. South Africans became good at navelgazing, and bad at seeing much further beyond than their northern borders. This means that South Africans can often more easily point out Barcelona than Bamako on a map.

The inverse of this knowledge gap can often be seen when traveling on the rest of the continent. Just look at the signs with Afrikaans surnames in the arrivals hall in Nairobi, or chat to your fellow tourists at breakfast in Zanzibar about the Super 14 rugby game, which you’d probably be able to watch in the hotel bar that afternoon on DStv, the satellite channel that stomped its footprint over large parts of Africa. The chances are good that your host knows more about South African history and politics than you know about theirs.

The media doesn’t exactly help. Compared to news beamed to us from Washington D.C. or London, we see very little coverage of other African countries in our newspapers, news sites and broadcast channels. The global impact of the political and economic power of the Untied States and Europe means that the minute details of Brexit or the Trump-vs-Clinton spectacle is beamed to our screens, but that you have to look hard to find nuanced information behind the headlines about, say, the Zambian election, political conflict in Burundi or renewed violence in South Sudan. This, while analyses show that the image of Africa has greatly improved in the past few years in international media. The Economist, that portrayed Africa as the “The Hopeless Continent” on that dreadful cover page of theirs in 2000, changed its tune to “Africa Rising” in 2011, a slogan that was consumed by Time Magazine a year later. However, critics point to the fact that this new-found optimism also sometimes reveals paternalistic stereotypes, or is based on a specific neoliberal ideal of Africa as an untapped market. But one simply has to follow sites like this one to see that fashion, music and sport in Africa gives journalists much more to report on than money and guns.

It is against this backdrop that two recent books about Africa, written by South African journalists, are welcome. Kevin Bloom and Richard Poplak’s Continental Shift: A Journey into Africa’s Changing Fortunes, and  Liesl Louw-Vaudran’s South Africa: Superpower or Neocolonialist illustrate a fast-changing political and economic landscape on the continent. Bloom and Poplak’s reference point is the increasing influence of China in Africa, and the xenophobic reactions meted out against Chinese immigrants. A particular incident from 2011 in the settlement of Ganyesa, in the North West province of South Africa, is used as a leitmotiv to illustrate the violence that immigrants regularly meet with in this country. Four Chinese immigrants were burned to death in their shop – and the book insinuates that this was not an accident, that the shop-owners were murdered by local citizens. The case remains unresolved, thus Bloom and Poplak travelled to Ganyesa to speak to locals in an attempt to learn more about the situation. The truth remains out of reach, and as they broaden their discussion of how bigger geopolitical shifts are mirrored in the everyday details in African cities and towns, they return time and again to the fire in Ganyesa.  As they travel through Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Central African Republic, their discoveries of new developments on political, economic and social terrain are punctuated by the threat of violence – old conflicts, prejudices and tensions mix with new ones and the result is not only intoxicating, but also often unhealthy.

Continental Shift is an entertaining and stimulating recounting of the authors’ experience of traveling thousands of kilometers and wading through academic books, historical documents, policy documents and news articles. It covers a broad range of topics – construction in Namibia, the building of a dam in Botswana, mining in Zimbabwe, Nollywood in Nigeria, food security in Ethiopia, realpolitik in South Sudan and conflict in Central African Republic. Continental Shift’s biggest achievement is its lively, and sometimes even humorous tone. It’s a heady mix of memoir, ethnography, analysis, travel writing and at times comes close to a type of political poetry. The accessibility and lucidity of this ambitious project is largely thanks to the distinctive style of writing – fans of Poplak’s political journalism in the Daily Maverick will be familiar with his destructive sense of irony. But this is also a gripping tale because of its reliance on first-hand experiences and field work, several conversations and interviews, and sharp observations on the ground.

The presentation and style is one of the big differences between Bloom and Poplak’s book, and that of Louw-Vaudran. Despite the fact that Louw-Vaudran is also an experienced journalist – she is  a former Africa editor at Media24 – her script follows a more conventional style of reporting. Her material is partly drawn from her own interviews with political leaders, but she also relies quite heavily on second-hand sources. She is less likely to communicate her own point of view or observations than summarize those of her interviewees. As a result the book is an easy read, but one that lacks a distinctive voice. The transition from reporting to long form journalism is not as easy as it might seem.

Louw-Vaudran’s point of reference is the role that South Africa plays on the continent. She questions whether South Africa, as the largest economy on the continent and a country that set the political tone, especially under the leadership of Mandela and Mbeki, can also be seen as a neocolonial power on the African continent. Is South Africa a leader or a bully? Louw-Vaudran uses several significant news events across the past 20-odd years to investigate this question. The South African liberation struggle and the ANC’s years of exile in Lusaka provides the historical starting point, while the moral bankruptcy of the Zuma’s government ends the book on a pessimistic tone about the future of South Africa, and whether it can be trusted again as leader and example for other African nations. Between these historical extremes, Louw-Vaudran aims to highlight among other things Mbeki’s attempts to revitalize the Pan-African ideal, South Africa’s role in the African Union, as well as the country’s sometimes disastrous military interventions – for example the 13 South African soldiers that died in 2013 in Bangui in a conflict with Seleka rebels in the Central African Republic. Louw-Vaudran creates quite a negative image of lost opportunities by the South African government to collaborate more strongly with South African businesses across the continent, and remarks on the damage that xenophobic attacks in South Africa have done to the country’s image on the continent.

Journalism on and about the continent tends to veer between the extremes of neglect or stereotype on the one end, and touristic exoticism on the other. These two books manage, each in their own way, to steer a path between these extremes. The Africa they show us isn’t always “rising,” nor is it always pretty, but it is fascinating.  And much more difficult to sum up than brief headlines can ever hope to do.

*A previous version of this review appeared in the Afrikaans Media24 publication Rapport.

Recession No Kill Celebration

Image from Glenna Gordon’s “Nigeria Ever After” Series.

An inescapable part of Nigerian social life is our lavish celebrations of important occasions, such as weddings, birthdays, housewarmings and funerals. Costly and ostentatious, these flamboyant events usually take place inside large banquet halls and hotel ballrooms crammed with guests. Party revelers spray handfuls of cash on people, while dancing to heady tunes about money and success. Family members are decked out in matching traditional outfits, and guests leave with customized gifts that range from plastic soap cases and mugs, to iPads. In 2013, the Lagos state government found that 36 billion Naira, (roughly $100 million), was spent on parties in the state, Nigeria’s most populous. What is remarkable is that celebrations take place against the backdrop of deepening political and economic crises, including a rapid decline in world oil prices, instability in the Niger Delta and Northern Nigeria and myriad economic problems.

I recently attended a funeral party for a deceased relative in Ikenne, my hometown in Ogun state, an hour from Lagos. In the middle of playing a Fuji song, the band teased attendees about having a grand party while their fellow Nigerians were facing tough times. The costs of staple foods had almost doubled and for the middle classes the severely-weakened value of the Naira to the dollar had made it harder to send children abroad to study.  It should have dampened everyone’s spirits, but the guests laughed loudly and the cluster of people in front of the band only danced harder. That night, a second cousin told me he had been laid off from the oil servicing company he had worked for in Warri, because it was not getting contracts from multinationals whose pipelines have been targeted by militant groups. He is a young father with a two-year-old son and a wife in university.

Growing up in the 1990s, events like weddings were smaller affairs held under canopies in one’s compound or in open fields at public schools. Extended family came from around the country to help with preparations. Roles were divided based on gender; the men set up canopies and plastic chairs and were responsible for slaughtering goats, while women cooked Jollof rice in huge tin pots placed over firewood. Extravagant weddings belonged only in the pages of glossy magazines like Ovation and City People. I remember flipping through these magazines with their photos of well-dressed Nigerians seated proudly in halls in London and Lagos; brides arriving in stretch limousines; reams of flowers and ribbons adorning tables and walls. Back then, this display of abundance and wealth was the reserve of elites. But, sometime in the early 2000s, things began to change. Middle-class families began hosting events that were bigger and more expensive. Simplicity gave way to excess. More people began renting showy event centers, hiring caterers and security personnel armed with guns. Popular musicians were invited to perform.

The size of Nigeria’s middle class has grown in the past two decades. A 2013 consultancy report estimated that households with annual incomes of more than $5,000 a year would increase from 20 to 27 percent of the population by 2020. According to the IMF, Nigeria’s GDP rose from $46 billion in 2000 to $247 billion in 2011. In recent years, Nigeria has witnessed a boom in entertainment, fashion, real estate and, of course, event planning. There has been an expansion in the retail industry, with local online stores that were absent ten years ago enjoying huge successes. In 2014, Nigeria was declared Africa’s largest economy. Arguably, there are more ways for people to earn a living now than in the past. This increased prosperity is reflected in the ways that we mark special moments in our lives. There has been a shift from the traditional and more communal to trendier and commercialized forms of celebration.

It is uncertain what direction the country’s economy will go in the coming months. No one is sure of when oil prices will increase and by how much. There is no guarantee that the government’s efforts at diversifying the country’s economy will make Nigeria less oil-dependent. Yet, people seem undaunted by these uncertainties. Though, they are angry and disillusioned about the present government’s inability to tackle economic problems, they are hopeful for change. We are, after all, a glass half-full kind of people. On weekends, event halls remain packed. Guests turn up neatly-dressed and ebullient.

Whether things remain the same because of our resilience in the face of hard times or due to pure denial is a long, subjective argument. However, recession or no recession, the blare of music from events continues to spill out onto the street.

#ThisFlag, social media & agency in Zimbabwe.

Robert Mugabe on a Zanu PF poster during the 2008 election period. Image Credit: Babak Fakhamzadeh via Flickr.

Late last week, President Robert Mugabe mocked the protest movement that has risen against his governance over the past few months. “Enough is enough,” the President declared, ordering the judiciary to fall in line with government policy, a move widely thought to be authoritarian and a threat to the separation of powers. The phrase “enough is enough” was not accidental. In using it, the President co-opted the slogan-cum-hashtag used by protestors, referencing the movement without naming it.

Earlier this summer, news from Zimbabwe was dominated by seemingly non-partisan protests against Mugabe’s government and the ruling ZANU-PF. The figurehead of these protests was a Baptist pastor, Evan Mawarire, who took to YouTube to express a deep affection for his country and an even deeper frustration with the governance of Zimbabwe. Mawarire’s video, entitled ‘This Flag’, which has been posted on multiple apps, remixed, debated and reported on, has somehow spurred a movement across social media channels that has resulted in the largest sustained protests against bad governance in the country since 2008.

Perhaps when history is eventually written as a series of tweets, a la BuzzFeed, we will come to truly recognize the revolutionary nature and power of the smart phone. But until then, traditional journalism and analysis demands that every time a population uses the tools available to them to voice their frustrations and concerns as a collective, we have to answer the question: “Can social media activism change a country?”

In Zimbabwe, the leap from online conversation to citizen protest has followed the same path as other protest movements around the world. The protests have always come first, the hashtag has followed, and in this case the protests have grown.

Among different, floundering attempts to discredit the protest movement, the most curious tactic employed by the Zimbabwean government has been the state-organized, pro-government protests designed to counter the narrative that the popular uprising is popular at all. Many of these protests have involved recruiting Zanu-PF’s youth wing, a ruling party organization, as well as bussing in rural Zimbabweans to enhance the numbers attending.

The question then, has been asked: are rural Zimbabwean’s pro-Mugabe? Consensus amongst the commentary class seems to be “yes”, the implication being that social media-led protest movements are urban phenomena and are not representative of the rural majority of the country. The narrative suggests that rural Zimbabweans are generally pro-Mugabe, and that urbanites erroneously elevate their current grievances above the ultimate crime against the country that was colonialism.

This analysis is frustrating, if only because it is not nuanced. It assumes a lack of intellectual sophistication and agency in the rural population without evidence to support such claims. It is difficult to say how genuine rural support for the ruling party is. Perhaps the tradition of rural support of the current government is ongoing, however predating the 2009 election, evidence revealed that blind loyalty to the government is no longer the status quo. For as much as the rural population has been the majority of Zanu PF support, the base has had to be coaxed, nurtured, and often times beaten, into alignment.

It is possible that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary political support is insignificant in electoral terms, but it is worth highlighting when the discussion turns to social media and the current protest moment. If rural presence in pro-government “counter protests” is rallied as a form of self preservation against physical violence and economic retribution for non-participation, social media channels, like the almost ubiquitous Facebook instant-messaging entity WhatsApp, provide an outlet to say what you really think.

In the “mobile economy” narrative in which mobile technology is “sweeping across Africa” and revolutionizing communication and banking all over the continent, it seems an improbable argument that social media movements are not penetrating the rural population. It is cognitive dissonance to simultaneously claim that “mobile phones have begun providing a means of communication, connecting Zimbabwe’s rural population with urban dwellers” and that a movement that is being kept alive through social media is somehow a solely urban phenomenon.

In a country with a mobile penetration of 97 percent, perhaps the anonymity of social media profiles and the protection of end-end encrypted instant messaging allows for the first public glimpse of the real leanings of all Zimbabweans, including the rural majority.

The African Summer Olympics

Gold medal winner Caster Semenya and Minister of Sports Fikile Mbalula during their welcome ceremony at OR Tambo International Airport. Image Credit: GCIS via Flickr

This was the summer of the Olympics. But if you were on safari, like we were, you may have missed it altogether. Fear not, we have some highlights for you, including those of you who are nostalgic for the games already.

First, let’s ignore the clumsiness – we are trying to be nice – of the commentators on US TV network NBC during the opening ceremony. No need to talk about how during the parade of the nations, Matt Lauer and his colleagues could not think of anything to say besides “Togo is an African nation; they love soccer in Togo.”  When The Gambia came up, they told us that the name appears in the first chapter of Alex Haley’s Roots and that’s where Kunta Kinte hailed from. And they definitely couldn’t let the Democratic Republic of the Congo walk by without a reference to “rumble in the jungle.”  We will also resist unpacking what Meredith Vieira could possibly mean by calling Brazilians “cultural cannibals.” Still, why did Matt Lauer say that top model Gisele Bündchen is Brazil’s most famous export? Let’s leave Pelé out of this. But, seriously, have not the folks at NBC ever heard of Ronaldinho?

Speaking of exports, Kenya has so many athletes that they are exporting them by the truckload – or shall we say, by the matatu? About 20 Kenya-born athletes competed for their adopted countries, which include the US, Bahrain, Qatar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Kenyan-born Ruth Jebet won for Bahrain its first ever Olympic gold medal.

But, did you wonder why Kenyan athletes were not wearing matching outfits at the opening ceremony? Apparently, a few of the Kenyan officials saved some of the sports apparel for themselves and their friends, instead of handing it out to the athletes. In a probe on corruption allegations, Kenyan police raided the headquarters of the Kenyan Olympic committee and arrested its secretary general, his deputy and the head of the Kenyan delegation as soon as they landed back from Rio.

When the javelin thrower Julius Yego showed up at the Nairobi airport to travel to Rio, he found out that he did not have a ticket. His fellow athletes refused to board the plane, and the Kenyan government eventually purchased a ticket for Yego, who went on to win a silver medal. One of the Kenyan coaches was sent home from Rio for reportedly submitting to a drug test on behalf of an athlete. At the conclusion of the games, with the Olympic Village closed, some Kenyan athletes had to stay in a Rio favela because the Kenyan Olympic committee was trying to score cheaper air tickets.

Kenya still won 13 medals, including six gold, the most at this Olympics; South Africa was second. So there is something to celebrate.

One athlete whose celebration landed him in trouble is the Ethiopian Feyisa Lilesa. He won the marathon’s silver medal (the gold went to Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya) but will not be going home, after he crossed his arms over his head at the finish line as a sign of protest about political repression in his country.

South Africa’s Wayde van Nierkek demolished the world record for 400m. Caster Semenya won the gold and those who say that she has an unfair advantage should probably check their privilege.

Niger won a silver medal in Taekwondo, thanks to Abdoulrazak Issoufou Alfaga. The last time Niger had won a medal was in Munich in 1972.

The Ivoirian Cheick Sallah Cisse also won gold in Taekwondo, while his compatriot Ruth Gbagbi took the bronze in the women’s middleweight category.

Algeria’s Makhloufi took home two silver medals in 800m and 1500m.

But the Olympics would not be the Olympics without some Nigerian delegation troubles. Their soccer team was stranded in Atlanta for days because apparently someone in Abuja had failed to pay for the chartered plane. They arrived in Brazil only four hours before the kickoff of their match against Japan. Then there was the small matter of the team’s outfits at the opening ceremony. And still, the stadium played Niger’s national anthem instead. Did, by any chance, Rio2016 hire the CNN intern responsible for this?

Anyways, Nigeria’s soccer team won the bronze medal and revealed to the world Umar Sadiq, a young and very talented player, who reminds us so much of Nwankwo Kanu two decades ago.

Still Doing the Right Thing

Still from Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” (1989)

For a black film and media student at the University of Cape Town, Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” was a revelation. I watched it first on a DVD one afternoon with my friend Frank in one of the damp tutorial rooms in the Arts Block on Upper Campus, only a few steps away from where the statue of Cecil John Rhodes stood.

Our film history curriculum at that point comprised mostly European and American cinema. Although clearly American, this film offered something completely different. It had been nearly 20 years since the film’s inception and it took place on a different continent, and yet it was so relatable. Moreover, it was a visceral film experience, a wake-up call, and an affirmation. Watching it again in 2016, it’s eerie (and tragic) how relevant its central theme of racial tension and structural violence still is, both in America and South Africa.

“Do The Right Thing” takes place over the course of the hottest day on a block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Spike Lee plays Mookie, a 25-year-old who seems to be meandering through life, but is on a mission to get paid. He works at the local Italian pizzeria, Sal’s, where most of the neighborhood eats and hangs out.

The simmering heat of the day (visualized by deep reds and yellows on screen) reflects the tensions between the Italian pizzeria owner, Sal (Danny Aiello) and Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), the self-appointed neighborhood spokesperson. Buggin’ Out questions the lack of representation of black people on the walls of the pizzeria, which services a mostly black clientele: “Sal, how come you ain’t got no brothers on the wall?” Sal’s hostile response to Buggin’ Out’s provocation leads to a protest that ends in police brutality and the loss of black life, and marks the demise of the pizzeria.

Despite its explosive dénouement, one of the main strengths of the film is the complexity of its characters and the representations of blackness on screen. Lee moved beyond stereotypes of African Americans in cinema and created characters reflected in the everyday. In “Do The Right Thing”, black people are not presented in the traditional binary of subservient and smiling, or violent and dangerous, but rather as more rounded expressions of themselves.

While Buggin’ Out is concerned with black nationalist politics and representation, he also bugs out when a white gentrifier on the block accidentally scuffs his brand new US$100 Jordan sneakers. Even though this infliction is frivolous, it leads to a cathartic (prophetic?) outburst: “Man motherfuck gentrification!”

No one in “Do The Right Thing” is necessarily “heroic”. Even Radio Raheem – the likeable, stylish giant who blasts the film’s opening theme and leitmotif (Public Enemy’s Fight The Power) from a large boombox – imposes his music on others. He is mostly an irritant in the neighborhood. Radio Raheem is unnecessarily confrontational with the Korean shopkeepers, who have recently moved onto the block. It’s reflected in the scene where he goes to them to buy batteries, “I said 20 ‘D’ batteries, motherfucker! Learn how to speak English first, alright?”  But, in the same scene he smiles and tells shopkeeper Sonny (Steve Park), “You’re alright, man”, diffusing any threat of real conflict.

Mookie isn’t necessarily noble or likeable, however his actions towards the end of the film disrupt this reading of him and show significant character development. Ironically, there is not that much black and white in this film; the characters live in a world of greys.

Although the film has no typical heroes, it is clearer about its villains, particularly the police. Also there is pizzeria owner Sal’s son Pino (John Turturro), who is openly racist and tells Sal, “I’m sick of niggers.” Sal is more complicated.  He sees himself as a good guy who takes pride in feeding the neighborhood. Sal later tells Mookie he sees him as “son”. Despite this, during the film’s climax and in the verbal screaming match between him and Buggin’ Out, he flips and uses racial epithets, telling Radio Raheem to turn off that “jungle music” and hurls profanities like “nigger motherfucker”.

In his book, “BFI Modern Classics: Do The Right Thing”, Ed Guerrero points out that it is Sal who destroys Raheem’s boombox with a bat: “A line is crossed here, from words to physical action.” When that violence escalates and turns fatal, the victim doesn’t need to be an angel for us to have tears in our eyes. He was real, we knew him.

“Do The Right Thing” was partly inspired by the 1986 Howard Beach incident in which a black man, Michael Griffiths, was killed while escaping an angry white mob with baseball bats after exiting the New Park pizzeria. The mob had earlier tried to chase him and his black friends out of the neighborhood. Unsurprisingly, this was only one of the stories that Lee drew from to write “Do The Right Thing”. This story is sadly familiar nearly 30 years later.

In 2016, amidst the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and a never-ending list of unarmed African Americans being killed by police, the film is even more relevant. In 2015, young black men were nine times more likely to be killed at the hands of police than other Americans, and 2016 looks to be on par. In a South Africa where the police killed 34 miners in Marikana for striking for a better life, and where the politics of representation and ownership are still unresolved, the tragic trajectory of “Do The Right Thing” sends chills down your spine.

When the film was released, journalists feared it would spark race riots and hate crimes. There were even warnings issued to white people to avoid seeing the film. Instead, it caused a nation to reflect, and affirmed the black experience around the world. Despite critical and fan acclaim, the film was mostly snubbed by the Academy Awards in 1990, receiving two nominations for Best Writing and Best Supporting Actor (Danny Aiello).

Tellingly, Best Picture went to “Driving Miss Daisy”, which Ed Guerrero calls

the paternalist problem picture with its long-suffering black servant … The contrasts between Morgan Freeman’s rendering of an elderly, humble and enduring Negro servant in “Driving Miss Daisy” and Spike Lee’s portrayal of the feckless, urban youth Mookie could not have been greater in the 1989 Oscar year.

Last year Lee finally won his Oscar at the Academy’s annual Governor’s Awards, an honorary nod for his contribution to cinema.

Filmically, there is so much more to be said of “Do The Right Thing”: its beautiful cinematography, it’s on-point casting (Rosie Perez’s debut as Tina, and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as an elderly couple) and its belligerent dialogue (“I’m just a struggling black man trying to keep his dick hard in a cruel and harsh world!”).

The film often breaks the “fourth wall” – the imaginary “wall” that exists between actors and the audience – making us aware of its construction, like in Raheem’s dreamlike love/hate soliloquy and the racial hatred montage. Watching it all these years later, perhaps what’s most impressive is how fresh the film still feels, even down to the classic hip-hop and “Afro-centric” clothes and haircuts (there are many Buggin’ Outs walking the streets of my home city of Johannesburg as we speak).

“Do The Right Thing” was a challenge to Hollywood’s cultural hegemony. Lee fought to get the story told on his terms, exchanging larger financial support for his artistic vision. Most importantly, the film doesn’t offer neat answers, but rather important questions, which haven’t lost any of their urgency today. As a filmmaker, one can only hope to create work with such long-lasting effect.

*This post first appeared on The Conversation Africa. It is republished here with their kind permission.

On Safari

Image by limeabeans via Flickr.com

While we would like to go full steam year round, the fact that we have day jobs (for example, I work as a professor), mean we take a break from the site every summer. Officially we went on break Friday, July 16th (we set up you up with a Sierra Leone-connected mix). However, in honor of one of our patron saints, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (not the Hollywood version, but the more radical, contradictory Mandela) whose birthday it is today (he would have been 98 years old), we’re making the break official. Don’t worry, we’ll cook up some stuff for the fall and we’ll be back on September 1. In the meantime, you can go potter around the website and catch up on our archive. If you have really bad withdrawal symptoms, check in occasionally at our social media media (Facebook here, here and , Instagram and Twitter here, here and here). See you in the Fall.

Music Break No.98 – The Freetown Sound Edition

This, the final music break before Africa is a Country takes a month-long break itself, is inspired by the rise of two artists on the international pop scene. Blood Orange and Sampha are two London-raised artists with Sierra Leonean roots, currently making waves on both sides of the Atlantic. When checking out NY-based music and culture magazine The Fader recently, I noticed that it featured Sampha on the cover of the latest issue, and touted Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound as “Xanax for these jittery days.” These news items appeared alongside a feature on my own ocean-spanning Sierra Leonean project the Kondi Band. So in celebration of this serendipitous occasion, I present to you a playlist (hit play below, sit back and enjoy!) of up and coming international artists that you may or may not have realized have roots in the tiny West African country of Sierra Leone.

Music Break No.98 – The Freetown Sound Edition

1) Berlin-based (former NYC roommate of mine) Lamin Fofana opens us up with a blessing from his Sci-fi and Fantasy released First Symphony EP. 2) Up next is Blood Orange’s 80s flavored, New York featuring video for “Augustine” 3) Talented, singer, songwriter, and pianist Sampha performs live in the BBC Radio One studio. 4) German reggae superstar Patrice has Sierra Leonean roots, and draws a direct cultural line connecting Sierra Leone and Jamaica. 5) Forget de diamond, today Sierra Leone’s proudest export (one we share with Ghana) has to be the one Idris Elba. Here he is teaming up with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis for “Dance Off.” 6) A couple years back when I got connected to Young Fathers’ Alloysious Massaquoi via email, I couldn’t help but notice his familiar and common Sierra Leonean last name. It turns out that while his official bio states that he moved from Liberia to Scotland as a child, in fact, his father moved to Liberia from Sierra Leone (and our fathers were classmates in school). So, welcome home to Sierra Leone Ally! 7) Detroit-based blues rock singer Mayaeni recently signed to Roc Nation management, and in celebration released the above video for “Million n’1.” 8) David Moinina Sengeh has been featured in the Music Break before, but I couldn’t leave this Boston-based multi-talented Sierra Leonean artist out of this special edition! 9) World Music artist Seydu spent many years living in Spain, where I came across his music at a local record store years ago. I believe he has since relocated back to Freetown, and his recent musical output has been a celebration of that homecoming. 10) And lastly, Fela! the musical was a huge success across the world, but maybe not everyone knows about the Sierra Leonean roots of the person portraying the musical’s chief protagonist, Mr. Sahr Ngaujah!

And one last HBO-style cliffhanger bonus clip to leave you this August break. Check out this intense trailer for “Flowers”, a new short film partnership between Sierra Leonean-American filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu and Yvonne Shirley!

See you all in September!

The Empire Strikes Back (or How Africa won Euro 2016 for Portugal)

In the 109th minute of the most important match of his career, Éderzito António Macedo Lopes, or simply “Éder,” rifled a low shot past French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris to place Portugal in a position to win the 2016 Euro Cup, an achievement the team would realize some ten minutes later. From my Lisbon apartment and, even more loudly outside my window, the raucous sounds of unbridled elation abruptly shattered the prevailing anxiety. Remarkably, though, given Portugal’s proud history in the sport, this victory garnered the country its first major footballing championship.

Portugal finished third in the 1966 World Cup, led by the great Eusébio, and decades later the so-called “golden generation” of Portuguese players, Luís Figo most prominent among them, lost in the 2004 Euro Cup final in Lisbon, in heartbreaking fashion to a Greek side that played some of the most efficaciously painful football ever witnessed. I was living in Portugal at the time, and can confirm that the nation mourned, profoundly, at the final whistle and for some time thereafter. Essentially the same Portuguese squad finished fourth at the 2006 World Cup, but many of the talented players retired in subsequent years and the team consequently suffered, while still experiencing some success at the major tournaments.

All of these squads, or selecções, as they’re known, featured African-born or African-descendant players from Portugal’s former colonies or now independent Lusophone African nations. Portugal was one of the first countries to utilize naturalized Africans in its national teams (second only to the French, whose use of such players has received significantly more attention), deploying these athletes in earnest beginning in the 1950s. In that decade, stars such as Matateu, Mário Wilson, and Hilário, each of whom hailed from Mozambique, began suiting up for the selecção; the legendary Eusébio would make his debut for the national team in 1961. Yet, despite the individual successes of these illustrious players and the numerous club titles they accumulated, they were never able to secure a trophy to parade through the streets of Lisbon. Indeed, only after Guinean-born Éder fired his historic shot did Portugal – as a multiracial squad and, arguably, nation – finally achieve this elusive objective.

If Portugal was an unlikely champion, Éder was an even more unlikely hero. Born in Bissau, the capital city of the former Portuguese colony of Guiné (now the country of Guinea-Bissau), Éder relocated to Portugal as a child and eventually established himself as a solid player in Portugal’s first division, enjoying his best years with Braga. He’s currently contracted to French club Lille, following a poor spell at English side Swansea. But, at 28, he’s heading into the twilight of his career, at least as a striker. Yet, he played an instrumental role in doing what even the incomparable Eusébio was unable to achieve in his otherwise trophy-littered career.

Éder, as a player with African roots on this iteration of the selecção, was certainly not alone. Arguably, 18-year-old Renato Sanches, who was named the Euro 2016 “Young Player of the Tournament,” made the most important contributions. The son of a Cape Verdean mother and Sãotoméan father, Sanches’ performance during Portugal’s 1-0 extra-time victory against Croatia earned him the Man of the Match award, while also helping to propel the squad through the ensuing knock-out rounds. In fact, Sanches’ talent and potential have already prompted German heavyweight, Bayern Munich, to pay his former club, Lisbon-based Benfica, a record transfer fee to lure him to Bavaria.

Meanwhile, Angolan-born William Carvalho was also a steady presence in Portugal’s championship side. As a defensive midfielder, he played a key role in anchoring a very stingy Portuguese defense, which, remarkably, yielded only a solitary goal during its four knock-out stage matches. Constantly rumored to be a primary target of the major Premiere League clubs, Carvalho may well be ready to take the next step in his career, but for now he remains a rock in the middle of Lisbon-based Sporting’s midfield. Cape Verde-born Nani was also vital to the success of the selecção. Playing as a forward on a squad with only modest attacking ambitions, Nani still managed to score three times (Portugal scored only nine goals in seven games, with three of these strikes coming in an exciting draw against Hungary). And, perhaps, most importantly, once Portugal’s biggest star, Cristiano Ronaldo, left the final against France after only 25 minutes, Nani held the ball up well and interacted nicely with substitute Ricardo Quaresma, generating what little in the way of attacking football the squad could muster. João Mário, also of African descent, was seemingly everywhere during the tournament, though his performances could often be characterized by endeavor rather than results. Danilo, born in Guinea-Bissau, and Eliseu, whose mother is Cape Verdean, also logged important minutes at the tournament.

Although this collection of players will certainly not be the most celebrated in Portugal’s more-than-60-year tradition of picking players of African descent, this group, which featured both direct and indirect connections to the former colonial empire, did strike. And when it mattered most: in the 109th minute of the final. The empire had finally struck for Portugal in a way that no previous generation of African footballers had in tournaments of this magnitude. Indeed, in this manner, and in many other ways, the empire endures – much to the chagrin of the French squad and the more than 65 million French citizens who were hoping to avoid the fate of Portugal’s 2004 Euro Cup squad, which similarly lost 1-0 in the final match, as the host nation, and by an identical 1-0 score line. If only the 2016 Euro Cup final had been in Athens.

Fittingly, on their flight back from France to Lisbon, the Portuguese selecção posed for a group photograph. Huddled around the prized Euro Cup, a photograph of Eusébio was propped up next to it. Finally.

The Empire Strikes Back (or How Africa won Euro 2016 for Portugal )

In the 109th minute of the most important match of his career, Éderzito António Macedo Lopes, or simply “Éder,” rifled a low shot past French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris to place Portugal in a position to win the 2016 Euro Cup, an achievement the team would realize some ten minutes later. From my Lisbon apartment and, even more loudly outside my window, the raucous sounds of unbridled elation abruptly shattered the prevailing anxiety. Remarkably, though, given Portugal’s proud history in the sport, this victory garnered the country its first major footballing championship.

Portugal finished third in the 1966 World Cup, led by the great Eusébio, and decades later the so-called “golden generation” of Portuguese players, Luís Figo most prominent among them, lost in the 2004 Euro Cup final in Lisbon, in heartbreaking fashion to a Greek side that played some of the most efficaciously painful football ever witnessed. I was living in Portugal at the time, and can confirm that the nation mourned, profoundly, at the final whistle and for some time thereafter. Essentially the same Portuguese squad finished fourth at the 2006 World Cup, but many of the talented players retired in subsequent years and the team consequently suffered, while still experiencing some success at the major tournaments.

All of these squads, or selecções, as they’re known, featured African-born or African-descendant players from Portugal’s former colonies or now independent Lusophone African nations. Portugal was one of the first countries to utilize naturalized Africans in its national teams (second only to the French, whose use of such players has received significantly more attention), deploying these athletes in earnest beginning in the 1950s. In that decade, stars such as Matateu, Mário Wilson, and Hilário, each of whom hailed from Mozambique, began suiting up for the selecção; the legendary Eusébio would make his debut for the national team in 1961. Yet, despite the individual successes of these illustrious players and the numerous club titles they accumulated, they were never able to secure a trophy to parade through the streets of Lisbon. Indeed, only after Guinean-born Éder fired his historic shot did Portugal – as a multiracial squad and, arguably, nation – finally achieve this elusive objective.

If Portugal was an unlikely champion, Éder was an even more unlikely hero. Born in Bissau, the capital city of the former Portuguese colony of Guiné (now the country of Guinea-Bissau), Éder relocated to Portugal as a child and eventually established himself as a solid player in Portugal’s first division, enjoying his best years with Braga. He’s currently contracted to French club Lille, following a poor spell at English side Swansea. But, at 28, he’s heading into the twilight of his career, at least as a striker. Yet, he played an instrumental role in doing what even the incomparable Eusébio was unable to achieve in his otherwise trophy-littered career.

Éder, as a player with African roots on this iteration of the selecção, was certainly not alone. Arguably, 18-year-old Renato Sanches, who was named the Euro 2016 “Young Player of the Tournament,” made the most important contributions. The son of a Cape Verdean mother and Sãotoméan father, Sanches’ performance during Portugal’s 1-0 extra-time victory against Croatia earned him the Man of the Match award, while also helping to propel the squad through the ensuing knock-out rounds. In fact, Sanches’ talent and potential have already prompted German heavyweight, Bayern Munich, to pay his former club, Lisbon-based Benfica, a record transfer fee to lure him to Bavaria.

Meanwhile, Angolan-born William Carvalho was also a steady presence in Portugal’s championship side. As a defensive midfielder, he played a key role in anchoring a very stingy Portuguese defense, which, remarkably, yielded only a solitary goal during its four knock-out stage matches. Constantly rumored to be a primary target of the major Premiere League clubs, Carvalho may well be ready to take the next step in his career, but for now he remains a rock in the middle of Lisbon-based Sporting’s midfield. Cape Verde-born Nani was also vital to the success of the selecção. Playing as a forward on a squad with only modest attacking ambitions, Nani still managed to score three times (Portugal scored only nine goals in seven games, with three of these strikes coming in an exciting draw against Hungary). And, perhaps, most importantly, once Portugal’s biggest star, Cristiano Ronaldo, left the final against France after only 25 minutes, Nani held the ball up well and interacted nicely with substitute Ricardo Quaresma, generating what little in the way of attacking football the squad could muster. João Mário, also of African descent, was seemingly everywhere during the tournament, though his performances could often be characterized by endeavor rather than results. Danilo, born in Guinea-Bissau, and Eliseu, whose mother is Cape Verdean, also logged important minutes at the tournament.

Although this collection of players will certainly not be the most celebrated in Portugal’s more-than-60-year tradition of picking players of African descent, this group, which featured both direct and indirect connections to the former colonial empire, did strike. And when it mattered most: in the 109th minute of the final. The empire had finally struck for Portugal in a way that no previous generation of African footballers had in tournaments of this magnitude. Indeed, in this manner, and in many other ways, the empire endures – much to the chagrin of the French squad and the more than 65 million French citizens who were hoping to avoid the fate of Portugal’s 2004 Euro Cup squad, which similarly lost 1-0 in the final match, as the host nation, and by an identical 1-0 score line. If only the 2016 Euro Cup final had been in Athens.

Fittingly, on their flight back from France to Lisbon, the Portuguese selecção posed for a group photograph. Huddled around the prized Euro Cup, a photograph of Eusébio was propped up next to it. Finally.