Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 315

The oil curse

‘So rich, and yet so poor’—that’s the juxtaposition most journalists turn to when they decide to report on the Democratic Republic of Congo. Slaves, rubber, metals—the DRC has been looted for these things on an almost continuous basis since the 17th century. The legacy of this exploitative process has been the endemic violence and instability that defines the Congo in the collective imagination. And unfortunately, that process isn’t even close to completion: $24 trillion worth of mineral deposits still have yet to be tapped, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. And, as we’ve learned recently, the soil has one especially important gift left to give.

Two announcements over the past year and a half have begun a new, and potentially lethal chapter in the history of resource exploitation in the Congo. The first is that Netherlands-based Fleurette, owned by Israeli billionaire (and, according to Haartez, Congolese citizen) Dan Gertler, said in August of last year that up to 3 billion barrels of oil were sitting under the DRC’s side of Lake Albert. If it was all recoverable—no one knows for sure yet if it is—that’s a haul almost the size of South Sudan’s entire reserves. The second is that UK-registered, US-founded SOCO international said earlier this month that (never mind the public pledge it made last year to cease exploration) seismic data has confirmed that yes, there is in fact oil under Virunga National Park.

The Congolese government has already begun prodding UNESCO to detach the relevant drilling areas from Virunga (which is a World Heritage Site, and therefore closed to drilling). Production currently stands at around 20,000 barrels a day—about as much as Albania, if you were wondering. Opening up Lake Albert alone could triple that number; if dedicated operations were extended across the entirety of the DRC’s Great Lakes territory, the potential profits would be huge.

But the potential violence would be devastating. “The abduction in 2011 of an oil employee in the Virunga Park, in the Kivus, is a reminder that exploration is taking place in disputed areas where ethnic groups are competing for territorial control and the army and militias are engaged in years of illegally exploiting natural resources,” the International Crisis Group said in a 2012 report. More than 20 militia groups—7 alone in and around Virunga—still operate in North and South Kivu, the eastern provinces that have seen the heaviest fighting. The government has not established anything close to effective control: in just one day last month, 30 soldiers died in battles between the Congolese army and Ugandan Islamists. The militias need sources of revenue to fund their continued survival, and foreign interests have never been shy in coughing up; one of the numerous accusations of misconduct leveled against SOCO is that it colluded with rebel group M23 to gain access to Virunga.

Inter-provincial power balances are at risk, too. Katanga, the southeastern-most of Congo’s provinces, has been the country’s mining center for decades. It won’t give up its economic primacy easily—especially given that its former governor, Moïse Katumbi, has been tapped to be the DRC’s next president. And that’s not even to speak of the international implications. Both Uganda and Rwanda have been heavily involved in the Eastern Congo for years; troops from both countries have been spotted crossing the border into the Congo this year. With Burundi mired in crisis, the risk that the region will descend into full-blown war has grown exponentially.

Drilling will start at some point—the economics are inevitable, and no one at the table has any incentive to prevent it. The only question is whether the Eastern Congo is already too much of a disaster for extractive infrastructure to be laid. Unfortunately, that won’t be much of a consolation to the countless numbers of people whose lives are brutalized by the extraction economy. After all, those same interests proved over the last 20 years that they were willing to do anything—including ending the lives of 6 million people—to satisfy the appetites of global commodity markets.

*Image Credit: Martin Harvey (World Wildlife Fund)

Artists in Accra are using kiosks to rethink space in the city

Zoom down the Kanda Highway in Accra at night and you might miss the series of kiosks that line the pavement, facing the grand mosque that overlooks them. Crawl through traffic on that same road the next morning as cars head towards the government ministries and head offices in Accra Central and you’ll see those kiosks transformed. From light bulbs and plug sockets to biscuits and soft drinks, collectively the unassuming structures – often used for lodging at night – become a centre of commerce during the day.

Ghana has a housing crisis and Accra – the country’s capital and the most favored destination for urban migration – with its luxury high rise apartments and cookie-cutter townhouses is increasingly marginalizing those who are far from able to get a piece of the real estate pie. When government and politicians fail to address social issues that tend to have a more lasting effect on those with the least resources who picks up the baton to make note of these issues?

At the end of October 2015, writer and cultural historian Nana Oforiatta-Ayim opened her research centre, ANO, with an exhibition ‘KIOSK Culture’. The exhibition sought to address how the country can alleviate its housing shortage by capitalising on the structures that already exist rather than execute suspicious reactionary demolitions across the capital that render thousands homeless.

Works from architects and artists who seek to explore and investigate ways in which kiosks and containers can be upgraded and utilised for living, trigger thoughts on how a very real societal problem can be viewed through the prism of art. “The whole idea of the centre is to show how culture impacts society and how society expands by culture,” says Oforiatta-Ayim. “You can say things in art that can reflect on what’s happening in the bigger picture, in all of society, in this clear and concentrated way,” Oforiatta-Ayim reflects. “When it goes back into society something happens. It’s like alchemy. Sometimes you don’t feel the effect straight away but I still think it’s still powerful.”

The exhibition in Accra is a starting point but a key factor is that Oforiatta-Ayim plans to move it across the country, building on existing structures to make it accessible to the wider population in what could be described as an open interactive exhibition.

The kiosk in the ANO exhibition is immediately recognisable for many. Transformed from its normal function it becomes a gallery in its own right, recognisable and approachable to its visitors. Inside the kiosk are case studies by the architect Latifah Idriss whose work took her across the country to study and develop blue prints for sustainable kiosks for living and working in.

Another architect DK Osseo Asare displays his sketches of existing structures he has created by up-cycling bamboo to fabricate water tanks, performance stages and canopies. Next door, artist Yaw Brobbey Kyei drawings wallpaper the room with his drawings of a myriad of kiosks on cardboard canvases. All the while, the familiar sounds of Accra fill the centre courtesy of a sound installation by Lawrence Baganiah. A film directed by Oforiatta-Ayim following her on her journey through Accra as she curates items from Ga culture for her first kiosk museum, is projected on the walls of the house converted research centre.

These artists are not alone in their quest for social activism. “My work is about the people,” states Ghanaian performance artist Serge Attukwei Clottey whose work highlights political, religious and environmental issues that affect the country. Less focused on getting his work into galleries than he is showing his work publicly he adds: “I invite people to see my work, to touch and see the process.”

When transporting his gallons – sometimes 30 or 40 at a time – from the beach side to his studio Clottey does so on foot with a team of assistants with the gallons on their backs effectively evoking a performance piece that stirs his neighbours and causes them to ask questions about what he is doing.

Festivals like ACCRA[dot]ALT’s Chalewote Street Art Festival brings together contemporary narratives about how the country is developing and how the citizens want it developed through artistic expression that touch on human technology, the environment and reimagined futures.

Back at ANO, if conversation is one step then action is the next. Oforiatta-Ayim hopes to hold discussions beyond the art world that would involve the main stakeholders: those living in kiosks, urban planners and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, then take it to the radio. “The artist is a social educator,” Clottey affirms. “Creating relationships and awareness between objects and the audience.”

*All images credit ANO Ghana

Can Lesotho survive more development?

In Lesotho, the state and the development industry often see development and macroeconomic growth as synonymous. This simplification represents the easy consensus that neoliberalism has won for a very specific view of how aid should benefit poor people.

This view puts economic growth front and center in conversations about development and assume growth is the driver of poverty alleviation: Economic growth is seen as the antidote to terrorism, the goal of foreign development assistance, and a result of lowered inequality. It also valorizes macroeconomic growth and argues that Lesotho is a success story in the neoliberal ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. This is marginally better than a racist, neocolonial Afro-pessimism that darkly hints that Africans are unable to govern or develop themselves, but not focused on policies that help bring about overall gains in life outcomes for poor people in Lesotho or anywhere else.

US development policy toward Lesotho has always focused on macroeconomic growth. During the Cold War this was the idea behind Modernization Theory—get growth to ‘take off’ and you will keep countries away from communism and move them toward a prosperous, industrial future.

This continues today with two major US development programs in Lesotho, the recently-renewed African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), both focused on macroeconomic indicators and ‘growth.’ AGOA explicitly links growth and opportunity in its name, while the MCC’s development philosophy is embedded in its motto, “poverty reduction through economic growth.” AGOA does directly benefit some 40,000 Basotho with formal sector employment in textile mills (owned mostly by Chinese, Taiwanese, and South African companies). Most of the textile employees are women, and a sizable number are migrants from the rural areas who were forced to leave their families behind.

The MCC, whose infrastructure improvements are ubiquitous throughout the country, pumped nearly $360 million into Lesotho from 2008 to 2013, with more planned. Much of the MCC’s work has focused on fairly unimpeachable water and health infrastructure projects. Another sizable portion, however, has focused on market-led land reform, which is having negative impacts on some of Lesotho’s vulnerable people.

Despite post-Millennium development programs like MCC and AGOA, most Basotho still live in poverty, and average life expectancy is 49 years. The purchasing power of Basotho has dropped as the South African Rand has cratered recently. Even $360 million in MCC money did not prevent a GNI decline in Lesotho last year. Recently, the IMF told the government to cut spending as revenues are dropping—in other words, even growth is not happening right now.

Lesotho’s economic issues are exacerbated by political and military tensions – an attempted coup in August 2014 happened after nearly two years of targeted violence. In the midst of this unrest, SADC brokered negotiations that brought about early elections in February 2015. Early glimmers of optimism in the electoral results have been snuffed out by the continuing security threats, with the former head of the army killed and the opposition boycotting Parliament, claiming its leaders cannot safely return from South Africa in the current climate. The US, through the American ambassador and other US diplomats, is attempting to leverage aid to pressure the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili to ease political tension in the country. High-ranking State Department officials have made clear that the continuation of AGOA and the MCC in Lesotho is contingent on relative peace and stability in the Mountain Kingdom’s politics and security forces. These threats have heartened the opposition and demoralized government supporters, who all accept the basic premise that aid is political and that those controlling the funds get to call the shots in Lesotho.

As a result, people have lost faith in the ability of government to bring about development, with strong majorities in the latest Afrobarometer survey data saying that government is underperforming in creating jobs, supplying water, ensuring access to adequate food, electricity, and roads. The general perception is that development monies are skimming and funneled to friends, or that companies have to pay bribes to receive tenders for infrastructure contracts. Hence, citizens do not trust the government to deliver on the aid and development they desperately want to see in the country. With such widespread dissatisfaction with the services provided by a government that most identify as corrupt, it is not surprising that only 32% of Basotho are “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” with how democracy works in Lesotho, as ordinary citizens perceive development efforts as only benefitting the rich and connected. This perception was recently reinforced by the SADC-run Phumaphi Commission which unearthed unseemly details about how politicians and the security forces spend their time jockeying for power instead of governing.

The philosophy of the MCC and AGOA too often rely on the unproven logic of trickle-down economics and assume competent governance. This primary focus on growth as the driver of poverty reduction is especially troubling when direct cash transfers have proved remarkably effective at providing opportunity and poverty reduction in Lesotho, and providing free health services has dramatically increased the number of women giving birth at hospitals and thus decreasing maternal and infant mortality.

The now-public critique of development only benefiting the well-connected in Lesotho needs to be taken seriously. Addressing this has the potential to help rebuild trust in government and reshape power structures in a deeply unequal society (in addition to making the delivery of aid and development more effective). But even more important to Lesotho’s economic viability than American aid packages are the labor and border policies of South Africa that contrive to keep out Basotho workers. Real “development” would address this border impasse, focus aid on raising household income for the poor and otherwise vulnerable, provide direct health and education services with fees eliminated, and provide an opportunity for substantive poverty reduction and increased life expectancy in Lesotho.

Cooking for the New Year with Chef Pierre Thiam

When you leaf through chef Pierre Thiam’s Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes from the Source to the Bowl, you’ll be rewarded with sumptuous images of food that will draw you back to the kitchen, armed with a renewed desire to be adventurous – and healthful – with flavorsome food. But you’ll also read for the pleasure of learning about a whole way of life in a way that no food blog or Youtube video on the Internet will be able to fulfill. There are recipe for various fish stews and vegetables with subtle differences in seasonings, but also  accompanying stories about the problems caused by illegal, commercial trawl-net fishing that is depleting the food sources that the Senegalese have depended on. There are recipes that trace the influence of Vietnamese cuisine to that of Senegal, as well as the ways in which Senegalese staples, like seafood-okra stew, soupou kandja, has clear linkages to Louisiana gumbo. And there is the story of Diallo, the octogenarian from Casamance with rippling, lean muscles of a body-builder-cum-yogi, who still climbs palm trees as tall as fifty feet to collect palm fruit clusters weighing up to ten kilos (or twenty-two pounds), then processes the fruit by boiling it and pounding it to extract palm oil.

Thiam is a natural cartographer and historian of food, aware of the fact that his global (and mainly American) audiences won’t know about regional specifics, never mind that each region of imagined “Africa” has specific food chemistries determined by trade routes, traditions culled from immediate neighbors and occasional visitors, proximity to sea and rainfall region, and yes, to the presence of the colonial past. He begins by explaining that the bowl is the central metaphor for Senegalese – and African – food traditions: “Teranga is what Senegal is,” he noted; “The bowl is the vessel from which we eat. We eat around the bowl in Senegal…Eating is something that’s not done in a separate way…You always stop everything when it’s mealtime and everyone gets together.”

Thiebou Jenn: fish, vegetables, and rice. This is the national dish of Senegal, and is traditionally eaten from a communal platter. Image courtesy of Evan Sung.

Thiam emphasizes the fact that long before the arrival of the French, Senegalese people had developed intricate food traditions, and could always feed themselves well. Their cuisine is based on seafood, grains local to West Africa (indigenous to both wet and arid regions), and fresh greens in which the umami of fermented conch, smoked fish, and the burn of scotch bonnet peppers came together in complex sauces. He refers time and again to pre-colonial foods that continue to feed Senegal, but are largely forgotten in urban areas. The grain Fonio, for instance – a gluten-free, protein-rich grain that does not “embarrass the cook” – is now rarely found in the city, though it is still eaten regularly in the countryside.

[image error]“Diallo from Casamance, the octogenarian palm-oil producer. Image courtesy of Evan Sung.

Modern city people believe, explains Thiam, that what came from the West was better; so they eat baguettes, and broken rice (this is rice that is discarded in Asian markets) that began to be imported to Senegal from France’s East Asian colony, Indochina (Vietnam). He is quick to note that the Senegalese have done “beautiful things” with broken rice (witness thiebu jenn or thieboudienne, for instance), but points out that they had their own varieties of rice – including the prized grains of the variety Oryza glaberrima, originating in the south of Senegal, in Casamance, where his family is from. This variety was taken from coastal West Africa to the Americas during the slaving period, and became a significant crop in the Carolinas. (Analyses of the genome sequence of O. glaberrima support the hypothesis it was domesticated in a single region along the Niger river; it is also a different species from Asian rice, according to research published in the journal Nature.)

Besides being a skilled interpreter of culture and history, Thiam is able to do that miracle that most trained chefs cannot – translate traditional methods for what a modern home cook with somewhat limited resources and skills can put together. His recipes are blueprints for what I plan to cook in the New Year. If you are lucky, and can reciprocate in some way, you might be able to wheedle an invite to a meal at my home, guided by Thiam’s deeply knowledgeable, yet joyful and easy-to-follow instructions.

*Read ‘kola’s interview with chef Pierre Thiam, back in 2013, here.

They herded us into the aircraft like cattle

Traveling while African is a new series of commentaries, articles, and artwork about the vicissitudes of carrying an African passport—inside and outside Africa. Our hashtag is #TravelAfrican. Send your visual and written reflections of no more than 750 words to series founder and curator, Robtel Neajai Pailey at travelafrican@africasacountry.com. To launch the series, Robtel reflects on her recent journey from Senegal to the UK via Spain.

I thought I’d become immune to the indignities of traveling with an African passport, but an encounter last month proved me wrong.

After a series of meetings in Dakar, I travelled back to London via Madrid on a red-eye Iberia Airlines flight. Disembarking from the plane in Madrid in the early morning hours, I got separated from my white male European colleagues—an Austrian and Brit—and was directed by a stern-looking Spanish security agent to the “RSU” section of the airport to await a connecting flight to the UK. The flashing information screens designated “HJK” as the lounge area for my departure, however, so I resolved to go there.

In the surprisingly empty “All Other Passports/Non-EU Citizens” line, I approached two immigration officials dressed in dark uniforms wearing looks of disapproval. One of the officers, a bearded man with a cropped haircut, directed me to the “RSU” section of the airport. It was way too early in the morning for mishaps, so I tried to explain in my very broken, secondary school Spanish that according to the departure screens mounted in the air like flying saucers, I was supposed to be at the “HJK” gates instead.

Visibly annoyed, the bearded man flipped through the pages of my passport and informed me that I was clearly in the wrong place. He scribbled “RSU” at the bottom of my boarding pass and motioned for me to go back from whence I’d come.

Confused, I felt like a child who had been unfairly scolded. This man had no doubt seen the blue Schengen visa in my passport, which was valid for another seven months. By law, I was not only authorized to transit through Madrid but I could have gallivanted around Spain if I so chose. Nothing should have stopped me from passing through that immigration threshold undeterred.

Yet bigotry did.

I walked through the winding airport corridors to “RSU”, found an information counter and asked the cheerful woman at the booth which gates generally served London flights. She directed me to S48, but I was still unconvinced. When I received an e-mail alert from Iberia announcing H8 as my departure gate, I finally felt vindicated.

Moments later, however, the gate changed to S48, where I observed that the dozen or so passengers milling around were all black, all African. Suddenly, a petite woman barked at us aggressively, “Hurry, because you are going to delay our flight!!!” We had been sitting patiently for at least 15 minutes waiting to board the plane, so her outburst seemed misplaced. We were led down a nondescript stairwell to a bus, and the driver meandered through the airport tarmac with a succession of sharp turns. The whole thing felt eerie and clandestine at the crack of dawn, as if we were smuggled contraband.

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of clumsy movement and activity. The flight attendants herded us into the aircraft like cattle, insisting that we quickly prepare for departure. Confronted with limited overhead storage and a cramped aisle passage, we struggled to stash our luggage and find assigned seats swiftly. I caught a glimpse of my British colleague, and whispered that I had no idea what was going on. I also noticed the sea of mostly white faces staring back at me in confusion.

Then it hit me like a forceful blow to the head.

The Spanish authorities had deliberately erected two access points to the aircraft at diametrically opposite ends of the airport: one for people who looked like me (S48), and the other for people who looked like my colleague (H8). I felt rage and sadness first, followed by amusement. It seemed both appalling and laughable that they would go to such lengths to demean us, especially when Europeans generally travel effortlessly to and through Africa with their humanity intact.

Novelist Taiye Selasi gave an interesting TED talk about how our nationalities should not define how we engage with the world and how the world engages with us. Nina Glick-Schiller, a prominent migration scholar, previously took the argument further by arguing that academics should refrain from practicing what she calls “methodological nationalism” by privileging the Westphalian nation-state as the sole unit of critical analysis.

But no matter how much we believe nationalities are social constructs that keep certain people in their place, we can’t escape migration regimes sanctioned by nation states. We can’t ignore geo-politics that rank countries along tiers of importance, in which the unconscionable actions of some nations appear more legitimate simply because they have economic and military might. We can’t dismiss mobility restrictions that deliberately humiliate one group while honoring another.

Truth be told, the age-old desire for movement is under threat more than ever before for Africans and some non-Africans alike. Muslims across the globe have understood for decades that even a Western passport does not shield one from explicit profiling or proposed bans. And as much as I’d like to be considered a “human being” first, inside and outside of international travel, my Liberian passport and all the social qualifiers that come with it—my race, gender, class—will continue to determine how I experience the world.

Yet, I neither pledge allegiance to the 50 stars of the United States nor genuflect to the queen of England, so the world must also engage with me on my own terms. Call me impractically defiant or defiantly impractical, but I don’t think I should have to change my nationality to travel with dignity. I simply will not.

Instead, it’s the built-in biases of international migration that must be interrogated. Not my passport. Mobility is my birthright.

The world already had a refugee crisis

On December 16, 2015 Jordanian police stormed a makeshift camp of Sudanese refugees located in central Amman outside the offices of the United High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They rounded up some 800 men, women and children and forced them into a detention center, beating those who resisted and later reportedly using tear gas.

The next day, Jordan started deporting the Sudanese refugees with military precision to Khartoum. To force asylum-seekers back to the country they fled is a brash violation of international law. But Jordan didn’t seem to care much about the unenforceable dictates of international human rights standards, perhaps calculating that the international community would be afraid to rally around the Sudanese in fear of the repercussions for the 600,000 Syrian refugees also living in the country. By all accounts they were right – despite a few public statements, including a noticeably weak one from UNHCR – no one exerted significant pressure to prevent the deportations.

The Sudanese refugees had camped outside the UNHCR offices in Amman for over a month to demand improved living conditions. The Sudanese protestors originally entered Jordan hopeful that the war and persecution they fled in Sudan was behind them, that after a perilous journey, they entered the perceived warm embrace of the international refugee system, with its new papers and asylum and promises of a life free from the icy-clutches of fear. Clearly, the Jordanian government wanted to send a signal that its hospitality had limits – refugees should be silent and orderly and thankful, not audacious enough to ask for what they were entitled to.

It seems everyone working with, for or against refugees is making a trade these days. Whose lives count as refugees is up for debate across Europe as countries try to tinker with asylum policies and to kick certain people out for those they publicly accept as legitimate. But such equations never take into account what it would mean to actually provide resettlement for the thousands of refugees waiting in the Middle East, Africa and Asia—people who have no chance of going home in the near future and may spend the rest of their lives in refugee camps.

According to UNHCR, there are now 14.4 million refugees worldwide. Over one million of these refugees urgently need resettlement. Most of these refugees are from 14 countries: Myanmar, Iraq, Bhutan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia and Columbia. (And while UNHCR’s numbers take into account some Palestinian refugees, they leave out 5.1 million Palestinian refugees living in neighboring countries, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.) We do not often hear about the refugees from some of these countries, but they are there waiting for resettlement nonetheless.

If you are a refugee, resettlement means you are moved from a refugee camp to a new country that has agreed to offer you residence. Resettlement is the opportunity to re-build your life; for your children to go to school continuously, for adults to have work permits, and the knowledge you are safe, or at least safe in a certain sense, as hate crimes are also on the rise. Resettlement does not always mean your family can come with you – Sweden for instance, does not continuously recognize the right to family reunification, and there are indications other European countries are going to do the same.

For the past three years, the U.S. has accepted 70,000 refugees for resettlement – more than any other country. The Obama administration announced in 2015 that the U.S. would increase this number to 85,000 in 2016 and 100,000 in 2017, which many found contemptible because the U.S. could afford to take many more. But being able to afford refugee re-settlement and having the political capital to do so are two very different things. Norway, one of the world’s wealthiest nations with only 5 million people and extremely low population density, normally accepts only 1,620 refugees a year (outside of the additional refugees they pledged to take in from Syria). Some countries – including the Gulf nations – have not signed the UN Refugee Convention and officially accept 0 refugees per year.

With chances for resettlement globally slim without major political and policy change from wealthy countries, and the likelihood dwindling that refugees from many countries can safely return to their homes in the next several years, the only other option for these refugees is the hope that host countries will allow them to become real members of society – able to work, live in apartments, study and leave the camps behind.

But this too is increasingly a dream. Over and over again, host countries refuse to allow refugees freedom of movement or the chance to integrate. Ethiopia for instance, requires all refugees to live in camps. In Gambella, these camps are often on undesirable land in flood-prone areas. Kenya has forced Somali refugees who settled in Nairobi back to the infamous Dadaab camp. Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon deny refugees the right to work. Each region is playing a face-off with the other. Just last week, Jordan admitted thousands of Syrian refugees were stranded at the border.

Does the fact that the media only covers certain refugees and refugee crises feed into these games, or is it just that our compassion has limits, or both? It’s enough to care about one refugee population. It’s enough to make a donation to help one group of refugees, and then go about the day without a care for the rest. Charity is easier than political change –a spare room rather than a building, a donated jacket instead of a movement.

Some Eritrean women are so desperate to make it to Europe as opposed to staying in a refugee camp that they first receive injectable contraception before undertaking dangerous smuggling routes – because they are aware they are likely to be raped. We often do not hear their stories, but they are accumulating, forming the history of a singular crisis and of the crises, one we are all bearing witness to, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

On Safari

For all the serious stuff we wrote or filmed about, tweeted or Facebooked this year (we’ll have a “Blogging Gold of 2015” in the new year, promise), this was undoubtedly the year that Prince Akeem, Queen Aoleon, King Jaffe Joffer and the “African” Kingdom of Zamunda made a spectacular comeback. Whether it was Snoop Dogg’s wife throwing a “Coming to Africa” birthday party for their son (TMZ has the video evidence), rapper Jidenna (!) throwing his “Nigerian Renaissance Ball,” Action Bronson reprising the whole film as a music video (Chance the Rapper played the Cuba Gooding Jnr. role) and, most notably, the Knowles-Carters borrowing not once–but twice–first in May (we couldn’t help noticing their inspiration) or at Halloween (above), everyone seemed to be in on Eddie Murphy and John Landis’s 1988 send-up of African stereotypes. Well, not everyone: For example, Kandi from TV’s Real Housewives of Atlanta recreated scenes from Coming to America, including rose petals and real lions, for her wedding: “I wanted to do something inspired by Africa,” she said. Nevertheless, the upshot of all of this is that it is so 1988 to go after bad Western media representations of Africa and Africans. We dispense with that on Twitter. There are more important things going on. Of course, someone is probably planning to write a blog post (calling out celebrities who can’t find Zamunda on a map) or a dense academic paper (quoting Baudrillard or Stuart Hall) about what Zamunda stands for or to decipher Randy Watson’s homilies. While they figure that out (we’re onto something else in the meantime, just check the Archive), I’ll take the opportunity to say thank you to our editorial team and contributors (everybody works for free with some trips, speaking engagements or paid freelance work thrown as occasional reward, but mostly we work because we believe in this project) for staying the course. We’re exhausted. So, we’ll be on a break from tomorrow till January 13th. Here’s to 2016.

Hipsters Dont Dance Top World Carnival Collabs of 2015

After doing a year of monthly roundups for the best in the World Carnival sound in 2015, we have noticed that Afropop in particular has had a stellar year. Perhaps most noticeably, it was Wizkid exploding onto the international stage that drew our collective attention, and we expect bigger things from him next year. Another noticeable trend was South African producers becoming the go to guys for Afropop hits, helping shape the sound across the continent and diaspora. Additionally, so many other great inspiring African sounds from Lisbon to Lagos became staples in clubs across the world.

Much of the successes in 2015 for African artists have come from high profile collaborations. These became the go to strategy for artists trying and become the next break out artist in markets unfamiliar with them or their national sound. This trend has been the general order of the day for artists from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, and beyond, landing music from the continent in markets as far removed from the sphere of daily continental influence as Colombia, Trinidad, The UK, and that great specter: USA.

Since so many artists from across Africa and the diaspora ended up working together to bring us some of the most exciting tunes of the year, here are our top ten world carnival collaborations of 2015. Here’s to 2016 being even bigger!

1. Wizkid feat Drake & Skepta x Ojuelegba Remix

2. Ayo Jay & Fetty Wap x Your Number

3. Kwamz & Flava feat R2Bees x Wo Onane No remix

4. Frenchie Feat Naira Marley x Cele

5. Boddhi Satva feat Nelson Freitas x May Heart

6. Edanos feat Timaya x Whine For Me

7. Rundown feat Wizkid x Bend Down Pause

8. Patoranking feat Wande Coal x My Woman My Everything

9. Leriq feat Wizkid x Say You Love Me

10. Frenchy Le Boss feat Giggs x Flexing

Fanon at Ninety

“In no way is it up to me to prepare for the world coming after me,” Frantz Fanon writes in his classic first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952). “I am resolutely a man of my time.” Yet, over sixty years later, the presence and influence of Fanon appears to be everywhere, from student movements in South Africa to racial violence in Ferguson, Missouri, and other parts of the United States. Fanon’s interrogation of racial attitudes—white and black alike—and his commitment to the Algerian independence struggle—a country not his by birth—continue to offer lessons for our political present. His arguments speak to the persistent problem of racism, but, more significantly, the importance of activism beyond our own, often self-imposed, limits. I want to stress this last point in particular. Fanon remains vital not only for his bracing anti-racism and anti-colonialism, but equally for the less-recognized, empathetic politics of solidarity he cultivated and exemplified. 

Born on the island of Martinique in the French Antilles, Fanon died from cancer at the age of thirty-six in 1961. This year marks his ninetieth birthday. Despite its brevity, Fanon lived a full and complex life, studying under the famed Negritude poet Aimé Césaire, serving in the French resistance during the Second World War, earning a medical degree at the University of Lyon, and circulating with esteemed intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He completed three books, most famously The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which detailed his argument for anti-colonial revolution based on his experiences serving the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during its long struggle against French rule. Published just days before his death, The Wretched of the Earth established Fanon’s reputation.

But Fanon has remained a polarizing figure for many precisely because of his advocacy for armed struggle. His rationalization of anti-colonial violence has served as a source of inspiration and condemnation both, with Hannah Arendt, among other critics, remarking on the “rhetorical excesses” and “irresponsible grandiose statements” of Fanon and his supporters like Sartre, who wrote the preface to The Wretched of the Earth. Violence has consequently been a troublesome topic for Fanon’s admirers—an issue intrinsic to his politics, yet one often handled carefully. Many have correctly pointed out that Fanon defined violence in a specific sense, as a distinct response to the sheer violence of French colonialism. Anti-colonial violence was, in a Sartrean manner of speaking, an anti-violence violence. The colonized of Algeria were faced with a decisive choice: either accept continued dehumanization by a colonial power or fight for their dignity.

But this focus on violence also obscures Fanon’s other contributions. Indeed, his critics often overlook his practice as a psychiatrist in Algeria and Tunisia and his deliberate inclusion in The Wretched of the Earth’s penultimate chapter of medical cases regarding the physical and psychological trauma of total war. Fanon was all too aware of the costs borne by both Algerians and the French, combatants and civilians, women and men, and adults and children, as his diverse set of patients attested.

This recognition of a shared dehumanization is first explored in Black Skin, White Masks. Less appreciated when it first appeared, this book has arguably surpassed its famed successor. As examined by Lewis Gordon, Ato Sekyi-Otu, and Reiland Rabaka, Black Skin, White Masks is primarily concerned with the limits of French citizenship—the fact of blackness in the face of French nonracial claims to the contrary. Though citizenship had been granted to all Martinicans, regardless of race, following the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, Fanon understood, similar to his African-American contemporaries like Richard Wright, that equality was not possible due to his “epidermal” condition.

It is on this point—the juridical promise, yet social limits, of citizenship—that continuities can be drawn between Fanon’s world of the 1950s and our world today. Indeed, the problem of race cut both ways for Fanon. Similar to the mutual dehumanization that resulted from colonialism, Fanon emphasized the mutual dehumanization that resulted from racism. “The black man is not. No more than the white man,” he declared, underscoring the illusory, damning qualities of race, whether as a source of imposed inferiority or feigned superiority.

Black Skin, White Masks is undoubtedly a complex work—his most psychiatric by far—and he does not call for decolonization in the direct manner of his final book. It marks an internal civic critique of France, in a manner akin to Wright and his fellow expatriate James Baldwin toward the United States. Fanon, though fully aware of systemic racism, believed in classic psychiatric fashion that change should begin at the individual level—a point later embraced by Steve Biko, also a former medical student before founding the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s.

Yet Fanon would move beyond this early position as reflected in his personal movements from France, where he studied medicine; to Algeria, where he worked as a psychiatrist; and, finally, to Tunisia, where he spent the rest of his life, except for a brief stay in Accra. By the time of his death, he believed that revolution, at the societal level, was the ultimate solution to the ills introduced by colonialism. But to conclude that Fanon thought violence alone would bring change is both a misreading of his writings on violence, as well as a reductive take on his personal politics.

A less addressed, if conspicuous, aspect of his political life is how Fanon identified with a cause beyond his own background. He was not Algerian, nor an Arab, nor a Muslim by birth. Indeed, he was middle class, received an elite education, and was a French citizen, as cited. Fanon was not of the wretched of the earth. Yet he developed a deep sense of solidarity with the Algerian struggle, based on a mutual history of racial discrimination and colonial chauvinism. An outcome of his contingent internationalism, this radical empathy not only had practical effects on his life direction. This solidarity also forcefully disrupted a politics of difference—by race, nation, culture, and class—established by colonialism. This form of empathetic politics that was grounded in his medical work, informed by his readings in philosophy, and expressed in his political journalism and diplomacy for the FLN actively undermined a colonial order that sought to divide and circumscribe the free will of colonial subjects. Radical empathy thus provided a subterfuge for problems of difference and inferiority introduced by colonialism, beyond the tactics of armed struggle alone.

Fanon did not use the expression “radical empathy.” Though this ethic implicitly emerges in his later writing, its most meaningful expression appears in “actional” (to use a word of his), rather than written, ways. Indeed, philosophy, African and otherwise, too often privileges the written text. Yet this unspoken practice supplied a foundation for Fanon’s understanding of a “new humanism”—a recurring expression in his work that pointed to a world without social distinctions, whether on the basis of race, class, culture, or nation.

In this sense, Fanon’s project remains unfinished—and still relevant today. While some may dismiss such politics as utopian and, thus, too impractical, such criticism neglects the price of non-action, as well as the acute severity of political alternatives—whether violence in its oppositional or institutionalized forms. From Ferguson to South Africa, we can see the continued effects of political indecision, how tragic events that initially appear isolated and contingent can form part of a pattern, become part of a dehumanizing routine. Transcending differences by empathizing with one another—not simply embracing pre-given solidarities of soil or descent, which are often deeply colonial in their inception—provides a different option. Among many principles, perhaps this is Fanon’s most enduring lesson.

Treasure hunt: Colonial ship renews tensions between Spain and Colombia

The house of Habsburg met an end in Spain with the death of Carlos II, who left no heir to the throne. On his testament, he had declared that Felipe V, grandchild of Louis XIV, should be the heir of the throne.

Other kingdoms such as England and the Netherlands saw with preoccupation the power that this alliance between France and Spain could have and, therefore, they decided to support the claims of King Charles the IV of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Hungary and Bohemia, based on his blood ties as a member of the House of Habsburg.

What followed was a full European war for the succession of the Spanish throne and what was in game was the prime bounty of the time, the Latin American colonies.

The war had already lasted five years when the Galleon San José parted from Cádiz with its twin brother, the San Joaquín, towards the Americas with the urgent mission to pick one of the largest treasures ever amassed.

It was 1706 and not a single boat had arrived with gold to Spain from the colonies in the last six years. The crown needed this influx to sponsor its war efforts. This treasure of the Americas, which was to be picked up in Panama, contained 11 million 8-escudo silver and gold coins collected in Lima and Veracruz, but coming from as far as Potosí (now in Bolivia), as well as emeralds from Boyacá (now in central Colombia), and the type of personal belongings and contraband ever-present in every journey of the time.

Due to delays and English corsair presence (part of the Austracist coalition), in the Caribbean, it took two years to decide to make the return voyage to Europe; in 1708, the San José parted protected by 16 ships, taking advantage of unforeseen French collaboration.

Aware of the dangers, they sailed to Cartagena under the command of José Fernández de Santillán. With spies on the ports, British Admiral Charles Wager knew the time and route the convoy was going to sail. It was intercepted nearly nine miles off the coast of Cartagena and told to stop.

With the skyline of the port-city on the horizon, Santillán commanded to accelerate full sail to safety. Wager commanded to shoot, triggering a nearly two-day battle between the convoy and the corsairs.

One of the first ships to sink, the San José was submerged 200 meters under into the oblivion of the Caribbean waters, and dismissed.

Well, not really. Humans never forget such treasures, like Atahualpa’s ransom when he was held by Pizarro, hidden in the Llanganates, or the distances the conquistadores were willing to go to find the mythical El Dorado. The treasure of the San José became part of the collective imaginary of the Colombian Caribbean.

In García Márquez’s novel Love in the Times of Cholera, for example, Florentino Ariza dives to appreciate and comprehend what the remnants of the ship consist of.

With the latter technological developments of the last decades, the bounty has become easier to locate and even rescue from the depths of the ocean. This enterprise has been undertaken by private firms and treasure hunters that have been after the San José for the last 30 years.

Only a few weeks back the Colombian government announced it had found it. Before people even started recalling what the treasure was, there were loud voices in Spain and the United States claiming it, finding shier echoes in Peru and Ecuador.

Three hundred years later, with a completely different political map, the question of who does the ship and its cargo belong to is not straightforward. The Spanish state argues that because the ship carried their flag, and the Crown sponsored its construction, it belongs to them.

But, as an op-ed in the Spanish newspaper El País conveys convincingly, there is no continuity between the idea of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish nation. Modern day Colombia was as much a part of the Empire as modern day Spain, and both of them are the result of the dismemberment of that shared past.

Furthermore, this claim has tints of an unrepentant colonization; rather than wanting to conserve the common past, it is an extractive, one-sided reclamation.

The colonization of the Spanish Americas was different from subsequent colonial ventures in North America, Africa and Asia, respectively. Describing this particular history as a bleeding of Latin America’s resources and people would simplify and obscure the complex narratives and interactions that took place in the continent.

America is as indigenous as it is Spanish. Through the process of mestizaje (or mixing), even Criollos (descendants of Europeans born in America) developed their own independent economic interests and recreated their social circles. Any kind of exploitation was not only externally imposed but also domestically perpetuated.

Even though systems such as la Encomienda or la Mita revolved around the processes of production, extraction and transportation, those systems were genuine Latin American phenomena, never replicated in Spain.

The heritage of the San José could be another symbol of this mestizaje, the ports across the ocean, the ship built in Spain and the goods carried from America were all necessary for the trans-Atlantic trade. If Latin America has this stronger claim to the empire, the treasure, and even the galleon, it then becomes harder to justify why they should stay in Colombia rather than sharing it with her South American counterparts. It is a historical accident that, of the entire Caribbean, the precise spot of the wreckage would become part of the modern Colombian nation.

Primarily, this exposes the artificial nature of the American nations. The idea of sovereignty drawn from a previously integrated system of social and economic institutions, of the same languages and similar macrohistories, can only be understood as an administrative arbitrariness.

The idealizers of the nations did not represent the people, on the contrary, they were part of a domestic elite that sought independence from Spain to be able to rule the territories according to their own republican ideologies.

The division of la Gran Colombia, for example, was due mainly to philosophical differences of whether to adopt a centralist system, of which Simón Bolívar was its maximum proponent, and a federalist one which found its strongest supporters in Caracas. Combined with the dictatorial tendencies of El Libertador, Quito and Venezuela declared their independence to attempt their respective national experiments.

It seems almost superfluous through the scope of time to develop new nationalist ideas in opposition to others, and to deny that common heritage, due to such punctual events. But it’s the present reality nonetheless.

It’s impossible to say that the galleon rightfully belongs to a single nation (even less to a treasure hunting private company from the United States). Estimates of the modern worth of the treasure range between five to 11 billion US dollars. Some argue that this money can pay the entire external debt of the country or that it could finance Colombia’s post-conflict.

While great news, this would require selling the treasure to a third party, probably fragmenting it, and slowly ripping it away from its meaning. Maintaining the treasure together, given the lack of an itinerant museum, or one in Cartagena, would be a testament to the shared heritage and ownership of the treasure.

Otherwise, Colombia would be taking advantage of an accident caused by an incapable colonial administration, and re-appropriating a common past.