Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 347

Weekend Music Break No.73

Here’s our selection of tunes for the weekend of May 9th, 2015

It’s mother’s day weekend in much (but not all) of the world… so let’s start out with Vusi Mahlasela’s “Thula Mama”.

Burna Boy turns in a really cool video for “Soke”.

Brooklyn artist Teleseen shoots a video on the coast of Brazil, documenting the lives of fishermen on Ilhabela for “Outlines”.

Sahel Sounds has a new Balani show album out. Here is “Danbe” from Supreme Talent Show, read up on them on the Sahel Sounds blog.

Danbe by Supreme Talent Show

Stones Throw artist Knxwledge goes “In the Dungeon” for a live performance of some of his beats.

This week Meklit Hadero realeased a clip for “Kemekem” dedicated to your beautiful afro.

Ismael & the Radiant Select is playing around New York these days. Here is their song “Sa Diatale”.

I can’t wait for the clip for Young Fathers’ crazy good neo-rap tune ‘Old Rock N Roll’, so here’s the song in a youtube stream… This one might get a double posting on the Weekend Music Break if the video ever comes out.

“Canto da lavadeira, Prelúdio das águas” from As Ganhadeiras de Itapuã sounds like it’s coming from an island in the middle of the Atlantic equidistant between Cabo Verde and Brazil.

As Ganhadeiras de Itapuã by As Ganhadeiras de Itapuã

Not a new track, but a big one that we haven’t put up yet. Here’s Kiss Daniel’s Woju Remix feat. Tiwa Savage and Davido

Happy Mother’s day and have a great weekend!

 

Ruminations? Or, Ruinations? in the work of Santu Mofokeng

Santu Mofokeng’s photographs and work as a photographer have been at the center of South Africa’s historiography and its representation. In part, scholars and activists have used his pictures to both document and analyze anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the significance of the “documentary” power of photographs in such struggle. Mofokeng himself much later spoke in numerous interviews to how he was attempting to photograph something different from his contemporaries and to challenge the notion of the “documentary’ that existed at the height and end of the anti-apartheid struggle. “A Metaphorical Biography,” the title of an exhibition of his work at the Walther Collection’s NY Project Space, is an ode to reflect on Mofokeng’s efforts to photograph what he “ordinarily sees.”  Furthermore, archiving efforts, like his “The Black Photo Album,”(compiled from the photo albums of black South Africans at the turn of the 20th century) questioned stereotypes of South Africans, and Africans more generally, by using portraiture (a popular medium in practice and study) to inquire about the notion of middle-class aspirations. Thus, the displayed works are pieces of art as much as they are methodological ruminations  on photographic discourse around South Africa and Africa more broadly—the very ways the public sees and understands events in and around Africa.

The exhibition features widely viewed photographs by Mofokeng, which the Walther Collection owns and includes: “Train Church” (1986), “Townships” (1985-2006), “Rumours: The Bloemhof Portfolio” (1988-1994), “Landscapes of Trauma” (1996-2008), and “Climate Change” (2007). Some series like “Train Church”, which feature the transformation of cramped train cars during daily commutes into hubs of spiritual readings and performances, and Climate Change, which includes scenes of a dust storm, a damn, and a beach, are from one specific year. Whereas, in Townships” and “Rumours: The Bloemhof Portfolio”, Mofokeng explores the interior and exterior worlds of life in townships in the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. The exhibition’s temporal coverage is vast. But, this span of time is also revealing for the types of questions that Mofokeng’s pictures present before South Africa’s historiography, his photographed subjects, and the viewers of his images and how these questions (and also commentaries on them) unfold over time through the collection and exhibition of his works. For instance, in “The Black Photo Album,” Mofokeng includes a slide in reference to previously displayed portraits:

Who were these people?

What were their sophistications?

What is going to happen to these aspirations at the end of the twentieth century South Africa?

Although specific to the pictures included in “The Black Photo Album,” such a query also travels with a visitor to “A Metaphorical Biography” and is something that the visitor is forced to grapple.

One experiences an eerie and ominous felling walking into the Project Space partly because during its short run, the “A Metaphorical Biography” has, perhaps for lack of a better word, witnessed protests advocating the removal of Rhodes’s statue at the University of Cape Town and xenophobic killings in South Africa. Not necessarily unrelated, Europe is now contemplating what to do about the countless migrants from Africa and the Middle East who have drowned in its seas. Discussion of these events has been the focus of “Africa is a country” and other news and social media feeds, but few, if any have discussed he photographic images that have come out of these events or that are used as stand-ins to document and explain them.

In one respect, the exhibition displays the very spaces and peoples whose lives lie at the center of apartheid and the anti-apartheid struggle and whose lives continued to be affected by the xenophobic killings in South Africa and discussions underway from within European parliaments. In another respect, the photographs force visitors to give greater thought to spaces, such as road signs, sheebens, train cars, and building architecture, previously dismissed as insignificant or overlooked. But, there are also landscape scenes that were the very spaces that the apartheid regime used to defend itself internally and also against South Africa’s neighbors. In “Landscape’s of Trauma,” Mofokeng revisits these sites of struggle to consider South Africa’s memorialization of these places in the post-apartheid period. These photographed spaces, in addition to the trauma they come to embody through photographs of them, are at play again today in unsettling ways. For example, how is one left to think about South Africans’ killing and destroying of property of African migrants who come from the very nation’s South Africa relied on to end apartheid (see Mia Couto’s letter to Jacob Zuma)?

In light of recent events in South Africa and Europe, Mofokeng’s photographs keep visitors wondering and wanting to know the answers to a question he posed in “The Black Photo Album”: who are these people, what are their sophistications, and what is going to happen to these aspirations in the future?

Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio, New York (Mofokeng3)

*“A Metaphorical Biography” is open until May 23 at the Walther Collection NY Project Space.

Teca #4: Pura Música in San José, Costa Rica

Welcome back to Teca, Latin America is a Country’s own jukebox, where we’ll introduce you to some of the coolest, hippest, most recent music from cities around Latin America. Brought to you today by our good friend and vinyl collector Juan Felipe Pérez.

“Ay, qué rico, Costa Rica,” sings the Peruvian musician François Peglau and that is what I feel as I write about the rock/pop scene in the country’s capital, San José. Usually, when we think about the “Latin American” scene, the first things we think about are the Chilean pop boom, the huge Mexican scene, or the well-known—and historical—Argentinian scene.

But that’s not all there is. We could argue that the Costa Rican pop/rock scene is the biggest and most interesting in Central America. Bands like Sonámbulo Psicotropical, 424 and Las Robertas have played in some of Mexico’s, Colombia’s and the United States’ most important music festivals (such as Nrmal, Vive Latino, Estéreo Picnic, Rock Al Parque, Austin City Limits, or South By South West). The latter two bands have also been reviewed in the Argentinian and American press.

What’s more, there are festivals in Costa Rica, like Epicentro—which has already been organized twice—that have created dialogues between the Tico scene and the “Latin American” scene, as they have invited bands and people working in the music industry from Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and others.

So, relax and enjoy a selection of five bands from San José that will make you travel through sounds so distant from each other like afro-beat or lo-fi rock.

Sonámbulo Psicotropical

Sonámbulo formed in 2006 and they have released two albums: A puro peluche (2009) and Psicosonorama (2014). They define their sound as psicotropical, which is a mixture between merengue, salsa, cumbia, Cuban son, funk and afro-beat. Their eleven members hail from Costa Rica, but also from El Salvador, Cuba and Colombia.

Las Robertas

If you like Daniel Johnston, you will surely like Las Robertas, as they (two girls and a boy) participated, with some bands from Spain and Argentina, in a tape cassette covering the American singer. Besides, the cassette came with a fanzine titled Coloreando a Daniel Johnston (Coloring Daniel Johnston). They have released two albums: Cry Out Loud (2010) and Days Unmade (2014).

424

Both times 424 have come to Colombia, they have made young girls melt with their charms. But this rock/pop band is not only about pretty faces. Their sound is a combination between brit pop and rock en español standards, such as the Mexicans Zoé. Maybe it’s because Phil Vinall produced albums for both bands, including 424’s Oro, released in 2012.

Florian Droids

Pablo Rojas, Jorge Guri, Álvaro Díaz and Franciso Araya got together in early 2010 to form Florian Droids, a psychedelic rock ensemble. In 2011 they released their self-titled debut album, and in 2014 they released Osos de agua. They were also part of the soundtrack of the film Por las plumas (directed by Costa Rican Neto Villalobos) with their song “Bípedo implume.”

Monte

Out of the five bands in this playlist, Monte is the youngest. So far they’ve only released two Eps: Monte (2011) and San José (2014). They also participated in a compilation titled Sí, San José, in which various up-and-coming bands from the city also took part.

BONUS:

For this bonus, I would like to thank David Bolaños, from Zòpilot!, who helped me look at the Costa Rican scene. These three bands were his recommendations:

Zòpilot!

Do Not  

Billy the Kid

Did we miss anything? Want to write your own Teca? Send us your suggestions to our twitter, , or .

See the rest of Teca here.

Why I asked for my work to be withdrawn from the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards

There is a new award just for people from poor countries. I came to know about it when the organisers requested proof of my nationality. My publisher promotes the prize, and I was unaware that they had submitted my work for consideration. I have a great working relationship with my publisher and value their support for my writing. I understand that when they submitted my work, it was because they valued the book. I understand the difficulty publishers face in promoting local fiction, and that international initiatives that draw attention to local writing are generally welcome. Literary prizes play an important role. Since ancient times, they have been a way of celebrating and promoting good writing. They bring recognition to artists and ensure their work gets noticed. That is what happened when my first novel, The Silent Minaret, received the inaugural European Union Literary Award in 2005. It drew a level of recognition and attention the novel might not otherwise have received. However, while I’m sure this new award was set up with those intentions, it is not one I support, and asked for my work to be withdrawn. This is why.

The inaugural Financial Times OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards 2015 is a cumbersome prize. Fiction prizes are only for Africa and the Middle East, film for Asia and the Pacific, and art for Latin America and the Caribbean. These exclusivist groupings do not reflect and cannot contain the breadth of creative production in those regions. Why create categories that exclude Indian literature, for instance, Brazilian film, and Tunisian art? While artists reach out to the whole world through their creativity, this award divides the creative world into arbitrary categories of their own making, pushing us into spaces too small to contain the full scope of our creative splendour. Of even greater concern, only writers, film-makers and artists from “emergent market countries” are eligible for entry. According to the organisers, “this list of emerging-market countries was defined by the World Bank Atlas Method (i.e. those with a GNI per capita of less than $12,746)”.

I do not believe in “emerging voices” or “emerging market countries”. Having spent enough of my life in contrived categories, I uphold the vision of just one world. By this I do not mean some chic Afropolitan ideal celebrating Africa only in so far as it emulates Europe. Consider the following travel advice from the May 2015 edition of a popular Afropolitan magazine to its Afropolitan readers about how to reduce travel stress with an “essential travel list” – a well-packed suitcase, toys for the kids, updated music and reading devices and a range of RESCUE products for gentle stress relief – a list so far removed from the experiences of African migrants being brutally attacked by xenophobic mobs in South Africa and drowning in their thousands in the Mediterranean, as to be obscene. No, I oppose such ghettoised categories because, however euphemistic the terminology and well-meaning the intentions, they overlook the reality that southern countries are already home to artistic brilliance of the best kind – despite their GNI. They simplify a complex world, so that excellence in “developing countries” is rendered as invisible, as rare, and as exceptional as poverty and human rights abuses in supposedly “developed” ones. To contrive “special” categories for artists in poorer countries, and to use their GNI to justify such tokenism is not praise, but diminishment.

Some will think me sensitive. I am. Consider the meaning of emergent: fledgling, embryonic, infant, in the early stages of development. Is the implication that in creative terms we are children? Is that what the broken egg shell on their website is meant to signify which – let us note in passing – is not how human beings are born, but oviparous animals like insects, birds and reptiles? I ask because metaphors are important in an artistic award. We have heard our male elders called ‘boys’ and our female elders ‘girls’, and to me, the language of this prize is reminiscent of that. Call a writing competition for school children “emergent” if you must, but we are men and women who have already received global accolades in the same global arenas as our European and North American counterparts. Why, given the evidence, this insistence on classifying us as “emergent”? Is the implication that northerners are “established” simply because their countries are rich, while we are eternally doomed to an “emergent” status simply because our countries are less wealthy? Do the organisers imagine that “emergent’ is what we aspire to be? That we will revel in the training wheel prizes while northerners get the real awards? This award is not a step forward. It takes us back. The implication that, as a whole, we are not yet developed enough to be admitted as equals suggests a view of Africa in which Achebe, Mahfouz and Gordimer are seen as exceptions to the underdeveloped norm. These distortions arise when the language and values of the market are imposed on art and literature. I hope the organisers will reconsider the terms of their award, for while our markets may be “emergent”, our writing, our voices and our agency are not.

*

Can economics measure all? What are we to make of a prize where a criterion for entry is not the quality of one’s writing, but the GNI of one’s country? What has a GNI of exactly $12,746 got to do with the quality of one’s work? Because the World Bank Atlas Method says so? In which case, who are we to ask about a country with a GNI per capita of $12,747, to ask what reason is given to artists from such countries for their exclusion – “Your country is not poor enough?” To wonder whether this is why Equatorial Guinea is the only African country not on the list? While it is indeed an oil-rich country, most of its wealth has been siphoned off by its elite, leaving most of its people poor. Ten percent of children there die before the age of five. What kind of thinking about the world leads to such distorted conclusions – and the resolve to press ahead with implementation regardless? This is what happens when cultural production is conflated with markets, and the World Bank Atlas Method becomes the bouncer. The world is flattened out.  Who are these organisers, still drawing arbitrary lines across the creative world like powerful men drawing maps in a bygone era? What do they really know about the creative life and process, of literature and art – other than as acquisitions? 

*

However well-intentioned, this is an ill-conceived award.  Also telling, is the additional requirement for artists to submit their passports or proof of nationality. Are European and North American artists ever interrogated in the same way? This distrust of southerners contradicts a key aim of the award – “to reward artists who further understanding of their region”. Why bother understanding regions when you do not trust the artists who depict them? This attitude from the organisers is in sharp contrast to that of readers. To readers, artists are known by their work. Yet, even as the organisers seek to reward the work, the work itself is not sufficient commendation. Passports and proof are paramount, which raises another issue – dual passport holders. Are Equatorial Guineans with South African passports for example, or French nationals who also have Algerian passports eligible?

Such tokenism is not isolated or uncommon and one almost objects to having to object – again.  In 2007, Britain’s Decibel Penguin prize for writers from African, Asian and Caribbean backgrounds was accused of racial discrimination.  Novelist Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal described the prize as “a special pat on the head for Britain’s ethnic minorities”. Eventually, the prize was forced to change its ethnic entry criteria. Still, here we are in 2015 faced with the same kind of thing. I can draw little distinction between the Decibel Penguin as was and this award. One cannot disguise tokenism by replacing ethnic criteria with economics. What, after all, is the ethnic majority in eligible countries?

If we are to have international prizes, let them be truly international, open to all artists from all countries – whatever their GNI. Let the work be considered in an equal arena. That is all Africans want – to be treated as equals. But equality remains elusive and wealthy award organisers apparently unwilling to concede that books, canvases and screens in poor countries are already illuminated with brilliance, just as they are in rich ones. Why does this threaten them so?

Profile of South African afro-psychedelic future pop sextet Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness

Foodzone is an eatery situated in Lakeview, Soweto, right next to the Rea Vaya bus station on the T1 route. Looking outside from the interior — Foodzone’s located inside a shipping container housing a variety of musical instruments in one corner and a stove where meals are prepared in another — one can see Regina Mundi church to their right and Thokoza Park to their left.

South African afro-psychedelic future pop sextet Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness (BCUC or B-Cook work just as well) are not only part-owners of the venue, they also hold their rehearsals in here, on a floor space they clear up to make room for their instruments. The band consists of Nkosi “Jovi” Zithulele, Kgomotso Mokone, Thabo “Cheex” Mangle, Mritho Luja, Lehlohonolo “Hloni” Maphunye, and Skhumbuzo Mahlangu. Mosebetsi Ntsimande of the band Uju is a featured bassist.

Between them, they rap in eloquently-phrased Sesotho verse; they howl fire and brimstone to the tune of a thousand angels; they harmonize, play nose flutes, bang bass drums; they jiva ispantsula to the shy rhythm of the tambourine; and they do the ‘tribal thing’, you know, feet-in-the-air, indlamu, Zulu warrior, live-wrangling for the hood, the ‘burbs, and the outer-skirts thing?! Word!

Thrown into the mix: whistles (izimfijoli) commonly used by amaBhaca, but also found in Lesotho where mokhibo/moribo women use them to rally up the audience’s participation and liven up the song; and imbombu, an instrument roughly 3 meters long, invented by Shembe adherents with the Biblical trumpet as inspiration.

BCUC Studio Session (left to right: Jovi, Hloni, Luja, Cheex)

I first saw BCUC live at Oppikoppi festival two years ago. It was on a late afernoon, Saturday, and they were performing at Skellum — a stage neither big nor too small, perfect for a band whose reputation as live performers rests on their willingness to compete against and out-match the last live show they put on. They had everyone tripping towards dizzying heights, entranced by their Nazareth Baptist-style chants. Their manic, relentless, hard-hitting zeal and their head-bopping humdrum rock-n-roll attitude turns them into miracle workers on stage.

A few months later, we were all squeezed into rapper/producer Joint Pusher’s home studio in Cosmo City, north of Johannesburg. BCUC were working towards an album and decided to decamp to JP’s in order to test out a few ideas. It was hot outside, sweltering even, mid-Summer highveld vibes. Regular swigs from a cold water bottle were vital!

The room, fitted with a couch and not much else besides JP’s studio equipment, became a hub of activity. JP started the session by programming the drum pattern under Jovi’s guidance. After getting the basic groove, an assortment of percussive instruments the crew had brought along were added — shakers first and then, ultimately, Cheex’s nimble hands producing complex sounds as they caressed the twin congas.

Cheex of BCUC

Cheex comes across as quiet and reserved, almost reclusive, in person. He’s the antithesis to Jovi and Hloni’s hyperactive personas, almost in the same energy spectrum as Luja. Put congas in front of him, however, and these notions and comparisons cease to exist. He transforms. He becomes a beast, each percussive line feeding a style of playing so free and unhindered it sounds like he’s charting new territory, coursing along with jugular jungle styles while getting drunk in the punch of the conga gods.

The session’s well underway by the time Kgomotso adds harmonies atop the loop. At this point, BCUC’s signature imbombu, hand-crafted from the finest zinc by merchants at Kwa-MayiMayi in Durban, has also graced the song.

“She is just black,” Jovi sings, in a soft voice far from the guttural growls he reaches during a live show. Four other people join in on the chorus: 

Just like Kingston, Jamaica [she is just black]/

Lagos streets in Nigeria [she is just black]/../

Jo-hustleburg and Berea [she is just black]

The song never gets released. Jovi tells me that they didn’t like the final mix and hence left it out of their album, a live affair named The Healer recorded at the SABC studios some two months after the “…just black” studio sessions.

“When we started the band, we didn’t start it because we wanted to make money. We wanted to start the band because we felt like there is a voice that is not there, you know?!”

Jovi utters the words while cooling off under the tree shade following the second round of rehearsals for the day. Luja’s preparing food for customers who’ve just ordered and Mosebetsi, the featured bassist, has left for other missions in the city. The rest of the crew, along with a few friends, are seated on the same restaurant bench underneath the tree with Jovi, sweaty and hyperventilating.

The s’camto’s (conversation) about their roots. Back in the early 2000s, Jozi had a buzzing underground scene out of which noteworthy names emerged: Sliq Angel and MXO; Simphiwe Dana; Lebo Mashile; Tumi Molekane and his (former) band The Volume; and the now-defunct Kwani Experience — perhaps the closest to BCUC, at least in their militant, pro-black philosophies.

“We are older than most of them, obviously, in terms of how long [we’ve] been together, you know?! The difference between us and them: I reckon they wanted to make money with the music, and thina we wanted to make music and then money will follow, because obviously when you do music, then money should follow. We wanted to be this voice for the black urban [youth who] are culturally inclined [and] proud of [its] musical heritage,” says Jovi.

Luja of BCUC

The collective wanted to become a bridge between what they call ‘muzik wa diplaas’ and ‘muzik wa ko kasi’ — essentially, an alternative to traditional music, and kwaito and house music. “Back then, we were annoyed by i-digital music, but now [it’s] got these guys who are using other machines, and they make it almost live now. You mention abo-Fantasma [and]Goldfish – at least you can respect that.”

The aim, therefore, was to play music that utilised instruments, and secondly to say something with substance.

What was the central message at that time, I ask.

“Black music, it hasn’t changed,” says Jovi and Kgomotso, almost at the same time.

Hloni calls it ‘shebeen muzik’, the type you don’t get to hear on radio. It’s the type of music sung by everyone.

“I think we’re speaking about ourselves,” says Kgomotso. “Our ideology, B-Cook’s sense of consciousness is not about us going outside of ourselves to find enlightenment. It’s about finding out who we are within our families. Ko-ntlung (at home), what’s happening? How do you incorporate it with what happens in Cheex’s place? At Hloni’s place? At Jovi’s place? [It’s about] how we build bridges and how we educate each other to be better people. For us, that is the consciousness — just being good people and putting that positivity out there.”

*

The pap and chicken giblets I’d ordered from the restaurant have been served. A few of us take turns to dip the pap into gravy and relishing it with chilli sauce. The s’camto continues; talk of the EFF’s parliament stunts, current South African rap favourites, and what BCUC are plotting next. Their next stop is Bushfire Festival in May, with Oppikoppi following in August.

* All photographs (c) Tseliso Monaheng

Africa is a Radio: Season 2, Episode 3

Xenophobia, Migration, and today’s Elections in the UK are the topics of discussion this week on Africa is a Radio. Special guest Musa Okwonga joins hosts Sean Jacobs and Elliot Ross, while I hold things down with some topical tunes.

Africa is a Radio: Season 2, Episode 3 by Africasacountry on Mixcloud

The Assassins of Memory

Given its crude quality, xenophobic violence in South Africa incites a Manichean, or even a caricatured, reading: in an African country, blacks are perceived as the only foreigners and are hunted down and massacred under the derisive gaze of their fellow citizens, who were once blamed for all the evils. The latter, delighted, chuckle away, but their silence does not prevent anyone from hearing, loud and clear, the words that are running through their heads: “We told you, they only know the stick!” “They are good kids,” and so on.

On social media, millions of Africans have unleashed their fury and have found in these unfortunate events evidence of some unknown ancient curse. And in the flood of comments, there have sometimes been suggestions (softly or between the lines) that instead of attacking their “brothers,” the rioters should be cutting up the whites with machetes and vandalizing their luxurious properties.

The South Africa question is far too important to accommodate an explanation that is as simplistic and childish. We cannot tell the criminals in the townships of Alexandra and Isipingo: “You’re quite right to destroy everything in your path, but you just have the wrong target.”

In the world that we live in, no one has the right to use their difficulties as a pretext to loot, rob, rape and kill, often with unspeakable cruelty. The is called the law of the jungle, and to support it would mean to believe that these idle youth are – if we dare say – a breed apart. The least we can say is that their behavior is at odds with the teaching of Mandela. However, one must hasten to add that, contrary to appearances, millions of others excluded from South African society – “the most unequal in the world,” according to experts – have invested relentlessly for two decades in civilized and intelligent struggles to improve their living conditions. Like everywhere else….

This means that the wielders of the drunken machetes of hate are, as underlined by many observers, a tiny minority.

This fact, however, does not prevent us from wondering why their singular mode of social protest has systematized itself only in South Africa, and why it has been at work for so long.

Perhaps we do not know this well enough, but the rejection of black Africans did not start in South Africa at the end of apartheid. The ANC leaders who came into power in 1994 with thanks, in particular, to the help of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique, are well aware that the citizens of those neighboring countries – and more widely all black foreigners – are looked at very badly in the townships, where they are called Makwerekwere. This word, the etymology of which is fairly controversial, appears to mean something rather neutral at first. Simply, migrants from the continent. But it has gradually become deeply contentious and, according to a 2008 article in The Mail and Guardian, a reputed newspaper in Johannesburg, it has come to mean that these Africans, whose skin is very dark, also smell bad. Its hard to believe, but this is unfortunately what it has become.

Three centuries of apartheid cannot be erased with the stroke of a pen and, as we were taught in the history of man, it is believed that the hatred of the Other is almost always the hatred of the self.

One would have hoped that, once they regained their freedom, South Africans would have looked at dark-skinned foreigners differently. In fact, the hard economic realities have weighed in far more than the ethical scruples. As disillusionment and social tensions have become clearer, the makwerekwere have become convenient scapegoats. There are traces of that hatred in Jerusalema, an ambitious film by Ralph Ziman, which paints a very unflattering portrait of Nigerians at the center of organized crime in Johannesburg.

The black ruling elite, glad to make others responsible for their own bankruptcy, have looked away, and in some cases have theorized this primary form of xenophobia with many mental contortions. Here, too, we should avoid excessive generalizations since political figures such as Thabo Mbeki or the legendary Ahmed Kathrada, to name a few, have never wanted to eat that bread.

There remains the nagging question, beyond the issue of the incapacity of the ANC to raise itself as high as the crucial historic stakes, about whether we should avoid judging the whole South African population for their almost friendly passivity towards the xenophobic gangs. After all, the killings in April were not the first. They have simply been accelerated since 1994, and if the two Senegalese were thrown from a moving train in September 2008, we should remember that the 62 dead in May 2008 comprised its bloody apotheosis. The torment of Mozambican Ernesto Nhamuave, burned alive on the street, remains an iconic image.

If these crimes have never really perturbed the South African opinion, it is also because the makwerekwere stigma has its corollary in a terribly isolationist mentality, the result of a very particular history that has spared no social class. I have often personally had the experience of this typically South African sense of being either outside the continent or being a grand exception to it. For example, I remember asking the person sitting next to me at a dinner in Kensington, Johannesburg, if she had ever visited Senegal. “No,” she replied immediately, “I have not yet had the opportunity. In fact I’ve never been to Africa.” Seeing my stupefied expression, she realized her blunder and we had a good laugh. I then wondered, deep down in my heart, if a Black person could have had the same reaction. I believe yes, even though a slip this unambiguous was quite exceptional.

Then, a few days later, I heard a somewhat nervous gentleman call in on an interactive radio show to make a small clarification: “Lets stop saying that Africa has had a successful World Cup. The only reason its worked out brilliantly is because it was organized by South Africa!”

While he was at it, this ardent patriot even rattled off some African countries where, according to him, it would have been a total disaster. These remarks confirmed something a disillusioned Mozambican filmmaker once told me: that “for the South Africans, everything north of Limpopo virtually belongs to another planet…” He added with a smile: “This strange and unknown world…well, it starts at my home in Maputo, a few short hours drive from Johannesburg.”

We can only expect the worst when these daily miseries and frustrations are grafted onto this truly national autism. We are talking about a country where the official unemployment rate, though largely underestimated, according to experts, is between 25- and 30 percent. And the fact that it reaches over 50 percent among black youth obviously cannot be without consequences for social peace. The number of asylum seekers makes for an even more surprising figure: around 220,000 in 2009 – that is to say the highest in the world, ahead of United States and Germany – although it fell to 62,500 three years later. These statistics were provided by UNHCR, which has seen a new surge in requests since January 2015, when the number was already at 246,000.

With five million foreigners – mostly African, and exactly one tenth of its total population – South Africa has quickly pronounced the pressure of migration to be intolerable. Those excluded from the post-apartheid system have had it particularly bad considering that they cannot count on the welfare state at all, and the newcomers, being more skilled or more enterprising, have literally snatched the bread from their mouths.

All the ingredients for an explosive situation were somehow in place, and everyone has been more or less resigned to cyclical pogroms perpetrated with an air of tranquility.

Yet it seems that something exceptional has taken place in the land of Nelson Mandela in the wake of the killings in these past days.

Signs suggest that. for the xenophobic criminal gangs, the end of impunity is near. The really good news is that the seven dead from Durban and Johannesburg have aroused more anger than the 62 victims of 2008. In truth, the world has come to the conclusion that “enough is enough.” We cannot offer hunger as the pretext for those stocking up on loaves of bread and crates of beer from other people’s stores with weapons in hand. Frankly, an embarrassing bestiality hurts us humans, and in the end, we have been resolutely condemned, this time even in South Africa.

Fortunately, it is not enough to level mere invective against the regime of Jacob Zuma. Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have reacted vigorously to these incidents. Some governments have started to repatriate their nationals, and South Africans working in these countries have felt unsafe for the first time. They have also been reminded of the very simple notions of interdependence and reciprocity, apparently never taken into account by Pretoria.

The South African economy owes a lot to the migrants upon whom so much misery has been heaped. Terry Bell noted recently on the BBC that if the Zimbabweans went away, the country’s banking sector would be unlikely to sustain its current level. It is true that we complain that Somali and Ethiopian small businesses should cut prices. Is that a reason to raze their shops and make them suffer the torment of the necklace?

It is also important to know that when we blame migrants for taking away South African jobs, it is they who often create jobs, however modest they may be. One of our compatriots, S. Sall, a native of Thies, is one of them. In the small town of Simonstown – less than an hour from Cape Town, where penguins attract thousands of tourists a year – his business of handicrafts did so well in 2010 that he employed six or seven young South African women, who are rather happy to work with him.

In the end, those who dreamed of a splendid South African isolation have realized with dread that it has yielded, in all respects, the worst scenarios. The setbacks are a measure of the impact. First the King of the Zulus, Goodwill Zwelithini, shamelessly took back his irresponsible remarks and improvised a press conference to call for calm. Then Jacob Zuma canceled a state visit to Indonesia and visited the Chatsworth camp with some of the thousands displaced. For once, the political class unanimously condemns the violence, and within this context, the media and civil society have had much less trouble being heard than in the past.

On a modest South African scale, all off this amounts to a “Never again,” the main merit of which will be that the xenophobia that tended to become routine will be seen as a moral deviance rejected with disgust by well-meaning women and men of an entire country. While not having the innocence to believe that the black foreigners in South Africa will now live in the best of worlds, we can assume that the gangs of hooligans, now less assured of the tacit complicity of much of the public, will not dare to attack them as openly.

Evil, however, runs deep, and it may well be that ordinary criminality will target foreigners more than before, and according to new patterns, the migrants be will just as vulnerable. What makes this situation even more messy is that many among these are in an irregular situation. In his response to Mozambican writer Mia Couto’s “Open Letter,” President Zuma stressed this point, pointing out that he must also take into account the legitimate complaints of South Africans themselves. Jacob Zuma is not alone in this: many of his fairly reasonable countrymen who do not even know what it means to be xenophobic are of this opinion. It is a perspective that should be heard. The counterpart to the hospitality and security that is expected of a host country is the scrupulous respect for its laws.

Despite all fears, there are still serious reasons to hope. In the end, these events have forced the silent majority to give voice and project another image – a less repulsive one – of South Africa. The symbol of this moral jolt was the march against xenophobia on April 23rd in Johannesburg, where a huge crowd gathered under the slogan “We are all South Africans.” And on this occasion, the moral debt of the “Rainbow Nation” with respect to the rest of the continent was often mentioned. Never has a reminder been so timely. The victory against apartheid was one of the few, perhaps even the only, success stories of independent Africa. Countries on the “frontlines” paid a high price for their support of Mandela’s comrades, and here in Senegal, generations of schoolchildren have seen written on the blackboard the famous phrase: “Apartheid is a crime against humanity.” Moreover, throughout the continent, artists, and especially musicians, have played their part effectively.

That is why the xenophobic violence in South Africa is as much a crime against memory as it is against body and property. We Africans often complain about the indifference of the world to our tragedies. If we would learn to remind ourselves a little more often of the tremendous outpouring of solidarity which eventually brought down the powerful South African racist regime, we would not be begging for the compassion of others in all circumstances.

The march planned in Dakar on April 17th in honor of the 147 victims of the carnage among students in Garissa was, in a sense, praiseworthy in its desire to reactivate this memory. To everyone’s surprise, the Senegalese people were forbidden to show solidarity with the Kenyan people. No matter what we say, it was not just the administration in Dakar that was opposed to the March, but the government of the Republic of Senegal. The same government that, while silent on the possible fate of our compatriots in the Mediterranean and in South Africa, is about to send 2,000 of our soldiers to serve as cannon fodder in distant Arabian lands. Almost no one agrees with the presence of Senegalese troops in Yemen. If this were to happen, it would be particularly damaging to our self-esteem. This would especially be the most mysterious and most foolish decision ever made in this country, and it will hasten to make us forget the mistakes, crimes and errors of the three forerunners of Macky Sall in the presidential palace.

* The article was originally published in Seneplus.

The art of “Unrest” –The work of Cape Town artists Hasan and Husain Essop

The Cape Town-born twin brothers Hasan and Husain Essop move beyond the expected. They play with fixed notions of place and identity as well as preconceptions of religion and tradition in a city that values keeping its apartheid era categories, especially for those it labelled its picturesque, acquiescent others: the Muslims who are the descendants of the first wave of dissenters and slaves brought to the Cape from Indian Ocean islands by the Dutch East India Company. Born in 1985 in Cape Town, both studied at Michaelis School of Fine Art and started to work together on the Halaal Art project shortly after their graduation. After Halaal Art, the young artists went through an artistic and personal journey to other projects, notably Remembrance to Unrest. Besides working and developing their art, both have teaching degrees and work as arts facilitators in the community of Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay, communities shaped by poverty and threatened by or outright faced with forced removals. Shaped by their experiences, and using the concept of spaces and places in the city, the twins reflect on the unrest happening in South Africa and all over the world. The subsequent project, Unrest, will be on show at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg from the 22st of April until the 20st of June. Unrest responds to the waves of xenophobic violence, as well as the struggle for land, adequate housing, education and equality in South Africa.

This past April, I spoke to Hasan and Husain at Hout Bay, about their previous major shows, and about the specifics that influenced their new works.

Cornelia Knoll: Remembrance showed work that you did while you traveling, Unrest brings it back to Cape Town in a way. Did you work on this series of photographs specifically for the Standard Bank Prize and what inspired it, what was the first spark?

Hasan: You know with Remembrance we were looking at the narrative and the history of Islam and the historical locations and landscapes that represent the religion. I think with Unrest when we received the award with Standard Bank it was such an honour and a privilege. More so that it is a South African Award, we felt a comfort, you know, proudly South African, as it is an award only given to South Africans. For us the context was that we wanted to bring our work back into South Africa and specifically Cape Town. They look at your career and at what you’ve done over the years. I don’t think it is a particular body that makes you win the award. I think its what you’ve done and contributed. We looked at the beginning of where our work started, which was obviously Cape Town, and the different societies, communities and different narratives within the city. Doing a start in Cape Town, a round-trip, it felt right to come back home..

I hope like in the future that I do something different and we will explore different ways of creating work, so the show was definitely not a conclusion but a kind of summary of all the narratives that we created, at the same time, showing the climax of our technique and method.

Husain: Well, to win the Standard Bank prize was absolutely amazing, like Hasan said, you accept it as an South African Artist. More importantly it was a platform for us to create a new body. Giving us the financial backing, the support, the confidence to really push ourselves to create a new body. It was exciting, its always exciting to go back to the drawing board and to try and push yourself to create something new that attracts attention, cause you also have the pressure to produce a body of work that can either make or break you. But I think we pulled through really nicely, I think Cape Town is the best place to start or to create this body of work, keeping, staying truthful to our technique. It is also a nice stage to explore sculpture, to explore installations and to push our video elements so it gave the viewer a nice full body experience so to say where it satisfied the appetite of the eyes, the ears as well as the hands.

CK: How does the video art speak to the photographs? Can you explain a bit what the video art is about?

Husain: The way the video work relates to the photographs, very interesting question, it was actually made in conjunction with the installation that was made talking about Ashura, or self- flagellation, the Shi’a on a specific day they celebrate Ashura in order to shed blood the death of a famous Imam, Imam Husain, and we intended to initially create the videos to show the viewer or justify why we put together this installation. How these weapons are actually used to self-flagellate your self but kind of this video stood on its own. We cropped out our heads and the first represents the chest beating which is the first process of the celebration and then goes into a more advanced process where they start chain-whipping their backs. We wanted to portrait these two videos so that the viewer could see visually in a movement process how these weapons are actually used on the body.

CK: How do people from the Muslim community respond to your work? Because I know you where saying that you didn’t grow up with photographs and pictures in your family home, meaning that images are actually something you don’t really show, yet you do explore these things and bring it to an open public. What is the thought behind it?

Hasan: I think the small Muslim art community that does exist were quiet impressed and very supportive that Husain and I managed to create another form of Muslim art. I think for many years Muslim or Islamic art has just been identified as calligraphy or things that are non-figurative. Were Husain and I really opened another avenue. I think this is also a route to our success because we’ve managed to corporate our beliefs into our art. At the same time there is also a lot of misunderstanding within the Muslim community. In the larger population, the larger Islamic group, there is no history of art within the family, the way they were brought up and there is still a lot of awareness and kind of education that needs to be done. A lot of people don’t understand it, so it is more ignorance than other things that upset them… I believe. I think if people have some sort of backing or knowledge they really connect with the work and our intention. All in all it has been more positive than negative.

CK: I am interested to hear more about the motivation behind your work. You speak about the Cape Malay ancestors, the history of the City, the Imams of Cape Town — just to give few examples — is this also because the community has previously not been seen or prevented from being seen? That you are now able to represent something that has never been shown?

Husain: That is a very interesting statement. Yes, for sure. I agree, totally. In the past people went through their own struggle and their mind was occupied by what is happening around them. You had a lot of photographers that documented it and today they still selling their work cause it represents a certain time, an oppressed time. They became really successful and built their careers at that time. History has created lots of subject matter for us to explore, it is always good to revisit your own history and learn from your mistakes, so to say. We also find ourselves history repeating itself, which is a very interesting concept. Especially today, how it is repeating itself and the same hurt and pain is inflicted on different nations. It is our food for our thoughts and we try to capture history but also capture present day. Cause, present day becomes history so to say. What happens, what we see growing up, what we see around us. What we see and experience within our communities, just try to re-enact that. Sometimes we also see ourselves a bit humorous, we recreate these scenes that don’t really exist, but what if it existed. Or maybe it does exist in another land, so we try to be a bit comical there. Humour being a good way to get the viewers thoughts.

Hasan: We come from a secular society that for many years has kind of been somewhat secretive about what they do. Be it the Muslim community, the Malay, Indian, being in the art world or showing things that happens in their home or traditions was never really documented. So I think now, more recently you have these traditions that have been passed on for generations, being represented and presented to people that have never been able to see it. So I agree with you, we are presenting these stories that have been around for many many years, for generations, in our photographs and people are now..providing our window, our view, our perception of the things, our story or our interpretation of it and you know sometimes its accurate sometimes its not. Hm, but with these …speaking about slavery, speaking about the people that came through slavery, speaking about Malay/ Indian culture, traditions, religions, the difference between religion and tradition. Some of the politics within the Islamic world, I think its all relevant issues being discussed.

CK: When I went to see the exhibition at the National Gallery in Cape Town, the first photograph that I looked at was Resurrection and it really struck me. It shows the vacant land of District Six, bodies spread on the desolated land. Could you speak a bit about the picture? What do the colours and the cloth represent?

Husain: For sure, the photograph is quiet a nice memory. Hasan and I fought quiet a lot on scene and the outcome as you can see was actually quiet amazing. The light was perfect, the symbolism of the cloth the fabric used for the Kaapse Klopse. My father supplies the fabric to them and we basically used their colours and laid it on the ground. The same way you would lay over a persons grave. You won’t really erect any sculptures or statues. You basically cover the grave with a piece of cloth to identify where the body is buried so that you don’t tramp on that ground or tramp on the body out of respect. These cloths are laid as graves to signify the people that lived there, that they were forcibly removed from their homes. The land is basically a graveyard to us because the people lived there and you know, these cloths represent these homes which was for us, kind of life itself. It was the only place here in Cape Town where people from different race groups lived together harmoniously. Resurrection also deals with the idea of being resurrected. So the way resurrection is described in the Holy Quran is that people will rise from nothing, it will rain this drop of semen so to say and once it hits the ground your little bone, your body will basically merge from this little bone. And from nothing you will rise up into something. You can see in the cloths, there is actually the stages of nothing and then the body starts to emerge and you have these people rising up and walking like Zombies. And that is the way it is described, the day of Judgement. People won’t really know that its judgement day, only afterwards they realise that they have been resurrected. So the same kind of metaphor of people being resurrected, District Six being resurrected. Bringing back people who once lived in District Six coming back to their homes. But in that also there are issues where a lot of them have passed on, now it is their siblings that inheriting the land and that is breaking up family groups because people are now fighting over the properties. It is quiet interesting that there is unrest even in something so positive.

CK: Is this also how the title of the exhibition came up?

Husain: The title was quiet interesting as Hasan and me had weeks and weeks of arguments of what the title is gonna be.  Hasan was fixed on the idea, the title unrest. He sold it to me by saying:’ you know what, its quiet a contradictory word as it has the word rest in it, yet it deals with something where you are uneasy, unsure, where your body is in a state of unrest. And we found it a very fitting title because we live in the state as South Africans, we live in the state of unrest. Being overcome by violence, by crime, by drug abuse, also where we work, we are surrounded by this, we experience this, and we felt that it fitted the body of work and it fits the time frame we are living in you know. If we should look back in 20 years time, we can say that it was a period of Unrest. The Unrest that is happening in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, you know, within the Muslim world there is this constant experience of unrest amongst Muslim people.

CK: Where do you see the role, the power of your art in that time? Times of unrest?

Husain: I feel Unrest is just the beginning of something, there is a lot of potential to speak about. And I am hoping we can achieve photographs that really capture more of this unrest that is really been experienced, within Nigeria, within Palestine, you know, I feel that the works slowly captures it, slowly captures our experience, and our effect. How crime has effected us, how we trying to deal with it, how we internalising it. But I feel like there are more photographs that are needed to really complete the body of work.

CK: I see a lot of shadows, looking at Mandela Park and 786. Can they be interpreted as ‘shadows of the past’?  What do these shadows represent?

Husain: That’s beautiful, shadows are the reflection of the past, and that is exactly what those shadows represent in these photographs. Specifically with 786 where these photographs represent these dark entities that once existed within this special location. These dark entities, that sell drugs to youngsters, that operate with breaking into homes, etc etc. und you can see some of the shadows are emerging from urine, from dirt, highlighting that these are dark shadows, these are not good shadows. Some of these shadows don’t correspond with the people there, talking about, they basically symbolising different poses, like reaching in the back of their pants for a gun, maybe, creeping up as if you break into somebody’s car, somebody’s home. Those are what the shadows really relate to.

In comparison to Mandela Park, those shadows talk about the unrest that these communities are experiencing with regard to sanitation, housing etc. all the protest action that has been happening. So you have these ideal men, however the shadows are not idle, they are in the state of protest.

CK: Did you take these pictures while you were working with a specific community in another capacity than as artists producing work towards a project? What inspired you at the Lalela Arts Project in Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay, where you were working with youth living under these circumstances about which we have been speaking?

Husain: Yes, for sure. That specific shot Mandela Park was inspired by the youth we are working with, where they live, cause this is where they come from. This is what they experiencing. Our reasons for working with Lalela, is to work with youth that are effected by domestic violence. That specific shot we had some of our students accompanying us. It was quiet nice that they were accompanying us, so it felt really safe doing it. It was also a way of us showing them how we work, with which method we working and I knew that once it was printed and framed, exhibited and shown in a magazine, I could take it back to my students and show them with pride: ‘ look here, you are part of this.’ That is what I really wanted to achieve with that.

The other location however is out of the community where we are working in, so we have a really good friend that helps us and he accompanies us with a lot of the shots. He comes from quiet a rough community in Athlone and a lot of our inspiration does come from him and our conversations with him. Those shots where kind of inspired though his interactions with us and he has been there since the beginning, so he has moulded us quiet a bit and moulded the work as well.

CK: You’ve always produced and exhibited work together. What is your typical way of working together: As you mentioned before, there is conflict. I think it must be quiet a challenge to work as a team, as twins, sometimes. Do you see it changing over the years, or are you in a routine by now?

Husain: Nah, for me, its because of that friction that we can create work. Hm…

CK: Does creativity come out of this friction?

Husain: Definitely creativity and …we are always arguing. I do hope we reach a point where we can work a bit better with each other, understand each other and keep and open mind. We both are very bull-headed.

Hasan: Its not that, it is just that, in art you have…in a work you are trying to, for example, send a message. You have a statement you want to make. The problem comes when the statement differs. When he wants to say something, I want to say something and its different and you only have this one picture to say it. I think that is where the arguments come when you try to say too much or you try to say too little. That is the tricky part. But you see when you have a location and everything goes the way you wanted, you have the perfect props with you, you have a perfect day, the perfect light. No one is messing with you on the location, everything works out. You see with that for me, that just runs smoothly. Where as with photographs where you not really prepared, things are not right, you get some issues on the day, and you try to make something out of it, that is where we sometimes have problems. Its just what you’ve working with.

CK: And are these pictures that are the ones that are the most powerful ones?

Hasan: Sometimes you know, it happens, where it is the luck of the draw.

Husain: Yes, definitely, that is my process, I am like, lets go out without any planning and shooting and see what happens and let the magic take over. Where Hasan is more like, no you need to plan and exactly know what you going to do on site. You know that is where we at log heads with each other, because I don’t like working like that, I agree with a certain amount of planning but I know, if you, if you plan, plan, plan and you don’t become productive, then what is the point of planning. My thing is to go out there and shoot, even if you not going use the work, just keep yourself warmed up. You can’t expect to draw like a professional if you don’t draw for five years, in that time you need to keep your hand warm. That is what I feel like, just go out and shoot, keep your hand warm, keep your eye warm, so when you do have these shots that you plan so carefully for, that you ready for it. That you don’t, you not unfit, so to say, and because you are so out of production, you don’t pull it off the way you expect it to pull it off. When you remaining productive and practical you doing four shots a day, because you so warmed up, to do so. So that’s where we fight quiet a bit, yes.

CK: Masculinity is always present in your work. Do you have plans to explore the feminine side? The role of women within the community, in Islam etc.?

Husain: We respond to this question by saying we are not women and its very difficult for us to represent a female side of Islam. Different women will differ in their interpretations of Islam, some might feel oppressed, some might feel in charge of themselves. We do feel that Islam is fair to both sexes. Hasan had his opportunity to dress like a lady, I had my opportunity to dress as a lady, we do try to portrait it but not in the light way, where we are actually being the voice for women, I think this is an interesting step forward. I know Hasan is exploring something with his new work, speaking about women, very interesting, so yes, this is something that we are keeping for future works.

10 Films you have to see at this year’s New York African Film Festival

Tomorrow sees the start of the 22nd edition of the New York African Film Festival. The festival–founded by Sierra Leone born Mahen Bonetti–is always something to look forward to with its lineup of lots of African films that Americans would not likely not otherwise have access to.  This year’s Festival is particularly special since it marks the 25th anniversary of the festival’s parent organization, the African Film Festival, Inc (AFF). This makes AFF one of the longest running African film institutions in the United States today. The festival will happen at three venues: at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (May 6-12th), Maysles Cinema Institute in Harlem (May 14-17th) and finally ending at BAM from the 22nd to the 25th.

The theme of this year’s festival is the “International Decade of People of African Descent” (which is also a theme of the UN) and particular focus is given to women of African descent. The festival organizers supplied us with trailers and synopses of some of the most interesting films being showcased below. You can also check out the AFF website to buy tickets, see the complete festival lineup, and get more information.

‘Bus Nut’ directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ghana/USA, 2014, 7min.

Akosua Adoma Owusu’s latest work, Bus Nut, screens as part of the Festival’s Shorts Program. It rearticulates the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a political and social protest against U.S. racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama, and its relationship to an educational video on school-bus safety. Actress MaameYaa Boafo restages a vintage video while reciting press-conference audio of Rosa Parks on a re-created set in New York City. This screening is particular special as Owusu and Boafo first met and subsequently shot the film during last year’s New York African Film Festival.

* Screening Tuesday, May 12th, 6:00pm (Introduction by MaameYaa Boafo) – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center

‘Cold Harbour’ (N.Y. Premiere) directed Carey McKenzie, South Africa, 2014, 73min.

While investigating a smugglers’ turf war in Cape Town, township cop Sizwe stumbles upon police corruption. His boss and mentor, Venske, gives Sizwe the case but assigns a rookie, Legama, to keep an eye on him. After Sizwe discovers that a homicide is linked to Triad (Chinese mafia) through abalone smuggling, a tip from a former comrade leads to a major bust. Despite the seized contraband being stolen within hours, Sizwe is still promoted to detective. It’s a bitter triumph though—he’s being played, and he knows it. In a world where self-interest and corruption have overtaken loyalty and honor, Sizwe is left with no one to trust and integrity demands that he take the law into his own hands.

* Screening Wednesday, May 6th, 7pm (Q&A with Carey McKenzie and Tendeka Matatu) – Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Monday, May 11th, 2pm – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center

‘Love the One You Love’ (U.S. Premiere) directed by Jenna Bass, South Africa, 2014, 105min.

Across the city of Cape Town, a sex-line operator, a dog handler, and an IT technician begin to suspect that their romantic relationships are the subject of a bizarre conspiracy, involving their friends, family, and possibly even greater forces. Love the One You Love’s parallel stories question the ideals we hold too sacred: love, happiness, and the New South Africa. For more on this great film, read Charl Blignaut’s review.

* Friday, May 8th, 9:00pm – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Mossane directed by Safi Faye, Senegal, 1996, 105min.



Every year the New York African Film Festival screens one classic film, selected based on that particular year’s theme. This year, in light of the festival’s focus on the International Decade of the People of African Descent and African women, in particular, they will be showing Mossane from the pioneering female director, Safi Faye. Mossane (Magou Seck), a beautiful 14-year-old girl from a rural Senegalese village, is the object of affection to many, including Fara, a poor university student—and even her own brother, Ngor. Although she has long been promised as a bride to the wealthy Diogaye, Mossane falls in love with Fara and on her wedding day, she defies her parents’ wishes and refuses to go through with it.

* Tuesday, May 12th, 9:00pm (Introduction by Mamadou Niang) – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center.

‘The Narrow Frame’ of Midnight (N.Y. Premiere) directed by Tala Hadid, Morocco/France/UK, 2014, 93min.

Following the interlacing destinies of three witnesses to a world eviscerated by fundamentalism and violence, Moroccan-Iraqi director Tala Hadid’s brooding fiction-feature debut is an urgent, evocative mingling of reverie and nightmare. Zacaria (Khalid Abdalla), a Moroccan-Iraqi writer, sets off on a journey to find his missing brother, hoping to rescue him from the sinister clutches of jihadism and also to redeem himself for having turned a blind eye to his brother’s torture in the jails of the Moroccan secret police. Aïcha (Fadwa Boujouane), a young orphan sold to a petty criminal, escapes from captivity and sets out into the forest. Judith (Marie-Josée Croze), the lover Zacaria left behind, yearns to have a child. The respective quests of these characters intersect, giving them opportunities to rescue one another before continuing on to their unpredictable fates.

* Screening Monday, May 11th, 6:30pm (Q&A with Tala Hadid and Danny Glover), Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center.

‘National Diploma,’ directed Dieudo Hamadi, Democratic Republic of the Congo/France, 2014, 92min.

With a concise narrative, precise camera work and sequential oozing moments of candid (and sometimes inadvertent) humor and heartrending emotions, Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi’s second feature-length film offers a poised and engaging view of his hometown’s high-school students confronting their graduate exams. A remarkable piece of cinema vérité, which goes mightily up close to its subjects, National Diploma is proof of Hamadi as one of Democratic Republic of Congo’s (if not Africa’s) most observant documentary-makers; rarely impeding on the circumstances but readily there to capture defining moments in the proceedings. His latest film is a flowing mix of erudite socio-political reflections and outright fun. Set in the director’s home city of Kisangani, National Diploma takes its name after the fin-du-lycée examinations which would make or break a high-school student’s future; and just as some of their counterparts in other countries, the Congolese students at the center of the film takes to everything and anything to try and pass the examen d’état, ranging from intervention of the divine (bathing in shamanic holy water, having pens blessed by a Christian priest) or the dough (getting “tips” about the question papers from self-proclaimed insiders).

‘Red Leaves’ (U.S. Premiere) directed Bazi Gete, Israel, 2014, 80min.

This year’s Centerpiece Film comes from Israel and focuses on members of the country’s Ethiopian diaspora. Meseganio Tadela, 74, immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 28 years ago with his family. He has chosen to zealously retain his culture, talks very little, and hardly speaks Hebrew. After losing his wife, Meseganio sets out on a journey that leads him through his children’s homes. He comes to realize that he belongs to a rapidly disappearing class that believes in retaining Ethiopian culture. As this harsh reality begins to hit him, he struggles to survive according to his own rules.

* Friday, May 8th, 6:45pm (Q&A with Bazi Gete); Sunday, May 10th, 4:15pm (Q&A with Bazi Gete) – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center

‘Run’ (N.Y. Premiere) directed by Philippe Lacôte, France/Ivory Coast, 2014, 100min.

Run finds shelter with fellow dissident Assa (Isaach de Bankolé) after assassinating the Prime Minister of the Ivory Coast. While in hiding, Run’s story is revealed in three separate flashbacks—his childhood with Tourou, when his dream was to become a rainmaker; his adventures with Gladys, the competitive eater; and his past as a young member of a militia, amid conflict in the Ivory Coast—which together speak volumes about contemporary life in the troubled country. Philippe Lacôte’s feature-film debut is a mesmerizing coming-of-age tale, alternately dreamlike and ultra-realistic.

* Monday, May 11th, 9:00pm–-Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center. Following the screening, actor Isaach de Bankolé will be in attendance for an audience Q&A.

“Sobukwe: A Great Soul” (U.S. Premiere) directed by Mickey Madoda Dube, South Africa, 2011, 100min.

This film celebrates the life of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, restoring him to his rightful place as a leading figure in South African history. Despite his pivotal role in the struggle for liberation (and as the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress), there isn’t a single piece of archive of the man who was once one of the most watched, recorded, and popular political prisoners in the world. Even the current South African government has failed to recognize his place in history and the relevance of his message today. Mickey Madoda Dube’s film seeks to fill that gap, standing as a monument to a great man, a global visionary, teacher, political leader, philosopher, and humanist who was well ahead of his time, declaring his commitment to a “non-racial” society in a racist world by asserting that “there is only one race, the human race.”

* Wednesday, May 6th, 9:00pm (Introduction and Q&A by Micky Madoda Dube) – Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Friday, May 8th, 4:00pm – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center

‘Stories of Our Lives directed by Jim Chuchu and the NEST Collective, Kenya, 2014, 62min.

Created by the members of a Nairobi-based arts collective — who have removed their names from the film for fear of reprisal — this anthology film that dramatizes true-life stories from Kenya’s oppressed LGBTQ community is both a labour of love and a bold act of militancy. Stories of Our Lives began as an archive of testimonials from Kenyan persons who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex assembled by a small Nairobi-based multidisciplinary arts collective. So compelling were these stories that the ten-member association of artists, social workers and entrepreneurs was inspired to adapt some of them into short films. Working on a shoestring budget with one small video camera, two LED lights, a portable digital recorder, a shotgun mic, and relentless courage and enthusiasm, the cast and crew shot, edited, and mixed five shorts over eight months to create this remarkable anthology film. The resultant black-and-white vignettes — Duet, Run, Ask Me Nicely (Itisha Poa), Each Night I Dream, and Stop Running Away — unfold with a graceful simplicity and beguiling charm that belie the fraught circumstances of their making.

* Thursday, May 7th, 9:00pm – Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Monday, May 11th, 4:00pm – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Burundi goes from peacebuilding success to a growing mess

In 2005, when President Pierre Nkurunziza rose to the presidency by indirect vote as dictated by the country’s then new constitution, Burundians and observers alike let out a sigh a relief. After decades of ethno-political violence and years of negotiations to ratify the Arusha Agreement (signed in neighboring Tanzania), Burundi had finally gone through a peaceful transition. Or so it seemed at the time.

To avoid the zero-sum politics that often characterize divided societies, the Arusha-inspired political framework established a power-sharing agreement that provided political and security guarantees for all those involved. Additionally, Burundi succeeded where others have failed in fully integrating various warring groups into a single republican army.

Right now, after nearly a week of protest resulting in at least 7 dead, dozens wounded, and tens of thousands of refugees, we are hard-pressed to understand how Burundi went from being the hallmark of power-sharing success to an increasingly polarized country.

The escalation of tensions seems to have taken many by surprise. Yet, for over a year, scholars and analysts have warned of the growing tensions in Burundi, such as in here, here, and here. In fact, there were early signs: In the beginning of Nkurunziza’s presidency, he hinted at his contempt for dissent. Early in his tenure, he shut down civil society organizations and disciplined party members who disapproved of his leadership.

But the 2010 elections should have been another, yet crucial sign of things to come. The electoral campaign was marred with harassment, intimidation and arrests of opposition members. By the end of the local elections, most of the opposition opted to boycott the remainder of the polls. This decision turned out to be a severe miscalculation. Instead of delegitimizing the electoral process, it emboldened the ruling party, which gained a crushing majority in the legislature. Burundi becoming a de facto single-party state is one of the contributing factors to the current crisis; and the fractured and, at times, ego-driven opposition is partly to blame.

What followed over the next 2 years was low-grade post-electoral violence between forces and institutions loyal to the National Council for the Defence of Democracy – Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) and the opposition. The ruling party and National Forces for Liberation (FNL), a predominately Hutu party, then headed by Agathon Rwanda, bore the brunt of the casualties. Opposition leaders such as Rwasa, and the journalist Alexis Sinduhije of the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD) went into exile. They returned in 2013 under robust security guarantees brokered by the United Nations to prepare the roadmap for the 2015 elections.

The current crisis over whether or not President Nkurunziza is eligible for an additional mandate is rooted in article 302 of the constitution. It stipulates that the post-transition president was to be elected by the national assembly and the senate. The aim was to minimize tensions during the post-transition period. However, article 96 states that a president is to be elected by universal suffrage, renewable once. The Arusha agreement, which was used to frame the constitution, clearly states in article 7.3 that ’no one may serve more than two presidential terms.’

The official position of the ruling party is that since Nkurunziza was not elected by universal suffrage the first time around, his first term did not fall under the limits outlined by article 96, making the post-transition president eligible for thee mandates. Moreover, the ruling party recently that some of the provisions of the Arusha agreement were “nul and void.”

Dissenters, argue that any interpretation articles 96 and 302 should be done in accordance in article 7.3 of Arusha.

The Constitutional Court recently ruled President Nkurunziza’s candidacy to be constitutional. This ruling, however, is not without controversy. Indeed, the court’s legitimacy is now tinted by allegations from its Vice President, Sylvère Nimpagiritse, who claims that supporters of the President have intimidated and threaten members of the court to support Nkurunziza candidacy. He stated what while others initially opposed gave in to the pressures, he chose to flee to neighboring Rwanda. The court decision, in light of these allegations, will likely strengthen the protestors’ resolve to remains in the streets.

Regardless of where one stands on the constitutional issue, the fact that President Nkurunziza is now rejecting the very document that has allowed him to go from rebel leader to president of the Republic, can potentially have dangerous consequences for the stability of the country. By reneging on its peace treaty obligations, the CNDD-FDD may open the door for other actors who abided by the treaty, to turn their back on it. While this disregard for Arusha may or may not have domestic legal implications, a peace treaty is only as good as the trust the parties have in it and in each other. Nkurunziza and his inner circle have violated that trust and protestors are letting him know.

That breach of trust, constitutional or not, may lead to more violence in the coming days.