Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 365

What if black people inverted South Africa’s township tours ?

This video piece below is just brilliant. Here’s the set-up: What if two black Capetonians (both photographers) went to Camps Bay doing “an alternative township tour” to invert the “township tour”? The video is by LiveSA, a Cape Town based web and print initiative staffed by young black people: “Recently LiveSA made a news insert for eNCA about township tours in South Africa – do they promote tired stereotypes? Are they ‘poverty porn’ for tourists? Can young people re-invent the township tour?”

For those not familiar with “township tours,” read Busisiwe Deyi’s post from last year. In short, township tours are instances “where tourists are taken in buses through townships to experience ‘authentic’ South Africa.”  (BTW, Deyi’s post also takes on a supposedly progressive variant of township tours, “social justice tours.”) As for Camps Bay, it’s a largely white neighborhood of the super rich on Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard, which is as much a legacy of Apartheid. There’s little else to add other than to say watch the video and see how all the whites featured do exactly what you thought they would do.  From the white man who announces that his dogs are barking because ‘they [the dogs] don’t recognize strangers.‘ Then there’s the people at a restaurant who are annoyed at this intrusion on their privacy and “Desmond,” “their black” (because that’s what he is), to deal with “these people.”

So apart from the comment on “township tours” (privacy is a privilege of the wealth, poverty means you are ready to be on display, be a ‘type’), what the video does is gives you a sense of what most black people Cape Town have to keep up with everyday, including random violence, in “white spaces.”   On the upside, this kind of interrogation (on video) of white privilege in Cape Town (and elsewhere in South Africa) by black people is relatively new, and with increasing access to social media platforms like Youtube, and media production tools like  DSLRS we’ll see more of this. Kudos to LiveMag for being the first (as far as we can tell) to do this. We only wish the video was longer. Next up, there should be tours of places of forced removals.

What Egypt’s latest football tragedy says about social divisions in the country

On Sunday while I sat sipping tea at a French chain café somewhere on the outskirts of Cairo, dozens of football fans were killed at a stadium less than a mile away. To grasp what happened and its significance, it is necessary to understand the landscape in which this tragic event took place. It did not happen in Cairo, as one less familiar with the metropolis’s composition may know it. It was not among the bustling, crowded, cluttered streets of the city proper. This carnage took place in the sleepy, affluent suburb of New Cairo, where the villas are many and the stores are boxy. And while a mile may seem like a substantial distance, in this context, it was right next door.

The Olympic Village of Air Defense Forces, where the football match took place, is part of a sprawling military complex that abuts two major thoroughfares. On the other side of this vast intersection is an enormous shopping and entertainment complex owned and operated by the Al-Futtaim Group, an Emirati conglomerate. While peak hours can see traffic jams, this area is often strikingly empty, and the great swathes of uniform desert make the distances seem like a fraction of what they actually are.

In the afternoon, I had a taxi pick me up to take me to this glossy compound of striking resemblance to the Dubai Airport. He took back roads so as to avoid the game-day traffic, commenting incidentally on the lack of police presence on the roads leading to the stadium. On the trip back two hours later he simply stated that in the interim, there had been “some problems between the people and the police.” It was not until I returned home that I realized what had happened: As I sat sipping tea and listening to elevator music next to a comically grandiose novelty fountain, across the street, completely unbeknownst to me, at least 20 fans were killed (the official death toll as of writing); trampled, suffocated by tear gas, and according to some reports, fired on by security forces (forensics report claims no deaths were caused by live ammunition).

This tragic juxtaposition felt so depressingly representative of the current social and political climate in Egypt, where groups of individuals live next to each other but in completely different worlds, and where one person’s version of the truth, shaped by their experiences or the content they choose to consume, is in direct opposition to the version of reality as understood by their neighbor.

The divergent narratives propagated by state and privately owned media domestically, by international outlets, and of course via social media, fuel this second point. Much of the local media blamed the reckless behavior of ticketless fans for the tragedy, while witnesses alleged excessive force on the part of the police.

Had this event occurred anywhere else in the world, invariably multiple narratives would have emerged. So is the nature of tragedy and panic. However, in the Egyptian context, this offers yet another glimpse into the deep-rooted social polarization, where those who support the government and police blamed the thuggery of fans, and those with deep-rooted suspicion of security forces, borne out of the many well-documented instances of excessive use of force, have labeled it a massacre.

On the other hand, my experience, or lack thereof, is indicative of the literal and figurative barriers that exist in a society where those who can afford to, are able live within protective walls, only looking to see what lays behind the curtain if they so choose. Ask virtually any Egyptian and they will tell you that the breaks from reality are a necessity for maintaining one’s sanity. However beyond that, these barriers reinforce the corrosive social inequalities that have been eating away at Egyptian society for decades.

Since the incident, President Adbel Fatah el-Sisi has called for an inquiry into what happened, and the Egyptian Football Association has pledged to compensate the victim’s families.

While many details about this latest disaster remain murky, what does emerge clearly is a common appeal; that until there is genuine accountability, a restoration of social trust, and systemic efforts to break down social barriers, tragedies like this will continue to occur.

5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Hawa Essuman

Kenyan-Ghanaian filmmaker and actress Hawa Essuman’s fascination with telling stories with pictures and sound led her to filmmaking via commercials and TV, which she continues to nurture as full-time fortunate indulgence. Her feature film Soul Boy (2010) was screened in over 40 festivals around the world and honored with several awards.

Essuman, who is also a music video director, is currently in production for two documentaries: Logs of War, about extractive industries and the delicate balance between development and destruction, is set in Liberia. Distance is about how the growing trend of people moving, as a way of life, impacts on their identity and relationships.

1) What is your first film memory? 

The first film I ever saw on the big screen was Star Wars, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was four or five and the day care centre was taking a group of children to the cinema. I was over the moon to be picked. I remember the seat feeling incredibly large. My craned neck and saucer eyes didn’t move for the length of the film. I was transfixed. Immersed. Absorbed. I went home dreamt about it for days after.

Much later, in my early twenties, when we were talking about the film, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen it. My friend borrowed it and while watching it, all those long ago experienced feelings came rushing back. It felt like I had returned to something important.

2) Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

I don’t think there were one particular defining reason, but more like a culmination of reasons. One was that I wanted to tell stories. It’s through stories that we learn and share thoughts.

Film has a power that we currently take for granted because they are so ubiquitous. Overload doesn’t diminish power though. Film has a way of moving and influencing people, like other art forms. Except with film you get to play with all other art forms to create your vision. I really don’t think any other medium allows that.

I like how the story one tells with film sits in people’s minds. It gets them thinking in a way they probably wouldn’t otherwise, simply because they allow themselves to suspend reality enough to fully engage, no matter how far-fetched a thought process is. I like that an idea being echoed back to society in images and sounds, makes one consider a specific perspective. Film widens our own horizons, whether we realize it or not.

3) Which film do you wish you had made and why?

There’s quite a few. The list rotates. Pan’s Labyrinth by and In the Mood for Love by are two. Both films are beautiful in their romanticism and darkness/tragedy. I love the fact that there are no clear-cut lines and that no one is spared, which is what life is about. Both films explore the human capacity to go beyond oneself for whatever our conviction is. Making us our best or worst selves.

4) Name one of the films on your top-5 list and the reason why it is there.

In the Mood for Love is always on that list. It is such a feast for the eyes – beautifully shot and crafted, so deliberate. I just really enjoy how Wong Kar Wai makes a meal of human relationships. Abandonment and pain make for interesting bedfellows and in their commiseration have their own emotional affair – a theme that he explores and treats really well.

5) Ask yourself any question you think I should have asked and answer it.

What do I think about the concept of “African stories”?

I think that confining any storyteller to a label is a disservice to the story and the one telling it. And I’m not really sure what purpose that serves. At the end of the day it’s about telling a good story. Inspiration is fluid.

How about, we just tell stories and make films as they come to us, and through the body of work try determine who we are/were as artists, keeping in mind that identity is in constant flux.

The hierarchy of refugee stories

Three hundred refugees and migrants are now missing and feared dead after trying to cross the Mediterranean over the weekend from Libya to Italy on rubber dinghies. According to the latest news reports, the majority of the refugees were from sub-Saharan Africa.

Stories about Syrian refugees dominated the mainstream U.S. and Western English-language media over the past year. Reporters covered the lives of individual refugees struggling to adjust in camps and European cities, while also examining everything from the international aid response to the architecture of refugee camps.

In 2014, at least 40,000 Syrians crossed the Mediterranean to seek asylum in European countries via Italy. But approximately 35,000 Eritreans also made the voyage – a sharp increase from 10,000 in 2013. More Eritreans have also entered refugee camps in Ethiopia and Sudan, the majority between the ages of 18–24, and a significant number of unaccompanied children under the age of 18. Young Eritreans are fleeing mandatory and indefinite military conscription and imprisonment and torture for political organizing; there are also reports of growing famine.

Yet in sharp contrast to the coverage of Syrian refugees, the Western English-language media has barely registered the escalating Eritrean refugee crisis. There have been few in-depth stories; absent profiles of Eritreans struggling to re-build their lives abroad; and rare editorials condemning the international community for not accepting more Eritrean asylum seekers or for failing to rescue Eritreans who are held hostage and brutally tortured in the Sinai.

There are several reasons for this discrepancy: the Syrian war has forced 3 million people to leave the country and created an unprecedented flow of people into neighboring countries; it rightfully deserves significant and ongoing coverage. But the other reasons are about history, politics and power – the Middle East has received increased Western media coverage in the post-9/11 era. As a result, there’s a media infrastructure; some of the main Syrian refugee camps are housed in countries where there were already bastions of foreign correspondents, and it’s relatively easy for Western journalists to travel from Istanbul and Amman to camps along the borders of Turkey and Jordan.

In contrast, most Eritrean refugees flee first to Ethiopia or Sudan, both countries where there are few journalists reporting for the Western press. Neither country is particularly welcoming to journalists, but Ethiopia’s draconian press laws mostly target local reporters, and accessing the refugee camps in the Northern Tigray region is not difficult – there are daily flights from Addis’s Bole Airport. Ethiopia now hosts more refugees than any other African country, yet most coverage of issues in the camps comes from the press offices of relief agencies. (As a side note, the fighting in Sudan and South Sudan has recently resulted in huge flows of people across borders as well as into Gambella, Ethiopia; but these refugees also get barely a mention.)

While we’re inundated with the tales of brave war correspondents crossing the border into Syria to capture the atrocities, there is an absence of stories about journalists attempting to infiltrate Eritrea on a similar mission. Eritrea, which once riveted Europe and the US with its independence struggle from Ethiopia, has fallen from the media’s gaze since Isyas Afwerki began constructing his police state in 1993. Eritrea now barely registers in Western consciousness – except of course as it relates to possible support for or against terrorist movements.

The mainstream media’s bias of covering refugee issues more extensively in the Middle East matters. While Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland have historically granted Eritreans asylum, there are now disturbing political undercurrents as Northern European countries appear on the brink of closing their doors to Eritreans.

In mid-2014, Denmark’s Immigration Service sent a team on a “fact finding mission” to Eritrea, after suspending asylum proceedings due to the increased numbers of Eritrean asylum-seekers. The purpose was to determine whether the situation was really so terrible. In Eritrea, these so-called fact finders primarily spoke to Western Embassy staff; their resulting report in October 2014 claimed that conditions in Eritrea had improved enough to conveniently tighten Denmark’s asylum criteria. The report was so blatantly inaccurate that Human Rights Watch and UNHCR debunked it point by point. The sole academic quoted in the report issued a statement he had been deliberately misquoted and demanding his name be withdrawn. The audacity of Denmark’s Immigration Service is notable – they clearly thought people were uninformed enough about the ongoing crisis in Eritrea to not even notice their inventions.

While the Danish report is now “under revision”, the Afwerki regime is already using it as propaganda. Meanwhile, the UK and Norway are undertaking their own investigations that will have implications on their asylum proceedings. Israel (which houses many Eritreans who survive the journey across Egypt) continues to imprison refugees who cross its borders or forcibly deports them, violating their basic human rights. (As AIAC has noted before, Israel refuses to even call them refugees, instead using the term infiltrators.) In a time when there are more refugees than in the previous 50 years, and as xenophobia and racism manifest in the political parties and policies of many developed countries, we need journalists who cover the lives of all refugees – not just those of geopolitical importance.

A boulevard named after F.W. de Klerk. Or, do we really need new street names?

It is interesting to note how much of the debate about the renaming of Table Bay Boulevard on the edge of downtown Cape Town after apartheid’s last president, F.W. de Klerk, has invoked ideas of memory and amnesia. How can we remember particular role players in relation to South Africa’s transition to democracy? It’s an important question. Memory can be associated with ideas of inscription and re-inscription, since it implies that the act of recollection is also one of forgetting. And that makes it profoundly political.

Indeed, from this perspective, we can see that the controversy surrounding the renaming of Table Bay Boulevard reflects a strange series of turns in contemporary South African political memory.

For example, if you will recall, a few years ago the eThiwkini municipality (how Durban in Kwazulu-Natal is officially known now) initiated a process of renaming a number of roads. One of the more controversial proposed names was that of Andrew Zondo, a young man who in the 1980’s planted a bomb in a shopping centre out of frustration at the brutality of the apartheid state. Four innocent people were killed and many were badly injured. Zondo was tried and eventually executed for his crime.

At the time, the Democratic Alliance (which governs in Cape Town) fought against the name changes in Durban. In court battles, and public statements, they marshalled many of the arguments—about cost, about the ANC bulldozing the proposal through and the moral standing of Andrew Zondo—critics (here, here and ) have raised against the renaming of Table Bay Boulevard. The Zondo case therefore marked a signal moment in contemporary South Africa’s contestation of public memory precisely because it highlighted the heated, complex political dynamics at play in the negotiation of forms of public honour.

Strangely, it seems prescient that it is a main arterial road in Cape Town that has been renamed, quite swiftly, and under dubious circumstances if opposition parties are to be believed, since it affirms strongly held views about the ruling DA being inconsiderate of the province’s black and coloured majority. Many were moved to ask, ‘how the can we honour the last apartheid president, a man who very recently declared on CNN, “I haven’t apologised for the original concept” of apartheid?’

But if you will recall, in 1994, while the ANC cleaned up in the national elections, the National Party claimed a majority in the Western Cape. This was a bitter pill to swallow. As Sean Jacobs (in a 2001 article) shows, the reasons for this are complex. The Western Cape was an important hotbed of anti-apartheid political activism. Many post-apartheid political figures, like Trevor Manuel, Cheryl Carrolus and Alan Boesak cut their political teeth in the city’s coloured townships and its African townships produced leaders like Oscar Mpetha while Chris Hani spent some of his formative years here. Indeed, like Andrew Zondo, Robbie Waterwich, Colleen Williams and Ashley Kriel feature among the many black South Africans who also took up arms against the apartheid government. 

Evidently, it was the National Party’s ‘swart gevaar’ political campaign, which played on the perils of immanent black rule, and the charismatic figure of F.W. de Klerk, that swung the vote. ‘Coloured voters’ (who make up the majority in the province) had effectively lent support to the party and representatives that they had actively struggled against during apartheid. (The plurality of coloureds now vote DA. Most whites vote DA too while Africans overwhelmingly vote ANC).

21 years later, the City of Cape Town is going ahead with the renaming, and it’s causing uproar.

One reason for the controversy is that post-apartheid memories are a product of the negotiated settlement, of compromise and complicity. Which means to say, all memories are valid in the context of the greater human tragedy of the bitter past. This flows through the TRC process, and indeed, is enshrined in South Africa’s heritage policy.

There was also no cleansing of the public sphere, no washing away of public memories, after the fall of apartheid. That is in part why Cecil John Rhodes continues to ‘salute’ in the Company Gardens in Cape Town, and the Voortrekker Monument, a monolith to Afrikaner nationalism, still stands proudly in Pretoria. The place of material representations of the colonial and apartheid past have been rendered the subject of continued negotiation, as markers of difficult pasts that cannot easily be abandoned.

This political spirit of parity of memory has also led to some strange juxtapositions, such as the Mandela-Rhodes Place, and the eponymously named fellowship. Freedom Park—a post-apartheid monument aimed at promoting nation-building and reconciliation—stands opposite the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria for example. It has a monumental Wall of Names. In 2007, an Afrikaner rights group, Afriforum and self-proclaimed Afrikaner rights activist, Steve Hofmeyr, campaigned for the inscription of former who died in the ‘Border Wars’ in Namibia and Angola to be inscribed on the Wall together with soldiers who fought for the country’s liberation from apartheid. 

Indeed such a policy forces us to continuously remember. And indeed, in the case Table Bay Boulevard it appeared that perhaps mainstream political memory had lapsed. For indeed it has come to light that there is already a road named after F.W. de Klerk in Wesbank, a poor coloured township on the outskirts of the City. The street name was assigned 15 years ago when the province was ruled by the ANC. The residents of Wesbank do not appear to have been incensed by the name.

I am strongly against the renaming. I don’t think F.W. de Klerk is worthy of the honour. But I find it difficult to also let go of the idea that the proposal raises a bitter, yet poignant irony about post-apartheid political memory, about its contradictions and complexities, and the struggle against forgetting that is so visceral and present for so many.

It’s been one year since Stuart Hall passed

My early university education at the then-very white University of Cape Town coincided with South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to democracy. Stuart Hall didn’t feature much, despite the fact, as I would later learn, I was indirectly influenced by his ideas about identity politics, language, culture, race, and social movements.

For example, I remember writing a seminar paper as a final year student at the University of Cape Town about “black Afrikaans”—a movement of coloured poets and educators in Cape Town and the Cape West Coast allied to teacher unions and the United Democratic Front who sought to counter white histories of Afrikaans by emphasizing its hybrid origins in a slave economy and encouraged use of spoken Afrikaans in classroom settings. Nevertheless, culture (or studying culture) was hardly a priority for my late-1980s/early-1990s cohort—South Africa then was in the midst of a violent transition; protest movements and their academic allies were tactically focused on electoral power and state institutions.

Strategic considerations, too, pushed us to eschew analyses of race in favor of class. Lynette Steenveld, a media scholar at Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, wrote to me that “… identity was a problem because of the Apartheid state’s racialization of identity and its essentialist stance on culture. So the one progressive move was to eschew identity and focus on class.”

That said, there is ample evidence that South African scholars, students and media activists were very familiar with Hall’s work in that period. In 1980s Apartheid South Africa, academics who studied culture, came at it from two diametrically opposed schools: on one side a more traditional behavioralist approach (the Afrikaans “communications studies”) and on the other, leftist /political economy approaches to culture (reflecting dominant positions in the liberation movement and old school Marxist influences).

But as Steenveld recently reminded me that when she was a graduate student in the mid-1980s, some scholars—most notably at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape and what is now the University of Kwazulu-Natal—were exposed to the work of Stuart Hall. Keyan Tomaselli, a media scholar at the now University of Kwazulu-Natal, who is most closely associated with the beginnings of cultural studies in South Africa, should take much of the credit for this. He modeled a center after Hall’s at Birmingham. Steenveld adds: “I personally came from a Marxist position which was critical of the ANC’s racial politics, so discovering through Hall a new way of thinking left politics was helpful to me.”

In 1995, I went to study for a political science graduate degree at Northwestern University in Chicago’s northern suburbs. It is probably there where I first became familiar with Hall’s work in classes on the interactions between media, globalization, and cultural politics. Not surprisingly, my current research and writing on popular culture (reality shows, public television, advertising, social media, and my foray into football studies), is heavily influenced by Hall’s work.

When Hall passed away, The New York Times tried to dismiss him as a scholar and activist of multiculturalism only and suggested his influence was limited to Britain; someone who was out of time. That was, however, contradicted by how a whole new generation on social media who honored and debated his legacy. It helped that Hall reinvented himself right up until the end, speaking directly to 21st century anxieties.  For example, in 2013 writing about his and others’ “Kilburn Manifesto,” Hall wrote: “What is required is a renewed sense of being on the side of the future, not stuck in the dugouts of the past. We must admit that the old forms of the welfare state proved insufficient. But we must stubbornly defend the principles on which it was founded – redistribution, egalitarianism, collective provision, democratic accountability and participation, the right to education and healthcare – and find new ways in which they can be institutionalized and expressed.”

Specific to South Africa, Hall cared for and wrote about that country. His most explicit engagement with South Africa was in his 1980 essay, Race Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance, where he entered academic debates between white South African left and liberal intellectuals over the nature of domination and repression. I am surprised not more people in South Africa have read it or commented on it. Hall, of course, eventually did get to South Africa himself in 1996, accompanied by his wife, Catherine. He gave the keynote address at a conference at the now-University of Kwazulu-Natal (invited there by Tomaselli).

I have been trying to find a copy or a transcript of Hall’s address to the conference, but with no luck thus far. I keep wondering what Hall made of South Africa, still a very new country at the time of his visit.  Perhaps he would have admired the South Africans for their tenacity, warned against complacency and, like Gramsci, reminded the South Africans that it is always a “war of position.”  Or he may have said of South Africa, what he later said of Barack Obama. At the time Obama was elected, Hall celebrated the election of the first black president of the United States as a historic event, but cautioned that the value of Obama’s Presidency remained to be seen. Three years later, Hall felt comfortable to cast judgment: While Obama’s “heart was in the right place,” he “was never radical.” Hall also felt that Obama and his supporters had not reckoned with the inertia of the American political system and its tendency to settle for a tepid consensus and was disappointed by some of Obama’s policy decisions.

But perhaps as much as his ideas, Hall’s influence and prominence made a significant impression on whole generations of black intellectuals and scholars, myself included, who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. The South African academy has always skewed white, and black intellectual role models were often rendered invisible, even where they did exist (either to exile: Archie Mafeje, Stan Nolutshungu, Bernard Magubane; or not properly acknowledged when at home, like Neville Alexander and Jakes Gerwel).  What John Akomfrah and Ben Carrington wrote and said about Hall’s impact on young black intellectuals in Britain holds for places like South Africa: “There was no space for someone like me before Hall.” Wrote Carrington, on Africa is a Country (a site I started and that I like to think may be an indirect part of Hall’s legacy): “It’s taken for granted now that culture matters, that popular culture is a site of politics, that politics saturates everyday life, and that these things can and should be studied in a serious manner. But despite their claims, it was not Sociology, or History, or Economics, or even Anthropology that created this space. It was Cultural Studies.”

Finally, Hall’s transparent engagement with his family’s biography, his exploration of his relationship to blackness and creole identities, provided a way of thinking about my own family history.  Despite the class differences (Hall grew up middle class; I’m the son of a domestic worker and a gardener) and the different historical specificities of the Caribbean versus the Western Cape of South Africa, there were striking commonalities: Shame, slavery, colonialism, colorism, and deference to whites (despite the violent history of white trusteeship and oppression), are also “natural” to the world in which I grew up. (For example, Hall’s parents discouraged him from playing with dark-skinned children, prevented his sister from marrying a black doctor and never really identified with Jamaica.)  Those are parts of my biography that I still want to explore. Perhaps the most lasting impression I have of Hall’s life’s work is that he continued working at making sense of the past and the present until the very end.

* This was first published on Social Text.

Economics has an Africa problem

Economics has a gender problem. This much we know. Economics might also have an Africa problem. There seems to be an established tradition in economics of talking about Africa (and developing regions in general) from afar, with western scholars leading the discussion (see this list of so-called big thinkers in international development). 

Arguably the most important conference on the challenges of economic development in Africa takes place every March in Oxford. The conference is hosted by the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE)  which is also based in Oxford. Once the call for proposals goes out, development economists working on Africa try to get their papers accepted with the hope of traveling to Oxford to talk about the continent. Then there’s the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference held every year in a north eastern university in the US. Last year’s was held at Boston University and all the papers presented were either on Africa or on other parts of the developing world. And then there is the African Economic History Workshop which has been held at LSE, Lund and in Geneva since its inception in 2005. This year it will be held at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. I could go on and on. 

The exclusion of Africa from the debates that concern it is also evident in the composition of the editorial staff of leading scholarly publications in economics that focus on the continent or have the continent as subject matter. The Journal of African Economies (JAE), arguably the most prestigious and influential publication on African economic development issues, is not only housed faraway at Oxford but has only one African-based scholar on its editorial board out of a total of 27 (Johannes Fedderke is listed as based in South Africa but he is actually a full-time professor at Penn State).

Matters are not any better at the Journal of Development Economics where none of the 64 academics serving on its editorial board is based in Africa (there is only one person that is partly based in a developing country)! The Journal of Economic Growth is just as bad. 

So what really explains this state of affairs? Some will say that the meetings/conferences by necessity have to be held in the US or Europe because of infrastructure concerns in Africa. But this is not entirely convincing given that some of Africa’s cities have infrastructure that easily rivals the best that the West can offer. Lagos, Nairobi and Accra can very easily host gatherings of the likes of the African Economic History Workshops. What about the exclusion of African-based scholars on editorial boards of leading scholarly publications in the field? Perhaps Africa lacks the necessary expertise to sit on these boards? Again this is doubtful: leading African universities in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, to mention but a few, are chock-full of academics with a deep and intimate knowledge of the continent. Some of these scholars received their training at some of the best universities around, the same universities that host these faraway get-togethers! 

By physically locating these meetings in places far away and disproportionately underrepresenting African-based scholars on journals’ editorial staff, the view is affirmed that the answers to Africa’s problems and the storylines of Africa’s past can only be weaved elsewhere under the leadership of western scholars. Economics as a discipline is sending a clear message: Africa cannot be a leading participant in the debates that ultimately shape its destiny. Is there any other interpretation that one can give to this?

Postponed For Now: Nigerians to choose between General Buhari’s populist promises and President Jonathan’s status quo

Nigeria’s elections, originally scheduled for Valentine’s Day, have now been postponed, for six weeks. One thing is certain though: the two leading candidates are neck and neck according to an Afrobarometer poll released at the end of January. Muhammadu Buhari, a former dictator who ended Nigeria’s second attempt at democracy with a coup in 1983, and incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan are polling at 42% each, with 11%of voters undecided. Local conflict resolution efforts and western policy planners have focused on two unpleasant scenarios, either one accelerating a downward spiral. How much fear is driving forecasting?

In the first outcome, Buhari, a northern Muslim wins and there is violence in the south, especially in the Niger Delta where former rebels in the oil-producing region pick up arms again. Upwards of 36,000 militants have been part of an amnesty program since 2010, and a large proportion of them are ethnic Ijaws, like the president. One former militant leader, “Tompolo,” threatened that Nigeria would break up if Buhari won.  Tompolo has much to lose since he has received hundreds of millions of dollars in security contracts from the Jonathan government. Asari-Dokubu of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force said ex-militants “would return to their old ways should President Jonathan lose the election.”

When a powerful former minister of defense recently called for the arrest of Tompolo and other militants over such statements, prominent cultural groups such as Ohanaeze Ndi’gbo among the Igbos in the east, and Oduda People’s Congress (OPC) among the Yorubas in the west lent political cover to the militants’ position by saying – perhaps clarifying – that if the election is not free and fair, the south should reject the results.

It’s the tightest election since the 1999 transition. The opposition All Progressive’s Congress (APC) has successfully capitalized on several tiers of frustration: political candidates have been locked out of elections through corrupt primaries for years by the ruling People’s Democratic Party and its rigid rules of geographical rotation; governors have fought the federal government over unfunded mandates, borders, and diversion of oil revenue allocations; and 74 % of ordinary citizens say the country is overall going in the wrong direction (up from 70% two years ago).  The APC’s electoral coalition includes powerful governors in critical states, including Lagos and Rivers in the south, and Kano in the north. Even the Niger Delta militants are divided over the campaign: the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) endorsed Buhari last month, beginning its statement by saying not a single government official has been successfully prosecuted for corruption under Jonathan’s administration. “No wonder,” wrote the group’s leader Jomo Gbomo in an email, “the once respected Nigerian Military has been reduced to a ragtag Army by the Boko Haram Terrorists.”

Image via

The second scenario, with a Jonathan victory, simmers in a similar cynicism about Nigeria. Jonathan’s plan to campaign on economic growth, improved infrastructure, and some increased diversification of Nigeria’s oil-based economy was interrupted in April 2014 with the kidnapping by Boko Haram of over 200 girl students (remember the #Bring BackOurGirls campaign; they’re still missing). The fear here is that northerners might believe they have been denied their “turn” to rule since Jonathan had his chance. In fact 800 people were killed in the wake of Jonathan’s 2011 electoral victory. Moreover, escalating terrorism in three northeastern states despite a federal state of emergency there has contributed to not only general insecurity, but also a sense of disenfranchisement. Due to logistical and legal barriers, over a million internally displaced persons may be unable to vote, and Boko Haram’s violence may significantly deter turnout in northern states aligned with the opposition. And if terrorism doesn’t interfere with voting, then the security services might: “There are strong cases of partisan control of security institutions in the country,” warned a leading human rights organization in December. “The Federal government has been very partisan in its use of the Police, Military and the DSS.”  Nearly 50 percent of Nigerians fear “personally becoming a victim of political intimidation or violence” during this election, according to Afrobarometer. I witnessed some of this interference directly, during a recent trip to opposition-controlled Rivers State, where the police have been physically blocking the state House of Assembly from meeting.

In this context the APC might take to the streets if the election is deemed neither free nor fair. Though such mass mobilization does add an element of uncertainty, the west should keep in mind the grassroots’ essential role in bringing down the dictatorship in the 1990s, defending term limits in 2006, advancing essential electoral reforms in 2010, and getting President Jonathan to focus on Boko Haram. Buhari has populist appeal among those nostalgic – perhaps naively so – for the law and order of “soft” authoritarianism, as well as among northerners who feel excluded from emirate and elite patronage structures (the “talakawa,” in Hausa). But it would be a mistake to take this as a basis for collapse. At the time of this writing, pro-democracy organizations are outside the electoral commission, demanding that the commissioner not give in to calls to delay the election. The Transition Monitoring Group, the Enough is Enough Campaign, Occupy Nigeria, and other groups are prepared to defend Nigeria’s democratic progress.  Nigerians have fought for democracy before, and we shouldn’t underestimate civil society’s willingness and capacity to peacefully defend it.

Yes, we have some #AdviceForYoungJournalists

It’s been a glorious week for journalism, hasn’t it? Those fearless warriors for truth and justice, standing up for the weak, giving voice to the voiceless. I think we can all agree it doesn’t matter which mosque you left, or which helicopter you weren’t in, the main thing for journalists is to get ahead with their careers. In that spirit, here is our contribution to the ongoing #AdviceForYoungJournalists hashtag that got going on Twitter. Speak truth to power? You must be joking.

If you're in USA, home of freedom, don't write anything critical of Israel or your cowardly bosses will fire you. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Make shit up that plays to white people's fears. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Never publish info that make the US government look bad. Write an op-ed denouncing those that do as traitors. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Never question or attempt to independently verify anything the police say. They never lie to reporters. Ever. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Write about Africans as if they're not real people. Never interview an African. Always use a "bridge character." #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Never read or cite a book that wasn't written by a white man. Especially if writing on Africa or the Middle East. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

To become a successful editor, never commission black writers. Especially black women. That white guy can do it. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

If making a documentary or extended report in, say, Uganda, only interview white people. That's very important. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Ride in the second helicopter, but remember being in the one in front. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

If you have a NYT column, never — upon ANY account — do any research. Just reheat what you wrote last week. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

If asked to write obituaries, part of your job is to deride the lives and achievements of dead black scholars. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Go to the mall. Order some mac & cheese. Observe the Macedonian waiter. Your Pulitzer will be along any second. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Report on US wars so that the killing of brown people appears somewhat sad but totally inevitable. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Report on Israel's massacres so that the killing of Palestinians appears somewhat sad but totally inevitable. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

US military bloodshed must be reported ONLY in the passive voice. Thanks to @AndyBarenberg for the reminder #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

The best political stories are the ones that show you got to talk to, or just stand near, a famous politician. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Ask the nice man from the Israeli Defence Force for advice on what to call the things you see before you. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

US politics are best reported on like a horse-race. Ignore the details of why people are screwed either way. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

If in doubt, the topic of your next op-ed should be: Why Iran is the real threat. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

If reviewing, say, Jamaica Kincaid's novel, deride everything except the "encantatory" quality of her prose. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Write a story about white men saving brown women from brown men. Repeat. Your Pulitzer will be along shortly. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 10, 2015

Image at the top is from Humor Times.

Teca #2: Latin America is a Country’s Suggestions for the Grammys

Did you watch the Grammys? It doesn’t matter for our purposes, anyway, since the “Latin” categories were not shown on the TV broadcast. And, while the “important” awards were held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the “Latin” categories were given out at a “Premier” award ceremony at the Nokia Theatre, also in L.A., a few hours before the main ceremony.

Here are the winners (and here you can see the full list of nominees):

Tangos, by Rubén Blades for Best Latin Pop Album.

Multiviral by Calle 13 for Best Latin Rock Urban or Alternative Album.

Mano A Mano – Tangos A La Manera de Vicente Fernández  by Vicente Fernández for Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano) (heh).

Más + Corazón Profundo by Carlos Vives for Best Tropical Latin Album.

So, let that sink in. Rubén Blades, one of the forefathers of salsa (and a man who shaped Latin America is a Country’s staff teenage years), won the Latin Pop award for an album in which he reworked 11 of his Salsa classics into Tango songs. Ranchera legend Vicente Fernández won a “Regional Mexican Music” award with an album of his covers of Argentinian and Uruguayan Tango standards.

It’s not like the Grammys are relevant, truly, but in one of the few chances Latin American music gets to be recognized, we get this. Even though we like both those Tango albums, we have a suspicion that maybe there were other worthy, non-cover, pop albums and Mexican works that deserved some acknowledgement last year.

And Calle 13… Again Calle 13? They have won a record-shattering 21 Latin Grammy awards and have won three out of eight Latin Urban/Latin Urban-Rock-Alternative awards that have been given at the Grammys. Some of the other nominees this year wouldn’t have bothered us. Anita Tijoux’s Vengo, was one of our favorite albums from last year. ChocQuibTown’s Behind the Machine is a beautiful pop reinterpretation of Colombian Pacific music that we hold dearly. Jorge Drexler’s Bailar en la cueva might be our favorite work of his. But, no, it had to be Calle 13 once more.

Aren’t you tired of Calle 13 being, apparently, the sole face of contemporary Latin American music in the U.S./Europe? Well we are. Which is why we compiled this brief list of Latin American artists who put out albums last year(ish) which could have been a good choice for the (completely absurd) “Best Latin Rock Urban or Alternative Album” category:

Our “Urban” nominees:

EveryDay Fight EP , Zalama Crew

The rapping crew from Cali, Colombia, has some of the best beats being done right now in Colombian hip-hop, fusing Colombian Afro-Pacific sounds with Colombian Afro-Caribbean cumbia and Afro-Caribbean reggae and dancehall. And with this EP (which is actually from 2013, like ChocQuibTown’s album), you’ll get to dance while listening their heavily socially-conscious lyrics. Listen to the full EP here.

Bidireccional , Pounda Ranks & NoModico

The duo of rappers from Lima, Perú, released this album for free in 2014. They dubbed it an “experimental, independent, free” production. Check it out for yourself.

Contraforma , Aerstame

The rapper from Santiago, Chile, is part of a crew known as Movimiento Original, but it’s the flow of his solo work that has us enamored. This album, from 2013, is maybe the best example of why you should follow him.

El presidente de la champeta , Mr. Black

The big guns over at Africa is a Country have their host of life presidents. Well, we have our own life president too, Mr. Black, the self-proclaimed president of champeta. The Cartagena, Colombia, native is probably the inventor of champeta-pop and has been filling out clubs around his country and abroad with his particular, party-heavy, breed of the Caribbean rhythm.

Our “Rock” nominees:

Conducción , Ases Falsos

We have said it once, and we might say it again. This album, by the Santiago, Chile, band Ases Falsos, might very well be our favorite from last year. With great lyrics, catching hooks, and great flow between songs, this is an album you want to hear from start to finish. Which you can do below.

Eclipse total del corazón , Los Waldners

Los Waldners, from San José, Costa Rica, bring us this bittersweet album which might make you cry, or look outside the window reminiscing about lover, or i might make you want to dance, or all at the same time, why not?

Eclipse Total Del Corazón by Los Waldners

Alkaloides , Alkaloides

The Quito, Ecuador, based group makes its debut with this wonderful sci-fi-inspired, punk influenced, shoegaze record that talks about bacteria, Nintendo 64 and time-travelling girls. What else do you need?

Our “Alternative” nominees:

Ada , Adanowsky

Adán Jodorowsky, the son of multifaceted Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mexican actress Valerie Trumblay, was born in Paris, France. There, he recorded this funky, 80’s poppish album, in which he sings in English about his feminine side. In the press release for the album, it is stated that Adán’s parents thought he would be born as a girl and were planning to call her “Ada.” When their mistake was revealed, they named him “Adán” instead. This is Adanowsky’s attempt to come to terms with Ada. Fun stuff, right?

Otra Era , Javiera Mena

In our humblest of opinions, this is Santiago, Chile’s Javiera Mena’s finest work yet. Full of techno and electronic beats, this indie pop record gets very easily stuck in your head. Dance away:

Historia , Los Actors

Melancholy, romance, dark bass-lines and sadness all around, all the way from Mexico City. Listen (if you have Spotify) to the full album here.

Do you have any other suggestions? Leave them on the comments below, or send them to our twitter or .

Also, see the rest of Teca here.