Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 383

Digital Archive No. 1 – The Afrobarometer

A few weeks ago, at the North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa in Burlington, Vermont, I got a chance to participate in a roundtable on Digital Southern African Studies with Africa Is a Country’s Sean Jacobs.  Sean asked me if I would be interested in starting a weekly series on digital African projects and I (obviously!) accepted.  So, every week, I’ll be discussing a digital project on an African topic, some based on the continent, some based in the United States, some based in the UK; basically, a lot of really cool projects from all around the world that are working to make more resources about Africa’s past and present available for our use!

First up is the Afrobarometer:

The Afrobarometer is a great resource for survey data from 35 African countries.  This project has conducted five rounds of surveys since 1999, producing revealing findings about public opinion on issues of key interest to scholars and the general public alike.  Run by a consortium of continent-based partners, including the Center for Democratic Development (Ghana), Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy (Benin), Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi (Kenya), and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (South Africa), this project aims to conduct regular assessments of social, political and economic opinions in such a way that public attitudes can be tracked over time and provided to policy advocates, decision makers, journalists, and concerned members of the public.  The best part about this site is the Online Data Analysis, which utilizes survey data in the archive to produce digital visualizations that allow for spatial and content analysis through a simple interface.

Follow Afrobarometer on Twitter @afrobarometer for their latest findings and news about the next round of surveys.

* Feel free to send me suggestions in the comments or via Twitter of sites you want us to cover.

 

How to be an expatriate in Nigeria

I have always held that the Nigerian god is far too kind. Kind to our political leaders in spite of their wickedness, kind to our religious leaders in spite of their hypocrisy, kind to our traditional leaders in spite of their complicity in all the mess we find ourselves in. And kind to foreigners. I mean, you can be a technician from the roughest, poorest parts of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and suddenly become a foreign engineer with servants, a huge salary and a secure mansion in the best parts of Abuja. We are in awe of expatriates.

I’ll share a little story: A Nigerian family friend who is a senior engineer with a big foreign construction company went to the mansion of an influential Nigerian politician together with his young white junior assistant to carry out some repairs. As they entered the house, a daughter of the politician gave the white man a seat and ignored his black superior. The white man of course kindly explained that he was not in charge, but his boss who had been totally snubbed. Don’t ask me how the story ended. The moral of the story is that we love you more than we love ourselves. Nigeria is expatriate heaven.

You have left hardship, harsh winters and a horrible economic recession in your nice developed country and are now an economic refugee in Nigeria. Of course, we don’t know this- you are the expat who will save us from ruin and teach us how things ought to be done. You have gotten a job with an organization or company that has applied for expatriate quota for you and secured a nice house with a generator, car and a driver. You have said goodbye to your family and your depressed, alcoholic friends and moved to Nigeria. Maybe you have even come with Hector, your cat. God will bless you for choosing our country. I mean you could have ended up in dingy Togo but you came here. This is how you must conduct yourself while living in Nigeria.

As soon as you arrive get in contact with other expatriates. There are online groups like Abuja Expats and you will quickly find whatever it is you need, from stores that sell foreign food to people selling off their furniture and books.

You are here to work and live large, not contaminate yourself with the locals. You can enjoy this country while pretending to live in your own country. Identify hangout spots that are ‘expat joints’. Your expat friends will tell what joints are suitable for expats- joints with food so expensive it scares the locals away. If there are any locals you can be sure they are in the safe upper classes. You don’t want to go get lost in a crowd of locals and catch some deadly disease like malaria or dengue fever or god forbid, ebola. Do nice expat things like jogging with fellow foreigners through the nice safe streets of Abuja and a nice picnic after. Of course there will be the odd local, but that is ok. One or two black persons in awe of you makes it nice and colorful.

When you are able to muster the courage to go to a non-expat joint, come in groups and dance with each other in a corner. The important thing is, you have done something revolutionary: risked kidnapping and disease by going to a local joint. Have a local guide- a nice junior local staff from the office who understands the pecking order. Drink as much as you can and party as often as you can. Where else in this messed-up global economy can you enjoy this much luxury?

Do not learn a local language. What’s the point?

Complain about everything in the country. Complain about how you can never find the kind of food that your cat, Hector, enjoys. Complain about how nobody cares about animals. Talk about how rude the locals are and how sloppy everyone is. Complain about how bad the driving is and how loud (except if you are American) everyone is. Complain about how nothing works in this country, about how everyone is trying to rip you off, about the heat. Because, in your cold, civilized, recession-hit country, everything works.

Have a nice upper-class local couple who can agree with you when you talk about how horrible things are. Invite them for dinner occasionally. This proves you are cool with the locals and are not racist.

Avoid the local food. Something terrible will happen to you if you eat the local food that is so low in nutrition and high in cholesterol and bacteria. Hire a cook who knows how to make food from your country.

Expect the locals to respect your culture even though you are in their country. It is ok to dress inappropriately, after all in your country, you are a free to wear whatever you like, or nothing at all.

I hope that you enjoy Nigeria and slowly get used to the heat and the reports of explosions and violence. Not to worry, you are safe. When we kill each other we usually leave out the foreigners. And the guys who used to kidnap foreigners are busy with more official duties. Stay well and God bless your foreign hustle.

* This post first appeared here. It is being republished with the permission of the author.

Burkina Faso on the boil (and, no BBC, Blaise Compaore is not a ‘peacemaker’)

Ça chauffe au Burkina, just like we knew it would. News came this morning that the National Assembly and the headquarters of the ruling party have gone up in flames, but it’s not a great surprise. A political crisis has been looming ever since it became apparent that President Blaise Compaoré (that’s him and his wife with the Obamas) would move to revise the constitution in order to extend his 27-year rule. A citizen’s movement has been brewing, bubbling, and is now on the boil. It’s impossible to know which way this situation will go, but here are a couple of thoughts.

First, the idea that Compaoré is a “peace-maker” as the BBC Newshour told us once again this morning is false. Compaoré doesn’t make peace; he cuts deals. And many of them are very shady.

In recent years, Compaoré has proven to be a counter-terrorist’s best friend, at least publicly. French forces relied on bases in his territory in order to launch the Serval intervention in Mali, while the USA looks to Burkina as a vital, and until recently stable, “security partner.” Somewhat paradoxically—or just cynically— Compaoré and his associates have been key players in the Sahel’s hostage industry, in which groups like AQMI and MUJAO kidnap Europeans against—in the best of circumstances—hefty ransoms negotiated through Compaoré’s good offices.

Regional dynamics matter. Crisis Group has dubbed Burkina’s diplomacy “an industry of mediation,” which is to say that Compaoré has been a key player in virtually every significant West African conflict of the last two decades. It’s an industry with a lot of breakage. Compaoré’s history fanning the flames of war in Liberia and Sierra Leone dates back to the 1990s. His backing of the Forces Nouvelles in Cote d’Ivoire kept that conflict alive (and helped bring Alassane Ouattara to power). In 2012, ECOWAS made him the key mediator after the coup in Mali, where his maneuvering produced a dangerous and untenable political gridlock, one that only came to an end with the French military intervention.

Some see Compaoré as an invaluable elder statesman in a troubled region. Others have never forgotten his role in the deaths of Thomas Sankara and Norbert Zongo. One thing’s for sure: he’s a survivor. Over the years, street demonstrations have probably been less dangerous for him then a string of serious mutinies, most recently in 2011. This time might be different. Whatever happens in the days—or even hours?—to come, neighboring states and foreign powers will be watching very closely.

Maliban White Choclet Puff Sells Superior Light Skin

You all know that South Asians have this “thing” about light skin, right? I don’t need to go into too many details – the skin lighteners, the Bollywood films dominated by people who look like they came from, say, Northern Turkey? And even popular, multimillionaire actors like Shahrukh Khan have become shills for skin lightener creams.

And now, our freakish propensity to be racist towards ourselves is actually being used to sell biscuits, using a popular actor in the Sri Lankan entertainment industry.

I’ll translate the dialogue (the advert’s in Sinhala, a language spoken by Sri Lankans). The scene: At a potential bride’s home. In Sri Lanka, the “eligible bachelor” and his family visits the home of potential brides. They try to see if there’s, you know, chemistry…before any other discussion takes place about whether the families are “well matched” (ie. caste and class) and the boy/girl’s horoscopes match (no, seriously). (All this is, of course, a fantasy of a history that happens less and less often. My cousins scoped out “potentials” at cafes and on Pizza Hut dates. But my aunts are still crazy about making sure the all important horoscopes “matched”).

So this dude visits a potential bride’s home. He’s sitting with his father. They are all obviously of a class that SLs would aspire to – check the furnishings, clothes, etc. Potential Bride comes out with a bundle of betel leaves on a beautiful leaf-shaped brass tray (betel leaves are used in ceremonies to bless and welcome – and chewed as a mild digestive). She’s dressed in a gold-emroidered osari – the traditional version of the sari favoured by upper-caste people from the “Up-Country” region, where the storied last Sinhala kingdom stood (saris are for the coastal nobodies, joke my Upcountry snob-cousins, not so jokingly).

Of course, Potential Bride exhibits all sorts of good, marriageable signals – she’s beautiful, shapely, sits shyly and looks away (no direct looking or it’s too forward!) but invitingly casts glances.

Dude (not looking too happy): “She’s a little dark, no?” (“Tikak kaluiy ne?”)

Father (being cute and appeasing) “What dark?! She’s just like chocolate! Because she eats ONLY CHOCOLATE biscuits!”

Dude: “She might be even darker than me…”

Oh oh! Younger sister (lighter skinned) comes out, bearing some other biscuits with a WHITE filling.

Papa: “Ah, me nangi!” (Ah, this is the younger sister.)

Dude (looking at her as if heaven itself brought her before him): “The younger sister is suduiy, ne?! (light skinned)”

Father (playfully): “That’s because she eats Maliban WHITE CHOCLET Puffs!”

Dude (sly): “Couldn’t you…” (ie. can’t you talk to the family about the possibility of her being available?)

Father: “Magulak kathakaranawa!” (lit. translation: “You’re talking marriage!” but figuratively: “Get the hello out/Don’t talk nonsense/rubbish)

They eat their chocolate Malibans in silence.

Ahhh. people. Why re-enact colonial and feudal shame? Apparently the advert’s been pulled, so there must be enough of a backlash. At the same time, the advertisers are only expressing what are considered “normative” views about skin shade, and using it in a caricaturish/buffoonish way to get people to learn about a new product.

At moments like these, one can only refer to Hari Kondabolu: “Do you love the taste of chocolate, but can’t stand looking at it? Try new white chocolate!”

Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows

5 Questions for a Filmmaker… Dani Kouyaté

In 1995 filmmaker and griot Dani Kouyaté won the Golden Stallion – The award for Best Film at the pan-African film festival FESPACO – for his first feature Keïta! The Heritage of the Griot. He has since made three more feature films in addition to directing for TV and the stage as well as several documentaries, including one about Burkinabé historian, writer and politician Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Kouyaté – son of internationally renowned actor (of Little Senegal, Dirty Pretty Things and London River-fame) – grew up and studied film in Burkina Faso and spent several years in Paris where he studied anthropology and film. Today the director, whose latest feature Suns is currently traveling the world, lives in Sweden with his family.

What is your first film memory?

The Charlie Chaplin short films I saw as a kid in the 1970s. There was a film club at the National Cinema Directorate of the Upper Volta (before the country’s name changed to Burkina Faso), where they hosted film screenings for youth every Thursday morning.  That’s where I discovered silent film. Later in life, when I was in film school, I got to see most of his feature films. I’m a great fan of his work and today I have all of his films. Chaplin managed to make the whole world laugh and cry, without advanced technique or even dialogue. He reached everyone, and should be an inspiration to today’s filmmakers who are preoccupied with things like lack of resources or what language to shoot our films in.

Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

There was never a doubt in my mind about what to become. Both my grandfather and my father were griots, who told our people’s history and stories for children. I remember my father, Sotigui Kouyaté practising his calling it from the scene of an amphitheatre. I realised that film could serve the same purpose when it came to keeping our memories alive. I was fortunate to spend my entire childhood on film sets across Burkina with my father. I followed him everywhere and observed him when he was working. He was passionately involved in every aspect of the shoots – casting, wardrobe, direction and even makeup sometimes. He passed on his love for cinema to me. When I left high school, the University of Ouagadougou had just started a film school so I knew exactly what to study.

Which film do you wish you had made and why?

Steven Spielberg’s first film, The Duel, from 1971. Without a big budget or artifices and tricks – just one truck and a car really – he has me spellbound from beginning to end. The film is a testimony to Spielberg’s great storytelling-talent.

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

Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin. Eighty years after its release, it’s more relevant than ever. Watching it today when we are witnessing the signs of the capitalist system falling part, you realise what a visionary he was back then.

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

Question: If you hadn’t been a filmmaker, what would you have done instead?

I would have been a chef. I love cooking. At home I spend half my time in the kitchen. I love trying out new recipes and inventing new ones. Sometimes I succeed, at other times my kids refuse to eat what I’ve cooked. I don’t mind though – that’s what pasta is for.

Great chefs, like great filmmakers, are in love with the creative process. Both as a director on set and as a chef in the kitchen, there’s sometimes a tendency to forget about the people who are going to consume what is being created. I believe that what makes a film brilliant is as complex and subtle as that, which makes a dish delicious.

(Translated from French by Katarina Hedrén)

Suns (co-directed with Olivier Delahaye) has its London-premiere at the Royal African Society’s Annual Film Festival in London this Sunday, November 2.

The ‘5 Questions for a Filmmaker …’ series is archived here.

Photo credit: Jože Rehberger Ogrin.

Gerard Gaskin, Legendary: Interview with the photographer

“I started become interested in this project, ‘Legendary’, back when I hung out in 42nd Street and Time Square in New York City. In the 42nd street area there was a place right across the street from the bus station on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue call Show World and it was the largest peep show place in the city.”

Trinidadian-born photographer Gerard Gaskin’s images in (Duke University Press, 2013) are a conversation with the Black and Latino transsexual subcultures, where those who are often marginalised and ejected from their homes and communities examine and perform gender and sex in the safe spaces provided by the Ballroom Scene in Harlem, New York. Frank Roberts, from his essay “The Queer Undercommons”, writes, “For members of New York City’s underground house ball community, being photographed by Gerard H. Gaskin is a rite of passage: All of the legendary children appear in front of his lens at some point or another.”

On the cover of Gaskin’s book, there’s one of the most arresting images I’ve ever seen. The subject: a figure in costumery meant to evoke the Renaissance – a Shakespearean vision of Italy, perhaps, a fantasy remembering a fantasy. But to me, this is Krishna – playful, powerful god – swathed in golden ruffles and woven discs. His skin, cobalt-blue desire, is not, however, that of youthful perfection. There’s mottled patches showing that the patina has oxidized, though its beauty is undeniable. He is the past, a location that is calling attention to the no-longer-there of itself, but he is, at the same time, the now and the future, an ever-present becoming. He sits for the camera, still as metal, still as a figure that knows each moment is limited, ever in the process of decay, and lets us take a good look.

But this is no ordinary attempt to “return the gaze”, a trope that many photographers play with. To begin with, the large discs of blue irises that cloak our attempt to penetrate this world; and whether the hint of pink and red around the rims of these eyes came to be because the paint is creating a reaction, or because the subject has just wept, we don’t know. Either way, we know that despite this exuberant costuming, the gold and the patina on the skin, there is suffering. Gaskin’s relationship with the performers – and understanding of how performance – works is the thing that cuts through the spectacle, and gets to the heart of what is happening here, in these moving floorspaces of where exhibitionism and vying for attention meets the refusal of the penetrative gaze. You eat me up with your eyes, I dance for your attention, you don’t see nothin’ at all.

Melancholy and cognisant of how this thing – this thing about looking and being looked at, about inviting the gaze, and yet being wary of how misperception always enters this sort of fraught conversation about self-fashioning – this Krishna, blue with knowing, returns our look.

Gaskin won the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is the sixth person to win this prize. He spoke to me about how he began his career, and what got him entry into the world of Drag Balls.

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself – where you are from/grew up, and how your interest in photography began.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago lived here for the first 8th years of my life and then me and my family moved to the United States. We moved to Queens, NY a housing complex call Lefrak City. When I am talking about me and my family I am talking about my father and big brother Derick and big sister Marie Therese my mother moved to the United States about four years before to work and then for her to get her documents and then sponsoring us as a family and then me and my father Herbert and my brother Derick and my sister Marie Therese came.

In the late 80’s when I graduated from High School that summer I when to France to watch the Tour de France bike race with two of my good friends who we raced bicycles together and one of my friends Daniel he had a really good SLR camera and he took some amazing pictures of our time in France so when I came back I asked my mother to by me a camera for my birthday and she got me a Canon AE-1. I then started taking classes at a Community College call Queensborough Community College and I meet Jules Allen he was one of my Photography professors there; and I also worked as his assistant to him. After the third photo class the photo bug then bit me then I transferred to Hunter College.

One of the main reasons I went to Hunter was because Roy DeCarava was there, and I wanted to study with him. He taught independent study, and only on Wednesdays. Because he had a lot of authority and power, he could just teach one day a week. I made sure that I took the class right before or right after lunch, so I could have more time with him, we would go to lunch together with two other students and we would talk about photography. (He always ate at this one Italian restaurant on 71st Street and 3rd Avenue.) And we’d talk about his struggles as an African American Photographer, or difficulties he was having with a show. I started this project as a class project. That’s what you had to do, work on a project and show him pictures every week. He would critique them and all that.

Q. How did you move towards this particular project, “Legendary”?

I started become interested in this project “Legendary” because I would hang out in 42nd Street and Time Square in New York City. In the 42nd street area there was a place right across the street from the bus station on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue call Show World and it was the largest peep show place in the city.

Then I met this guy, Douglas Says, a clothing designer and makeup artist who worked with Jules Allen, a photographer whom I was assisting at the time. Douglas knew all of the major figures in the ballroom scene. He made costumes and did makeup for transsexuals who performed at the balls and worked at Show World on 42nd Street. He introduced me to people, and I started hanging out at Show World, and then later at a place called Sally’s II (Sally’s I was then called Sally’s Hideaway, that’s where Paris Is Burning was shot, and it burned down).

And I started attending balls, which back then only happened about ten times a year. The process began with me just hanging out at the balls. The first year I didn’t take any photographs, though I had my camera with me. I got a lot of advice telling me not to take photographs immediately, to wait until the community became comfortable with me. There had been some fallout from Paris Is Burning, because some members of the community did not appreciate how the film came out. Some people felt exploited—their interviews either ended up on the cutting-room floor, or they felt like they didn’t get any return for their involvement in the film. (Livingston’s film, like my series, started out as a project for school, by the way in 1993.) As a result, I was very careful about spending a lot of time with members of the community first; I didn’t make my first image until 1994.

Q. How would you differentiate your work from what Livingston, and his film, Paris is Burning set out to do? You mention that you had emotional, social connections, and became a emotional social presence in the community before you took photographs.

The difference between my book and the documentary film Paris is Burning is that I photographed the scene over a twenty-year period, in various cities across the US. Paris is Burning was filmed over 4 years, and focused solely in New York City. My images speak to and show a history that can’t be present in something that occurs over a shorter period of time. For instance, I have images of the people that have passed away. I also discuss where the balls might be headed – for that, I needed to have a sense of the past, present and possible future of the Ballroom Scene. So, for example, my black white images of balls in the 90’s show the Harlem and New York City scene, while my color images were taken in Philadelphia, PA, Washington, DC, Atlanta, GA and Richmond, VA. This shows that the future of the ballroom scene is no longer dominated by NYC or Harlem.

Q. But before you got there, what drew you into the world of drag balls? Was there a particular person you knew, or an awareness of a world that seemed unexamined that you wanted to explore?

I was just really curious. I wondered, “Why does someone decide to become a transsexual? Why do people believe or feel so strongly, that they need to transform themselves? And I am interested in the safe spaces that balls create, how performers at balls play with the idea of whom they are and how they want to live. Remember, I grew up in a very Catholic home. My mother was a three-day-a-week Catholic. Queerness is taboo in the church, even as I saw it all around me. So questions about innate versus acquired sexuality, about transformation and performance, these are the things that I was interested in.

Q. What does Balls provide, as locations, as communities, especially for Black and Latino LGBT people and especially for young people?  

I believe that the Ballroom Scene is a space that the Black and Latino LGBT inner-city community meaning Harlem, NY created because they want a safe space to examine what it means to be gender and sexed. Balls are a forum for queer “kings” and “queens” to express themselves; Balls are where participants compete in categories such as “butch queen sex siren,” “transman body,” and “femme-queen big girl realness.”

Often ousted by their biological families, these “children” have makeshift “parents,” who are ten years old than them. They mentor and teach their children to walk with a switch and act worthy of true pageantry. So, though the Balls are ostensibly about fashion and prestige, they are really about building family and manifesting selfhood. So when people look at my photographs my hope is that they would be interested because they would love to look at beautiful images that talk to or document this beautiful space called balls.

The balls are a celebration of black and Latino urban gay life. They were born in Harlem out of a need for black and Latino gays to have a safe space to express themselves. Balls are constructed like beauty and talent pageants. The participants work to redefine and critique gender and sexual identity through an extravagant fashion masquerade. Women and men become fluid, interchangeable points of departure and reference, disrupting the notion of a fixed and rigid gender and sexual self. My images try to show a more personal and intimate beauty, pride, dignity, courage, and grace that have been painfully challenged by mainstream society. All of this happens at night in small halls in cities all over the country. These photographs . . . show us different views of these spaces as they are reflected in the eyes of house and ball members who perform what they wish these cities could be.

Here, young adults are part of houses with glamorous names like Blahnik and Xtravaganza. They have to scrabble together dimes and dollars to build their next outfit; with street drugs, they morph their own bodies to an internal vision of soft curves and high voices; and by necessity, they play doctor, shrink, beautician and health advisor to one another.

Q. What your current work about? What thoughts do you have for future projects?

I don’t know what next. What’s current is my work around Trinidad artists; I’m making portraits of Trinidadian artists, and at the same time, I’m learning what it means to be a Trinidadian artist.

What If We Publish Children’s Books African Kids Could Relate To?

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” wrote Toni Morrison. Imagine a world with no Hobbits, no Aslan, no Dr. Who. These English mythologies, love them or hate them, are rampant, bold and provocative. There is a tendency for children’s books set in ‘Africa’ to be somewhat journalistic. Just the facts. The bad ones. Or they are about being black, which most children don’t think about until they’re told to. My first children’s book, The Wedding Week, is a joyful response to the prevailing narrative.

Five years ago, I was doing my dream job: working at Random House in London publishing a list of multicultural children’s books. Unfortunately, it was fraught with unwelcome realities. I was constantly handed manuscripts set in grim housing or squalid rural poverty, peopled with self-hating or one-dimensional black characters. Stories read more like statistics. Selling the diverse books we published was another problem. ‘We don’t have people like that in this area,’ a bookseller might say (they didn’t have local Hobbits or wizards either, but that wasn’t an issue.) While visiting relatives in Nigeria, I found a children’s bookshop in Lagos with NO African children or African languages in their books. That day changed everything.

I founded Kio Global, a company that distributes multicultural and multilingual resources for children. Kio exists to ensure that no children feel invisible in the books they read. This year, I wrote our first original resource, a multilingual picture book called The Wedding Week. Set in Lagos, the story reflects a contemporary, urban Africa. Told in local languages, the text is dual Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and English. The story leads up to Cousin Ayo’s traditional Yoruba wedding, from the child’s eye view of twins Femi and Kemi – and of a neighbourly wall gecko. The Wedding Week explores traditions around Nigeria and the world from a place of modernity and imagination. The story invites global readers to one of Africa’s most iconic, dramatic and exciting events. And did I mention the talking lizard?

Will Popular Resistance Against One-Party Rule in Burkina Faso Succeed?

Tuesday marked the start of a popular resistance campaign in Burkina Faso in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow President Blaise Campaore to run for a third term. The term limit law, enacted in 2000, currently limits the president to two terms, and Campaore secured his second five-year mandate in 2010. Some have asked if these protests will succeed in stopping Campaore’s bid to stay in office especially given his tight grip on power for more than 27 years—he has been in office since 1987 after he led the coup d’etat that killed former leader Thomas Sankara.

While it may be easy to cite several African leaders who have successfully done away with term limits and determine that Burkinabè don’t have a chance, this time it may not be simple victory for Campaore. Citizens across Africa are learning from each other and youth in Burkina Faso have learned from Senegal’s Y’en a Marre movement. As Marianne Saddier noted just a few weeks ago, there was already a youth-led movement called Le Balai Citoyen (Citizen’s Broom) that formed during the summer of 2013 to struggle against bad governance and to improve social conditions.

The two musicians at the head of Le Balai Citoyen, rapper Smockey and reggae artist Sams K, have very close links to Y’en a Marre. They have had meetings with the leaders and were given ideas and suggestions for organizing and strategizing. There are also similarities between the two groups; both assert a pro-democratic and nonviolent position and both call for the participation of the population to create change through protests. In a visual show of solidarity, in June 2014, Y’en a Marre rapper-activist’s Thiat and Kilifeu were on hand for concerts, protests, and conferences in Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso, the second largest city, to support local opposition to any amendment to the constitution. It would not be surprising to see Y’en a Marre activists in Burkina Faso in the coming days or weeks to lend support to the movement.

Young Burkinabè have become organized. They have also learned from the Senegalese case that even if Campaore is allowed to run for a third term, their fight for democracy is not necessarily over. In Senegal, when the Constitutional Court allowed Wade to run for a third term, citizen coalitions turned their energy toward defeating Wade in elections. Burkina Faso’s youth-led movement has also learned the importance of using the tools they have at hand—their popularity, their microphones, and their access to the media. They are spreading their message through social networks, protests and concerts.

It is unclear whether the current citizen action in Burkina Faso will mark an end to the presidency of Blaise Campaore. The country experienced a wave of protests in 2011 that included students, soldiers and others. The protests were quickly ended as the government responded by imposing a curfew, closing schools, and using violence as the police opened fire to disperse youth. It may be possible for the current demonstrations in Burkina Faso to have a different outcome because citizen groups did not solely organize in opposition to the proposed constitutional changes. Rather the grassroots movement had been building since at least 2013. Youth have been reaching out to local communities and building coalitions with the political opposition in hopes that when the time is right, the masses will not hesitate to go to the streets to protest. Research into social movements suggests that forging alliances and building coalitions are essential strategies in grassroots social action. These linkages are often vital resources to sustain a movement.

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A “Take Your Madam Home Campaign” Instead? A Comment on Social Justice Tours in Townships

Lately I have been struggling with the idea (and the proliferation) of “social justice tours” in South Africa. If you don’t know what I am talking about, social justice tours are tours which take the tourist through low income, economically depressed or working class neighborhoods —mostly former townships—whilst teaching them and allowing them to “witness the reality of marginalization, poverty and oppression that 48% of [the] South African population is forced to endure.” The latest iteration of this kind is that run by Media for Justice, a nonprofit run by Gillian Schutte, a well-known web commentator and her husband, filmmaker Sipho Singiswa, in Johannesburg’s Alexandra and two other black townships.

I find the concept extremely offensive, though Schutte and Singiswa suggest their tour is different from the tourist township tours where tourists are taken in buses through townships to experience ‘authentic’ South Africa. Schutte (who is usually quite outspoken about the commodification and appropriation of black struggles) and Singiswa caused a fervor on Twitter over whether they themselves weren’t just commodifying poverty and objectifying people living in townships. A friend of mine sarcastically responded: “They’d have better luck with a take-your-madam-home campaign.” Sarcasm aside, both events crystallized my discomfort with the use of the tour-the-township method in the name of social justice.

It’s helpful to start first with a bit of history: the primary purpose underpinning the geographical construction of South African society from 1860 on was segregation. But apartheid as a policy was introduced in the 1948 general elections and legislation meant to implement it — such as the Group Areas Act of 1950, the Population Registration Act, and other similar legislation — was used a tool through which the image of the ‘other’ was reproduced and affirmed. Reifying apartheid in material terms; it ceased to be just an ideology and became a reality. Instead of the swartgevaar – a term which literally means black danger – being a mythical boogey man, it became personified in black bodies and evidenced by townships. When violent protests flared up it could be rationalized as confirmation of already ingrained beliefs about the violent and primitive nature of black people.

This forced isolation came with a particular narrative through which black bodies were to be viewed, and therefore spaces where black people lived took on the characteristics associated with those bodies. Townships became dangerous, dirty places. The marches of resistance, successors of the 1949 tram boycotts, then became confirmations of an already established narrative around black bodies and black spaces. Acts of resistance such as the 1952 Defiance Campaign, the Sharpeville massacre, and Soweto uprisings became affirmations of the primitive nature of black people to a state intent on justifying its racist separatist policies.

The spectatorist method – a term I use to describe the process of observing poverty – as a means of ‘social consciencitization,’ isolates community struggles; systematic and structural oppression and marginalization are isolated to a singular geographic location (i.e. poverty only happens in the townships.) It erases the intersectional ways in which poverty and marginalization incorporates itself and infiltrates every aspect of our lives, and it erases the fact that there are no spaces unoccupied by poverty. Limiting the possibilities of understanding oppression and marginalization as an entire system that penetrates into your (the observers) daily interactions creates a compartmentalized and distanced understanding of poverty from ourselves.

If the tours are to have a ‘social justice’ component which has any chance of surviving beyond the allocated three hours, the tours need to move into the neighborhoods of the observers and expose the segregation, poverty and marginalization which exists in those spaces. Tour the central business districts of major cities and see how poverty has manifested itself, and how we have managed to grow and live oblivious to the marginalization around us. Tour factory shops and the street corners populated by unemployed construction workers waiting for an entire day in the hopes that some bakkie (mini-van) looking for construction workers will offer them a piece-job for the day. Or maybe tour the homes of wealthy white South Africans; experience how they rationalize the tension between their privilege and oblivion to the social injustices around them.

These tours, as they exist now, simply manifest already ingrained beliefs. They confirm the narrative created by the apartheid system; poverty, dirt and violence only exist in the townships. They do nothing to recreate townships as alternative spaces; nor engender an understanding of poverty as ubiquitous. They rarely allow for a look into the different ways in which people experience oppression within and outside the township (i.e. LGBTI persons, sex workers, and foreigners.) The community performs poverty, whether as tour guides or simply as members of the community invested in the economic returns of the project.

These tours extinguish the possibilities for communal, self-sustaining collaborative strategies for effective activism. Because the relationship is from the onset one of observer and observed, it removes possibilities of identifying mutual points of struggle. It sets the template for interaction at a ‘you vs. us’ level, removing the possibilities of a ‘we’ interaction.

In order to make inroads into the struggle for freedom South Africans have to understand that poverty is complex and proliferates in our ‘safe’ middle-class. We have to understand that the struggles we see as outside of us are intimately connected to our own struggle for freedom and liberation. As Aboriginal activist Lilla Watson once said “If you’ve come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”

South African Hip Hop Series: Producer Brian Soko

Brian Soko is not a happy man! Not only is he having to deal with the trauma of a daylight break-in at a cottage he’s renting while on a three-week work-related trip to Jozi, but the rappers he’s supposed to be having a studio session with the next day aren’t picking up their phones. I’ve been tasked with following him around for the next two days, photographing him as he works with artists like Cassper Nyovest and Teargas.

For now, we’re on the N1 highway headed towards Centurion where Chad da Don, another rapper, is due to complete his verse on a Soko beat. As we race to beat the traffic, the producer sheds more light on the break-in incident. He’d barely been gone from the cottage for thirty minutes. Returning with the groceries he’d gone to buy, he discovered that his iPhone, Macbook, two external hard drives, sneakers, and his girlfriend’s jewellery had gone missing. The cleaning ladies knew nothing; neither did the cottage owner nor the gardener.

Going to the police didn’t yield results.

*

Born in Chiredzi, a small town to the South-East of Bulawayo, Soko was initiated into hip-hop by his elder brother Prince with whom he now runs the Anashe Media Group, a management, marketing and production company focused on the African music sector. His other brother Arnold and a third partner are also involved.

The story of his initial forays into music production follows a similar trajectory to that of many producers: he’d started off as a rapper, but instead of him feeling like he wasn’t good enough, he realised that there was good money-generating potential from making beats. He then switched to that trade exclusively while in high school.

“I used to sell my beats online,” he said in an interview, referring to early start-ups like Mp3.com which enabled independent artists (or ‘bedroom musicians’) to generate income from their music.

His banker father re-located his family to America after a brief stint in South Africa. Soko’s athleticism – he played football at one point – took a backseat when he decided to study sound engineering. He met his current production team, The Order, during his freshman year at college in Tampa, Florida.

Among them – there are three other members – The Order have produced for A-list artists such as Rich Gang, Future, and Drake. There’s also Beyonce’s “Drunk in love” which was [wrongly] attributed to recording artist Detail. I ask Soko about this.

“It’s all industry politics,” he tells me.

Later, he’ll reveal: “I made that beat about four years ago.”

In Centurion, we’re greeted by two apes which belong to Chad da Don. Chad’s mother, a hip-hop lover of sorts, comes out and invites us into their home. Maggz, the Soweto-born rhyme-spitter who can rap circles around many a rapper, is present, as is Chad’s producer Ashleigh.

After brief introductions, Chad invites us into his studio. Soko’s still concerned about the break-in, but his mood instantaneously changes when Ashleigh fires up the studio workstation. He’s most at peace making music, it seems.

The producers go through songs which have been placed on albums due out later this year. Pusha T’s name gets flown about; Rihanna’s too.

Next is Chad’s unfinished song with Maggz who’s in the same room and has already recorded his part. The playback elicits something of a collective mini-orgasm when everyone hears it. “I pray we take it, to the next level/ change the game and let the cheques battle/ when you state your name they’re like ‘yessus’/ into ziya jika mfankithi/”

Maggz’s cadence is unmatched!

The last time Soko was in South Africa, he did production work for Cash Time Life – first KO’s “Mission statement”, then DJ Vigilanti’s “Sgelekeqe” which features stately rap contributions from Ma-E, Pro, and Maggz. Both songs went on to dominate radio charts and establish KO, especially, as somewhat of a lyrical monster outside of the Teargas collective (of which he’s part, alongside brothers Ma-E and Ntukza).

Over the next two days, Soko’ll host a roster of producers and rap artists either at the tipping point of their careers, or currently riding the crest of an ever-brittle and elusive ‘top’. Cassper Nyovest will make a stop to record “Phumakim”, as will Ganja Beatz, the production collective responsible for producing bangers for Reason, Okmalumkoolkat, and Riky Rick, among others.

I pull Ma-E aside during one of the sessions to ask him how the working relationship with Soko developed. He tells me that the producer used to contact them (Cash Time Life/Teargas) via e-mail with links to his soundcloud. KO decided to open one of the links and went on to alert Ma-E. “In two seconds, I was like ‘yo, this guy’s the deal! When he comes down, we’ve got to hook up!’”

*

On our last meeting, Brian comes across a post from October 2012 while scrolling through his Facebook timeline: “I make Weird beats on purpose!… 1 of theez days imma set a trend.” With one of last year’s biggest songs under his belt, and song placement on some big name artists’ upcoming projects, Brian may well be on his way to accomplishing his goal.

*Originally published in Mahala.

**This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.