Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 384

Mali and Manhattan: “So Ebola’s in Manhattan. Now it’s touched my two homes.”

So Ebola’s in Manhattan. Now it’s touched my two homes. Thursday we heard that the virus had made it to Mali, which I’d figured it would. How could it not? One way or another, in the tightly bound region, it could only travel, and it did so inside the embattled body of a two-year old girl, first to Bamako then to Kayes. Friday we learned that a doctor who lives here in Harlem, one block over, is the first confirmed Ebola case in the city. He’ll get the best care possible, and the Brooklyn bowling alley where he played is being disinfected. An unfortunate photo had her—is it her, or a months-old stock photograph?—being lugged like cordwood. She’s since passed—ala k’a dayoro sumaya—but he’s surviving. Neither the case of the sick doctor nor that of the little girl should be surprising.

Ebola’s already been here, just not among the affluent. It’s already hit, indirectly, the West African communities—the Liberians of Staten Island, the Guineans of Harlem and the Bronx, the Sierra Leoneans… No one is sick, but that doesn’t mean that no one suffers. Weeks ago a friend of ours in the Bronx lost her sister and several members of her family. They’d fallen ill in Guinea, down in the ‘parrot’s beak’ where the three hardest-hit countries meet. Her brother-in-law came home infected from Sierra Leone, and in dying he took one of his wives and several children with him. Perhaps pushed by such stories, the local West African associations are well out ahead of this. They’ve been talking ebola for weeks, looking for ways to help at home and educating people here about how to avoid transmission and what symptoms to watch out for amongst returning travellers. So far, so good. It seems like they’ve all got an endless flow of sanitizing hand gel, which ought to at least delay the flu season. I don’t know first-hand what the picture is like in Bamako, but local doctors and primary care-oriented NGOs have been gearing up, coordinating, educating. They’re on the case. I’m impressed by their activities, even optimistic, but with one big shadowy doubt: rumor and panic corroded and convulsed Bamako in the political crisis of 2012. Let’s hope that, both here and there, the voices of those who think clearly and speak calmly will carry the day.

We can see what’s happening. Whether it’s a crime or simply a damn shame, I can’t decide, but how and why is Ebola spreading? For a lack of buckets, gloves and chlorine. And maybe an abundance of love and generosity. The caretakers will be hardest hit, the mothers, aunts, grandmothers and sisters especially. Because who wipes the brows and empties the buckets of the ill in West African households? The same people who do it at home do it in the hospitals, which have always functioned around the idea that the primary caretakers are family members, and that food is home-cooked.

Here, we’re not so high-minded. The conversation is not about love; it’s about fear (but oddly, not about money—is that a measure of how afraid people are?). Our mayor gave an authoritative and calming press conference flanked by medical professionals, including an excellent health commissioner. But he’s not up for re-election soon. Our governor is, so he threw fear back in the mix in order to pretend to keep us safe from a danger that scarcely exists. Now returning health care workers will face a quarantine order. Nice work! Skilled and generous people will be discouraged from going where they’re needed, and we’re back to making decisions that are either based on fear or play on the fears of other people (which is worse?).

So, Mr. Governor, should I be afraid? Looks like the good doctor and I live in the same neighborhood, work at the same university, and use the same subway station. Oh, and the health commissioner called him a “good historian” (meaning he kept good records). But wait, I’m an historian. Should I be even more worried? Maybe I’m not a good one, though—would I then have less to fear? She also said he’s a very responsible person. In that case, we don’t have as much in common as I thought, and I should be okay… This is absurd.

Friday, I watched the mayor’s press conference in a Guinean restaurant. One man who’s there to pick up his take-out says that of course the disease will spread, because it travels on the back of money and we are all moving around looking for money. In a room full of immigrants from West Africa’s effected countries, no one objects, but no one seems worried either. Later, the governor tells us to worry more. But who should I be afraid of? Should schools exclude African students (this happened in New Jersey—talk about missing a “teachable moment”)? Should the authorities ban flights from West Africa? Should other cities ban flights from New York? Maybe we should limit them—from New York to Freetown, Monrovia, Conakry, with onward service to Dallas? Air Ebola… This, too, is absurd. I know what I’m afraid of: the rank idiots in my own government.

The question ought to be, who should I be more afraid for? My neighbor the doctor will likely recover, like one of the nurses from Dallas has done. I hope he will live to bowl again. The poor girl in Kayes won’t be the last person in Mali to fall ill with Ebola; it’s hard to imagine and it might be too much to ask for. Let’s hope she’s the last to succumb, and that our collective common sense survives. Maybe then we can go on one step further, in West Africa and in New York, and ask why the conversation here is about what the government will do, while in thinking of West Africa, many look instinctively to the NGOs. Could we then go even further, trash the distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ and put the public back into public health?

Photo from NYTimes.

The Brazilian Election, Race

There’s a lot going on in the world these days, so you may not have been paying attention to Brazil. But the country has an extremely important election coming up this weekend – one that will decide amongst other things, who their president will be for the next four years.

The reason this election is so important is because it is more or less a referendum on the incumbent party, the Partido dos Trablhadores (PT) — the “Worker’s Party,” who has ushered in an unprecedented era of prosperity in Brazil for people across almost all backgrounds. This is also the first election after massive, nationwide protests (led largely by young upper and lower middle class urban residents), against government spending on mega events like the FIFA World Cup, and the Olympics. Brazil is also still one the world’s most unequal countries. Fed up in general with “the establishment,” many Brazilian voters are so disillusioned with politics that in this traditionally left-leaning, post-right military dictatorship society, the right has made surprising gains in this election. So, what’s going on in Brazil, and what’s at stake in this referendum on the PT?

Well to the first point, in the wake of the protest, young Brazilians haven’t suddenly switched political allegiances to support the right. Protesters aren’t turning to Neves and his party of the upper classes. In fact, more people voted null than voted for Neves in the first round of elections. In terms of what’s at stake, as The Guardian points out, this vote will send a signal to the world weather or not Brazil will take a more global capitalist, U.S. friendly stance, or continue on the trend of an independent, continental, pro-South American stance that has grown in Brazil and neighboring countries in the past years. However with Brazil’s economic miracle showing signs of waning, perhaps more importantly, this is a referendum on the state-led social programs that the PT has attempted to implement over the last years.

General wisdom is that the lower classes who benefit from such social programs as Bolsa Familia, programs that have helped reduced poverty during the Lula/Rousseff presidencies, are fully (and naively) in support of the PT. Besides class, there is a definite racial dynamic to this course of thought as well. Emblematic of this is the comment that a university-educated, engineer-turned-taxista made to me recently — that black people in Brazil don’t know how to vote in their own favor, and that they only vote for the PT because of the Bolsa Familia, a program that is really holding them back. These are attitudes that I’m not unfamiliar with, similar to opinions that led to the stripping of welfare programs in the United States a generation previous (a debate that also had racial undertones.)

However, as Rio Gringa and the Rio Real Blog point out, that the common views about favela residents, black, and lower class Brazilians as a monolith:

One of the frequent complaints of some right-leaning voters is that the poor consistently vote for the PT, and that the PT uses programs like the cash-transfer program Bolsa Familia to win those votes. But Neves’ close second finish in the first round and the election of the most conservative Congress in the post-1964 period indicates that there’s a diversity of support for the right. Rio blogger Julia Michaels even argues: “Paradoxically, it may be that part of Dilma’s Workers’ Party shrinking appeal is due to a growing conservatism on the part of those who have left poverty during their watch.

However, my favorite quote from Rio Gringa’s article really explains the social and political dynamic of contemporary Brazil, and really most middle-income nations of the global South. Juliana Cunha writes “It’s important the PT realizes that even if it wins, it’s lost, and will continue to lose as long as it doesn’t advance inclusion of consumers to extend to inclusion of citizens.” In order to understand this quote it would be useful to turn to popular culture.

In Brazil, like Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, and similar “big” growing economies, the popular culture often illustrates the dreams and desires of young people to participate in the global information age and consumerist economy. Funk Ostentaçao, a music genre and youth sub-culture that depicts the extreme materialism common to mainstream U.S. rap, popular during the last few years in Brazil, is emblematic of this phenomenon. So are Rolezinhos. But where there is a disconnect in this participation, is that many times the young populations that represent, and are represented by these cultures, are left out of participation in the political life of a country. A prime example of this in Brazil is the violence carried out by Military Police on favela residents in Rio, and particularly young men of color whom are usually just seen in the public sphere as “thugs” and drug dealers. This is also not unique to developing nations (#MikeBrown #Ferguson.)

In Brazil, a place where in the last few years, the lower classes have fully entered in to the consumerist economy (whether by state engineering or not) — and are existing in an economy that is fully dependent on materialist consumerism — the perceived gains achieved by economic inclusion plans such as Bolsa Familia, are thinner than they perhaps seem. From what I’ve witnessed over the past months, this is the real concern of the protesters, young people, and the Brazilian Left.

South African Hip Hop Series: Video Profile On Rapper Sam Turpin

“The thing about Joburg,” observes rapper and producer Sam Turpin “it’s kind of on the scale of rich and poor.” Sam’s music explores themes of growing up in a changing South Africa. He’s constantly questioning, learning and adjusting according to the dictates of his environment – oftentimes one not receptive and trusting of white people and their intentions. Sam will, in stream-of-consciousness fashion, jump from discussing his love for Outkast to questioning why its so hard for some people to learn a second language in South Africa. He’s an artist whose thoughts are in flux; his music, his raps, his style – it reflects an unsettled version of South African hip-hop seeking to carve its own space and claim its right to exist.

In this video profile, set around Braamfontein and featuring scenes shot in the Wits Art Museum, Sam introduces himself and gives the motivation behind the title of his debut EP, “Eternal Sentiment”. The segment also features footage of him performing with collaborator Illa N at an invite-only event where the two previewed music from their collaborative EP “Cold Chinese Food”.

*Sam Turpin’s Eternal Sentiment is available on bandcamp.

Pan-African fashion that rejects “social entrepreneurship”

‘Kushn’ is a chic, afro-futurist fashion and design store based in Cape Town. Owners Greer Valley and her husband, Themba Mntambo, started the company three years ago using leather and colourful woven cloth sourced from textile co-ops in Ethiopia and Ghana. The store’s name is a play on the kingdom of Kush – which was situated in what is now Sudan, going far back as 1070 BC. But don’t mistake Valley and Mntambo’s designs as an homage to an ancient past.

Instead, their designs – while referencing the innovations of past African greats and looking to the techniques that have served artisans, artists and builders of traditional housing – also look to modern artists, weavers, architects, urban landscapers and designers from across the continent. For instance, they source Kente cloth from Ghana’s Ashanti region – from weavers use foot-treadle looms that produce long and narrow strips of cloth, a process that requires painstaking precision and skill – and incorporate these weavers’ beautiful workmanship into shoes and other wearable objects. “The men in the village do the weaving; it’s like a right of passage,” Valley said.

“It’s a tradition that’s passed on from older men to young boys with the entire village being structured around weaving”.

Although “It would actually be cheaper for us to just buy mass produced Kente from a bulk producer…we’re actually building relationships and we’re involved in sustainable practices. That’s important to us in the long run. [But] maybe it’s not the best business practice,” she added, laughing.

When Kushn first opened in 2010, Valley and Mntambo were gleaning offcuts from mainstream retail and fashion stores. Soon after they began using shweshwe, a traditional South African fabric. However, they were devastated when they found that the cloth was not made locally, but “printed in Korea, China, Holland and being sold back to Africa.” Even though “There is this amazing legacy and history behind material [production in African countries]…it’s being trivialized by these fake  ‘African print fabrics’ that are so popular,” Valley said.

She is also concerned about how products from Africa are often marketed: “There’s this need to look like you are being socially responsible and you’re helping Africa, but so many [products] are owned by white Europeans moving into these communities and punting so-called ‘ethical fashion’” and using this “help-the-downtrodden” trope as a marketing tool. “I don’t see why you need to label yourself as being ‘ethical’; I’m suspicious of that. You can tell the story of your products without harping on the fact that you’re about social responsibility or being ethical. Why not just be ethical anyway?” Valley added. “Unfortunately a lot of people look for those things because they want to help in some way,” thus unwittingly supporting a business or a designer that simply uses “doing good” to market themselves – without actually benefitting that community they supposedly help.

Kushn prefers a collaborative approach to business. They hire independent producers in an attempt to move away from what is termed ‘social entrepreneurship’. “We’re a business. We make profit and our profit goes back into our business. We just try to practice principles of sustainability by honoring rare skills like leather-making and weaving, because we wanted to explore this tradition that is very much alive,” she said. It won’t be pity-marketing that sells these designs and products. The skill that goes into assembling Greer and Mntambo’s products, and the innovative, beautiful designs will sell them – and thereby keep the communities of artisans, whose work is intrinsic to Kushn’s designs, alive, producing and part of the future of fine African design.

Check out the online Kushn store or follow them on Tumblr, Facebook,  Etsy (where you can buy their stuff), Instagram or Pinterest.

Canadian burden

The “Of Africa” symposium begins at the Royal Ontario Museum tonight with a keynote by Binyavanga Wainana.  The gathering is an attempt by the museum to finally move beyond its vile and condemned 1989 exhibit “Into the heart of Africa.”  The display on entering that exhibit was a portrait of a British coloniser stabbing a Zulu impi through his heart.  Colonial gaze on steroids it was.
 
To partake in the festivities, one must be well-endowed.  Wainana’s talk will set you back $35; $32 if you’re a student or senior.  No pressure – but it better be good …  After some pressure, each day of the rest of the gathering will cost $10 a pop instead of the initially advertised $30.
 
I’ll just be happy if the next time ROM puts on a dinosaur exhibit, the extinct creatures are not displayed together with African art works.  That will be an advance.

Image Source: Internaz on Flickr.

Music Revue, No.2: Dookoom Rises Up

Finally South African hip hop is spurring national debate, and it’s not Die Antwoord.  No it is Dookoom, the new Cape Town hip hop outfit fronted by local legend Isaac Mutant, which has caused a huge stir with its video “Larney Jou Poes” (roughly translated: Boss, your cunt.) Much has been written about the video, from the likes of radical black consciousness intellectual turned member of parliament Andile Mngxitama, to constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos. Even Vice’s music blog Noisey ran an extensive piece on the video.

“Larney Jou Poes,” directed by young white filmmaker Dane Dodds, is an awe-inspiring work of black rage – farmworkers who down tools, revolt and burn the word “Dookoom” onto the side of a hill. The word originates from the Afrikaans word dukun / doekoem, referring to spiritual healer. The word became a sort of negative term in the Cape, and signified a distrust of the Cape Malay population, and the “dark magic” they brought on the slave ships from the east. The video is aesthetically quite dark – a muddy black and white treatment endures throughout, every shot almost underexposed.

While the video does not overtly call for violence, the anger is palpable and it real – it draws on hundreds of years of oppression and exploitation. The director said in an interview with film industry publication Biz Community that he chose the song out of a few from Dookoom’s A Gangster Called Big Times EP because he found it challenging. “It made me feel uncomfortable and I felt that it expressed something that should not be real, but probably was.”  Unbeknownst to young Dane, this shit is all too real.

Isaac Mutant was inspired by the De Doorns Wine Farm strike of 2012, where workers demanded an increase of their meager daily wage of R69 to a more liveable R150. South Africa has a long history of oppression and abuse on wine farms, from slavery to indentured labor, where white farmers paid workers in alchohol–a devastating practice which has led to generations of alcohol addiction and dependence.

When Dookoom pulls the middle finger and says “fuck you, boss!” it is this continued history of violence that they are raging at. But as Pierre de Vos put in his analysis of the Dookoom backlash, not everyone understands or acknowledges that structural racism exists today. When you call out white racism in South Africa, you get labeled a racist (which Isaac cleverly anticipates in the song.) Much to the advantage of Dookoom, Afrikaner rights group Afriforum (who claim to exist to promote the interests of minorities in South Africa) labeled the song “hate speech” and have made an application to have it banned. This will only give more credibility to those that are buying into the message, and the authenticity and cool that comes along to it.

Perhaps the only critique of the song that I agree with was Adam Haupt’s suggestion to change the name of the song to “Larney, Jou Piel” – (Boss, your dick) thus subverting  Cape Town’s age old misogynistic insult. However that’s a discussion for another day. In the meantime, turn the bass up and nod your head to Dookoom’s beat, and imagine a day when all Larney’s, regardless of race, will have to share their ill gotten gains.

South African Hip Hop Series: Thoughts On The Late Rapper Mizchif

I was home alone one Friday night around 2001 watching, as was tradition, one of the music shows which came on at SABC 1 during that period. It could’ve been Studio Mix during its dying years, or Basiq with Azania, or Castle Loud with Unathi and Stoan.

The first video played after a Telkom ad. It featured a tall-ish man in an afro with what looked like a (mobile) telephone; I assumed it was a continuation of the advert. Roughly ten seconds in, I realised that this was an actual music video and began to pay attention.

I immediately pressed record and managed to capture Mizchif’s “Fashionable” video premiere in its entirety. It was my introduction to an emcee who went on to release one of my first South African hip-hop CD purchases in the form of his 9-track EP Life From All Angles.

He’d be on YFM during the Sprite Rap Activity jam providing a crucial dose of hip-hop news, or on Channel O presenting some video programme or another. He even had a breakout hit with kwaito artist Mavusana called “Summertime” which was big on national radio.

Then, silence!

Forward to 2008. I ran into Mizchif in Cape Town; introduced myself and let him know how much of a fan of his work I was. A year later while hosting a hip-hop show on the campus radio station, listeners would regularly request Mizchif songs to be played.

My copy of Life From All Angles had since been misappropriated, but we managed to find a copy of “Fashionable” on the campus’ local area network and would play it. And thus began my brief re-introduction to Mizchif’s music.

It’s easy to fall into wistful nostalgia and wax philosophical about how ‘great’ and ‘legendary’ he was. Indeed he was a dope emcee. But much like Robo, King Daniel, and to some extent Mr. Fat, Devious, etc., Mizchif has joined a growing line of fallen soldiers who were/are all but forgotten by the movement they helped build.

Instead of reinforcing the ‘poor, starving artist’ trope so commonplace in the music industry, perhaps it’d be best if South African hip-hop came up with ways not only to chronicle its present, but to ensure that the contributions of its purveyors don’t fade into obscurity. If anything, we should do it for posterity, because it’s paramount to ensure that the culture isn’t muddled in the fleeting romance of celebrity. We can start by acknowledging that there are people whose stories need to be told and re-told, because they too matter.

The first (and last) time I saw Mizchif perform was at the South African Hip Hop Awards in 2013. I cannot say I was moved. Not only was he in bad shape, he could barely remember the lyrics, choosing instead to rap over certain parts – as a fan rapping along would. It wasn’t a good sight.

The music lives on!

*Opening image: Mizchif performing at the South African Hip Hop Awards, 2014

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

Film Review: 100% Dakar – More than Art

Dakar has long been hailed as a center of African visual arts since President Leopold Senghor hosted the World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966. More recently African Artists and art enthusiasts descend onto the city for the Dakar Biennale, a major exhibit of contemporary African art that happens every two years. In the lead up to the 2012 presidential elections, the world came to learn that Senegalese hip hop was a force to be reckoned with as rappers and journalists formed Y’en a Marre, a popular protest movement to denounce injustice and inequality and then against the controversial bid by Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade for a third term in office. A year later, rappers Keyti and Xuman emerged onto the scene with their Journal Rappé, a weekly 4-minute long news broadcast delivered in rhymes in both French and Wolof. Dakar-based fashion designers have also figured quite prominently in African fashion in recent years.

It is no surprise, then, that director/producer Sandra Krampelhuber’s recent documentary, “100% DAKAR – more than art” focuses on the creative arts scene in Dakar, Senegal. In this film portrait we meet artists from a range of disciples including fashion, music, graffiti, photography, dance, and other cultural entrepreneurs including an art blogger:

The film opens with Amadou Fall Ba of the hip hop arts organization, Africulturban, walking through a busy Dakar suburb with a steady beat pumping in background. In the next scene several artists are working on a large brightly colored graffiti mural. The two scenes come together to highlight that the arts and the city figure prominently into the lives of a new generation of Dakar-based creative artists.

We learn from the artists featured that the urban environment of Dakar provides the opportunity for cultural blending, mixing, exploring and collaborating for individuals who come from all over the country and who have traveled all over the world. We get a sense of an excitement running through the arts scene where people feel that anything is possible.

The artists featured also clearly see their role as change-makers in their society with the goal of leaving the world a little better for the next generation. Veteran rapper Didier Awadi notes, “The city offers artists the freedom to create, critique, and comment on anything,” thereby allowing artists to become cultural activists with more of an impact than politicians. Another rapper, PPS The Writah, drives this point home when he says, “I’m a cultural soldier who wants to change things.”

The film allows the audience to hear from the various artists themselves through a series of interviews. Yet, the viewer is brought directly into the center of Dakar’s contemporary art world as photography, painting, fashion, graffiti, musical and dance performances, fashion shows, and art exhibits are featured throughout.

At one point, dancer Ben-J claims, “There is a special vibe here. Dakar booms with life.” Krampelhuber’s film portrait highlights the fact that there is a special collaborative energy that has come together in the city to form Dakar’s contemporary art scene. Her documentary offers a behind the scenes peek into the makings of this exciting creativity and does what photographer Omar Victor Diop hopes his art can do; it shows another image of contemporary Africa.

Zambia turns 50

Zambia, the country its young people fondly call “Zed,” is the next in a number of African countries to turn 50–they are the firstborns of the first wave of African countries to gain independence in the 1960s.

Zambia’s turn came on 24 October 1964, a day chosen because it was United Nations Day. That kind of symbolism is indicative of a very Kaundasque decision. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s first president, always had his eye far on the horizon–Zambia being but a small part of first the continental and then the global stage on which he would perform what he believed was his vocation: being called to greatness. It was at that level that he sought a place in history – sometimes messianic in its dimensions, as would be seen in the huge role Zambia was to play in freeing the rest of the region from colonialism, white supremacy, and apartheid. In retrospect, we can see that he would make a statement, even with the choice of date for our Independence Day.

Children born soon after Independence like myself grew up in a wonderful Zambia. Service delivery was at its finest, funded by flowing copper resources. We had free schooling – good schooling too – from birth to whatever level your grey matter allowed. At primary school, we had free milk and biscuits at break (well, it was chocolate milk for the fancy “formerly whites only” schools, and regular old milk and buns for the others). Kaunda had even promised an egg every day for each citizen. And boy did he try hard to deliver on this one. It was one of his many intentions to make Zambia paradise.

But sometime in the ’80s, when it was clear heaven was getting further and further away from Zambia (the copper prices having crashed and oil prices shot through the roof) he tried to cajole the copper price up and oil prices down via a Transcendental Meditation project named – yes you guessed it, “Heaven on Earth.” Suffice to say, this trick was whacky to the extreme, second only to his attempt to turn grass into oil with the aid of some international conman.

I guess all we can say is that he loved his Zambia, Kaunda! Loved it so much that at some point he even killed democracy, because his children could not live in tribal harmony (he said). So out went tribalism engendering multi-party politics, and in came that other special invention Zambia is known for, “One Party Participatory Democracy”, in which all Zambians only voted for one candidate of one party. It allowed Kauda to maintain the pretence of a democracy, and to rule for 27 years.

The late 70 and 80s were all about Zambia freeing the nations within the region of Southern Africa. Kaunda managed to convince Zambians it was their duty to do so. He let us know the sacrifice we were making – empty shop shelves due to trade embargos, and the bombing crusades by the Rhodesian Selous Scouts – were territorial hazards. In every speech, he repeated that we could not really be free unless our brothers (it was before the politically correct era of including sisters in that statement) in Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and then South Africa were free too. KK was long winded; it wasn’t unusual for him to stand on a podium and scold the nation for up to 8hrs without break if someone had done something silly like attempt to overthrow his government in a coup.

A telling fact about Zambians was how they voted during these years. It was in that period of real hardship that, every 5 years, Zambians went to the polls to retain Kaunda as president. His opponent on the ballot paper- symbolised by the frog – was never a match! He regularly received 99.99% of the vote – a well publicised matter on the nationally-run newspaper, The Times of Zambia.

But all this idyllic stuff came to an end. Eastern Europe, our biggest allies besides Cuba, toppled walls and dictators. The perestroika bug hit everyone – even in distant lands like Zambia – and the poor man, incredulous until the last moment, was replaced.

In came Chiluba! He quickly found out and declared that “power is sweet.” So sweet he could not fathom exiting after a paltry 10 years in office. So he tried to change the constitution to allow him a third term. Zambians said NO like only Zambians can. They got into their cars and hooted him out of office – literally.

You see, Zambians are known largely for being some of the most laid back people on earth. Passive is the word usually employed. They really put both “nice” and “easy going” into the dictionary. As a rule, they will take nonsense-on-steroids from their leaders and from each other. But then one magic day comes, and they are over all of their patience. Kenneth Kaunda, Fredrick Chiluba (that’s his shoe collection above) and Rupiah Banda found out just how resolute a people Zambians can be when, well, they have just had enough.

And so Zambia, the country known for having cultivated a benign dictator for 27 long years, have now made a name for themselves in Africa: we are now known for the regularity and relative ease with which we change presidents.

Now it’s 2014, 50 years down, and Zambia has to be one of the most frustrating places on the continent. We are annoyed by our country because its people are needlessly poor due to terrible management of resources by administration after administration. But then our country is equally wonderful to be in – a happy, heady place that’s so easy on the soul.

So this October, the country will be awash with green, red, orange and black. Everywhere you look, someone will have on their lovely attire made of the colours of the flag.  Little ones will go to school in their own little pieces. Most people will momentarily forget about a president who is not too well, the endless succession battles, runaway corruption in the corridors of power, and mines that make Europeans rich. The collective jaws that dropped at the nerve of investors, sometimes aptly termed infesters by the former Michael Sata, who celebrate our jubilee by banning the use of Zambian languages on mine premises will be picked of the floor, for the time being.

You know what’s great? It’s that the pride and love for the mother land will not have been engineered by the politicians. Nope, her people love Zed-warts and all! Happy 50th Zambia!

Belonging–why South Africans refuse to let Africa in

Any African who has ever tried to visit South Africa will know that the country is not an easy entry destination. South African embassies across the continent are almost as difficult to access as those of the UK and the United States. They are characterised by long queues, inordinate amounts of paperwork, and officials who manage to be simultaneously rude and lethargic. It should come as no surprise then that South Africa’s new Minister of Home Affairs has announced the proposed establishment of a Border Management Agency for the country. In his words the new agency “will be central to securing all land, air and maritime ports of entry and support the efforts of the South African National Defence force to address the threats posed to, and the porousness of, our borderline.”

Political observers of South Africa will understand that this is bureaucratic speak to dress up the fact that insularity will continue to be the country’s guiding ethos in its social, cultural and political dealings with the rest of the continent.

Perhaps I am particularly attuned to this because of my upbringing. I am South African but grew up in exile. That is to say I was raised in the Africa that is not South Africa; that place of fantasy and nightmare that exists beyond the Limpopo. When I first came home in the mid 1990s, in those early months as I was learning to adjust to life in South Africa, I was often struck by the odd way in which the term ‘Africa,’ was deployed by both white and black South Africans.

Because I speak in the fancy curly tones of someone who has been educated overseas, I was often asked where I was from. I would explain that I was born to South African parents outside the country and that I had lived in Zambia and Kenya and Canada and that my family also lived in Ethiopia. Invariably, the listener would nod sympathetically until the meaning of what I was saying sank in. ‘Oh.’ Then there would be a sharp intake of breath and a sort of horrified fascination would take hold. “So you grew up in Africa.” The Africa was enunciated carefully, the last syllable drawn out and slightly raised as though the statement were actually a question. Then the inevitable, softly sighed, “Shame.”

In the early years after I got ‘home,’ it took me some time to figure out how to respond to the idea that Africa was a place that began beyond South Africa’s borders. I was surprised to learn that the countries where I had lived – the ones that had nurtured my soul in the long years of exile – were actually no places at all in the minds of some of my compatriots. They weren’t geographies with their own histories and cultures and complexities. They were dark landscapes, Condradian and densely forested. Zambia and Kenya and Ethiopia might as well have been Venus and Mars and Jupiter. They were undefined and undefined-able. They were snake-filled thickets; impenetrable brush and war and famine and ever-present tribal danger.

Though they thought themselves to be very different, it seemed to me that whites and blacks in South Africa were disappointingly similar when it came to their views on ‘Africa.’ At first I blamed the most obvious culprit: apartheid. The ideology of the National Party was profoundly insular, based on inspiring everyone in the country to be fearful of the other. With the naiveté and arrogance of the young, I thought that a few lessons in African history might help to disabuse the Rainbow Nation of the notion that our country was apart from Africa. I made it my mission to inform everyone I came across that culturally, politically and historically we could call ourselves nothing if not Africans.

What I did not fully understand at that stage was that it would take more than a few lectures by an earnest ‘returnee,’ to deal with this issue. This warped idea of Africa was at the heart of the idea of South Africa itself. Just as whiteness means nothing until it is contrasted with blackness as savagery, South African-ness relies heavily on the construction of Africa as a place of dysfunction, chaos and violence in order to define itself as functional, orderly, efficient and civilised.

As such, the apartheid state was at pains to keep its borders closed. The savages at the country’s doorstep were a convenient bogeyman. Whites were told that if the country’s black neighbours were let in, they would surely unite with the indigenous population and slit the throats of whites.  By the same token, black people were told that the Africans beyond South Africa’s borders lived like animals; they were ruled by despots and governed by black magic.

When apartheid ended, the fear of African voodoo throat slitting should have ended with it. Indeed on the face of things, the fear of ‘Africa,’ has abated and has been replaced by the language of investment. South African capital has ‘opened up’ to the rest of the continent and so fear has been taken over by self-interest and new forms of extraction.

In the parlance of South Africans, our businesses have ‘gone into Africa.’ Like the frontiersmen who conquered the bush before them they have been quick to talk about ‘investment and opportunity’ to define our country’s relationship with the continent. The pre-1994 hostility towards ‘Africa’ has been replaced by a paternalism that is equally disconcerting. Africa needs economic saviours and white South African ‘technical skills’ are just the prescription.

Amongst many black South Africans, the script is frightfully similar. The recent collapse of TB Joshua’s church in Nigeria, in which scores of South Africans lost their lives has highlighted how little the narrative has changed in the minds of many South Africans. Many have called in to radio shows and social media asking, what the pilgrims were doing looking for God in such a God forsaken place?

In the democratic era we have converted the hatred of Africa into a crude sort of exceptionalist chauvinism. South Africans are quick to assert that they don’t dislike ‘Africans.’ It’s just that we are unique. Our history and society are too different from theirs to allow for meaningful comparisons. See – we are even lighter in complexion than them and we have different features. I have heard the refrain too many times, ‘We don’t really look like Africans.’ Never mind the reality that black South Africans come in all shades from the deepest of browns to the fairest of yellows.

This idea that South Africans are so singular in our experience; that apartheid was such a unique experience that it makes us different from everyone else in the world, and especially from other Africans, is an important aspect of understanding the South African approach to immigration.

As long-time researcher Nahla Vahlji has noted, “the fostering of nationalism produces an equal and parallel phenomenon: that of an affiliation amongst citizens in contrast and opposition to what is ‘outside’ that national identity.” In other words, South Africans may not always like each other across so-called racial lines, but they have a kinship that is based on their connection to the apartheid project. Outsiders – those who didn’t go through the torture of the regime – are juxtaposed against insiders. In other words foreigners are foreign precisely because they can not understand the pain of apartheid, because most South Africans now claim to have been victims of the system. Whether white or black, the trauma of living through apartheid is seen as such a defining experience that it becomes exclusionary; it has made a nation of us.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which sought to uncover the truth behind certain atrocities that took place under apartheid, was also an attempt to make a nation out of us. While it won international acclaim as a model for settling disputes that was as concerned with traditional notions of justice as it was with healing the wounds of the past, there were many people inside South Africa who were sceptical of its mission. As Premesh Lalu and Brendan Harris suggested as the Commission was starting its work in the mid 1990s, the desire for the TRC to create the narrative of a new nation led to a selection of “elements of the past which create no controversy, which create a good start, for a new nation where race and economic inequality are a serious problem, and where the balance of social forces is still extremely fragile.”

This is as true today as it was then. Attending the hearings was crucial for me as a young person yearning to better understand my country, but I am objective enough to understand that one of the consequences using the TRC as the basis for forging a national identity is that ‘others’ – the people who were not here in the bad old days – have found it difficult to find their place in South Africa.  Aided and abetted by the TRC and the discursive rainbow nation project, South Africans have failed to create a frame for belonging that transcends the experience of apartheid.

Twenty years into the ‘new’ dispensation, many South Africans still view people who weren’t there and therefore who did not physically share in the pain of apartheid as ‘aliens.’ The darker-hued these aliens are, the less likely South Africans are to accept them. Even when black African ‘foreigners’ attain citizenship or permanent residence, even when their children are enrolled in South African schools, they remain strangers to us because they weren’t caught up in our grand narrative as belligerents in the war that was apartheid.

While it is easy to locate the roots of xenophobia in our colonial and apartheid history, it is also becoming clear that our present leaders do not understand how to press the reset button in order to remake our country in the image of its future self. They have not been able to outline a vision for the new South Africa that is inclusive of the millions of African people who live here and who are ‘foreign’ but indispensable to our society for cultural, economic and political reasons.

America – with all its problems – offers us the model of an immigrant nation whose very conception relied on the idea of the ‘new’ world where justice and freedom were possible. Much can be said about how that narrative ignores those who were brought to the country as slave cargo. It is patently clear that America has also denied the founding acts of genocide that decimated the people of the First Nations who lived there before the settlers arrived. Indeed, one could argue that while oppression and murder begat the United States of America, the country’s founding myth is an inclusive one, a story of freedom and the right to life. In South Africa murder and oppression also birthed a new nation, but the founding myth of our post 1994 country has remained insular and exclusive, a story of freedom and the right to life for South Africans.

The South African state has always been strongly invested in seeing itself as an island of morality and order in a cesspool of black filth. The notion of South Africa’s apartness from Africa is deeply embedded in the psyche that ‘new’ South Africans inherited in 1994 but it goes back decades. For example, the 1937 Aliens Act sought to attract desirable immigrants, whom it defined in the law as those of ‘European’ heritage who would be easily assimilable in the white population of the country.’ This law stayed on the books until 1991, when the National Party, in its dying days, sought to protect itself from the foreseeable ‘deluge’ of communist and/or barbaric Africans. The Aliens Control Act (1991) removed the offensive reference to ‘Europeans’ but it kept the rest of the architecture of exclusion intact.

As a result, when the new South Africa was born the old state remained firmly in place, continuing to guard the border from the threats just across the Limpopo, as it always had.   It was a decade before the Bill on International Migration came into force in 2003 and it too retained critical elements of the old outlook.

The ANC politicians running the country somehow began to buy into the idea that immigrants posed a threat to security. Immigration continued to be seen as a containment strategy rather than as a path to economic growth. As President Jacob Zuma tightens his grip on the security sector, and extends the power and reach of the security cluster in all areas of governance, this attitude seems to be hardening rather than softening.

None of South Africa’s current crop of political leaders seem to be asking the kinds of questions that will begin to resolve the question the role that immigration can and should play in the building of our new nation. South Africa’s political leadership sees Africa in one of two ways: either as a market for South African goods, differentiated only to the extent that Africans can be sold our products; or as a threat, part of a deluge of the poor and unwashed who take ‘our jobs and our women.’

No one in government today seems to understand that post-apartheid South Africa continues to be the site of multiple African imaginations. One cannot deal with ‘Africa’ without dealing with the subjectivity of what South Africa meant to Africa historically, and the disappointment that a free South Africa has signified in the last decade.

So much of the pan-Africanist project – even with its failings – has been about an imagined Africa in which the shackles of colonialism have been thrown off. South Africa has always been an iconic symbol in that imaginary. Robben Island and Nelson Mandela, the burning streets of Soweto, Steve Biko’s bloodied, broken body: these images did not just belong to us alone. They brought pain and grief to a continent whose march towards self-determination included us, even when our liberation seemed far, far away. With the invention of the ‘new’ South Africa the crucial importance of African visions for us have taken a back seat. South Africans have refused to admit that we are a crucial aspect of the African project of self-determination. In failing to see ourselves in this manner, we have denied ourselves the opportunity to be propelled – transported even – by the dreams of our continent.

What would South Africa be like without the ‘foreign’ academics who teach mathematics and history on our campuses? How differently might our students think without their deep and critical insights about us and the place we occupy in the world? How might we understand our location and our political geography differently if ‘foreigners’ were not here offering us different ways of wearing and inhabiting blackness? What would our society look like without the tax paying ‘foreigners’ whose children make our schools richer and more diverse? What would inner city Johannesburg smell like without coffee ceremonies and egusi soup? What would Cape Town’s Greenmarket square be without the Zimbabwean and Congolese taxi drivers who literally make the city go?

In an era in which borders are coming down and becoming more porous to encourage trade and contact, South Africa is introducing layers of red tape to the process of moving in and out of the country. The outsider has never been more repulsive or threatening than s/he is now. This is precisely why Gigaba’s announcement of the Border Management Agency is so worrisome. Yet it was couched in careful language. Ever mindful of the xenophobic reputation that South Africa has in the rest of the continent, Gigaba asserts, “We value the contributions of fellow Africans from across the continent living in South Africa and that is why we have continued to support the AU and SADC initiatives to free human movement; but [my emphasis] this cannot happen haphazardly, unilaterally or to the exclusion of security concerns.”

Ah, there it is! The image of Africa and ‘Africans’ as haphazard, disorderly and ultimately threatening is in stark contrast to South Africa and South Africans as organised, efficient and (ahem) peace-loving. The subtext of Gigaba’s statement is that South Africans require protection ‘foreigners’ who are hell bent on imposing their chaos and violence on us.

Nowhere has post-apartheid policy suffered from the lack of imagination more acutely than in the area of immigration. Before they took power, many in the ANC worried about the ways in which the old agendas of the apartheid regime state would assert themselves even under a black government. They understood that there was a real danger of the apartheid mentality capturing the new bureaucrats. Despite these initial fears, the new leaders completely under-estimated the extent to which running the state would succeed in dulling the imaginations of the new public servants and burying their intellect under mountains of forms and rules and processes. They also didn’t understand that xenophobia would be so firmly lodged in the soul of the country, that it would be one of the few phenomena would unite blacks and whites.

South Africa’s massive immigration fail is a tragedy for all kinds of reasons. At the most basic level, the horrific levels of violence and intimidation that many African migrants to South Africa face on a daily basis represent an on-going travesty of justice. Yet in a far more complex and nuanced way, South Africa’s rejection of its African identity is a tragedy of another sort. All great societies are melanges, a delicious brew of art and culture and intellect. They draw the best from near and far and make them their own. By denying the contribution of Africa to its DNA, South Africa forgoes the opportunity to be a richer, smarter, more cosmopolitan and interesting society than it currently is.

I spite of ourselves South Africans still have a chance to open our arms to the rest of the continent. The window of opportunity for allowing our guests to truly belong to us as they have always allowed us to belong to them is still open. I fear however, that the window is closing fast.

Image Credit: Zachary Rosen