Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 394

Watch’s Umlilo’s new music video “Magic Man” here first

You’ve seen the teaser, now see the video. Umlilo, is back with his fifth music video single, ‘Magic Man’ from his upcoming EP, ‘Aluta’. 

Produced by Umlilo, ‘Magic Man’ is an electronic fusion of different sounds ranging from dark post-dub with afro-dancehall accents to a baroque synth pop accompanied by Umlilo’s powerful vocals.

“Magic Man represents a person’s metamorphosis from a tortured outsider to a fully realised divine being and I wanted the music to reflect the transformation,” says Umlilo. “It’s one of my most personal songs and I wanted to explore the physical struggle in all of us to transcend beyond the ordinary and mundane to become greater people.”

Umlilo teamed up with director Jasyn Howes and DOP Nicolas vd Westhuizen, with the avant-garde styling expertise from Art Mataruse, make-up artist Charli Vdr and visuals by Danielle Clough.

Performers Sheldon Michaels and Alex Alfaro join Umlilo in a dark ritualistic journey to become the enigmatic and ethereal Magic Man who skirts on the outskirts of the norm. Shot at Old Cotton Mills in Epping, Cape Town, the video is a fitting visual accompaniment to the lush and eclectic single.

Watch ‘Magic Man’:

* For more on Umlilo, see Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

Why Oscar Pistorius’ anxiety spectacle might matter more than we think

Guess what? Oscar Pistorius, the South African Paralympic champion who is tried for shooting and killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, turns out to be sane. He might still lose his temper, like the other day when VIP-ing it up in a fancy night club in Johannesburg or tweet ill-guided Bible verses, self-celebratory do-good pics or compare his life to a Holocaust survivor, but unlike what his psychiatrist proclaimed, none of this is rooted in an anxiety disorder. An independent team of psychiatric experts concluded as much after a month-long evaluation.

You can’t blame them for giving it a go, though. After all, psychiatric conditions are excellent tools for reducing agency in bad behavior, character flaws, nasty temper, hypermasculine aggression and lethal rage. With symptoms such as ‘worrying, overthinking, attention problems, impulsivity, activity issues and inappropriate behaviour’, anxiety disorders and attention deficit disorders (AD/HD) are amongst the best-known kinds. They often go together and overlap. So for Oscar, medicalizing his mistakes by making his violence a matter of the brain rather than the mind, could have served him well.

We won’t know for another month what the Judge made of all this, but that does not mean that the consequences of this failed psychwash attempt, and the media attention it has generated, are limited to Oscar alone. Quite the contrary; those who are likely to be most affected by it, albeit indirectly, got absolutely nothing to do with Oscar or the trial.

Instead, it’s the spectacle’s media attention, and the misperceptions, ignorance and skepticism around mental disorders that it feeds and fuels, that may impact their lives.

Because the way South African media appears to have it, these disorders are most relevant in relation to the white and wealthy, such as medication abusers on wealthy college and high schools in the suburbs. Like Oscar’s case, such reports reinforce the idea that such disorders are nothing more than socio-cultural imports affecting the well to do, designed to either excuse their flaws or drug them with Ritalin. It doesn’t help that the experts, researchers and websites that do take the disorders seriously, seem to insist on illustrating their works with pictures of white boys. This is despite the fact that various studies, such as this one and this one, suggest that AD/HD levels of Black South African children are at least as high as Western children and their anxiety levels often higher.

It’s not like overdiagnoses, medication abuse or attempts to medicalize bad behaviorshould not be problematized. Of course they should. But not without acknowledging that the flipside of overdiagnostication is that others, who are actually suffering from these disorders, are being missed. And that the ones who are likely to pay the price for misperceptions and ‘convenience use’ in South Africa are not the middle and upper class Oscars and college buddies, but the black (including coloured) children that make up the bulk of the 5-10% of South African children estimated tosuffer from AD/HD, and struggle with anxiety, whose struggles won’t be understood or recognized. Because teachers’ misperceptions of mental disorders, as this study in the Cape Town area shows, are shaped by the media too.

Biased media reporting won’t advance popular and professional understandings on how psychiatric conditions interact with race, poverty, gender, culture and other sources of stress (which of course affect Black children much more). Diagnostic criteria need to be sensitive to all of these contextual factors too. Finding out who suffers, why, to what effect and what kind of accommodations and types of support they need is important. Especially for those in poor schools.

Overdiagnoses is an issue, that’s right. But underdiagnoses should be taken at least as serious.

Ethiopian Dream

Six years ago, as a young, inquisitive and idealistic undergraduate, I traveled to my country of birth, Ethiopia, on a quest to answer one of the toughest questions in political science: how does democracy develop in a poor country with a long-standing history of authoritarian rule? At the time Ethiopia had recently passed through a tumultuous period following the highly contested 2005 election and the political crisis that ensued. There had been concerns of election fraud and as people took to the streets to protest the ruling party’s (the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front or EPRDF) preemptive claim to victory, a callous response by security forces led to the death of 193 civilians and years of fear and silence that have followed. When I arrived in Addis Ababa in late 2008 to do research around those fateful elections, a sense of apathy mixed with resignation and fatigue permeated the air.  I sought to meet and interview prominent political leaders, journalists and activists to understand from their perspective the significance of the 2005 election and its implications on democratization in Ethiopia. In the end I came back with more questions than answers and an unrelenting interest to understand a subject that was infinitely more nuanced and challenging than I had imagined.

On the way to one of these interviews in December 2008, I ran into a remarkable woman, a person who defined the essence of leadership as a form of servitude to a people and an idea. Birtukan Mideksa was a leading figure in the opposition movement and a former federal judge who never cowered in the face of political pressure, at one time dismissing a politically motivated corruption case against Seye Abraha (a core member of the ruling party who had a falling out with then Prime Minister Meles Zenawi)—an action that would cost her career. A dedicated and fearless leader, she had a unique ability to inspire these same virtues in others. When I met her, our encounter lasted less than five minutes. She was on her way out of a colleague’s house but promised me an interview in the coming week. A few days later she would be arrested, allegedly for reneging on the terms of a pardon by the government in statements she made to the media, and sentenced to life in prison. I would not speak to her until six years later.

It was not clear why the Ethiopian government decided to release Birtukan but in October 2010, she was pardoned again. By this time, the political situation in Ethiopia had regressed to an almost hopeless point. The EPRDF and its affiliated parties, led by Zenawi, had just won another election gaining a 99.5% majority in parliament (all but two of the 547 seats went to the ruling regime). In addition to obliterating the opposition through laws that restricted civil liberties, part of the ruling party’s success lay in its ability to become ubiquitous in all aspects of Ethiopians’ lives. As the rest of Africa continued to embrace the Internet revolution and globalization of media, in Ethiopia the government maintained tight control over access to information and communication.  Until today, despite being amongst the fastest growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia is one of the few countries in the world that has yet to privatize its telecommunications sector. In all semblances Ethiopia had become a de-facto one-party state.

During those years I slowly started to shed my idealism, but remained inquisitive. After working for a human rights organization for a short time, I decided to shift and focus my career on development issues like peacebuilding and conflict resolution—issues that, ironically, seemed less intractable than democracy and governance.  As I traveled to other countries—Liberia, Somalia, Iraq—I would rediscover what drew me to write about Ethiopia in 2008 in different manifestations elsewhere. Injustice takes on many different shades but nothing about it made it more palatable or less worthy of attention.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me to a graduation dinner in honor of Birtukan Mideksa who had recently completed her Masters at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In a low-key Ethiopian restaurant in Silver Spring, I would again encounter the person who unlike anyone I had met before sacrificed so much for an idea she believed in.  For the next few hours, the room buzzed with conversations about politics, social change and culture in Ethiopia, interspersed with laughter and comic relief. Reminiscent of that important moment in time when change seemed possible through dialogue and cooperation, here was a space to have an open intellectual discussion about democracy and the fate of a country we cherished.  For me, a young Ethiopian-American sitting at dinner with Birtukan and other Ethiopians who continue to toil for human rights and democracy through social media and academia, this encounter led to an important realization: there are no eureka moments or straightforward solutions to the injustices that we observe and so desperately seek to change. But each person’s actions stand as an example for others who can continue to keep the hope of change alive through an indomitable sense of conviction and solidarity.

These days I’ve started to write again, inspired by the examples of others around me who are making their contributions to a vision of Ethiopia that I share. I know that I am privileged to be able to express my ideas without fear, while others have died or languish in prisons to have this ability. It is a gift I cherish and one that I hope to use constructively. I don’t consider myself a political activist, but at a fundamental level, I desire a freer and more just society.  Like many people from various national, religious and socio-economic walks of life who share this intangible connection to humanity, I feel a responsibility to carry forward the dream that others have sacrificed for.

* Dedicated to the Zone9 Bloggers (Befekadu Hailu, Atnaf Berahane, Natnael Feleke, Mahlet Fantahun, Zelalem Kibret, Abdel Wabela), Tesfalem Weldeyes, Edom Kassaye, Asmamaw Hailegeorgis and countless others who continue to inspire us in their absence.  Images: ‘kola.

There are apparently only three people in the world that can cook pasta like Wole Soyinka

Soyinka turned 80 this year. We learn this in an interview a Nigerian newspaper did with his wife, Folake:

“He cooks and he is quite good at it. He even cooked about two days ago. When the boys were really little, one day in California, he called us all to the kitchen and said he wanted to have a family meeting. They were so young I don’t even think they had any concept of what a family meeting was. He lined all three according to their heights and asked me to sit. He said he has something to tell us and he was only going to say it once. He whipped out some cooking utensils, moved them around noisily inside the pot, threw some up, caught them, performed a few tricks and then told us to listen up. He said there were only three people in the world that can cook pasta like he does: one is dead, the other lives in Sicily, Italy, and he is the third one and he is going to cook something the likes of which we had never eaten. He cooked pasta that day and we truly enjoyed it.”

Source.

 

South African Hip Hop Series: Rap Songs About Weed

Hip-hop’s love affair with marijuana is a much-publicized affair. Artists such as Cypress Hill and Snoop Dogg have built careers by co-opting the good ganja crop and working it into their public personas. Of late, the likes of Wiz Khalifa and Flatbush Zombies continue to model themselves in line with stoner tendencies. South African hip-hop hasn’t been as vocal/showy about its habits, although a fair deal of emcees do indulge. We went on a hunt for some South African rap songs about marijuana and emerged with a list ranging from Cape Town’s Youngsta; to Gauteng-based Mothipa’s Mpharanyana-sampling three-verse letter to a love deferred; to rap troubadour Hymphatic Thabs’ rally to just grow a crop.

Artist: Deenodee & Swish 8 – 8

Song: Norwegian breakfast

“It’s another whole year where I was pedaling school/ meddling to understand what does it all come to” raps Deenodee on the introspective ‘Norwegian breakfast’, a song about weed’s capacity to have you thinking big, but also about the mind’s ability to drag you head-first into reality. “I take another pull and start to see it from a different view, the rent is due” says Swish, countering himself after going on a philosophical trip about equal opportunity, and a self-motivational wank about training one’s brain to master what they’re good at. Play this one very early in the morning!

*

Artist: Blaze 5th

Song: Who Got The Bud?

Album: GreenHouse Project EP

This is a directive in the mechanics of communal weed smoking uttered amidst the haze of jazzy horn samples and lazy beats. “Inhale/ exhale/ two puff, pass to the left and chill” says Cape Town-based Blaze 5th. This song is equal parts autobiography and mythology. Blaze shares his journey with the lady he calls Ms. Juana from the first day he ‘saw’ her (“and then the weed came/ good look, hooked from the first kiss”), and traverses the stars while name-checking the Dogon people of Mali as well as XXL Magazine.

“Like Snoop said ‘You are what you smoke’/ light up and get ghost/ let’s see who smokes the most/”

Artists: Arsenic & Youngsta

Song: 3rd Avenue Trippin’

Album: Deurie Naai Alliance

Towards the end ofArsenic and Youngsta’s 15-track scorcher DNA is this little seed of weed plantation music. With Bob Marley and Bone Thugs as composers, it’s no wonder the outcome is so smooth. Youngsta reps the green-tinged leaf through detailed descriptions of his exquisite outings to other universes. Arsenic’s swinging drums and lammed-out synth pads provide the impetus necessary to transcend the physical and descend into astral galaxies. Play this one while chasing all your worries away at the end of a stressful day.

I don’t care about brands and the promotion/ as long as it’s pure green and it’s potent/ weed became ‘cheese’ and Swazi became golden/ but I don’t give a fuck what it is, I just smoke it

Artist: Hymphatic Thabs

Song: Just grow a crop

Album: Perfect Times

Hymphatic Thabs is a rap superhero. He possesses answers to questions which herbalists in the hip-hop community end up asking regularly, like “what’ll happen if I chain-smoke ganja?” Well, according to Thabs – an emcee who was pivotal in setting the template for indie rap success in South Africa through his prolific work in the early 2000s – it’s bad to smoke a lot. Why? Well, because you’ll end up talking total kak! This one’s for the heads; for the ciphers; for the moments where you just want to spark up yet be present in the here and now. Of course Thabs’ fabulous rhyme schemes and specialist flow shine through.

To owe the cops a bag of weed just has to be the most fucked-up tragedy/ it dazzled me, but now at least I know what’s up

Artist: The Temple

Song: Ntsango

It’s that echo at the very beginning that gets you. It catches you off-guard, wakes you up from slumber and locks you in= a trance. “Bem’Intsango” they chant, imploring you to light up; coercing you into their web of higher consciousness. These gentlemen know exactly what they’re doing; “ma-uganthayo abantu ba bemayo, wena u-insane” cautions  Kenny Mlambo of the rap duo The Temple. Along with his partner Jacky Mopedi, they form The Guru Group, “home to the subsidiaries Guru Apparel, Guru Photography and Guru Music respectively” according to their blog. Play this one as you prepare to leave the house at night.

Quote: “Ma ukathand’abantu ba bemayo, wena u infene/ mang’bemile ndi-strongo e-ncondweni my man”

Artist: Jam Jarr

Song: Space Jack

Album: Pura Obscura

Imagine this: dusk is quickly approaching in the Western Cape town of Worcester. After an unbearably-hot day which had temperatures peaking in the high 30s, a cool breeze blows over the extreme dryness of the karoo. The occasion is a three-day alternative music festival called RAMfest. On one of the three stages is a figure who stands at approximately no shorter than six feet; he’s rapping, and somewhere in the middle, he makes a pronouncement – something to the effect of his love for weed. His partner lets loose very mean electronic beats; the crowd gathered before this duo, Jam Jarr, treat every passing moment with sheer admiration. It’s a ganja party, and everyone’s invited. Now stop imagining; that’s how it really went down.

*Honourable mention goes to Thor Rixxon and The Exorsistahs, $tilo Magolide, pH and Towdeemac, Mothipa, and The Archetypes. Some of them have been included in the playlist we’ve created below.

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

Goma Rap: The 9th annual Salaam Kivu International Film Festival

When the M23 militia took control of Goma, the capital of North Kivu in Eastern Congo, in late 2012, the premises of Yole Africa were quickly occupied by a large crowd of youngsters. Some of them were looking for refuge after their homes had been bombed; some others were there to make sure that the cultural centre was not attacked, recalls Congolese filmmaker and cultural activist while he supervises the preparations for the closing ceremony of the 9th edition of the Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (Skiff). “Even the police jumped the fence and broke into Yole! They were also seeking safety for themselves. They knew that the community would never allow an attack to this place”, he adds, pointing to the ground littered with volcanic rock. “This is a magical place, a place for the people, respected by everyone. Every year Skiff summarizes our work and brings everyone in Goma together.”

The 9th edition of Skiff closed last Sunday by the shores of Lake Kivu with a fashion show showcasing the work of Congolese-American designer Eric Ndelo and a group of young Yole members, a concert by songwriter Fonkodji and with the awards for best film of the Goma Focus category for local directors, and for the winning troupe of the dance competition, a festival highlight that gathered several thousands the previous day at a downtown sports ground. Other guests for Skiff’s 2014 edition included Canadian filmmaker Mathieu Roy (director of  Surviving Progress), Howard University scholar Chioma Oruh, Ugandan hip hop archivist Gilbert Daniels of Bavubuka Foundation, British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley, and local community leaders such as Samuel Yagase of GOVA Organisation, among others.

Petna Ndaliko founded Yole Africa in Kampala in year 2000. He had gone into exile in Uganda shortly after he was briefly kidnapped, twice, while he was a radio presenter and community leader during the armed rebellion that erupted against President Laurent Kabila in the late nineties. “At that time in Kampala you had rebels and refugees from DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea. Within a year our centre became the place where all these people from different backgrounds would come to work in artistic projects, make movies and create dance pieces. That’s when I first witnessed the power of art, transforming hatred and frustrations into a creative force”, he says.

But in 2002 the Nyirigongo volcano erupted and buried Ndaliko’s family house, and large parts of Goma, under lava. Ndaliko helped his family resettle in Uganda, but realized that many of his old acquaintances were going through desperate times. “Their choices were either to join a militia or be killed by one”, he says. “But I had already experienced the way in which art can transform a community in this kind of situation. This was the time for me to come back, when all the NGOs were running away from this place. And all those people of different groups who had threatened me in the past were gone too because of the volcano’s eruption. In those days the joke here was that the true Commander in Chief of all these armies was that volcano –he says waving a finger to a point behind the hills and the clouds of dust– under whose command they all had to run”.

That is how Yole Africa started in Congo, under what Ndaliko calls the basic premise to ‘decolonize the mind’, encouraging the youth to express themselves through art in order to achieve social change. “The education system here, even up to now, is the one that was drafted by Belgium, during the time when they were comparing Congolese to monkeys. We still don’t know our true history, and Yole offers an alternative to that, through filmmaking and alternative TV, music and computer literacy programmes, and through community discussions and creative workshops with guests from different parts of the world when we have the opportunity”.

An assiduous follower of Frantz Fanon (whose face has been painted next to Angela Davis’ on the wall outside his office at Yole), Ndaliko argues that his cultural and social project fits into his global view of progressive Pan Africanism. “We need to start thinking of Africa as a matrix, and whose people and history are scattered all over the world. The general connotation, when Fanon speaks of nationalism, is to consider a nation, not as a piece of territory that has been carved by colonialists, but as an entity which has traditional and cultural values that go beyond the borders we have now. This is the kind of notion on which Yole Africa wants to start building on, reconnecting all these branches of our history and our people”.

Some of Yole’s young members have also been members of armed groups operating in the region, and many others are at risk of joining one, but in Ndaliko’s view Yole Africa provides an alternative space in which the youth can be exposed to different aspirations through artistic expressions in a context in which many people are struggling to survive. After decades of armed conflict, he believes in long-term healing strategies and local empowerment more than in foreign aid with strings attached or Western celebrity campaigns for peace, of which he is openly critical.

Paradoxically, or perhaps provokingly, Skiff 2014’s programme included the film The Day After Peace, which documents the quest of British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley to convince world leaders of establishing a global ‘Peace Day’, and which ends with a successful one-day ceasefire in Afghanistan in 2007. However, the film (featuring Jude Law and Angelina Jolie) was received with certain scepticism from the audience. Through his organisation Peace One Day, Gilley plans to repeat the experience of a day of no-violence (including a free concert of American rapper Akon at the Goma airport) in Eastern Congo next September.

But Petna Ndaliko highlights the lack of local input in this kind of initiatives. “Everybody talks about peace in the DRC”, he says, “but who has ever asked for the opinion of the local people? As long as the international organizations don’t listen to the local agenda these projects are going to fail and the state of chaos here will continue.” His criticism extends to the numerous NGOs working in Goma and that often approach Yole Africa to promote their campaigns. “They want to use us because we draw a lot of people. But we can’t buy into that”, he says, “that’s how you start corrupting the creativity of artists, who stop representing their community and start representing what those organisations want.”

Live from Grahamstown

Every winter, for 11 days in early July,  the sleepy South African college town of Grahamstown comes alive with art. Artists from all over the world swarm to the tiny town, and every nook and cranny is packed with theatre, dance, performance art, film, comedy puppets and face paint with the sweet sounds of jazz spilling onto the streets. The National Arts Festival, that celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, is the second biggest arts festivals in the world. For the last couple of years, a group of journalism students at Rhodes University cover the festival through a pop-up newsroom called CueTube, where they interview a variety of artists, choreographers and directors. Here’s some samples of the work.

CARGO: Precious

Sara Baartman was taken from South Africa and shipped to London to be exhibited as the Hottentot Venus, to be ogled for her African physique. CARGO: Precious is a dance collaboration between producer Georgina Thomson, Sylvaine Strike, PJ Sabbagha, Concord Nkabinde and Fana Tshbalala to portray the journey of the young Saartjie Baartman.

Report by: Lilian Magari, Noxolo Mafu and Aneesha Ndebele

 

Local Jazz Muso Kyle Shepherd delivers

Jazz pianist, Kyle Shepherd talks about his music, his background and and the state of Jazz in South Africa.

Report by Cindy Archillies & Megan Flemmit

 

Jazz Legend Louis Moholo-Moholo

The last of the legendary The Blue Notes, Louis Moholo-Moholo performs at the National Arts Festival for his first time. Born in Cape Town, he lived in London for most of his life as exile during the Apartheid era. Moholo-Moholo is extremely passionate about jazz and talks about the current state of South African jazz. He performs here with the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz, Kyle Shepherd, as well as previous winners of this award.

Report by Cindy Archillies, Megan Flemmit, Deneesha Pillay

 

Unraveling the mysteries of Islam 

Bismillah and Salaam Stories two theater productions that delve into Islamic identity. The former depicts a father ritually preparing his son’s body for burial, while the latter production dramatises a selection of stories. Both directors reject westernized representations of the faith and illuminate its fundamental aspects to audiences at the National Arts Festival.

Report by Deneesha Pillay & Megan Flemmit

 

Marikana The Musical

Aubrey Sekhabi’s explosive new production, based on the Marikana Massacre of 2012 is adapted from the book ‘We Are Going To Kill Each Other Today — The Marikana Story’. This powerful musical gives names and faces to those who lost their lives during the massacre.

Report by Olona Tywabi and Anna Kharuchas

 

Hasan and Husain Essop’s Unrest

Twins, Hasan and Husain Essop, talk to us about winning the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for 2014 before delving into their latest exhibition, ‘Unrest’. Rooted in Cape Town, the twins explore various forms of unrest in Cape Town, touching on themes of violence, gang warfare and identity.

Report by Lilian Magari and Campbell Easton

Facebook and Politics in Zimbabwe: Who is Baba Jukwa?

Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, is buzzing with the arrest of Edmund Kudzayi, editor-in-chief at the Zimbabwean Sunday Mail. Together with his brother Phillip Kudzayi, the editor stood accused of administrating the faceless online personality known as “Baba Jukwa.” Since early 2013 the popular Baba Jukwa Facebook page has been posting allegations of scandals and corruption, mainly against politicians and state officials, but also predictions of what was going to happen within the political landscape, many of which turned out to be true. For this reason one could suspect Baba Jukwa to be (or be connected to) a mole within Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party. 

On Sunday of the same week the police released a list of ten more people they intended to arrest in connection with the case:

At least 10 people, including journalist Wilf Mbanga and his wife Trish, are being sought by the police in connection with the shadowy Facebook character Baba Jukwa, who posted subversive articles aimed at inciting people to engage in acts of insurgency and banditry (The Herald print version, 28.6.2014).

Edmund Kudzayi faced charges of terrorism, sabotage and undermining the authority of the President, as well as an accusation of holding illegal ammunition.  Kudzayi was later released on bail.  One Romeo Musemburi (a student at the University of Zimbabwe) and one Mxolisi Ncube (a South-African-based journalist) have also been charged in relation to the case (Newsday print version, 1.7.2014).

In April of this year I got ahold of Baba Jukwa on Facebook, and asked him what he was up to:

I stand for truth, transparency, and the preparation of a renewed Zimbabwe, and a new Africa. This page is the people’s hope for freedom.

Said he. Or she. Or them.

Baba Jukwa has over 400,000 “Likes” on Facebook (409,071 earlier today to be exact), a significant number considering that only around 130,000 people “Like” Robert Mugabe’s Facebook page. “In a daily blizzard of posts, Baba Jukwa has waged a furious information war against Zanu-PF,” wrote BBC correspondent Andrew Harding in 2013:

The stories–some of them more salacious gossip than whistleblowing– include allegations of rape, murder and corruption by senior Zanu-PF officials, and are often accompanied by the mobile phone numbers of those accused, with calls for the public to bombard them with questions.

Now, however, it seems the Zimbabwean authorities are stepping up their game. Editor Kudzayi (who impressively managed to speak far and wide with the press from inside prison walls) claimed he had in fact been working with the government in their efforts to find the ever-elusive Baba Jukwa. In fact, Kudzayi claims to have been working with both the Ministry of Defense and the Police in trying to hack into the gmail account off, and expose, the “real” Baba Jukwa.

These allegations are not only laughable but a clear abuse of the criminal justice system by those in the corridors of power who are afraid that I can use my technological expertise to expose those who actually supplied the real Baba Jukwa…The State has missed the ball and is now majoring in minor and trivial things, yet the real Baba Jukwa is laughing off after the State has arrested an innocent man who has no connection to the Baba Jukwa page” Edmund Kudzayi to The Zimbabwean Herald (Print version, 26.6.2014).

There have been suspicions that the arrests of the journalists are in fact part of a larger, and much more complex, political game. As President Mugabe enjoys his 90th year upon this earth, the question of succession grows ever more pressing. With the end of the coalition government in 2013, ruling party Zanu-PF gained a stronghold, but this time it is a stronghold marred by the vacuum left by the death of the opposition (the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC-T). Or, if not the death, the rasping gasps and signing of wills.

Anyway, the point is, Zanu-PF have been systematically targeting MDC-T for so long. And yet it turns out that the MDC-T’s downfall has made Zanu turn its fangs inwards, upon its own members. A shadowy Facebook character is just an easy way of vilifying whomever you find to be Enemy Number One, whether outside or inside your own party. Others think it is more than that; the Baba Jukwa case is a (more traditional) attempt to distract the population from more pressing matters like, for instance, the dire economic situation.

In all this, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services Professor Jonathan Moyo is a bit of a wild card. As he came to office in 2013 he appointed a range of new people in the state-owned press, including as it happens, Edmund Kudzayi as editor-in-chief of The Sunday Mail. In the weeks before Kudzayi´s arrest, President Mugabe had a very public and well-publicized rant concerning Moyo, calling him “the devil incarnate.” Mugabe accused Moyo of appointing editors that were disloyal to the party, though some see this as Moyo´s attempting to open up for a little more press freedom.

Harare is (and has been for a while) a city of endless rumors, gossip and speculations.  In the absence of unbiased commentary, a city of speculators is what you get.

The Baba Jukwa case embodies this aura of speculation. What is interesting is that Baba Jukwa has continued to post on his Facebook page, even after Kudzayi was arrested. What is even more interesting is that, on June 13th, Baba Jukwa predicted that Kudzayi and two others would be arrested.

Great Zimbabweans the chief chipfukuto has decided to sacrifice his blue-eyed zvipfukuto, Edmund kudzayi (Sunday mail), Mduduzi mathuthu (chronicle) and Caesar zvayi (herald) who all came to zimpapers on nepotism lines without proper channels followed to push his 2018 agenda.

He is such a coward serving his own position and leaving his agents without jobs. I feel pity for obscure journo mathuthu and fake IT specialist kudzai who thought they were above everyone.

Information coming in after chief Chipfukuto apologized to his excellency. More to follow…

Asijiki!

Ndatenda

Baba jukwa (Baba Jukwa Facebook post, 13.6.2014)

Curiouser and curiouser as this becomes, what is certain is that the Zimbabwean press is having a field-day with the Baba Jukwa case.

Baba Jukwa is a strong symbol, and even if the ‘real’ administrators are caught, Baba Jukwa will remain a representative figure, capable of frustrating the State and challenging the powers that be.

The Baba Jukwa case shows us that social media offers an opening, even in a relatively closed situation. My concern is that before it is over, this nation-wide witch-hunt is going to lead to further arrests of media practitioners and further restrictions on information, freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

On July 17th, Baba Jukwa wrote on his/her/their Facebook page: “The mighty ‘Baba Jukwa’ will post until Jesus comes back.”

 

The Goal is Clarity: War, Sports, and the Dangerous, Delightful, and Disgusting Elasticity of Experience

In the weeks since returning from the West Bank I’ve been tuned into the news, the news that stays news, and the news that isn’t news at all. The top story in the The New York Times on Wednesday, July 9th begins “Israel and Hamas escalated their military confrontation on Tuesday. . .” Inches away, the World Cup story allows, “The final score was Germany 7, Brazil 1. It felt like Germany 70, Brazil 1.” The juxtaposition of balance on one hand and the exaggeration of how unbalanced the World Cup rout felt on the other is too close to ignore. I dare say, with warfare again in the open in the region, it’s worth tracing its contours in our media, in our minds, and in our lives.

I know. It’s the oldest of old hats to note the distended shapes American journalism creates to preserve the Israel-first, false impression of some symmetry or parity between interests and powers in the contested territory split, shared, and struggled over by people known as Palestinians and Israelis. Even the names are disputed. Many Palestinians would refute the idea of “Israelis” and simply say Jews. Many Israelis have contended that, in fact, there are no “Palestinian” people. It’s territory—rhetorical, ethical, religious, ethnic, and geographic—so complexly, at times, hideously, contested that many people in the West, certainly in the U.S., simply look away. As a person who, since childhood, has lived a life athwart American racial codes and territories, I’ve always kept an eye on Israel / Palestine for the focused, if challenging, clarity it can offer one’s perspective on American experience. That might sound strange. But, it’s true. In a recent tour of the West Bank with the Palestinian Festival of Literature, in fact, I found much clarified.

This clarity is not complete, of course. It’s based on my own observations as well as conversations with people such as Ray Dolphin from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in occupied Palestinian territories (UN OCHA), Dr. Tawfiq Nasser, Director of the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem and Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (BDS). While touring the region, I was also reading, widely and variously and, at times, all night long (jet lag): James Baldwin’s letters (one from Israel) published in Harper’s in 1963; Etel Adnan’s incomparable two-volume, To look at the sea is to find what one is (2014); Sarah Schulman’s great memoir of (Jewish American) political re-awakening, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International (2012); the report, East Jerusalem: Key Humanitarian Concerns (2011), and the Humanitarian Atlas (2012) put out by the UN OCHA; and the Legal Unit Annual Report (2013) from the Czech-run Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee recorded over 600 violations of Palestinian human rights during the calendar year, 2013. They’re very thorough. The report contains month-by-month charts in which each violation has its entry. Incidents are tabulated by category: against people; against property; by settlers; by Israeli soldiers. This daily array of violence presents, for one, a background I’ve yet to see appear in American media reporting the abduction and murder near Hebron (in Arabic, Al-Khalil) of three Jewish teenagers in June.

There’s active and latent anger and violence everywhere in the region. But, according to these sources, even in so-called “Palestinian” territory (occupied by and often under the control of Israeli military personnel), there’s absolutely no parity in the legal, military, and social contests between Israeli power and Palestinian struggle. One is a contemporary bureaucratic state whose legal system vigorously operates to sustain and increase its hold on geographic territory and is possessed of a cornucopia of surveillance and weapon systems to back it up. The other is a disparate array of factionalized, anti-colonial resistance that uses smuggled and home-built weapons when not employing such high-tech systems as slingshots and cutlasses or simply throwing stones. Simply put there’s no contest here.

Looking around, say, at the closed-off, shut down and vacant business district in Hebron, Shudada Street, or at the scorched guard tower and murals of martyred and imprisoned Palestinian leaders at the Qalandia checkpoint in East Jerusalem, Baby Shuggs comment from Toni Morrison’s Beloved rang in my ears, “Lay down your sword. This ain’t a battle; it’s a rout.” Staring at children at play in the Hebron streets under the shadow of iron bars and barbed wire and under the watch of Israeli guards with machine guns, or, just down the street from there, staring at armed soldiers, near-children themselves, deep in so-called Palestinian territory at yet another checkpoint, this one stenciled with a mural: “Free Israel,” I heard June Jordan’s visions, in “Requiem for the Champ,” of Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1980s: “This is what it means to fight and really win or really lose. War means you hurt somebody, or something, until there’s nothing soft or sensible left.”

Let’s stipulate that the Palestinian Authority does its best. But, the reality is that the PA is, at best, Superintendent to Israel’s occupation. The people know it; many resent it. At bottom, they work for the landlord. They’re in dialogue with Baby Shuggs. Hamas, meanwhile, newly beset, again, now by el-Sisi’s rule in Egypt, and contested within Gaza by even more militant factions, seems to be playing out the gambit June Jordan observed in the blasted out Brooklyn blocks of the 1980s. At the core of the Palestinian struggle, however, is the fundamental—not to say universal—urge that the Israeli/Jewish people—from their point of view, the oppressor—will not lead normal lives while Palestinians live in cages of restrictions made of law, concrete, and razor wire and very often watched over my men with machineguns. That Palestinian aim, in fact, isn’t foreign to an American sensibility, not at all; it’s incoherently twisted deep in the core of what America is supposed to afford people (“freedom”) while at the same time it’s there at the crux of what the United States has inflicted on subordinate, mostly non-white, populations of people, within and beyond its borders, since before it existed and until today.

This is the basis of the disturbing power of clarity the situation in Palestine / Israel confronts an American viewer with. When and if, that is, one is allowed a glimpse. This is why the American media operate in the way they do and it’s at the heart of why most Americans look away. In order to admit the most basic, blatant facts in the one situation—and exactly to the degree one finds a home in the American “mainstream” (itself an incoherently contested mythology), or “dream,”—people would need to give up or radically adjust primary illusions about the country in which they live: “individual achievement,” “equality of opportunity,” “an open society,” etc. In short, clarity about Palestine destroys the mainframe illusions of American whiteness, no matter the color of the person who aspires to it. No wonder Palestinians identify to the extent that they do, and they do, with the African American freedom struggle, and with the history of American Indian quarantine and displacement, in the U.S.

Recently returned from Palestine, this week, I found myself re-engaged with the psychological gymnastics of contemporary life wherein media images of LeBron James’ free agency and Neymar’s fractured vertebra butt up against gruesome political and social intensities—massacres in Coastal Kenya, 82 shootings and 14 dead in Chicago over the 4th of July, and, of course, renewed warfare in the West Bank and Gaza—as well as duties such as teaching my five year-old to ride a bike in the parking lot across the street. The struggle is to keep some semblance of perspective and proportion.

So it was on Wednesday morning that I found myself reading aloud to my wife, Stacey, from front-page stories in The New York Times as she got ready for work. One story frankly depicts Germany’s rout of Brazil, 7-1, from Tuesday, July 8th plain enough. Another, though, just inches apart on the page, frames conflict between forces in Gaza and Israel as a “military” contest of some plausible parity. “Israel and Hamas Trade Attacks as Tension Rises” reads the headline over a photo of a sizable explosion in an urban era. The silent suggestion in the headline being that the photo could be from either an Israeli or Hamas attack. Is that really possible? Is it plausible? Do Palestinians have a “military” at all? One report in the article ominously held that one Hamas-launched rocket made it almost seventy miles into Israeli territory. No mention was made of exactly what kind of navigation/aiming system those rockets use and what kind of explosives are attached. The previous evening, CNN’s Erin Burnett interviewed Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. who described the near-total precision of Israeli strategic capabilities. His description served, at once, as assurance about limited “collateral damage” and also as a bold declaration of unassailable Israeli power. The Ambassador’s interview stood alone as CNN’s report on the increasing violence that evening. The scorekeeping continued. In the war.

After the jump to page 8 in the Times, about the “military confrontation,” we’re told: “Israeli military said . . . that more than 150 rockets had been fired at Israel.” Meanwhile, the military reports that “Israel hit some 150 targets” in Gaza. So, at a glance, it’s a tie?

No scorecard was offered for how many targets, if any, in Israel were actually hit. One guess that, had there been hits, we’d know. Later in the story, confirming the Ambassador’s comments as to Israeli accuracy, or not, we’re told that targets hit in Gaza included, “five senior Hamas officials, ten smuggling tunnels, 90 concealed rocket launchers, and 18 weapons storage and manufacturing sites.” That’s 123. No mention of the other 27 hits in Gaza. No mention of how many firings were required to hit 123 targets. Elsewhere in the article the tie score diverges, “Palestinian officials said that at least 23 people were killed in Gaza on Tuesday” while Israel reports “two people were wounded in rocket attacks on Monday” though it doesn’t say exactly how these injuries occurred or note their severity. If you’re willing to actually follow the news out of the region in American media, these are the kinds of feigned attempts at balance that portray an evenly matched “military” struggle on one hand and, on the other, assure that one side has the unassailable upper hand and, of course, the unquestioned right to secure its territory.

So it is that equality, supremacy, and security all go together. Just don’t try it at home, these are trained professionals at work. Even so, exactly the same thing is happening at home, which is the whole point. Middle and upper class Americans are assured that everyone’s equal in the eyes of the system; meanwhile, they insist that their privileges and comforts (supremacy) are secure and that their right to safety is ensured.

When it comes to sports we’re free to feel the elasticity of the facts in pursuit of deeper truths, 7 to 1 felt like 70 to 1, we say, adding that “it wasn’t as close as the score suggests.” Such elasticity is delightful. No wonder why ESPN is what it’s become. Inches away, however, a story about an occupying power (one in violation of scores of international laws and accepted rules controlling political occupations) is told in ways that preempt and even invert a reader’s freedom to extend the facts into coherent feelings in order to understand the world. That elasticity is dangerous.

As I wrote this piece, on the morning of July 10th, NPR reports, now, 80 Palestinian dead. Then, I woke up to reports of 100 dead and a report of one Israeli seriously injured at an exploded gas station. Now there’s been a fatality; an Israeli man delivering food to troops at the entrance to Gaza. Soon, there’ll be more. The numbers roll along, each a life, a death, each a blurring cloud of grieving and terrified people. In my morning brain, Baby Shuggs playing checkers with June Jordan, “king me, honey, will you please.”

Fully awake, it’s clear to me that when it comes to Israel and Palestine, for Americans, it doesn’t matter if the careful phrases contradict the most basic facts or if numerical equivalences depict “military” parity in one paragraph and describe unassailable supremacy in the next all the while affirming a people’s (one can’t but think, “all people’s?”) unquestionable right to security. No one’s looking that closely. They can’t. Close examination of Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians under their control, its quest for simultaneous supremacy, security, and the semblance of democracy or equality, would reveal more than Americans are willing to admit about our own towns, schools, states, and the filmy mythology that coats—whether with security or numbness no one investigates too far—our experiences of our own and each other’s lives.

South African Hip Hop Series: Interview With Khuli Chana

On the morning of 28th October 2013 – a Monday – South Africa woke up to news that rapper Khuli Chana’s vehicle had been shot at by the police after they mistook it for that of a kidnapper on the run. The incident occurred at a filling station in Midrand on Khuli’s way to a show in Pretoria.

The current bullet count on the blue BMW 1 series vehicle that Khuli Chana was driving is seven (7). All seven (7) were shot from the passenger side.  Khuli Chana was the only person in the vehicle at the time of the shooting. A private forensic ballistic report is currently being conducted and will be made public once received

read the press release.

In the same week that he got chosen among GQ’s best-dressed men, and the same weekend where he gave yet another impressive live performance in Soweto mere hours before the shooting, Khuli Chana’s life nearly ended. It was another blotch in a long trail of police-related fuck-ups, a trail whose perpetrators tried to cover up their own misgivings by laying charges of attempted murder against Khuli.

The investigations have been finalised, and the Director of Public Prosecutions’ office shall reach a decision soon.

It’s in the midst of all of this that we had a chat with him, at his recent video shoot for a song featuring Da Les and Magesh. Instead of discussing the particulars of his case, we tripped out over nineties hip-hop; broke down the science behind his flow; and discussed the recent resurgence of Morafe, the group he’s been a part of since the mid-nineties.

AIAC: Let’s talk a bit about your nineties influences. What shaped Khuli Chana?

Khuli: The nineties kwaito, the nineties feel, the nineties boom bap, the hooks, the colours – I’m about that! The nineties’ music was so authentic and so timeless. I’m down to experiment and try out some new things, but I’m still stuck in the nineties.

The Motswako movement wasn’t always as lauded as it is now. What did it take to get here?

The end in mind. If you don’t have a vision, you’re screwed, and that’s what we had.  Today, I just wanna say that we’re living HHP’s dream. Everything that’s happened, he predicted; it sounded like all kinds of gibberish back then. Big up to him.

There seems to be a Morafe resurgence going on, not that you guys necessarily left.  What’s the plan with that?

Like Towdee always says, ‘Morafe never left the game/ we just changed how we played the game.’ It got to a point where we were like ‘we’re not gonna be predictable.’ You’ve got three geniuses, three talented cats. Let’s start to dismantle and experiment. They experimented with me; I guess that was fuckin’ awesome!

You had no label support when you came out, and resorted to releasing the music independently.

When we started up, I wasn’t really down for the idea. It made sense, [but] I wasn’t down for it because I was scared. I just didn’t think I had it in me; Towdee was pushing for it. The guys that gave us that head start, big up to Skwatta Kamp, big up to Slikour and Ventilation. When we dropped ‘Futhumatsa’ on that [Sprite] Hip-Hoop mixtape [was] when I got that validation; that’s when I got that ‘whoa, you could do this!’ That was pretty much Towdee’s experiment. We worked on the joint, we sampled one of his verses. We did it, put it on that mixtape, and then boom, we were touring! We hit all nine provinces. That was an interesting time.

How did you manage to get Magesh on the song?

Khuli Chana: The song is inspired by a Magesh classic joint from his second album. That’s been my favourite joint, so I kind of merged “Hape le hape” with “Time and time again,” which is a Magesh hook. I used to always freestyle on that beat.

You’re one of the few mainstream hip-hop artists who never sacrifice when it comes to lyrical content. What’s the importance of lyrics, and how do you stay ahead of your own game?

Words man, words have power; they can either destroy or build. I don’t write everyday; I wish I could, I wish I did. I put so much thought into that process. I never really know when it’s gonna hit me, but when it does…it’s a spiritual thing. Big up to the lyricists: Reason, Tumi, Jabba, Tuks, Towdeemac! Ba re lefoko ga le bowe, go bowa monwana – words stick. If you’re gonna talk out of your bum now, think about how it’s gonna impact the next generation.

Who influenced your flow, and how did it develop?

In the beginning, it was the pioneers of Motswako, [the likes of] Baphixhile. There was this rhyme pattern that was popular; everybody who was down with Motswako had that same (*mouths a rhyme scheme*) I was like ‘okay cool, I’m down to switch’ because Prof (Sobukwe of rap group Baphixhile) was always saying ‘you’re dope, but I want you to try it ka Setswana’. But I didn’t like this pattern, this rhyme scheme. I’d like to hear a guy that has that Mos Def delivery, but spitting in Setswana. That’s when I started experimenting. I remember it was a day, [Prof was] like ‘listen, I’m off to Joburg, and when I come back, if you put me a hot sixteen, Imma put you on. I spat him a hot verse, and that’s when it started. I’ll be honest, ka Setswana it’s always more challenging. I’d go months without writing because all I’m doing is I’m finding new slang; new slang, words. Just trying to find an opening line sometimes takes me a month, and it depends on where we’re at.

You’ve had a very successful run over the past eighteen months or so, plus an unfortunate incident with the police. What’s your state of mind right now, and going into the future?

It’s a new chapter, we were talking about that le Towdee ke re you know what, sometimes you get to this place and you just have to acknowledge that everything you wanted to  achieve, my whole list of goals I’ve literally scratched everything off. I’m just starting all over; it’s a whole new journey now. Running a business is not an easy thing, and that’s where I’m at right now. A lot of musicians blow up and become businessmen, and then the talent suffers. I wanna be just like a JAYZ who still raps like an eighteen year old, and the business sense and hustle is just as crazy. That’s where I’m at.

What goes into preparing your live sets?

I wish we had more time. I’ve become so busy trying to balance fatherhood, work. I treat every show like a rehearsal; I’m always learning something new. Big up to my band – J-Star, Raiko, Maestro.

*Get Khuli’s music on iTunes

**This interview first appeared on Mahala