Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 402

@ChiefBoima’s World Cup Diary Day 1: A Tale of Two Copas

World Cup Day 1 — The sun is out in Rio for the first time in days. It’s a national holiday. Anticipation in the air. I’m woken up to the sound of horns.

My first Brazilian national home game of significance is today… but perhaps this one is bigger than many. This is because there are two fields of action. One is on the pitch and the other is on the streets. This is Brazil’s chance to prove itself in many different ways. As a country that’s arrived on the global stage, as a fully developed democracy. It seems like proving themselves on the pitch was the last thing that was on many Brazilians minds in the run up today. ‘Imagina na Copa’ has rung in my ears since I’ve arrived. Well the cup is here and today I’m woken up to horns.

This morning I’m going to be trying to follow the action on the streets, this afternoon I’ll be looking at the pitch. I’ve been following activist groups online for months in the preparation. It seems like one prominent activists’ house was raided by police last night. Sao Paulo is already seen some protest action. Airport workers in Rio went on strike this morning for 24 hours. How else are Brazilian activists and workers going to show their cards today?

My next challenge today is to attempt to become mobile in Rio… I’m dreading the traffic.

For the perfect soundtrack, all the way from Rio de Janeiro, check out @ChiefBoima with AfricasaCountry Radio, Episode 3. You can listen to all the episodes here.

James Baldwin at 90, Part 4: The Brilliance of Children, The Duty of Citizens

At the outset of the essay, I asked “What changes, what constants and what chimeras made the United States the place that elects a black President?” And, “What does black president actually mean?” (You can find the first three parts of this essay here.)

Consider a statement made off hand and in jest by President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner on May 1, 2010. In his remarks, President Obama recognized the presence of the pop group Jonas Brothers. He went on to state the following, “Sascha and Malia are huge fans, but boys don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: Predator Drones. You’ll never see it coming.”

I can see Jimmy Baldwin slipping on his shades. He saw this coming. Everyone knows the President is a persona, highly crafted. It’s interesting to see President Obama, here, consciously playing upon the protective father role. And, he’s twisted the irony of his father/President persona precisely to enlist the deadly military force of the state to his shotgun-at-the-door-on-prom-night purposes as a father. He’s playing with changes and constants. Or, is he working? A father’s love of daughters? Constant! But, do we hear the smack of numb patriarchy, even an echo of the fathers of the white South’s fear for their daughter’s chastity? Change? A black man is Commander and Chief? Change! But, where and against whom are Predator Drones actually mobilized when they’re not metaphorically menacing teen idol pop groups? Constant? 

The threat and use of state violence against “insurgent” forces is nothing new. All American militant groups and many that weren’t militant experienced levels of state terror as well as state apathy in the face of social terror in the 20th century. Baldwin knew such state terror first hand. Baldwin was conscious of state as well as vigilante threats against his life and livelihood. In Istanbul, for instance, he noted the proximity of his house to consulates not aligned with the United States in case he should need emergency political asylum. His family opened his mail, intercepted the death threats and more than once attempted to dissuade him from returning to the U.S. for fear he’d be shot. In his biography, James Weatherby quotes Baldwin from an interview with Italian press soon after the murder of Malcolm X: “He said his own mail had got ‘so horrible’ he had turned it over to the FBI. ‘Maybe they were writing some of it’” (264). These were not unreasonable fears and precautions. The family knew their phones were tapped. Baldwin suspected that his mail was being opened. References to surveillance and tactics and codes for eluding it appear in his correspondence.

Cases prosecuting American terrorists who as employees of and / or with the sanction of local governments menaced and murdered American citizens are currently on-going or recently concluded in Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Chicago and elsewhere. The blogosphere was full of commentary about the international politics of President Obama’s joke before the first correct fork was lifted amid all the comic incorrectness at the Correspondents’ Dinner. Frequent mistaken or collateral killings of Afgani, Pakistani, Somali, and Yemeni civilians and numerous intended murders of “suspects” by Predator Drones immediately struck many as bizarre territory for a joke about a father protecting his daughters. It doesn’t take much to mark the offense.

But, the change/constant structure of Baldwin’s work takes it further. The fact that vast numbers of bloggers stop at marking ironies with outrage—and vice versa—opens and limits our discourse. The fact that the mainstream media often do less than that (ask Helen Thomas why) intensifies our need for clearer, deeper perspectives such as James Baldwin’s work offers. If jokes are often funny because they flout convention, they’re revealing for exactly the same reason. About involuntary confessions hidden in humor, in No Name in the Street, Baldwin wrote: “one’s merely got to listen . . .to what they think is funny, which is also what they think is real” (Collected 469). If I hold a mirror between us at arm’s length, my one-year old son sees my face at the end of my arm, but he doesn’t laugh until he looks back at where my face actually is. Such is the brilliance of children. Such is also, exactly, the duty of citizenship. How about a quick look back at where it’s at? Baldwin can see this coming even from the grave.

Possibly, a small glimpse of what’s change and what’s constant in President Barack Obama’s America appears in this joke. And, more interestingly, the relationship appears between what’s constant, what changes and the dangerous chimeras of confusion between them. Short of two weeks after the Jonas Brothers gag, on May 13, Scott Shane’s story entitled, “US Approval of Killing Cleric Causes Unease,” in The New York Times began like this: “The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.”

Moving the President’s joke closer to home, by May 13th it was clear that the “suspects” targeted for killing by Predator Drones could also be American citizens. In fact, the American-born cleric / “suspect” in question, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan, an American-born editor of the English-language, militant web magazine, Inspire, were intentionally killed in a CIA-led U.S. drone strike while driving in Yemen on Friday, September 30, 2011.

Leading up to the 2012 election, discussions of Nobel Peace Laureate, President Obama’s foreign policy credentials begin with his presiding over the murder of Osama bin Laden. In the vaunted post-racial age that bears his name, “the Obama era,” it’s difficult for me to distinguish this credential from the old-fashioned, time-honored horror of the American political spectacle: the tough man waving his trophy scalp. 

Echoing as it does real time state terror on Earth, President/father Obama’s joke links the human constant of fatherly love with the capricious nature and terror of political power. Fathers and politicians are dangers in their own ways. That’s constant; we can work with it. But, by this kind of gesture, illusory permanence, state power, borrows the universal permanence of a basic fact of life, fatherhood. And, the fact of life, fatherhood, adopts the (to me, a father, destructive) straight-backed, macho force of technologically abstracted military violence. Exactly as Baldwin’s work diagrams, such chimerical traffic between changes and constants is dangerous to democracy and family life. And that’s no joke. Ask a Kennedy. Ask any President/father. Ask any dissident/daughter. 

Historically speaking, this is not “post-racial” territory; and neither is it now. Cloaked in the constants of family, state terror becomes familiar, natural, to people while its ideological, unlawful and error-prone deployment is obscured. This impairs the mirror-and-back vision of citizens and makes the nation more dangerous to the world, and vice versa,  than it has to be. And, dressed in the gleam and ferocity of abstract killing force, the role of fatherhood becomes further dehumanized and abstracted from the lives of actual men and daughters attempting—however over-matched—to live as people. This obscures the privately panic-stricken vacuum of our errors as fathers. And, that makes our houses and neighborhoods more dangerous than they already are. In 1964, in “Uses of the Blues,” Baldwin revealed the hidden transactions that prop up the structure of this chimerical American theater. He wrote: “People who don’t know who they are privately, accept as we have accepted for nearly fifteen years, the fantastic disaster of American foreign policy, and the incoherence of the one is an exact reflection of the incoherence of the other. Now, the only way to change all this is to begin to ask ourselves very difficult questions” (Baldwin Cross 66). Here Baldwin connects the private panic in the American head and home to the forces global terror played out on behalf of so-called American interests in the world. In case this is sounding rhetorical, consider the following image:

Ask, for instance, the driver of this SUV in Georgia for his views on drone strikes, gun laws, neighborhood watch programs and related social issues. You ask, that is; I’m afraid to. All of this, at each level, driven by private questions the language for which—to say nothing of any answers—is obscured by the whole pageant of guns, jokes, and (by whatever name) drones.

This paradigm is directly applicable, for example, in the relation between the neighborhood watch mentality with its reliance on pro-gun legislation pervasive in much of the contemporary U.S. and the popular support, indeed demand, for preemptive strikes in the American “war on terror.” In this sense, the “war on terror” appears, in fact, to be a kind of “natural” (meaning veiled ideological) extension of the nexus of pro-gun legislation and gated community / neighborhood watch mentality. Bush’s war on terror / homeland security policies positioned constitutionally by John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales and kept basically intact or extended by Eric Holder in the Obama administration, in Baldwin’s lens, operate precisely as a global neighborhood watch program. The system of connections at work here is toxic to lives in ways few are conscious of and, in fact, in ways few want to know anything about. In this, then, as it was in 1964, Baldwin recommends that the place to start may not be located in Somalia or Afghanistan, not even in Washington, but with the lyrical resuscitation of a strangled blues self beginning with difficult questions in the hallway mirrors and across the dinner tables of American private life. And, the proportion of panic in the stricken vacuums produced by these reckonings, I’d bet on Baldwinian logic, will decrease in direct proportion to the level of privileged bankruptcy which have afflicted the persons in the mirrors.

Now. We know some of what the black President has in the bank. And, it’s not because he’s black and it’s not not because he’s black either. We know because he wrote it down, which is exactly the same reason so few of us know it. Which scarcity itself, it appears, is a crucial political (if not survival) tactic. I read Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father while flying to Kenya when the author was a newly elected U.S. Senator. I read parts of the book in shock and disbelief. The author of these paragraphs is a U.S. Senator? My amputation: I’d have never thought it possible. For one thing, we know for certain that Barack Obama understands what Baldwin wrote about gangrene and amputation. Consider the following two passages from Dreams From My Father where Obama riffs on Du Bois and describes what he imagines about a Kenyan waiter in a restaurant frequented by Westerners : 

If he’s ambitious he will do his best to learn the white man’s language and use the white man’s machines, trying to make ends meet the same way the computer repairman in Newark or the bus driver back in Chicago does, with alternating spurts of enthusiasm or frustration but mostly with resignation. And if you say to him that he’s serving the interests of neocolonialism or some other such thing, he will reply that yes, he will serve if that is what is required. It is the lucky ones who serve; the unlucky ones drift into the murky tide of hustles and odd jobs; many will drown. (314)

That’s gangrene. And, amputation? Obama writes : 

Then again, maybe that’s not all that the waiter is feeling. Maybe part of him still clings to the stories of Mau-Mau [essentially, revolutionary amputations of these complexities], the same part of him that remembers the hush of a village night or the sound of his mother grinding corn under a stone pallet. Something in him still says that the white man’s ways are not his ways, that the objects he may use every day are not of his making. He remembers a time, a way of imagining himself, that he leaves only at his peril. He can’t escape the grip of his memories. And so he straddles two worlds, uncertain in each, always off balance, playing whichever game staves off the bottomless poverty, careful to let his anger vent itself only on those in the same condition. 

A voice says to him yes, changes have come, the old ways lie broken, and you must find a way as fast as you can to feed your belly and stop the white man from laughing at you. 

A voice says no, you will sooner burn the earth to the ground. (314)

The President of the United States wrote those paragraphs. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. If it gets around, he’s finished. And, in his first term in office, Barack Obama’s Department of Justice successfully prosecuted long-time Chicago Police Commander John Burge (notorious for his decades-long campaign of torture and false imprisonment).

But, don’t tell anyone that! News such as that could give his “pro-American” opponents fuel; in American history, and from a perspective, albeit hideous, that Baldwin’s line of sight forces us to acknowledge, such news could endanger the President’s life. At the same time, he jokes about the often mistaken and always extra-legal use of Predator Drones in killings across the globe which turns amputations—in this case the militant urges for revolutionary freedom such as the Mau-Mau—into assassinations. Who now is in dangerous rhetorical territory close to the Kennedys’? Well, this is beautiful, the President has these paragraphs and the sensibility they profile in the bank. And, it’s terrible. He must radically dissemble that sensibility to govern at all if not simply to survive. And, that’s the nature of the view Baldwinian light gives up when we hold our eyes there long enough that they start to adjust. Who can afford such visions? Whose style can, “in a way. . . must,” accommodate them? And, here we are. Truth is, there’s no need for such perceptions to be secreted because the vast majority of Americans’ (life)styles simply can’t accommodate what all this spells out. That’s the trap, that’s the vacuumed panic ca. 2014.  

Comments like Obama’s joke, echoing as they do comments by Baldwin and Kennedy and many others, make me wonder again if this is the country that would elect a black president or not? And, to quote Miles’ sardonic stylized-lyricizing, “So what?”

Do we aspire to clarify and further our shared, blues condition or intensify our chimerical and bankrupt states of mind? Then, I wonder about it, again, vote by vote, person by person, mirror by mirror. What’s changed? What’s constant? And, what would that mean? To whom? And in what way? James Baldwin’s musical attention to this dynamic riding the dynamics of amputation and gangrene offers quite precise and useful guides to these massive and imprecise questions and to much that lurks, in our mirrors, within and behind them. His work also exposes some of why the answers and evidence has been so confusing and suggests some of how the confusion is still so dangerous. It also offers eyes to see, possibly, much more than we’d like to see and places us close enough to touch the living turbulence of political, social and private life. The living turbulence is painful and dangerous but, as Baldwin told Studs Terkel in 1961, the alternative is a treadmill pursuit of a chemirical happiness amid a joyless chaos. The contemporary choice Baldwin clarifies, written backward in the mirror, is clearly between the “Uses of the Blues” and the Bankruptcy of Privilege. There’s no predesigned script. Baldwin offers chord changes and constants. Who’s marked the tonic? And, indeed, at those prices, who can afford to improvise? Baldwin’s ready answer: those who must. 

India’s ‘Africa’ policy

In a speech last October, Narendra Modi argued, “I believe a strong economy is the driver of an effective foreign policy…we have to put our own house in order so that the world is attracted to us.” The need for a robust economy is paramount for Modi’s India. The economy will drive Modi’s government in domestic and foreign agenda, and New Delhi’s ambitions in the African continent reflects this. India’s interests are likely to be bound up more and more with the growth of African economies. It is likely that the language of a ‘Rejuvenated India’ will become enmeshed with the grand and convenient narrative of a ‘Rising Africa’.

India’s engagement in Africa since Independence has been chaotic and incoherent, with a multitude of actors and sectors engaging in Africa continent. The official Indian rhetoric, however, has treated Africa as a monolith, discounting a continent with heterogeneous political economies and varying levels of economic and social development. While India made had long historical linkages with the continent, trade in the postcolonial era lagged behind. Till the year 2000, the volume of trade was a meagre $3 billion. In the last decade, however, there was a dramatic increase in trade between India and Africa, leaving it at $70 billion currently; trade is projected to reach $90 billion by 2015. Despite the multifold increase, India is still playing catch up to the $200 billion volume of China-Africa trade. The reason for this disparity? While Chinese inroads in Africa are state driven, Indian in roads are private sector driven.

All of that is set to change. Modi’s Election manifesto states, “BJP realizes the need to focus on generation and distribution of power as a national security issue, so that the growth is not negatively impacted due to supply issues in the energy sector”, squarely placing energy security under national security. If Modi is to achieve his goal of development, then energy security becomes of paramount importance. And where commerce heads, the military will follow.

In the past decade, India’s strategic presence in the continent has increased; under Modi’s reign these trends will solidify. In 2006, Raja C. Mohan argued that India should “reclaim its standing in the near abroad in parts of Africa”. The Indian Navy has cautiously and steadily extended its presence to cover most of the island states off the eastern coast of Africa since a 2003 bilateral defence assistance accord first authorized it to patrol the exclusive economic zone of Mauritius. This was done under the Prime Ministership of BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Subsequent deals have led to patrols of the territorial waters of the Seychelles and regular presence off the coast of Mozambique. In 2007, India established its first listening post in northern Madagascar, setting up a surveillance station to track shipping in the western Indian Ocean. Attacks on several Indian merchant ships by Somali pirates in 2008 gave an added impetus to keep at least one Indian Navy warship on station in the Gulf of Aden at all times since October 2008.

India’s Economic and Energy Policy will make it imperative to secure the African coast, just as China secures its interest through the “String of Pearls” strategy. Alioune Ndiaye, in “L’Afrique dans la politique étrangère indienne: Les nouvelles ambitions africaines de New Delhi”, calls this geographic regional strategy the “Varuna Triangle”. Here, India will have to contain China through long term strategic investment in African countries located along the Indian Ocean from the Horn of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope, including African island states of Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. Through naval diplomacy, and the opening of listening posts, India is already aiming at securing its external trade and countering the presence of China in the region. Under Modi, Africa will not just be a continent where India endeavors to expand its economic footprint, but one where it will seek to build, protect and project its power.

Dutch Logic and the New Brown Pete: Making Something Less Racist by Making it More Racist

As most AIAC readers know by now, the Dutch are having a very hard time letting go of their precious blackface tradition. Well sadly, but not surprisingly, Zwarte Piet (in English: Black Pete) is still amongst us. Obviously there are so many rational and convincing arguments to keep him; the kids would be terribly upset, he’s a symbol of black power, he actually got black because he came down the chimney, and our all time favourite: he’s good for moral reasons…because he demonstrates that black people work too. Asking the Dutch public to get rid of their national blackface hero is just too much to ask in 2014.

But (enter cheers), not all is lost because the Nederlands Centrum voor Volkscultuur en Immaterieel Erfgoed (Dutch folk and heritage centre) decided to talk to about 20 Dutch people, do research and what not, all to figure out what a new Black Pete should look like. Hooray. Their ideas were presented on Dutch public television TV show Knevel & Van den Brink. I’m sure they thought real long and hard about it because Black Pete is now, wait for it, no longer black but brown! His Afro is replaced by black straight hair and the big red lips and the earrings have disappeared. People, let’s all get down on our knees and give praise!

This seems to be a very emotional loss for many white Dutch folk; we’ve all heard so much about all their thoughts and feelings on the matter, ranging from why black straight hair is clearly less racist to in to why people of colour have too much say nowadays and should be shipped back. But really, in what universe did people think settling for a ‘new’ Black Pete, would be better? People: never seek to find a compromise on racist imagery because it will really only get worse. Replacing blackface by brownface is a move that clearly demonstrates that the Dutch really do not understand how ingrained and pervasive their racism actually is. Let’s face it, only the Netherlands will try making something less racist by making it more racist.

Dutch Logic and the New Bruin Pete: Making Something Less Racist by Making it More Racist

As most AIAC readers know by now, the Dutch are having a very hard time letting go of their precious blackface tradition. Well sadly, but not surprisingly, Zwarte Piet (in English: Black Pete) is still amongst us. Obviously there are so many rational and convincing arguments to keep him; the kids would be terribly upset, he’s a symbol of black power, he actually got black because he came down the chimney, and our all time favourite: he’s good for moral reasons…because he demonstrates that black people work too. Asking the Dutch public to get rid of their national blackface hero is just too much to ask in 2014.

But (enter cheers), not all is lost because the Nederlands Centrum voor Volkscultuur en Immaterieel Erfgoed (Dutch folk and heritage centre) decided to talk to about 20 Dutch people, do research and what not, all to figure out what a new Black Pete should look like. Hooray. Their ideas were presented on Dutch public television TV show Knevel & Van den Brink. I’m sure they thought real long and hard about it because Black Pete is now, wait for it, no longer black but brown! His Afro is replaced by black straight hair and the big red lips and the earrings have disappeared. People, let’s all get down on our knees and give praise!

This seems to be a very emotional loss for many white Dutch folk; we’ve all heard so much about all their thoughts and feelings on the matter, ranging from why black straight hair is clearly less racist to in to why people of colour have too much say nowadays and should be shipped back. But really, in what universe did people think settling for a ‘new’ Black Pete, would be better? People: never seek to find a compromise on racist imagery because it will really only get worse. Replacing blackface by brownface is a move that clearly demonstrates that the Dutch really do not understand how ingrained and pervasive their racism actually is. Let’s face it, only the Netherlands will try making something less racist by making it more racist.

Can an African team reach the World Cup semi-finals?

No European nation has won the World Cup when it has been held in South America, and the potential for teams such as Argentina, Chile and Uruguay to pose a major challenge should be taken seriously. Although the marketing campaigns of major multinationals sell the event as a stage for brilliant individual players, such as Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney, the last few tournaments have seen excellent team performances consistently overshadow outstanding individuals. Less-fancied teams such as Uruguay in 2010, South Korea in 2002 and Croatia in 1998 have all made it to the semi-final stage through discipline, drive and collective effort. This year, perhaps, an African team can make that step too.

On paper it is the Super Eagles, the champions of Africa, who go into the tournament with the best chance of making a big impression out of all the African sides. Nigeria have a strong squad of powerful and skillful players to call on, and have shown no sign in recent years of the kinds of internal divisions which plagued past campaigns. Their secret weapon is undoubtedly their indefatigable head coach Stephen Keshi, the man known affectionately as “Big Boss”. A no-nonsense centre-half as a player, Keshi won the African Cup of Nations as the captain of the Super Eagles in 1994, and after spells in charge of Togo and Mali he took over as manager of the Nigerian national team in 2011, with the team in disarray following its disastrous showing at the 2010 World Cup. A man possessed of great natural authority and charisma, Keshi has set about comprehensively rebuilding Nigeria into an attacking force that can once again pose a threat on the continental and global scene.

“My vision is to bring back our style of play, which is attacking football, with speed, power and technique, which I think has been lacking for so many years,” Keshi said in a recent interview. “It’s not going to take one day or six months to get that done. It will take time.”

With Keshi at the helm, many established players — the likes of Obafemi Martins, Taye Taiwo and Yakubu — have given way to fresh blood, with young, dynamic talents such as Lazio’s all-action midfielder Ogenyi Onazi and pacey winger Ahmed Musa bursting on to the scene. Vincent Enyeama, one of the top-performing goalkeepers in Europe this season, remains a bulwark of stability between the posts, while Chelsea’s vastly experienced John Obi Mikel is the lynchpin of the side, deployed in a more advanced, creative role than the holding midfield position he fills at club level.

The good news for Nigeria is that by the time they face the skilful Argentineans in Group F, they may already have qualified, if they can secure good results against Iran in their opening tie, and tournament debutants Bosnia and Herzegovina. A second-place finish in their group would see them drawn against the first-placed team in a weak Group E, likely to be France.

If Nigeria have the best coach of the African teams, Ghana’s strength lies in the depth of their very gifted squad and in the experience built up through good performances at the last two tournaments. Though the Black Stars have stumbled in recent Nations Cups, they have nonetheless looked by far the best equipped African team to challenge on the world stage over the past decade. Juventus star Kwadwo Asamoah is a key player, though given the range of midfield options available to coach Kwesi “Silent Killer” Appiah, his single most important squad member remains forward Asamoah Gyan, who is in line to become only the fourth African to score in three different World Cup tournaments.

A winner-takes-all tie against the Portugal of Cristiano Ronaldo looks likely, but if Ghana can rediscover the form that saw them blast six goals past Egypt in qualifying, the slick-haired Real Madrid superstar may be in for a shock.

Perhaps the African side whose performance is hardest to predict are Ivory Coast. Blessed with CAF African Footballer of the Year Yaya Toure, who goes into the tournament as the world’s finest midfielder on current form, coach Sabri Lamouchi’s task is to find a system which allows the creative talents of Toure and the effervescent winger Gervinho to unlock defences. The inexperienced Lamouchi faces a major selection dilemma in the striker’s position. Didier Drogba is team captain and retains huge respect within the Ivorian game. But Wilfried Bony, a similar type of forward to Drogba, finished the English Premier League season as the outstanding form striker in the country and looks far more of a goal threat than his aging rival. The ideal solution might be to start Bony and use Drogba as a high-impact substitute — provided the legendary forward can be persuaded to put the team’s interests above his personal pride.

For all their high-calibre players, Ivory Coast have been hugely disappointing in recent competitions. This time the draw has been kind to the Elephants, who should have too much for both Japan and Greece. Their second game, against Colombia, should be a superb encounter and is likely to decide the group winner.

Algeria have never made it beyond the group stage, and will face three tough games against Russia, South Korea and much-fancied Belgium. Fans of the Fennecs can take heart from the recent emergence of the elegant midfielder Nabil Bentaleb and the good form of rugged centre-forward Islam Slimani. Their key player is Valencia’s Sofiane Feghouli.

Cameroon, who always seem to qualify for the World Cup despite weak performances at continental level, face difficult games against Mexico, Croatia and hosts Brazil. Although their biggest goal threat is likely to be 22-year-old Vincent Aboubakar, all the focus, as ever, will be on Samuel Eto’o as he competes in his fourth World Cup tournament (btw don’t miss Ntone Edjabe’s brilliant piece on Cameroon for the FT). The four-time African player of the year recently dismissed Jose Mourinho’s suggestion that he is in fact older than 33, and promised to emulate his boyhood hero Roger Milla and keep playing until he is 41.

Asked about the challenge of taking on the hosts, “le petit Milla” insists he is undaunted. “We beat the Brazilians at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,” he recalled. “There was a certain Ronaldinho in the team and many others. Eto’o is not scared. Cameroon is not scared.”

Think you know football? Test your skills against AIAC bloggers, top African football journalists and other fans by joining our World Cup fantasy league. Register, pick your team and join our league, “AIAC Superleague” — then invite all your friends to join too. But hurry! The tournament kicks off tomorrow.

We will be tweeting throughout the tournament — for all our football-related coverage follow our dedicated football handle @FutbolsaCountry.

This is an edited excerpt from a preview written for The Africapitalist magazine, and is republished with permission.

Africa is a Country Radio: Episode 3

Episode 3 of Africa is a Country Radio is live on Groovalizacion and the AIAC Mixcloud page. This month is a music only episode because I had been touring the U.S., and only just arrived back to Rio to record the show.

However, there is a still a bit of a theme. Brazil being on much of the world’s minds these days I had to open the show with a dedication to the World Cup host country. A special post-show big up to the Brazilian people — who stay challenging the status quo of global mega events!

Africa is a Country Radio: Episode #3 by Africasacountry on Mixcloud

Interview: On two important exhibitions devoted to African diasporas during the slave trades (Part II)

In this, the second, in a two-part interview with Dr. Sylviane Diouf and Dr. Joaneath Spicer, respectively the curators of two important exhibitions of African diasporas–Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europeand Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers ­—Jean-Philippe Dedieu and Noémie Ndiaye began by asking Sylviane Diouf about the juxtaposition of East African slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers.

East African slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are juxtaposed in your exhibition. It allows you to explore the question of the African diaspora on a global level. What is at play here?

Sylviane Diouf: Our exhibition doesn’t talk at all about the Atlantic slave trade. What we show, tacitly, is the difference between the Atlantic slave trade and the East African slave trade, whether it be Arab or Indian. We point out the differences. And one of the fundamental differences is Islam. How does Islam define slavery? How does it treat slaves? Slavery in India was more flexible than in Europe, but solely in its Muslim version. For example, slavery carried out by the Portuguese in Goa was the same as Atlantic slavery. With Islam, we see an enormous difference, and it is that which interests and surprises people. The fact that slaves could become prime minister, found dynasties, and achieve important positions, was impossible in the European system, but was possible in the Muslim system. In the European system, the children of an enslaved woman were born as slaves; in the Muslim system it was the opposite, the children inherited the father’s status. When the father was free — which was often the case with owners — the children were born free. Emancipation of slaves in the Muslim system was very easy — it was a means of earning God’s favour. There was no need to complete a large amount of paperwork. With regards to the recruitment of slaves — and they came from Africa as well as Europe, Turkey, and Asia, another difference with the Atlantic world –, there was no requirement for them to work the soil in India because there were already plenty of people available to do so. The people who were taken there – since it was a more complicated and expensive procedure — were generally, in the case of the men, soldiers, which allowed them to rise up through the ranks. Many of the women were domestic servants in the royal courts (in which there were thousands of people working), concubines, nurses, cooks… The concubines had a very prestigious status — well removed from the western view of them –, their children were born free, and the women themselves were generally freed, either at the birth of the children, or the death of the owner. The children were integrated into the family, which was completely different from the Atlantic system. It is one of the aspects, once again, which are of interest in this exhibition: to show people that the western model is not the only one, and that it could have been different.

The case of the African arriving as a slave in India and who, due to the flexibility of the Muslim system, managed to rise through the ranks – this was surely an exceptional case?

Sylviane Diouf: As regards the highest positions — prime minister, nawab, finance minister — the options are limited. But we must think in terms of the culture of those countries. To be a eunuch was very important — not as much as in Turkey, but important all the same. Army general, captain, religious leader or concubine: these were also important positions. Even in the 20th century, the domestic servants of the court who took care of the elephants and the horses were considered to hold significant positions. One of the first well-known Africans was in charge of the sultana’s stables in Delhi, and it is even rumoured that they were lovers. The position of stable master was a very high honour, an important position from a non-western viewpoint.

Is there a specific way to paint and portray an African person in Indian art?

Sylviane Diouf: In Indian art, we find real people, depicted with their true characteristics, shown as they really were. The impression that I have, after having viewed many items, is that Indian art is very realistic and treats Africans in the same way as others.

The Walters Art Museum insists that this exhibition constitutes an attempt to “create an increased sense of a shared heritage” with the African-American community of Baltimore, and to serve a more “diverse audience”. Do you feel that the attempt was successful in this respect?

Joaneath Spicer: Yes, I do. People care about other people, and people care also about their sense of their own role in history. There is a reason that traditionally African-Americans have not come so much to art museums to my mind. We should not be astonished by this. There is a feeling underneath that they are looking back at history. One of the reasons that there is a tendency to look towards more contemporary art or modern art in African-American culture is that the past is not necessarily a comfortable place, and people would rather look forward. African art is not necessarily appreciated more. Not everybody, just because they are of African ancestry, is going to care about African art. There is no necessary relationship there at all. So that leaves you a little bit in a vacuum. What I really want to share is: “I know you were there, I want you to know that you were there, so that we can just go on. Of course I’m expecting you, because this is your heritage too.” Not only does this seem to me absolutely true, but from a museum perspective I also think it is critical for us. One of the reasons that I kept pushing and pushing for this show is that I personally think that it is absolutely critical for how we operate as institutions. There are all kinds of layers here in which something operates, and I will certainly say that we sold apparently a record number of memberships during that show.

According to both of you, what are the contemporary stakes of the representation of the African Diaspora?

Sylviane Diouf: Here at the Schomburg Center, there has been a realisation that, when they are presented with their history, people are absolutely enthralled, sometimes completely incredulous: “We had no idea that this existed! We didn’t even know that there were black people there!” The academic research has been carried out and continues to grow; there is now a need to pass it on, to successfully repackage it, and present it to the public at large. That is what we are doing here, and we have noticed a great interest in the subject. It’s not only a discovery but there is also a feeling of connection to a much larger African Diaspora. And even though the experiences were  different, of shared history.

Joaneath Spicer: I think the stakes are actually considerable. If you are thinking about the Renaissance, just imagine yourself in an upland meadow. There are all these little streams running through it, and it’s all very interesting, it’s beautiful, it’s very lush, many sorts of possibilities here, and they’re all interesting in themselves, but you don’t know which ones, from just focusing on that, are going to be important 200 years later. After all, as a point that I kept having to make, we are not saying that this is a central issue of the Renaissance, this is one small thread within the Renaissance, because the African presence, numerically, was not so great. To my mind, one of the most compelling aspects of this subject, besides just the natural fascination of the untold story, is that I have the advantage of standing downstream. And I can look upstream. And I can see where that stream came from. And what was a little stream is now a river. And, in some degree, it waters our world.

* Image: Portrait of the seventh ruler of Sachin, Nawab Sidi Mohammed Haider Khan, 1930. The Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Collection.

Modi’s New India

In what has been called a historic general election, India elected Narendra Damodardas Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the highest echelons of power — the Office of the Prime Minister.  Modi was elected by a nation of “aspirational Indians”. His victory is theirs. As he took oath as the country’s fifteenth Prime Minister, men rejoiced on the streets and women cried before their 24/7 news channels. Under Modi, India thinks only of the dreams of the future, not the history of its past.

But, as you may know, PM Modi is a polarising figure. He has been called a strongman by some and saviour by others. Many in India’s intellectual class have repeatedly drawn comparisons to Modi’s emergence and statesmanship to fascism. India’s liberal left-leaning intellectual class—which rightly rallied against him for the atrocities committed in Godhra and the muscular Hindutva propagated by the RSS and its nexus to the ruling BJP Government—has never been able to carry out a dispassionate analysis of Modi and his style of governance. In my opinion, while Modi’s brand of politics is not quite fascism, it definitely shares the same structure that fascism does. It closely resembles what Stuart Hall described as “authoritarian populism”, rather than European fascism of 30s and 40s. Gramsci evokes Machiavelli’s famous metaphor of a centaur from the Prince—half man, half beast—to illustrate the concept of power as a combination of coercion and consent. Modi is like the centaur that both Machiavelli and Gramsci describe: “half man half beast, a necessary combination of consent and coercion.”

The rise of Modi and the mood in India today is not unprecedented or historically unique. History is full of men who have ridden the populist mood, of people who wanted to be saved by an all-encompassing charismatic leader who could get the work done. One only need to look at India’s recent past, when Indira Gandhi was the ‘Empress of India’, to note a parallel moment of projected desire. With her slogan “Garibi Hatao” (Abolish Poverty) she won the 1971 elections with a popular mandate and landslide victory. One of her cronies declared ‘Indira is India, India is Indira’: one that isn’t that far from the slogan that accompanied Modi’s rise to power—”Ab ki baar Modi sarkaar“, which, crudely translated, reads, “This time, Modi’s government” (“sarkar means “The Government” and colloquially refers to a “political overlord”). To borrow from Twain, history might not repeat itself, but can certainly rhyme.

While the event of Modi being elected to the highest office in India not unprecedented, men with the magnitude of power that Modi possesses today will shape and influence the India in an unprecedented manner. What does all of this mean to the country, its foreign policy and its engagement with the outside world ? Predictably, there’s been a lot of huffing and puffing and disagreement about what Modi will mean to India. One camp feels that Modi is no revolutionary figure, and business will go as usual. The other camp feels the rumble of a colossal shift in economic policy. Prof. Manjeri Chatterji, in a recent Foreign Affairs article, stated that Indian foreign policy has been broadly consistent and any changes had little to do with the Prime minister’s political ideology. “Predictability,” she argues, this “also applies to foreign policy.” Prof. Akeel Bilgrami has argued that BJP’s election campaign based on “change” is mere “rhetoric and pretence” and states that “… what it (Modi’s government) proposes as change and novelty is entirely continuous with policies that Manmohan Singh and his economic advisers have put into place.” Prof. Ashutosh Varshney has argued the opposite, that Modi will “reshape the entire political universe of India” and economist Arvind Subramanian stated that “Modi could be India’s Deng Xiaoping”.

Oddly, there are some salvageable truths in all these pronouncements. While India’s foreign policy has stuck to a certain predictable course over the last few years, it is also known for having a powerful Prime Minister who left an undeniable mark on the country’s foreign policy. In the words of Nehru’s (India’s first Prime Minister) biographer, “In no other state does one man dominate foreign policy as does Nehru in India. Indeed, so overwhelming is his influence that India’s policy has come to mean in the minds of people everywhere as the policy of Pandit Nehru… Nehru is the philosopher, the architect and the engineer and the voice of his own country… that foreign policy may be properly termed as his own monopoly…”. If he aspires to mimic Nehru’s levels of global influence, it is likely that people everywhere will begin to see India’s foreign policy as the policy of Narendra Modi.

Modi ran a Presidential campaign in a parliamentary democracy and won. Siddharth Varadarajan, former Editor at The Hindu points outs, “his means of governance might also be Presidential.” For the first time in 25 years, India will be governed by a single party with no real opposition. Prof. Varshney is partially right: Modi with this overwhelming political capital and power, might reshape and expand the powers of the Prime Ministers Office, if not the entire political universe.

Domestically, however, much will remain the same in India, because political change seldom leads to or guarantees social change. Even the greatest of social revolutions and political revolutions hold on to more continuities than usher in immediate change.

 

Mixed race kids a new phenomenon in the Netherlands? We think not.

This week cultural centre de Balie in Amsterdam will be hosting an event titled ‘LovingDay.nl: (In)visibly Mixed’ on “mixed race” families and relationships (BTW, the Netherlands uncritically accepts this terminology, along with the assumption that certain people are “pure” and others are “mixed”, thereby reifying 19th century race theories). Loving Day takes the end of anti-miscegenation laws in America in 1967 as its starting point to celebrate the growing number of mixed couples and children in the Netherlands. Mixed children are a growing phenomenon in the Netherlands (up from 30% to 37% from 2007 in Amsterdam) but oddly, the program claims, this growth is not visible in Dutch policy or imaging of the Dutch identity.

Being designated as “mixed race” ourselves, we don’t deny that there’s a lot to talk about, but we were mildly surprised to see that this program completely ignores the historical and socio-economical context of mixed race identities within Dutch colonial history. We say mildly, because it wouldn’t be the first time the Dutch conveniently forgot about their colonial adventures. There were clear strategies to instill and secure Dutch “purity” and a cultural sense of belonging in both South Africa and Indonesia. But of course, there were those “Others” that produced in both former colonies. Indos (people of mixed Indonesian European descent) have existed within the former Dutch-East Indies (and thus the Netherlands) for over 300 years, and the same can be said about the Coloured community in South Africa. Let’s not forget that there were and has been strong Dutch policy surrounding and creating these “mixed” identities beginning with the colonial period and existing well into the present.

The regulation of sexual relations was ingrained in the structure of the colonies and often also after periods of colonization. Many of us already know that in apartheid South Africa, sexual prohibitions were made very clear through the prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and the Immorality Amendment Act (1950) that outlawed marriage and sex across the colour line. But back in the day, Dutch settlers eagerly married or fathered children with Khoisan women. As scholars such as Ann Stoler have pointed out (see here), the regulation of sexual relations was important to the development of the colonies itself. In South Africa we see that in the initial period of colonization “mixing” was tolerated and even condoned. Actually the sexual relations between European men and colonized women aided the long-term settlement of European men in the colonies. Again, as AIAC readers may know, “Coloured” South Africans descend from European settlers—as well as from Cape slaves, indigenous Khoisan population, and other black people; because of that, they are regarded as being “mixed race” and often seen as distinct from the historically dominant white minority and the African population. There is of course much more to say about the Coloured identity and its fluidity, but the influence of Dutch settlers cannot be denied.

In Indonesia, the VOC and Dutch colonial powers specifically created the Indos (or IndoEuropeans) as an acclimatized, cheap workforce that would be loyal to the Netherlands. Within the colony, Indos had special privileges above Indonesian natives and below Dutch colonials, which ultimately resulted in their expulsion from Indonesia once it gained its independence. Needless to say a people of mixed origin—who were brought up and told they were European and were above the local populace during colonial times, only to end up in Europe where they discovered that they were in fact not European—have some serious identity issues to work through. That is, before they completely disappear off the map of Dutch self-knowledge and history. As with silences inherent in other parts of Dutch history, the Indo, too, is expected to disappear from the present, now that colonial times have ended.

Obviously, South Africa and Indonesia weren’t the only colonial territories that the Dutch set foot on. There is a clear need for more research when it comes to similarities (as well as the differences) between the different colonies and the influence of the Dutch. In the same vein, current Dutch race and gender relations have been greatly shaped by colonial endeavors. It is odd enough that the Netherlands takes on the end of American anti-miscegenation laws as a means to celebrate people of mixed backgrounds within the Netherlands, but it becomes problematic when these issues are presented as something new and unpoliced, when the Dutch have had such strong colonial policies related to the creation of new ‘people’ for their own profit.

Furthermore, current Dutch policies banning and preventing new immigrants from bringing over spouses from their motherland will have an obvious effect on the increase in mixed race relationships and children in the Netherlands. Often the idealized idea of mixed race children with “cute light eyes and curly hair” dismisses the ambiguous feelings of cultural belonging that underlie mixed race identities. For instance, it is not uncommon for a white mother to be asked if she adopted her child. In addition, it is often not recognized how mixed race children are privileged over black children in the media and popular culture, which further enforces the idea that ‘lighter’ children have more status and privilege.

Too bad that Balie and LovingDay.nl programmers ignore these serious identity issues and prejudices faced by both mixed race couples and their offspring as well as Dutch colonial history and the role it has played in creating people like us. But as usual, the Dutch just like feeling good about themselves as liberal and tolerant—they are happy to “celebrate” but not deal with anything difficult.

Post by Chandra Frank & Mieke Weismann.

*Mieke Weismann: Corporate whore by day, writer by night. Mieke is currently exploring her place in the world as a model minority and the descendant of both the powerful and the powerless in the context of the Dutch-Indonesian colonial past and post colonial present