Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 412

#HistoryClass: Nigeria’s Police

Right, so by popular demand, let’s talk about the Nigeria Police this Easter Monday because they definitely need to be resurrected.

The Nigerian police have come under a lot of scrutiny recently because of, frankly, very poor performance. From issues that require policing escalating to points where full blown military intervention is needed, to plain incompetence on the parts of police officers, and cases where it is quite clear that the people do not trust those who are meant to protect them. Where did it all go wrong?”

The Nigerian Police exists as a force to provide, er, security for Nigerians. It was established in 1930 by the colonial government. Before 1930, we had the Hausa Constabulary, established in 1879, the Royal Niger Company Constabulary (1888), the Niger Coast Constabulary (1894), and the Lagos Police, which was established in 1896.

Like Nigeria before it in 1914, the different police forces were merged for, err, “administrative convenience”. From that moment on, the police was administered from Lagos. Its main purpose was to stifle dissent to colonial rule.

This particular mission statement is important, because asides from a few isolated cases, our police was never really an investigating force.

In 1960, at our “independence”, our policemen simply swapped masters. Their brief did not change. The FG still used them to enforce their own point of view, even if that viewpoint was not entirely legal.

But at least they had the equipment to do their jobs. A criminal report in 1964 talked about fingerprinting, forensics and lab work.

Nigeria’s first Constitution after independence gave each region the right to have regional police forces while the FG retained oversight with NPF. However, because of the role of the Northern Police forces in the pogroms of 1966, the Gowon regime disbanded the regional police forces. The process of disbandment started in October 1966 and was complete by the end of 1972.

As of 1960, Nigeria had 12,000 policemen. By 1979, as a result of post-war expansion, there were 80,000. Most of them poorly trained. The 1979 Constitution gave the FG controlled NPF the sole-jurisdiction over the country.

However, that democratic experiment was short-lived, and the various military governments thereafter saw the NPF as a potential threat to their power, and as a result deliberately underfunded the force.

The only serious attempt ever to look at police behaviour was a committee set up in 1967. It concluded that the police was “hopelessly corrupt”. A previous effort in 1952 had a member of Nigeria’s parliament complained about “old sergeants” in the NPF who were “steeped in corruption”. Do these sound familiar?

By the 1990s, that reputation as “hopelessly corrupt” was cemented. A 1994 report said, “Most people just join the police to make money”. By the 1990s also, whatever security budget the police may have had was also being shared. In June 1986, Babangida dissolved the National Security Organisation and created the SSS. The SSS was responsible for domestic intelligence, and at first at least, drew from the police’s budget. What I do not know is whether, proportionately, the police’s budget went back up when the SSS went under the security vote when that was brought in by Abacha in the 1990s.

The UN recommends one police officer for every 400 citizens of a country for effective policing. With the return of “democracy in 1999″, there were 140,000 police officers in the country. 1 for every 820 Nigerians. In 2000, President Obasanjo ordered a recruitment drive to add 40,000 new officers each year for 5 years. The recruitment did not stop in 2005, and by 2008, we had nearly 400,00 policemen, a growth of almost 300% in less than a decade!

Again, about this time, in 2003 the EFCC was formed. It also drew from the police’s budget initially, we don’t know if, afterwards, budget has proportionally gone up.

Nigeria’s police now has around 400,000 policemen servicing a population of 170 millions, or 1 per 425 souls. But this is still a problem.

Most recruits were not trained in policing techniques. In some cases, they were virtually taught just to shoot and sent on their merry way. Does this remind you of the recruitment drive that happened between 1970 and 1979? It reminds me.

Then there is the guard duty thing for VIPs. At least 150,000 of our policemen are on guard duty for “bigmen”. What this means is that in reality, Nigeria has 250,000 policemen for our population. That translates to 1 policeman per 668 souls. WAY LESS THAN 1/400. It also means that even with the low man per population ratio, the police is chronically under-funded. So, there is a HUGE problem.

But asides the numbers, what are the other, probably more pertinent and structural problems of our police?

The police’s command structure has the President in charge of the PSC, then 12 Zonal Commands, then 37 State Commands, then 127 Area Commands. There are 1129 police divisions in our country, 1579 police stations, and a total of 3756 official police posts.

Policeman are often deployed, or redeployed across state lines, often without a local knowledge of their new deployment. Policemen are poorly paid, and have been known to seek supplementary income elsewhere.

Like in the Judiciary, a new policeman in a posting often has to resume a case from the start leading to bottlenecks.

There has been a large clamour for states to have their own police forces in response to the apparent unwieldiness of the national force. People have kicked against this idea because of a fear that governors would turn such forces into private armies. The fears are born out of the role that the police under Hassan Katsina played in May – July 1966, and the police under Sam Akintola in 1964. So they are not unfounded fears.

Again, and I repeat, the fear of politicians colonising state police are not unfounded. However, those fears are irrational.

It is irrational to expect a policeman who has lived all of his life in Bukuru, Plateau, to suddenly become effective in Ojoto, Anambra. He does not speak the language, neither does he understand the customs. So the people will not trust him. Criminals often come from communities that they harass. People are more likely to give them up to trusted policemen.

Then there is the issue of pay. It is no gain-saying that our policemen are chronically underpaid but still have to feed their families. Simple logic, if you pay a man NGN20k per month, and then give him a gun, you are giving him an order to rob people. The examples are glaring: in 2011 in Adamawa state, a policeman was arrested because for years he’d been giving robbers guns at 200k a pop. Of course he would give them such arms at such a rate. He was earning 84k a month and had two wives.

A few years ago, police Inspector General, Tafa Balogun was found to have helped himself to $98million from the police kitty. He is free now. His successor, Mike Ehidero became a guest of the state at Kuje Prison. His offence, helping himself to quite a lot of moolah. I make bold to say that at this rate, Uncle Ehidero will be a special guest at a party celebrating the 2015 Presidential Inauguration. Last Saturday, on Twitter, we were told that the current IG has a Bugatti Veyron. This is a vehicle that retails at $2.5 millions!

What these tell us is that money meant for effective policing is going nowhere. Police Internal Affairs is not doing its job.

On January 9, 2012, a policeman shot and killed Demola Aderinde. The case has stalled in court. Cue, a culture of impunity.

Back to the argument in favour of smaller, locally controlled police forces: Policemen should live within the community they police. Not in remote barracks that isolate them from the society, and make them alien to the very people they protect and serve.

So my solution to the police problem: state police under the control of a stronger judiciary, scrapping police barracks, better remuneration.

* Cheta Nwanze committed to doing a #HistoryClass once a week as a response to Nigeria’s removal of history from its school curriculum. 

Africa is a Country Radio: Episode 1

Listen to Africa is a Country Radio every month on Groovalizacion.

March’s episode was the first one, and it features music from Sierra Leone, Angola, Colombia, Brazil, Portugal, Nigeria, Ghana, and more! Old episodes will be archived on the site here, and via our new Mixcloud account. Last month’s show is streaming below. Look out for the next one coming soon!

Africa is a Country Radio: Episode #1 by Africasacountry on Mixcloud

The #RaceScienceFiles: The New York Times edition

I recently downloaded a copy of a book from a white-supremacist website (sorry, no links here). It claims that, because of evolutionary forces at work in Africa, black people have smaller brains, lower IQs, more sex hormones, higher rates of crime, and are worse parents than whites. (It also reports, with what seems like a touch of sour grapes, that black men have larger penises.) Why did I do this to myself? Because the author, the late J. Philippe Rushton, had just been cited in an op-ed appearing in the New York Times as an authority on—wait for it—morality.

The Times op-ed, which offers advice on how to raise a “moral child,” cites a 1975 Rushton study on how various sorts of interventions would affect children’s likelihood to behave generously, so it’s not hard to see why it wouldn’t have set off any red flags. But do the Times editors not have Google? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when websites with names like “white power forum” are eulogizing someone, you might want to take a second look. If you did, you would discover that he consistently made claims like the following from his 1995 Race, Evolution, and Behavior:

The reason why Whites and East Asians have wider hips than Blacks, and so make poorer runners is because they give birth to larger brained babies … Further, the hormones that give Blacks an edge at sports makes them restless in school and prone to crime.

And “Blacks are more aggressive and outgoing than Whites [and] also have more mental instability than Whites.” They might also have found out that Rushton got in trouble a few times for things like surveying first-year students about the sizes of their penises and how far they could ejaculate, or setting up shop in a mall and paying shoppers to tell him about their sexual habits.

Now, the fact that the British-born Rushton–he partly grew up in South Africa after his family migrated there the year Apartheid was introduced–is, in University of North Carolina Anthropologist Jonathan Marks’s elegant gloss “a guy who ass-rapes evolutionary ecological theory in order to show that Africans have an innate intellectual ability equivalent to mentally handicapped Europeans” does not necessarily mean that his findings on child behavior are invalid. But it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, either.

And it also raises a question, just what level of racist insanity (to say nothing of prurient, icky fascination with black men’s penises) does an “expert” have to exhibit before the New York Times starts to think, “Maybe we should ask our author to find himself another expert?”

Intimacy in Africa (on film)

When Hollywood does Africa, there’s little in the romance and love department, unless it’s about Karin Blixen making ill-fated choices (in white colonial men) or some random family who move to Africa and fall in love with the land … and the flame trees (you know the list I’m thinking about). When a white do-gooder escapee from European/British stultification falls for a gorgeous Ugandan–she’s going to get chopped up by Idi. If ever we see black characters falling in love, their romantic world is overshadowed by various external crises—warlords, corrupt politicians, locusts, famine, war (then a nice white aid worker helps one kid). Love is rarely explored in terms of the emotional and existential crises that love between two white people from America or Europe is explored, or in a silly, light-hearted way that focuses on the couple’s respective families and friends behaving badly (as in the style of, say, ‘Love Jones’ or the remake of ‘About Last Night’).

The just inaugurated Intimacy in Africa at the University of Chicago hopes to change some of those skewed perceptions. The series is curated and organized by Erin Moore, a comparative human development graduate student at the university, whose goals for the series include bringing attention to African filmmakers who challenge prevalent cinematic depictions of the continent.

The six films that make up the series, according to Moore, provide a comparative perspective on issues of “domesticity, intimacy, sexuality, subjectivity and affect in Africa and the diaspora.” Through their focus on the domestic sphere, this set of films provides a space in which ideas of love, intimacy, and sex are brought to the foreground even as they are shaped by and impact larger issues of politics, history, and culture. Thus while these films–set in and between Senegal, France, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Mali, Mozambique, Uganda and the United States–grow out of engagements with the historical and social conditions of colonialism, post-independence, and globalization, they also articulate the roles intimacies have played and continue to play in African lives. Each film will be followed by a short discussion, creating a forum for viewers to engage with the individual films and also as a unified body of work.

The series kicked off with Ousmane Sembène’s first film, “Le noire de (Black Girl)” (1966), which follows a young Senegalese woman as she migrates to France to work for a wealthy French family. Packed into this short film are representations of migration, labor, race, loneliness, and longing. Here’s the trailer:

The series then moved on to several films centered on questions of love and solidarity. The first was Souleymane Cissé’s ”The Wind” (1982) from Mali (screened two nights ago), the story of a young couple from opposite worlds: the daughter of a military general and the son of one of Mali’s chiefs. As the film tracks their relationship, it examines the conflicts between “modernity” and “tradition” and critiques the effectiveness of the military administration that runs the state. As it works to bridge generational gaps, the film also offers hope for the young people of Mali in its representation of the potential of a solidarity movement against the regime.

The next film to be screened at the end of this month, “The Silences of the Palace“ (1994), is also the first full-length feature film directed by an Arab woman. While it also takes up issues of love and solidarity, Moufida Tlati’s film traces the lives of women who are forced into sexual and domestic labor during the end of the French protectorate in Tunisia. In the face of their torment and torture, the women who reside in the ruling king’s palace must band together for their own survival. Alia, the film’s protagonist, returns to the palace after ten years to memories that continue to haunt her in the present.

The series then switches genres (on May 13th) to the 2013 documentary “God loves Uganda,” a film that has screened worldwide and already won numerous awards. In the film, director Roger Ross Williams exposes the anti-homosexual Christian missionary movement in Uganda and links it to North American evangelicalism. This powerful documentary provides a critical look into a disturbing cultural phenomenon, and the screening will be followed by a discussion with the director as well. Here’s the trailer:

BTW, Brett Davidson reviewed “God Loves Uganda,” together with another film dealing with gay rights in Uganda,” for Africa is a Country. You can can read it here.

With “An Uncommon Woman” (2009), the series turns to Abdoulaye Dao’s comedy about a successful businesswoman in Burkina Faso who decides to take a second husband as revenge for her first husband’s infidelity. Cast with some of the best actors of Burkinabe cinema –Georgette Paré, Serge Henry, Bakary Bamba, and Augusta Palenfo –the film focuses on issues of jealousy, infidelity, romance and revenge as it challenges traditional marriage practices in the region.

Finally, ‘Intimacy in Africa’ ends with “Virgin Margarida” (2012), a film based on real stories of women who endured Mozambique’s 1970s “re-education camps” that were established to transform former female sex workers into “new women” for a newly independent nation. (In April 2003, Corinna Jentz interviewed the film’s director, Licínio Azevedo, for Africa is a Country.)

Wrapped up in revolutionary politics, the film’s main protagonist, Margarida, is mistakenly transported to the camps where she, along with the other women, suffer the harsh realities of life there. In the face of adversity, the captive women’s strength, as well as the protection they offer  Margarida provides a hint of optimism. Azevedo’s film dramatically explores this forgotten chapter of Mozambique’s history and highlights broader questions about sex and gender in Mozambican society.

‘Intimacy in Africa’ serves as an important showcase of both popular and marginalized films about Africa and Africans. The series begins on April 1st at the University of Chicago and will run through June 3rd. The series is free and open to the public.

Click here for more details.

Who are Boko Haram, and how did they come to be?

Nigeria has a long history of communal conflicts, many of which were only suppressed under military rule. Despite the heavy handed tactics of the various dictators who ruled Nigeria, some of these conflicts came to the fore, the best example being the Maitatsine conflict which was eventually resolved in the early 1990s. A lot of these conflicts and the groups that aid them found more freedom after the return to civilian rule. One of these groups is Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad, which became the Boko Haram sect.

Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad started in and around Maiduguri in the early part of the last decade. Starting out as a radical group at the Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri about 2002, they saw society, particularly the government of Mala Kachalla as irredeemably corrupt. So, in the middle of 2002, the group, under its founder, Mohammed Ali, embarked on a hijra to Kanama in Yobe state.

In Islam, a hijra is a journey from the bad world to go and be closer to God. The Prophet undertook one, from Mecca to Medina. Usman dan Fodio also undertook his own hijra, to Gudu, when Yunfa wanted to kill him. This should give us some context.

Back to topic. So during this period at Kanama, is probably where this group had their first foreign contact. While there, more members joined, some of these new members, the kids of influential Northerners, such as the son of Yobe’s governor at the time, Bukar Abba Ibrahim. Bukar Abba Ibrahim is now a senator, and his son’s involvement meant that the group was in a typically Nigerian style, more or less immune from punishment.

Towards the end of 2003, the group had a communal clash with the Kanama community over fishing rights which led to police involvement. In the crisis which followed, they defeated the police, which in turn led to the Army getting involved, and the group was defeated, the founder, Mohammed Ali, was killed, and the group “scattered”, a few of the survivors, including a chap called Shekau, went north to training camps in the Sahara desert.

The other survivors of the Battle of Kanama returned to Maiduguri and reintegrated into the Ndimi Mosque, where they were now led by Mohammed Yusuf, who started the process of starting a new mosque without molestation. The land on which the new mosque was built was donated by Baba Fugu Mohammed, Mohammed Yusuf’s father-in-law. Baba Fugu Mohammed, was an influential, but moderate figure, who while never a full member, was to be murdered by the group. His crime, was attempting to negotiate with former President Obasanjo after things got out of hand.

Between this time (early 2004, and 2009), Boko Haram was largely left alone, and grew as a movement. In that time, they started a farm, provided employment for their members, provided welfare for those members who could not work, gave training to those who could, in short, they provided an alternative to the government of the day, and this very viability attracted more members, and a lot of zakat donations from prominent members of the Northern elite.

The only incident which brought them to prominence was in 2007, when Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam was murdered. Ja’afar had started criticising them, and predicted that someday, because of their extremist ideologies, they would clash with the government. It is generally believed that Mohammed Yusuf ordered his murder

For another two years after the Ja’afar assassination, they were left largely alone, growing, and attracting more followers. Then, in February 2009, the government of Ali Modu Sheriff banned riding bikes without the use of helmets. This seemingly innocuous event, is what led to the meltdown.

Five months later in July, a prominent member of Boko Haram died, and a large number of them were on the way to bury him. They were stopped by the police who quizzed them about their lack of helmets as the new law dictated. An argument began, and in the process, shots got fired. People on both sides got injured and things went out of hand. Boko Haram attacked in Bauchi, Borno and Yobe states, killing several policemen. In Maiduguri, they took over town, and controlled it for three days, doing what they pleased, until the army was called in to help. Eventually, the army regained control, and arrested a lot of Boko Haram members, including Mohammed Yusuf.

However, when Mohammed Yusuf was handed over to the police, he died. According to the police, “while trying to escape”. Boko Haram on their part, say that he was murdered extra-judicially, in cold blood.To be frank, there is evidence that Mohammed Yusuf’s arrest and an eventual trial would have exposed some prominent people. One of the Boko Haram members killed in that time was a former Borno state commissioner, Buji Foi, who was shot in the back by policemen. The video is available online till this day. Asides Yusuf and Foi, a large number of people were also killed in cold blood by the police.

After this, Abubakar Shekau, who had returned to Nigeria in the time being and had become Mohammed Yusuf’s right hand man relocated to Northern Cameroon. Shekau decided that there could be no negotiations with such a government, and set about reorganising the group. He adapted the Al-Qaeda model, and broke the group into cells which are largely independent of each other.

This is currently Boko Haram’s structure; a cellular structure, and no centralised command, and seemingly no unity of purpose. This “lack of unity” makes them particularly difficult to negotiate with, as you cannot tell who exactly represents the group. When someone attempts to negotiate on behalf of the group, think Baba Fugu Mohammed, he is quickly hunted down and killed. So, as things stand, the extremist elements within Boko Haram are the ones fully in control of the narrative.

Cheta Nwanze tweets @Chxta

Basil Breakey’s images: An important recording of South Africa Jazz

A few weeks ago, the Central Library in the Cape Town made a book maze from books that were intended to be pulped. Inserted in between the stacks of books that were packed on the first floor, coming up to my shoulders, and sitting atop the stack was a book, Beyond the Blues: Township Jazz in the 60s and 70s, A Photographic Book. When the maze was disassembled, the public, principals and other libraries were invited to grab a book for free. Amidst the chaos that ensued I got my hands on the book ‘Beyond the Blues’. I have stared at it many times. It invokes in me memories I do not own. Memories I have weaved together from other books and other people. The photographs in it are not just works of art but they are ways in which a memory can be haunted and jolted from its state of forgetting.

Steve Gordon, describing the photographs, writes in the book.

Basil Breakey’s photographs are intimate, showing the half that is never told: the rehearsals, the non-events, the empty chairs, the failure, and frustration of gifted performers to find the avenue or platform to connect with their natural audience in their home country

And a postscript of the book reads:

This is a book of photographs, rather than text, and lays no claim to be a reference work. The intention is that the captions, biographical notes, and discography help to contextualize, rather than circumvent the images.

The statement is however disingenuous of the book, at least of what the book is now, many years later after being published. Perhaps the publishers intended it to be all those things but the book has chosen a path of its own, as often films, books, artwork do. Though it is true that ‘Beyond the Blues’ is a book of photographs and not text but that it ‘lays no claim to be a reference work’ is incorrect. It is a reference book.

The book was published in 1997 by David Philip Publishers and marketed as a photographic historical record of South African jazz. Basil Breakey, a friend to many of the jazz artists in the book, was the photographer. When it got late and the musicians could not travel back to the township due to Apartheid segregation laws they slept on the floor of his flat in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. They had to hide, as they were not allowed to be in a white area in the evening. Basil Breakey’s house also became a residence for many musicians. Johnny Dyani stayed there. Chris McGregor, who later formed the Blue Notes, slept on the floor.

The book also has an important introduction, written by Professor Christopher Ballantine, a professor of music at the University of Natal. In the introduction he paints the milieu in which these jazz artists had to work under. In the introduction, he avoids using only his own words, like all good writers, he is aware that these things have been said before and so he quotes Lewis Nkosi to make his point:

It is a music which has its roots in a life of insecurity, in which a single moment of self-realisation, of love, light and movement, is extraordinary more important than a whole lifetime. From a situation in which violence is endemic, where a man escapes a police bullet only to be cut down by a knife-happy African thug, has come an ebullient sound more intuitive than any outside the United State of what jazz is supposed to celebrate–the moment of love, lust, bravery, increase, fruition, and all those vivid dancing good times of the body when the now is maybe all there is.

Lewis Nkosi wrote this in exile in 1966, in an article titled ‘Jazz in Exile’ that appeared in Transition.

The book is in three parts. Part One is in Johannesburg, mostly at Dorkay House, Part Two is in Swaziland and Part Three is in Cape Town. The photographs manage to capture moments in South African Jazz history that today one can only attempt to relate to but can never completely do. The photographs reel you into that time but they also keep one at a distance. In them, one can hear the songs coming together, the spirit of the musicians, and in the ones where the musicians are sitting and not playing, their thoughts are sketched in the photographs.

There are many pictures that stand out in this book. Bassist, vocalist, composer Johnny Dyani at Dorkay House, in 1963, sitting in a chair, staring beyond the camera and behind him a collage of photos, entire lives caught in a moment, are on a large glass frame. He was 18 then. He was to leave South Africa in 1964 at 19, to tour France with the Blue Notes and to float around the world for many years thereafter, unable to return home.

Abigail Kubeka, singing aloud into the air, drowning in a black sky.

Winston Mankunku Ngozi sweating whilst blowing melody into his tenor saxophone. Louis Moholo in a trance whilst playing in Langa Stadium and a crowd of people behind him, held motionless, by his drumming. Christopher ‘Columbus’ Ngcukana on stage and a crowd of people watching him. Basil ‘Manenberg’ Coetzee on stage with Addullah Ibrahim aka Dollar Brand, staring into empty chairs, imagining the crowd, in a venue they were going to play at. Another photograph is of Abdullah Ibrahim, accompanied by Ray Nolie on stage, he has his hands flung over a piano as if surrendering them to it to do with them as the piano pleased because he never played, the hands played by themselves. Another photograph is of a young Philip Tabane playing. Having recently seen him at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, the photograph makes me feel emotions words cannot describe.

This book is only fraction of South Africa’s jazz history but it is an important book. If one listens carefully, uninterrupted by anything else, not even by their own thoughts, the photographs speak of times when South African Jazz thrived against tough odds.

The Shifting, Sonic Geography of Cartagena, Colombia

It had been three years since I’d visited Cartagena, and I was shocked by all the changes. They must have been bubbling under the surface the last time I came, because they seemed so drastic. On my first visit to Colombia’s Atlantic coast, I was on a mission to hear of Afro-Colombian sounds produced and consumed in their local context. I had heard about the influence of African pop music in cities like Cartagena and Baranquilla, but didn’t realize the extent with which they had come to represent the local identity of costeños (“coastal”), especially those descended from the community of San Basilio de Palenque (outside of Cartagena). It warmed my heart to know that Africa was definitely a major factor in the equation that made up costeño identity.

Taking a stroll around Cartagena this past November, I was gripped with fear that the strong local identity was slowly being erased from the city. During my previous trip, most of the tourists I ran into last time were Colombians from the highland interior, this time there were many more backpackers and high-end tourists from the US and Europe. Inside the old city, on every corner you see a luxury hotel, a fancy boutique shop, and pricey restaurants. That was one thing, but the fact that above the old salsa club now hung a Hard Rock Cafe sign was a little hard to comprehend.

The most evident musical expressions in the historic Centro of Cartagena are salsa and vallenato. These are the types of music peddled to foreign tourists, by people spinning Cartagena as a romantic alternative to Havana. Not that I don’t love those musics, but they are the safe genres — accepted by the country’s middle classes and elite — and they don’t really represent the diversity that makes up Cartagena’s cultural heritage. Even if you do get more traditional Afro-Colombian styles like mapalé, or bullerengue presented in public, they’re often historicized or treated as dormant folk culture, not the living tradition of a very real and alive people.

Mapele in Cartagena

Bullerengue Festival in Colombia

However there are two music styles in Cartagena that very much contain the living breathing influence of all those previous genres mentioned and more. Besides cumbia, salsa, and vallenato, the Atlantic Coast of Colombia is famous for the development of champeta music. This music and it’s antecedents are the popular musics that most represent the Caribbean identity of the Afro-Colombian community today. The story of champeta is that in the 1970s, vinyl pressings from African and Caribbean capitals made their way to the port cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla. Sounds like highlife, calypso, soukous, kompa, mbaqanga and makossa became all the rage amongst local Afro-Colombians, particularly in the autonomous maroon community of San Basilio de Palenque. Afro-Colombian Atlantic costeños took to these records as a form of cultural affiliation and pride in their African roots. In the early ’90s, the stream of vinyl would dry up, and local singers started producing their own records based on both older and newer African sounds such as kwaito or ndombolo, and called them champeta criolla, or local champeta, and that’s why you might hear echoes of someone like Brenda Fassie in local singer Lilibeth.

However champeta is not the only new form of music to develop in Cartagena’s popular neighborhoods. In recent years dancehall Cartagenero has grown up to be the newest expression of youth subculture. The music is influenced by producers from San Andres y Providencia, Colombia’s beautiful Caribbean islands located between Nicaragua and Jamaica. The cultural mix of these islands have allowed for the development of a Spanish-English patois that borrows equally from the Spanish Caribbean as the English. The subsequent migration of many of the island’s residents to the North coast of the Colombian mainland provided the recipe for an amazing musical mix that includes elements of calypso, dancehall, reggae, salsa, and, yes, champeta.

Flaco Flow y Melanina feat. Big Mancilla – Tiki Tiki

DJ Buxxi – Como Tu No Hay Dos

There are positive and negative effects of economic development in any context. The positive in Colombia’s post-war opening is that outsiders are finally able to appreciate the beautiful culture, the amazing music, the unbelievable food. As evidenced by the many music festivals in the country such as Circulart, and the strong delegation at this year’s Womex festival in Europe, Colombia is investing a lot in its cultural exports and tourism. The economic boom of the past years has been good to some costeño artists. One of champeta’s biggest stars, Kevin Flores, recently scored a deal with a record label based in Bogotá and I was able to buy an official CD from a local shop (as most champeta is only available online or on bootlegs sold in the market).

Kevin Flores’ “La Invite a Bailar” remix

In Cartagena it is clear that there is money flowing into the city. The negative side effect of this kind of investment is that often the financial rewards only end up in the pockets of those who already have. While the city appears richer, it becomes more unequal. It is a classic case of free market development, and reflects the relationship that Colombia has entered into with countries like the United States.

Getsemaní is perhaps one of the only places in Cartagena where there is an even mix of locals and foreign tourists. The cultural mix this allows, especially with historically open sonic tastes of Cartageneros, is quite unique and exciting. Walking down a main strip in the neighborhood you can hear the latest dancehall from Jamaica, zouk from the French Caribbean to Spanish pop from Central and South America, and I even heard Nigerian superstars P-Square’s “No One Like U”  pumping out of one bar. These are all the sounds that are adding to the palette of dancehall Cartagenero producers and DJs such as Passa Passa Soundsystem’s DJ Dever, or DJ Corpas from the alt-Caribbean super group Systema Solar, who play regularly in the neighborhood.

Systema Solar — “El Botón del Pantalón”

However, the gentrification of Cartagena points to a very real threat of the disappearance of a local identity from the city’s historical center. The Getsemaní neighborhood has become a mecca for backpacking tourists from around the world. There are cheap hostels, and restaurant catering to gringo palates. The last time I came to this neighborhood it surely retained a local barrio feel. I remember distinctly one little neighborhood square that was filled on evening with young folks just hanging out and socializing. Today that square was surrounded by fancy restaurants, and no hanging out.

Edna Martinez, a Colombian artist currently living in Berlin, tells me that a classic case of gentrification is happening in the neighborhood. As she describes it, “In the last two years a strong and accelerated process of gentrification has taken place. Many people native to Getsemaní have moved because they sold their houses, or because they were living in rented apartments, and the apartments decided to sell their houses to foreigners or local and international investors looking to buy in that part of Cartagena.” The results of such market oriented investment have very real consequences for a neighborhood like Getsemaní. Edna explains, in “another part of Cartagena, San Diego Plaza, was like that before, but now you only see restaurants, cafés, hotels, etc. There’s no room for local people. It’s very expensive to live there. Many of the houses are closed because they are only vacation homes. Nobody sits in the doors of those homes, there aren’t even places to sit in the plaza. There is no ‘vida’ there.”

But again, as is common with stories of economic development, there are positive changes happening in the neighborhood. Before arriving in Cartagena, Edna had told me that in Getsemaní a community center called Ciudad Móvil had opened up. She explained, “Ciudad Móvil is a project that tries to support something a little different in Getsemaní by working with the local community, and trying to retain some sense of local identity and open spaces where the community can meet and interact.” Luckily for me, the weekend I was in Cartagena, Ciudad Móvil was having a three day music festival, so I could check it out in full swing!

I headed to the center of Cartagena on Friday, the second night of the festival. The atmosphere on the street was electric as we walked amidst the crowd of about thirty young people through Getsemaní. I realized halfway to Ciudad Móvil that we were all headed to the same place, and my excitement grew, especially after having passed by too early the first night when the venue was still empty. On the previous night I did see a young DJ setting up a small modern picó, the Caribbean coast of Colombia’s colorfully painted sound system. Unfortunately when I arrived this night, the picó was not there. However, local radio DJ Tiger was playing champeta and a mix of international African sounds, including Batida from Portugal, and a remix of the Nigerian tune “Mangala Special” by a personal friend of mine in New York, Uproot Andy.

The crowd was a mix of twenty and thirty something gringos and locals. People were hanging around the bar as the venue started to fill up. There was a beautiful open lounge outside where they were also serving local fried snacks such as arepas and empanadas. While the foreigner crowd largely sat outside and enjoyed the nice  nighttime air, local Champeta fans danced and sweated away inside.

Photo Credit: Dina Candela

The venue was really filling up when the music suddenly stopped. A band called El Caribe Funk was about to go on. I didn’t know the band, but when I told a friend who was living in Panama that they were about to hit the stage she screamed and said, “El Caribe Funk is here?!” We straight ran into the venue space and joined the throng. El Caribe Funk launched into a series of high energy original productions that were kind of a rock meets reggae meets salsa melange. Girls sang along at the top of their lungs, and screamed after the rugged rockero-looking trio. I felt almost like I was witnessing the Caribbean Beatles! My group and I danced in sweaty circles for about 45 minutes until the group finished. After an all vinyl DJ started to throw on throwback cumbia, vallenato, and African records, and the young crowd began to file out. It was a high energy flash, and I wasn’t quite sure what hit me, but it was one of my funnest nights out in awhile.

Caribe Funk’s self-titled single

I spent some time researching the Buenos Aires-based, Cartagena-bred El Caribe Funk the next day. Turns out their bio very much reflects what I had been feeling about the changes reflected on the face of the city in Cartagena:

The elegance of music has seduced us from childhood, first rock, later funk, and inevitably the exotic music of the geographic area in which we were raised: The Caribbean, which shouts in the skin of the drum and the volume of the picó. That elegance that according to the collective imagination of the musical gatekeepers, is pagan, grotesque, low class, nothing important, ‘ñera’, ugly, for poor people, for black people — it makes us understand that to do independent music with it’s own identity in a city biased by unbridled capitalism is a bit daring… so the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, decided to open its arms and accept us to bring them a piece of the Caribbean to the City of Fury.

On our way back home the previous night, walking back through Getsemaní to catch a taxi at edge of the old city, in almost every late night bar I heard someone playing dancehall Cartagenero. As I hopped along into the night, I thought that sometimes if you just scratch the surface of the glitz, sometimes you can really find gold! Projects like Ciudad Móvil are an example of that, and it can really serve as an example to anyone living in a changing urban environment on how to act (and interact) with their community before it’s too late. As Edna put it, “luckily, in Getsemaní the barrio still lives!”

Photo Credit: Dina Candela

Originally posted on MTV Iggy

#HistoryClass with Cheta Nwanze: A Short History of the Slave Trade

Henry Okelue suggested that today’s History Lesson be about Nigeria’s security agencies. Problem is, there’s paucity of verifiable information, so, we’ll go ahead with what was mapped out for today, which is about slavery, it’s effects on us, up until this day. And before some people chop my head off, it is not possible, in any way, to compress five centuries of history into a few paragraphs. The idea behind this is so that those who are interested will pick it up. Like I stated earlier, I committed to doing this once a week as a response to Nigeria’s removal of history from its school curriculum.

Unknown to us, most Africans, especially West Africans are suffering from what is called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. PTSS as a theory says centuries of slavery followed by systemic oppression, have made what normally would simply be survival strategies into daily habit.

Before we go on, we must set the records straight: Slavery, was not an invention of the West. It predates all written records. On the African continent itself, slavery predated the arrival of Europeans by centuries, and it sill continues until this day. However, until first, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, then the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the exchange of humans was “benign”.

Africa as a continent, bled from slavery for 14 centuries: ten to the Arab World, and another four to the Western World. The Arab slave trade started in the 8th century AD very likely because Islam prohibits Muslims from enslaving each other. Despite this prohibition, human labour was needed for certain tasks, so the Arabs had to forage into the African hinterlands to get slaves. To start with, they stayed on the East coast of Africa, close to the Rift Valley, but as they traded, they spread their religion. This meant that the former slaving areas went out of the picture for slavery, so eventually, they reached West Africa. Time went by and West Africans became wise to the prohibition of slavery by Islam, and started to convert to Islam. This meant that it is safe to assume that Arab enslavement of Africans may have eventually ended.

One thing the Arabs and the West had in common was the use of religion, Islam and Christianity, to justify trading in people. In giving this similarity, we must then state that fundamental difference between the Saharan trade and the Atlantic trade was the racism involved. While the Arabs’ slaves could adopt Islam and their kids at least would not be slaves, in Europe/America it was different. For example, the king of the Kongo, Nzinga Mbemba became a Christian about 1491 hoping it would stop Portugal from taking his people. That did not work as many letters he wrote to the king of Portugal were ignored. Some of his own kids were even sold into slavery. Another difference was the needs of the slavers. The Arabs mainly wanted domestic servants, soldiers, eunuchs for their harems. The Europeans on the other hand were industrial in their demands. They wanted their slaves for one thing: to make money. Before we move on, it must be pointed out that Arabs did try to enslave Africans for production, but it was a disaster. Riots in Baghdad from 869 to 883 AD ended the idea.

Now, the balance of global power shifted sometime in the 15th century, as Muslim power waned, and Western Europe took the reins. Shortly after that, the New World, with all its resources was discovered, with great environment for growing sugar and cotton. The demand for sugar was growing at the time, but growing it, and cotton are very labour intensive and a workforce was needed. But the native Americans were not good for two reasons – first, they had no immunity to European diseases, then they could not cope with intensive labour.

In 1517, a Catholic Bishop, Bartolome de las Casas, wrote and suggested the use of slaves from Africa, because according to him, Africans were stronger, less likely to rebel, and most importantly, shared the same diseases as Europeans, so were unlikely to fall sick and die. Bishop de las Casas’s suggestion was well received, so off some people went to get them some slaves, and of course they saw some Delta youths willing to sell them a consignment. Soon other European countries began to get involved in the Americas and as a result face the same issues the Portuguese faced. They all took the solution that the Portuguese had taken, go get us some African slaves. And they always found ready sellers.

The part about Africans being willing to enslave their fellow Africans is crucial because then, Europeans couldn’t go deep inland. Little things such as the mosquito made sure that Europeans never strayed far from the shore, so they needed collaborators. This role of our people in kidnapping, degrading, and then enslaving their own fellow people stays with us till today.

As Masters of the Universe then, it was only natural that Britain came to dominate the slave trade for the next 300 years. So, how exactly, did the British move the slave trade from something done by rabble renegades, to a major economic activity?

Much of the blame for the growth of the slave trade into a major industry is attributed to a Briton named John Hawkins (pictured above). Hawkins “modernised” the rabble the Portuguese started, cleaned it up, and made it a “respectable” business. He started what was called “the triangular trade”. Ships would sail from Britain with guns, mirrors and alcohol; these ships would go to the area known as the Slave Coast, today’s Niger Delta, and would anchor off the coast; the crew would row ashore, where they’d be met by natives who’d take their weapons and drinks in exchange for slaves; the slavers would then take this unfortunate slave cargo on a truly memorable trip across the Atlantic, to the New World where, the slaves would be exchanged for sugar, cotton and cash. These goods would go back to Europe for a great profit. Given the demand for alcohol and weapons in Africa, slaves in the Americas, produce in Europe, this was truly profitable.

At first, the people who were given to the slavers were victims of wars, or raids, or in a few pathetic cases, efulefu. But as the demand for slave labour increased, that demand fuelled wars and more raids specifically to satisfy the commerce. Of course, the demand for more slave labour, was fuelled by the demand for more (and cheaper) sugar and cotton in Europe.

So let’s now skip forward a few centuries, and a young Brit called Wilberforce led an anti slave trade movement, with success. We must note that when the British legislated to ban the slave trade, the French, Spanish Portuguese and Americans were not thrilled. But then, Britain was the supreme naval power, so her word was law. The ban held. I must also point out the African role. When the Brits banned the slave trade in 1807, the Ashante King wrote to the King of England to ask why he would do such a thing. Not only the Ashante King, the Oba of Benin, and the Arochukwu Confederacy kicked against the ban. As did Spain and Portugal. But as stated earlier, Britain’s word, much like the United States today, was law, so the ban held, the trade went underground. There were some high profile attempts to flout Britain’s ban of the slave trade, such a 1840′s Amistad Affair, but most failed.

Britain’s ban on the trade was not altruistic. Britain did not need slaves any more. Britain is the first industrialised country in the world, and it’s no coincidence that their ban came after the industrial revolution started. Again, the Brits came back and colonised us, with almost equally devastating consequences. They are here again as NGOs and companies.

What we will now look at is just HOW, the slave trade affects us today. So my fellow Africans, just how does it affect us?

The immediate, and most cited effect of the slave trade is that it robbed us of millions of our best and brightest. While I’m not sure of that, those who captured them were probably stronger, it definitely robbed us of a lot of human capital. The most important thing that the slave trade robbed us off is trust. A lot of our mistrust today is historical. Half a millennium old!

This lack of trust was evident in that when the Europeans decided to colonise, we could not, and did not, stand together. An Nri man circa 1800 would not have sold another Nri man into slavery, but he’d have sold an Ezza man with no second thought. The fabric of trading in goods (and probably services) which existed before slave trade had been gone for centuries. Nri and Ezza are within a day’s walk from one another, but that ancient trust was long gone. And this pattern repeated itself all over the place.

In summary, what slavery did to us as a people, was to establish, and entrench, the African collaborator with Europe. As long as the Europeans could not get into the hinterland they sold their guns, mirrors, alcohol, basically low end products to the willing African collaborator, who went further afield to go and get people. This pattern was worse in the Niger Delta. One of the reasons that Igbo people are mistrusted till this day is because of the actions of the Aro Confederacy in trading.

Now, and for the sake of balance, it must be pointed out that Africans themselves did resist slavery. Problem is by the time we began to resist it was already too late. The Lloyd’s list shows that between 1689 and 1807, 17% of all slave ships were damaged by slaves aided by local populations.

Slavery in Africa changed because of the Atlantic Slave Trade as the justification for enslaving people became more flimsy. Some of our ancestors sold their neighbours’ children into slavery. Some others, simply turned on their neighbours themselves. The Aro, Edo and Ashante are perhaps, the best examples of peoples who turned their neighbours into virtual slave depots. The mistrust engendered, Efik mistrust of Igbo (Aro), Esan mistrust of Edo, Ewe mistrust of Asante are still there today.

Meanwhile, there was a lull for about half a century, before Europe came back as colonisers, but the trust was already gone. In that intervening period, new power structures had formed here. The Bini Empire for example was in decline, refugees had fled the Sokoto Jihad, former slaves such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther had returned to Africa with education.

When Europe returned to colonise Africa, things had changed. Modern medicine made it possible for them to penetrate inland. When Europe returned to colonise, they again found willing collaborators in Africans, but under different rules this time. These collaborators ensured that other Africans kept working for Europe to be happy, in exchange, their kids went to Oxford.

Cheta Nwanze tweets @Chxta

There is more to Lesotho than blankets, mountains and horse rides

“The Forgotten Kingdom,” the new feature film by American director Andrew Mudge, depicts the story of a rebellious young man called Atang, toiling in inner city Johannesburg. When Atang’s father, living elsewhere in a Joburg township, passes away, he must voyage back to his homeland of Lesotho to honour his father’s wish to be buried in the “forgotten” country of his birth. While at home Atang sparks an intimate connection with an old friend, Dineo. He then embarks on a challenging journey of self-discovery, guided by a mysterious young shepherd, as he readjusts to the now foreign landscape of the Mountain Kingdom and her people.

Here’s the trailer:

Known for having one of the highest prevalence of HIV in the world, the Kingdom of Lesotho has been host to many HIV-centered film projects shot among the nation’s scenic valleys and modest thatched houses. It is almost typical to associate Lesotho with HIV. “The Forgotten Kingdom” once again weaves the pandemic into its overall storyline, though it succeeds at being one of the most visually spectacular films ever shot in the country. By virtue of its particularly wide reach, having been screened across the Unites States, it has become one of the most powerful representations of our country. Still, as usually is the case when one represents another culture, the film is not immune to critique.

The film made its premiere in Lesotho on March 1st to a VIP audience, which included Lesotho’s monarchy (King Letsie III and Queen ‘Mamohato Seeiso) in its ranks. The film had been on peoples’ lips since it was shot in 2011. The hype had only intensified after its international debut in 2013 and it’s series of award nominations. I went to the Lesotho premiere fortified with awareness that “no one can tell your story better than you can yourself.”

Before the first frame, several things had been floating in my mind. Firstly the writer/director Andrew Mudge likely had somewhat of a romantic experience with Lesotho, one different from Basotho. Secondly, leading roles are occupied by South African actors while locally-based talent serves as support. Thirdly, the movie debuted in America (winning awards for the Best Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography at the Woodstock Film Festival) before it came to Lesotho where it was shot. I was a skeptic who wanted answers, so I went into the theatre beaming with curiosity about how my country would be depicted.

Upon watching the film, it became apparent to me that “The Forgotten Kingdom” offers a limited biography of Lesotho. The Lesotho I know is vibrant, transcending the narrative of HIV so often ascribed to it. It is home to visionaries who produce creative work and intellectual property from a first world perspective in a so-called third world country. There is more to the country than blankets, mountains and horse rides.

In addition, some of the details Basotho culture in the film have been altered in strange ways. For example, the blankets (which are an important aspect of our traditional cultural attire) as worn by the protagonist Atang and his shepherd guide are out of place. The shepherd, a young boy, is wearing a blanket only worn by older men who have graduated from initiation school and Atang is initially wearing his blanket like women do. It is not clear why these style choices were made. Was it by error, or was it to make a statement? Regardless, these wardrobe malfunctions, deliberate or not, contradict the way many traditional Basotho see themselves.

The spellings of words and names are also disconnected from the Basotho culture of Lesotho. Dineo, the name of the love interest, should be written as Lineo in Lesotho’s Sesotho language (but pronounced with the “D” sound, as in my name). The spelling of Lineo with a D is the more Western-oriented South African way. These details are an indication that the film is concerned with privileging foreign audiences over those at home in Lesotho.

Yet still, the awesomeness of the landscape captured by the film’s cinematography is something to behold. The setting is a character in itself. Mudge cited that the Director of Photography, Carlos Carvalho, had his work cut out for him because his challenging task was to grade with flawless poise what mother-nature had already brilliantly crafted in Lesotho’s delicate mountains. This was done with admirable artistry.

When the lights came on at the end of the film, I was left with the insight that the film communicates to us as Basotho that we live on a grand movie set, that our stories, trivial as we may assume them to be, deserve audience. Overall, there were a number of elements of The Forgotten Kingdom to appreciate – the cinematography the dialogue and the quality of the acting (the shepherd Lebohang Ntsane stole the show). But my biggest takeaway from the film was the hope that it will summon Basotho writers, filmmakers, aspiring actors and the public as a whole to be more active in telling our own stories. There are a number of Basotho whose creative work warrants greater attention. But for those Basotho in need of a wake-up call, the film speaks in the tone of a travelling messenger who is bewildered and wants to know: “why are you sleeping on your own allure, aesthetics and talent? More especially, why do you flirt with the attractions of foreign lands when you live on a treasure you can explore practically for free?”

* The Forgotten Kingdom opened in theaters on April 4th in Lesotho and on April 11th in South Africa.

The Cape Town company that designs and markets “slave ship” ironing boards and aprons

What is it with some white South Africans’ penchant for living in an a-historical bubble? Gumtree, the South African Craigslist, is running an ad for an apartment in Randburg, a former white suburb of Johannesburg (with about 30% black residents) to which only “young white professionals” are invited to apply; then people who should know better (journalists, researchers) think Apartheid wasn’t so bad after all. Now there’s a Cape Town company that–in the name of subversive “art”–designs products using a slave ship drawing from a 1788 abolitionist broadside (chances are you’ve seen it). Yes: a graphic of a slave ship packed with slaves, intended to depict the inhumanity of chattel slavery, is now printed on dresses, aprons and ironing boards (which they actually refer to as “slaving boards”).

Maid in Africa (a white-owned company in–where else?–Cape Town, South Africa) is a design studio run by a couple, Micha and Andrew Weir. They  ”convert fine art into utility objects.”  The slave ship themed ironing/slaving board is intended evoke the ethos of the company: “Ebony & Irony, Aloe Africana and Boerewors on a Roll.” Their brand slogan for this particular range of products is “Slave to Fashion.” Why are they doing this? Because, according to their PR, “15 million African people displaced during the slave trade left a permanent imprint on the continent’s fabric.” 

The idea (design and premise) to put the slave slip on an ironing board is taken wholesale from a piece called ‘Stowage’ by the African-American artist Willie Cole in which he interprets the shape of an ironing board to be the shape of, possibly, a slave ship.  That piece (which looks identical to the Weirs “design”), was exhibited at MoMA and other major galleries, and received a lot of critical attention.

As Africa is a Country’s TO Molefe pointed out on Facebook:

Cole’s inspiration is that of a black artist reflecting on his own ancestry and the lived experiences of his mother and aunts. It’s a deeply personal reflection for him and thus a highly original concept, despite its origins in a historical image. These things in my view suggest that Cole’s treatment of The Brookes Ship has, since 1997, when he made the ship into an ironing board, filtered through news, word of mouth and in other ways to eventually end up as a Maid in Africa print stripped of its original context.

If you have time, go check out the comments on their Facebook page (as well as this thread), and see the Weirs defend their stupidity as some sort of antiracist activism. They are also condescending to their critics.

The moneymaker here is a combination of transgressive hipsterism with a reminder to powerful consumers that not only are they safe in their positions of power,  but that they are “helping.” (They trace their origins to helping to create work for a domestic worker who lost her job when her employees moved to Canada.)

What do the company’s owners say? On a Facebook post, where Molefe had a discussion thread going, Micha Weir jumped in and offered the following explanation:

[The drawing] came to epitomize the cruelties of the trade in enslaved Africans of the 18th and 19th centuries and the struggle to abolish that trade. Our intention by printing it on an everyday utility item, an ironing board, was to bring the fact of slavery closer to home …. It is a statement against denial and the moral high grounds attempt to white wash a society where the poor still slave for the rich. Our greedy consumer behaviour enslaves millions of people every day all over the world by buying designer t-shirts made in sweatshops, drinking Coke, consuming shit at MacDonald’s or flaunting our wealth at Woolworths. We are all “Slaves to Fashion”, enslaved by banks, trend setters or pure consumerism.

That’s rich.

So, when I buy some junk because the Kardashians say I should, am I in the same position as someone forced to wear a mouth bit, shacked to the floor of a ship for months? Or if I buy the stuff the Weirs have made (stuff I don’t need), I become more conscious of how my consumer habits help create indentured labour?

Who was it that said, recently, on Twitter “I hate it when people want to make a point by comparing x, y, z to either slavery or the Holocaust”? Yeah. That’s just the beginning of the point we want to make. Second, you just forced (the symbolic) bodies of people who already did the labour of creating your privilege to continue to do the labor of creating pathos and pity. Third, in  South Africa, who will be actually using that ironing board, looking at a historical representation of enslaved labourers? Not the madam who should be getting conscientized.  We wouldn’t put it past certain madams to actually buy such a ironing board cover, only to have their R100 ($10) a day plus lunch “domestic” spend the day in meditation over how their position in history hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot. (BTW, the label for the ironing board says “Hand wash in cold water (or ask the maid)”.)

On Facebook Molefe argued,

I really wish you [the Weirs] did not assume people objecting to your use of it were doing so from a place of ignorance to art history or the purpose of art. Even if some are, there are a genuine issues of making light of and money off of other people’s experiences that saying “but it’s art!” does not answer. If your intention is to question slavery and the domestication of black bodies with this print, and as a response the people whose lived experiences are of slavery and domestication are objecting, then you are doing it all wrong and clearly not listening.

You’d think all this would be obvious (hello, Weirs, black people are on the Internet and read art history).  Then to make things worse, they still had a stall at Cape Town’s annual Design Indaba. (This, BTW, is also an important part of the story: how a major design festival thinks it is okay to sanction and legitimize this.) Word is there was a petition to have them removed from the Indaba, but it seems they showed anyway as this picture taken by artist Athi-Patra Ruga shows:

This being Cape Town and South Africa,the Weirs and Maid in Africa have no shortage of defenders. (They already do on the company’s Facebook page). There’s also a few others doing this kind of thing. Maid in Africa’s postcards, featuring shack-designs (no royalties there, either, it seems safe to assume), are marketed as a “celebration of free enterprise and free-range chicken,” and recall a similar stunt by Woolworths–the national retailer aimed at middle class shoppers of the tacky Mandela tribute.

A few aisles away from that shop’s Israeli tomatoes and the organic meats, you can buy Shack Box Soap. Yes, soap packaged to look like informal housing. One of the designers on Behance.com describes it as a “soap project that embraces the culture of South African Townships. Exploring the vibrant colours and juxtaposition of material to re-create a township experience.” Because, as someone commented on Facebook, nothing says ‘township experience’ like paying R50 (about $5 US) for a bar of soap.

Nice. These free enterprise models sure remind me of another group of people who took shit from some other people without asking and said they now owned it. Note to Maid in Africa: the people who actually came up with those shack designs might really celebrate if you gave them the percentage owed for appropriating and profiting from their intellectual property and design skills. Business partnerships: that’s real help. But putting an historical image of slaves on an ironing board (or on your dress) and commodifying pity isn’t.

Really people. We can’t anymore.