Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 413

Peter Clarke–In Memoriam

Peter Clarke. It is such sad news to hear of his passing quietly in the middle of the night on Sunday 13 April. His body is gone but his art remains – bearing witness, etched into memory. Peter Clarke holds a special place in my personal history. He was born in my home town, Simonstown in Cape Town. He and my mum grew up in the Kloof (pronounced Kloef)–what was then the poorer part of town. They went to the same school, Arsenal Primary, and my mum always recalls his artist prowess from then; the Clarkes were regular customers in my grandfather’s shop in Waterfall Road, at the foot of what is still one of the resident naval barracks. He is the only South African artist I know of to have captured Simonstown pre-forced removals.

The Clarkes were one of the many forcibly moved by the Apartheid state to Ocean View; a few kilometers away but far cry from the idyllic seaside hamlet with not a view or a scent of the ocean. He spent most of his life painting from his studio in Ocean View–quietly–and with success. Though, I would hazard to say that if you had to quiz people in Simonstown, they’d probably know more about who Just Nuisance (a statue of a dog) was than a legendary painter just around the corner and over the hill. This painting is entitled the “Ruined houses of Simonstown” where his family used to live. It’s so easy to forget and erase – people, their histories and becomings. We need our artists to help us remember. For generations past, generations present, the born frees and beautyful ones yet to be born – this is to not forgetting. In memoriam Peter Clarke, in memoriam.

EDITOR: For a good account of Peter Clarke’s career as a visual artist and poet, we’d recommend Hein Willemse’s More than Brothers: Peter Clarke and James Matthews at 70.  George Hallett also took many of the images in the book. And here, below, are some videos (embedded as a playlist) of Clarke at his last major exhibition, a retrospective in London at Rivington Place last year (from 15 January until 9 March, 2013). In one of the videos Tessa Jackson, chief Executive of Iniva, previews the exhibition:

Image Credit: George Hallett.

The #BullshitFiles: This rich New York designer couple have never been to Africa, but can smell it

The stuff rich white people say sometimes. The New York Times’ Style section is more often than not full of arse-kissing puff pieces that do little besides illustrating the genealogies of privilege stretching between New York, Hollywood, Paris, London, and Caribbean island tax havens. Lots of these people also claim to love everything “Africa” (read: going on safari with a bona fide beaded Masai Moran) or “Asia” (read: staying at the Taj in Bombay whilst spending a fortune on silk saris that will be cut up for wrap-around skirts).Take this product-placement advert by Marisa Meltzer (her previous piece for the Times was on pubic hair), masquerading as interview, with designers Nicole Hanley Mellon and Matthew Mellon. Are they real? Africa is framed as the location of choice for creating interest in an interview with a dull, moneyed pair who are so buffered by their privileged inanity that they don’t know how stupid they sound. Mr. Mellon tells us:

I’ve never been to Africa, but I feel like I have this deep affinity for it… I’ve read every Hemingway, we collect Peter Beard, I’ve watched ‘Out of Africa.’ It touches your soul to visit and smell the smells, and you can’t recreate the experience without immersing yourself.

(Someone on AIAC’s Facebook site had the best response: “But have they listened to Toto?”).

Ok, Matthew: the importance of being somewhere other than one’s own comfortable space is exactly why semester-abroad programs are pushed on college sophomores. So it’s not like you suddenly tripped, fell, and invented Cultural Immersion 101. And trust me, it’s no good you sticking to ‘Out of Africa’ for an accurate depiction of anything but a failed love life–I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it might actually be better if you watched Nollywood films to understand Nigeria. But why are you talking about “smelling the smells” of Africa? I mean, what’s going on with you and this need to be all up in our smells? I don’t know … I mean, for me, my memory banks of the mysterious Africa are the smell of my mother’s yellow roses in Kitwe, Zambia, the sulphuric acid rising from the copper refineries of Nkana Consolidated Copper Mines, and Mrs. Chanda’s roasted groundnut and pumpkin leaf relish, wafting out during our lunchtime walk home from school. Smell and memory are intrinsically connected in our brains, and therefore, create very personal catalogues. Not sure if my memory of smells will touch anyone’s else’s soul. Anyway, I suspect Mr. Mellon is conjuring up naked red-clay smeared warrior sweat and foot-of-the-Ngong-Hills sorta smell–borne not of memory, but of Hem’s drink-addled hallucination and Peter Beard fantasy.

Just in case we thought he was sired by some ordinary Mellon, we are told that Mr Mellon comes from the Mellon and Drexel families of Bank of New York Mellon and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Nicole Hanley, who, after working in boutique after boutique, and failing at running two businesses–”a clothing line and boutique”–landed in the Mellon butter. The closest these two have come to the Africa of their dreams is through Peter Beard’s photographs, one of which they pose with (photo of a cheetah). In the NYT image of the pair, they are arranged on a sofa–sitting on its back, with their feet on the cushions (I suppose this is to give them some sort of youthful jouissance?). Ms. Mellon wears artfully torn jeans, grey cashmere sweater, and two sets of trying-too-hard silver necklaces. Mr. Mellon is wearing some ill-advised, very tight print pants that would look really good on singer Miguel.

Matthew Mellon complains that these days, people don’t travel for design inspiration, and bemoans that  ”technology has made us lazy”: “In the old days you’d have to travel to India or China for inspiration, and these days you’ve just got Pinterest boards and you can create looks from home.” Sad. He has all the money in the world, and plenty of free time. At 50 years old, shouldn’t he have visited at least 30 of Africa’s countries, had some “experiences”, smelled some nice smells, and collaborated with some people who really had creative edge and proper business acumen? Those things are in Africa, too, Mr. Mellon.

The last space of cultural dynamism in Luanda’s baixa is no more

Thirty years ago Joni Mitchell sang: “They paved paradise/ And put up a parking lot/ With a pink hotel, a boutique/ And a swinging hot spot. /Don’t it always seem to go/ That you don’t know what you’ve got/ Till it’s gone.” Who knew her words would resonate in today’s Luanda?

Since 1988, Elinga Theater, has anchored cultural life in the Angolan capital. On March 22, 2014 José Mena Abrantes, director of Elinga Theater, as well as poet, dramaturge, journalist, and communications consultant (read: sometimes speechwriter) for Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, announced the impending destruction of Elinga’s historic space.

This comes after the theater group was told in January this year to vacate by the end of last month.

Come April 1, fear turned to action. Central Angola launched a campaign on Facebook to get bodies in front of Elinga and stall the destruction. A petition began circulating on April 2 (online and at Luanda schools), after Ângela Mingas, professor of Architecture at Lusíada University, suggested that 1,000 signatures delivered to the National Assembly on April 18, UNESCO’s international day for monuments and sites, would pack symbolic punch.

Kiluanje Kia Henda, renowned photographer, posted an eloquent lament on Facebook on April 2 too. He noted that Elinga, under actor Orlando Sergio, in 2000-2001 opened

… to artists considered marginal and poorly behaved. And there I had the opportunity to meet and the privilege to work with individuals like: Marcos Opcional Kabenda, Lino Damião, Sunny Dilage, Muamby Wassaky Wassaky, Yonamine Miguel, MCK, Keita Mayanda, Edson Chagas, Raul Rosário, Michel Figueiredo, O Toke É Esse, Anabela Aya, Paulo Kapela, Nástio Mosquito…and others.

Many of those listed above have achieved international kudos for their work. The Ministry of Culture (we’ll return to them in a second) embraces them only ex-post facto.

“In a country without art schools, Elinga played this role spontaneously and singularly, and clearly, with greater freedom,” continued Kia Henda.

Bulldozers will raze Elinga to build … you guessed it: a parking lot!

Elipark will consist of a large parking lot, a skyscraper with two floors for a “cultural center” (Elinga got a verbal offer to manage the space), and the rest for offices and condos.

The hunger for building luxury high rises in Luanda’s historic baixa will not be sated.

Elinga’s saga started in 2006 when Imogestin S.A. purchased their building. In April 2012, Minister of Culture Rosa Cruz e Silva (historian and erstwhile director of the Angolan Archives), signed the decree declassifying the Challet building, home to Elinga, from its status as historic patrimony. Journalist Reginaldo Silva called out the minister and the “gang of concrete” taking over Luanda. The Minister decreed “that the reasons of an historical nature that determined the classification of the referred building no longer exist.” Weeks earlier she’d raged at a rise in demolitions of historic monuments across the country. What gives? (Luaty Beirão leaned in on this question this morning).

Built in the 19th century, the building served as a school in the colonial period. Angolans with nationalist credentials like Cônego Manuel das Neves, Hoji Ya Henda, and Nito Alves studied here. After independence it was the home of the Young Literature Brigade.

But Elinga is not just historic, it’s inconvenient. It’s on prime real estate. And every piece bemoaning its closure highlights the rare “magic” and “informality” of the space; the “mix of global and local” it attracts. Artists and audiences are multi-generational and aesthetically diverse. Officially home to Elinga, the theater houses acclaimed artist António Ole’s atelier, that of fashion designer Mwamby Wassaky, and it is the base of the traditional dance group Kussanguluka. Angolan and foreign artists (of reputation or emerging) have exhibited or performed there. Cultural elites mix with the urban hoi polloi.

The Joni of Big Yellow Taxi would feel right at home here: someone mouthing off at authority taken off by the cops as artists sing out, against, and in between state strictures. But Luanda’s downtown is no longer about education, urban culture, and interaction between different walks of life. That is history.

Elinga may be the last space of cultural dynamism in Luanda’s baixa. It’s a shrinking spot of horizontal connections in a downtown that’s all about vertical integration in the global economy.

But its end may be the beginning of a new way of engaging the state. Central Angola laid it out in convo with Kia Henda on FB: first they came for the 17th century Palácio de Dona Ana Joaquina and then they razed the modernist gem of Kinaxixi to build a shopping mall- i.e., this is systematic. Then CA shouted “O ESTADO SOMOS NÓS!” (We are the state!), torquing the old MPLA slogan: “the MPLA are the people, and the people are the MPLA.”

Images Credit: Kiluanje Kia Henda. The images were taken in 2006 when there was construction in front of Elinga and the spotlights they were using in the construction began to spill into the theater space.

‘Films to fall asleep to’: Are development agencies derailing the film industry in Tanzania?

Smooth camera work. Masterful writing. Clear audio. Linear narratives. There are plenty of people who watch Hollywood films and think that their local films could look and feel more like the productions that grace movie theatres across the United States. Many point to African filmmakers lacking training, funds, and equipment as the major impediments to the “development” of African film industries. But what happens when western development agencies offer said training, funds, and equipment in exchange for carrying development messaging?

Tanzania’s film industry is an example of the uneasy relationship between African popular culture and Western development agendas.  Swahili films, or “bongo films” have started to become popular within the last decade or so. There are over 25,000 video shops renting out DVDs, and over 10,000 video vendors that publicly screen films.  At least 10 films are produced each week, or roughly 500 films are produced per year, and despite poor sound, shoddy lighting, and undertrained filmmakers, bongo films are becoming increasingly popular in Tanzania and among the Tanzanian diaspora.

A few days ago at Columbia University in New York City, I went to a lecture by Claudia Böhme, a professor at the University of Leipzig in Germany, titled “Swahiliwood? The Appropriation of East African Film Productions By Development.” Böhme’s main argument was that development interests are meddling with the Tanzanian film industry and distribution markets with little regard for the aesthetic preferences and cultural sensibilities of Tanzanian audiences.

As the films become more and more popular, they also attract foreign filmmakers and organizations who see in these productions a potential for a global film market, especially spreading development messages through their networks,.

She referred to these efforts as a “ model of humanitarian Tarzanism,” and that the slickly produced development films reminiscent of Hollywood films are guilty of “aesthetic intrusion.” Even the name, “Swahiliwood” was a label created by outside development agencies, not from local audiences.

Organizations such as Media for Development International (MFDI) provide training, equipment, and funding to Tanzanian filmmakers in exchange for carrying development messaging.  MFDI  receives support from donor agencies such as Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Ford Foundation, USAID, Kellogg Foundation,  CDC, DFID, SIDA, and the John T. Macarthur Foundation, to name a few.  MFDI produced kiswahili development films such as Siri Ya Mtungi,  Yellow Card, and Chumo.

Here is a Youtube trailer for “Siri Ya Mtungi,” produced by MFDI on Youtube:

Here’s a trailer for “Chumo”:

In contrast, here‘s a link to the full movie for “Point of No Return Part 1,” a local, (non development) independent film.

The differences in production values are immediately obvious.

But back to the politics of the development film industry. In a promotional video for MFDI Tanzania, MFDI-TZ director John Riber spoke about the nascent Tanzanian film industry:

Our particular interests are the potential of this industry to deliver social messages … we use communication to inform, educate people around social themes, public health primarily. We are interested in developing this industry as a cultural expression, as a potential to employ people.

Riber emphasizes the desire to ensure that the development films are widely seen.

We want to work with this local industry who already have a distribution system in place, popular film stands—we want to use this network to deliver messages on health awareness. But I think our  most important contribution at the end of the day is building the capacity of the industry from a technical point of view.

The way the development films address social issues conflict with how the local film industry addresses them. “There is permanent and persistent sex talk in the series, totally opposite to the local films. [The local films] address this but in less overt ways and ambiguous use of image and dialogue.”

In her research, Boehme observed that the development agencies were overly concerned for the technical aspects of the film, rather than concern with whether the performances of the characters would be received as authentic. Additionally, western-funded development films tend to have slower narrative paces, with actors taking turns speaking to one other instead of over one another.

Vincensia Shule, a filmmaker and lecturer and researcher on film and theatre studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, argues that from an economic standpoint, western funded development films financially destabilize the Tanzanian film industry. “Perhaps [there have been] about 5 donor films in the last 3 years, but their total production budgets can be equivalent to almost 100 Kiswahili films,” Shule says.

Normal film production costs between 15 to 20 million tsh. Then these donors are funding almost 50 million to 100 million for production of one video and sell to distributors for 10 million or less.  They sell less copies and distributors prefer to buy from them rather than the big five (local production companies).  What kind of buisiness is it? How about our audiences who are interested in our stories and not developmental messages—are we being fair to them?

What about audiences? It is unclear whether the development agencies undertake surveys to investigate whether Tanzanian audiences actually enjoy and demand films made in the Western style, much less whether or not the films have had any impact on public health. Studies have shown that media for development projects often fail to connect with their intended targets.

In the case of Tanzania, the high budget development films are regarded as boring by Tanzanian audiences. They have earned the nickname among some as “films to fall asleep” (in Swahili: filamu za kusinzia). During a home screening session of development films, Bohme remarked that her Tanzanian hosts preferred to fast forward through the DVDs, and then finally asked, “Can we watch something else?”

‘Films to fall asleep to’ in Tanzania

Smooth camera work. Masterful writing. Clear audio. Linear narratives. There are plenty of people who watch Hollywood films and think that their local films could look and feel more like the productions that grace movie theatres across the United States. Many point to African filmmakers lacking training, funds, and equipment as the major impediments to the “development” of African film industries. But what happens when western development agencies offer said training, funds, and equipment in exchange for carrying development messaging?

Tanzania’s film industry is an example of the uneasy relationship between African popular culture and Western development agendas.  Swahili films, or “bongo films” have started to become popular within the last decade or so. There are over 25,000 video shops renting out DVDs, and over 10,000 video vendors that publicly screen films.  At least 10 films are produced each week, or roughly 500 films are produced per year, and despite poor sound, shoddy lighting, and undertrained filmmakers, bongo films are becoming increasingly popular in Tanzania and among the Tanzanian diaspora.

A few days ago at Columbia University in New York City, I went to a lecture by Claudia Böhme, a professor at the University of Leipzig in Germany, titled “Swahiliwood? The Appropriation of East African Film Productions By Development.” Böhme’s main argument was that development interests are meddling with the Tanzanian film industry and distribution markets with little regard for the aesthetic preferences and cultural sensibilities of Tanzanian audiences.

As the films become more and more popular, they also attract foreign filmmakers and organizations who see in these productions a potential for a global film market, especially spreading development messages through their networks,.

She referred to these efforts as a “ model of humanitarian Tarzanism,” and that the slickly produced development films reminiscent of Hollywood films are guilty of “aesthetic intrusion.” Even the name, “Swahiliwood” was a label created by outside development agencies, not from local audiences.

Organizations such as Media for Development International (MFDI) provide training, equipment, and funding to Tanzanian filmmakers in exchange for carrying development messaging.  MFDI  receives support from donor agencies such as Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Ford Foundation, USAID, Kellogg Foundation,  CDC, DFID, SIDA, and the John T. Macarthur Foundation, to name a few.  MFDI produced kiswahili development films such as Siri Ya Mtungi,  Yellow Card, and Chumo.

Here is a Youtube trailer for “Siri Ya Mtungi,” produced by MFDI on Youtube:

Here’s a trailer for “Chumo”:

In contrast, here‘s a link to the full movie for “Point of No Return Part 1,” a local, (non development) independent film.

The differences in production values are immediately obvious.

But back to the politics of the development film industry. In a promotional video for MFDI Tanzania, MFDI-TZ director John Riber spoke about the nascent Tanzanian film industry:

Our particular interests are the potential of this industry to deliver social messages … we use communication to inform, educate people around social themes, public health primarily. We are interested in developing this industry as a cultural expression, as a potential to employ people.

Riber emphasizes the desire to ensure that the development films are widely seen.

We want to work with this local industry who already have a distribution system in place, popular film stands—we want to use this network to deliver messages on health awareness. But I think our  most important contribution at the end of the day is building the capacity of the industry from a technical point of view.

The way the development films address social issues conflict with how the local film industry addresses them. “There is permanent and persistent sex talk in the series, totally opposite to the local films. [The local films] address this but in less overt ways and ambiguous use of image and dialogue.”

In her research, Boehme observed that the development agencies were overly concerned for the technical aspects of the film, rather than concern with whether the performances of the characters would be received as authentic. Additionally, western-funded development films tend to have slower narrative paces, with actors taking turns speaking to one other instead of over one another.

Vincensia Shule, a filmmaker and lecturer and researcher on film and theatre studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, argues that from an economic standpoint, western funded development films financially destabilize the Tanzanian film industry. “Perhaps [there have been] about 5 donor films in the last 3 years, but their total production budgets can be equivalent to almost 100 Kiswahili films,” Shule says.

Normal film production costs between 15 to 20 million tsh. Then these donors are funding almost 50 million to 100 million for production of one video and sell to distributors for 10 million or less.  They sell less copies and distributors prefer to buy from them rather than the big five (local production companies).  What kind of buisiness is it? How about our audiences who are interested in our stories and not developmental messages—are we being fair to them?

What about audiences? It is unclear whether the development agencies undertake surveys to investigate whether Tanzanian audiences actually enjoy and demand films made in the Western style, much less whether or not the films have had any impact on public health. Studies have shown that media for development projects often fail to connect with their intended targets.

In the case of Tanzania, the high budget development films are regarded as boring by Tanzanian audiences. They have earned the nickname among some as “films to fall asleep” (in Swahili: filamu za kusinzia). During a home screening session of development films, Bohme remarked that her Tanzanian hosts preferred to fast forward through the DVDs, and then finally asked, “Can we watch something else?”

The African Cake

Last week a bunch of smartly dressed activists, myself included, made a visit to the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) offices in London pretending to be representatives of large food corporations and offering them a cake in the shape of Africa. This, we said, was to celebrate the help that the UK government is giving to big business’s efforts to mount a new scramble for Africa. Watch what happened:

What you saw was part of a new campaign, launched by World Development Movement (WDM) is set to counteract the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (New Alliance), an initiative led by the now Group of Seven (representing the finance ministers and central governors of the most “advanced” economies). This partnership between governments and corporations claims it will accelerate agricultural production and lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. In reality however, it is channelling aid (including at least £600 million from the UK) towards projects that are designed to make the continent more business friendly, making it easier for corporations to buy up land, push GM and hybrid seeds on farmers, control markets and export crops’.

Attracted by high economic growth rates and propelled by a lack of new opportunities elsewhere, huge global food and agriculture companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Unilever are rapidly increasing their presence in sub-Saharan Africa, seeking access to resources and new markets to expand their operations.

King Leopold II of Belgium, responsible for the colonisation and the genocide in the Congo region in the late 19th century and a key player in the Berlin conference where European powers formalised the African takeover, would have liked the gesture made by the disguised activists last week–for completely different reasons of course–as he once said: “I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.”

In the same way as when Europeans colonised much of the continent in the nineteenth century, large corporations are now looking for raw materials, land and labour and their attention is turning to Africa which the World Bank has dubbed “the last frontier” in global food markets. What is scandalous is that the UK and other rich countries are promoting these initiatives through aid money to guarantee vast profits for these companies under the guise of tackling hunger and poverty.

This isn’t the first time that aid has been used by the UK, not as a means of international wealth redistribution, but to encourage private sector involvement in developing countries. In Bangladesh UK aid has been used to support Special Economic Zones, lawless areas which ban trade union activity and exempt corporations from taxation in an area where workers are payed an average of less than £1 a day.  And between 1998 and 2004 the UK aid budget played a direct role in promoting privatisation in Tanzania, spending £9.5 million of ‘aid’ on supporting privatisation. A practice that was brought to a halt by a WDM campaign in 2009.

Resistance is building for this recent wave of initiatives, in May 2013 a hundred African groups said in a statement:

Opening markets and creating space for multinationals to secure profits lie at the heart of the G8 interventions…Multinational corporations like Yara, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill and many others want secure markets for their products in Africa.

They are calling instead for funding towards food sovereignty; A practical vision putting the needs of small-scale farmers before the profits of big business.

The video goes alongside similar stunts being organised across the country to push the UK government to withdraw its aid from the new alliance and instead use in ways which support rather than undermine the farmers who feed Africa now.

* More photos from the campaign launch here.

Can forgiveness that is mandated by a government be genuine?

Reviewer Neil Genzinger (in The New York Times) writes about the new documentary film, “Coexist” (to be shown on US public television this month) about post-genocide Rwanda, 20 years later. The film, according to Genzinger, “… at first seems as if it is merely going to be another effort to draw feel-good stories out of an impossibly ugly moment in history.” But then it explores  ”whether forgiveness that is mandated by the (Rwandan) government can be genuine.”:

… As the interview subjects open up, cracks in this facade are evident. A man who did some of the killing begins to sound as if he is merely parroting whatever the authorities say, just as he followed the instructions to kill 20 years ago. A woman who experienced unimaginable loss is not at all on board with the forgiveness plan. “If I could afford to, I would leave,” she says, “because I don’t want to see the people who killed my family.

Source.

* BTW, The New York Times Magazine published a series of photographs last weekend, by the South African Pieter Hugo, that paired perpetrators and victims of the 1994 Genocide to pose together awkwardly. For some thoughts on those photographs and the text that accompanied it, see a series of tweets by Siddhartha Mitter here (he storified them for you) or Musa Okwongwa’s piece in The New Statesman.

Chris Hani’s political legacy

The American political scientist Adolph Reed Jnr. once wrote about Malcolm X that “… he was just like the rest of us—a regular person saddled with imperfect knowledge, human frailties, and conflicting imperatives, but nonetheless trying to make sense of his very specific history, trying unsuccessfully to transcend it, and struggling to push it in a humane direction.” Like Malcolm X, Chris Hani, who was also assassinated (Hani was murdered on this day in 1993), should not be made into an ideal type or used to settle political scores in the present.

Yet, any observer of contemporary South Africa can’t help noticing that while Chris Hani is still lionized and his name invoked in speeches and songs, the principles he stood for no longer  animate the political project of the liberation movement he laid down his life for or that his erstwhile comrades in the ruling party, its Communist ally and the main trade union federation have been disappointing.

To miss Chris Hani, is a natural reaction. When Chris Hani was alive, he was the most popular ANC leader after Nelson Mandela, especially among ordinary members and supporters. (This piece by Nomboniso Gasa captures Hani’s charisma and leadership well.) At his funeral, Mandela called him “one of the greatest revolutionary leaders the country has ever seen.” Fidel Castro described him among South Africa’s  ”most valuable leaders.” For my generation at least, Chris Hani was the natural successor to Mandela.

His life was animated by moments of independence and accountability: Samples include, the now famous 1969 memorandum where he criticized the exiled ANC leadership after the failure of the Wankie and Sipololo incursions by ANC soldiers (endangering his life in the process); his later very honest reflections on the murder of his own comrades in Angolan camps by the ANC; or by 1990, already talking about the urgency of the HIV health crisis when infection rates were still comparatively low:

Some of us might regard this as a diversion from the important task of transfer of power to the people. We have a noble task ahead of us–reconstruction of our country. We cannot afford to allow the AIDS epidemic to ruin the realization of our dreams.

But it is perhaps his thoughts on the transition from liberation movement to governing party that are quite prescient:

The perks of a new government are not really appealing to me. Everybody, of course, would like to have a good job, a good salary, and that sort of thing. But for me, that is not the be-all of a struggle. What is important is the continuation of the struggle – and we must accept that the struggle is always continuing – under different conditions whether within parliament or outside parliament, we shall begin to tackle the real problems of the country. And the real problems of the country are not whether one is in cabinet, or a key minister, but what we do for social upliftment of the working masses of our people.

And this:

I think finally the ANC will have to fight a new enemy. That enemy would be another struggle to make freedom and democracy worthwhile to ordinary South Africans. Our biggest enemy would be what we do in the field of socio-economic restructuring. Creation of jobs; building houses, schools, medical facilities; overhauling our education; eliminating illiteracy, building a society which cares, and fighting corruption and moving into the gravy train of using power, government position to enrich individuals. We must build a different culture in this country, different from Africa (sic), different from the Nationalist Party. And that culture should be one of service to people.

But let me leave you with this 30 minute video below, filmed by Afravision, that opens with visuals of the murder scene at his house; the mostly white police and soldiers–whose units were implicated in political violence–milling about (it was still Apartheid) and giving orders; his lifeless body on the ground and then loaded into the back of a yellow police van; the singing of “Hamba kahle mkhonto.” The video then cuts to Hani talking about his life as a soldier against Apartheid, including of the regime’s death squads and of the first attempt at an armed incursion by ANC guerrillas in 1967, the “Wankie Campaign,” as well as his reaction to the decision to suspend the armed struggle in 1990. The video ends as his coffin is lowered into the ground:

 

Where were you when Chris Hani was killed?

On the day he died, i was in our flat on grafton and minors in yeoville.  my dad called.  i turned on the TV to hear the worst news. i remember being quite hysterical, laughing, not because i thought it was funny.  somehow, tears seemed too little and my emotions were confused.  i hear that an aunt of mine laughs when she is sad.  i had only had occassion to meet him once.  we were visiting MK cadres on hunger strike in hospital – Neo, Ting Ting, Jabu.  i had a crush on Ting.  we were sitting on the floor in the corridor of the hospital one fine day, an ordinary day, waiting for the doctors to tend to our comrades.  then, the light became brighter, the world slowed down, and walking down the corridor in a haze of nostalgia was our hero, Chris Hani.  he shook our hands.  and we were forever touched.

when he was murdered, we drove with our neighbour Andrew who was also a soldier, to visit his family in boksburg.  we were lost in vosloo looking for the place.  i pulled over and asked someone, where is dawn park? he didn’t understand me.  andrew leaned over and said, dawna puck.  he directed us there.  my silly colonial monotone.

i like to think that Chris, Ting Ting and Andrew are together now, looking out for us, reining us in, and maybe even steering us back on track.

rest in power, our comrades.  you will never be forgotten.

* Feel free to share your Chris Hani stories in the comments.

The Edutainment Industrial-Complex

The ONE organization (it counts one of Warren Buffett’s sons as well as Bono, Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice, Nigeria’s unpopular finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, among its leadership) dropped a new African pop star powered video this past week:

So this is their strategy? Ask a bunch of relatively wealthy, globally-mobile pop superstars to tell rural youth to not participate in the flashy urban lifestyle they (the artists) usually promote–to stay in the countryside and participate in the resource extraction side of global capitalism? As Sean pointed out to me over email, the video isn’t unlike the type campaign some dictatorship (South Africa’s racist regime was fond of it) might use as a tool of “national development” or to fight crime or build national morale.

It’s actually kind of humorous if you look at it in that way.

Let’s pretend ONE (the organization) tried to do something like this in the American Midwest. Like, asked Kanye West to go to a car factory in Detroit and tell inner city youth to invest in their future as urban manufacturers. Would it work? Maybe that’s not the right analogy. Still, this ad/music video/pro-agriculture campaign in my mind just isn’t effective, and way out of touch with the reasons why African youth follow pop stars in the first place.

It’s not that I’m completely against edutainment. I do think that in general, especially in the context of developing countries, we have to be vigilant about who’s involved in such projects, and how funding molds priorities of organizations, artists, and average people. Perhaps the most important thing for the producers of such material to do is to understand and respect their target audience, an attitude that would prioritize grassroots movements and help enforce transparency.

For example, a Danish company recently launched an entertaining (and a little less patronizing) pro-sex ad addressing falling birth rates in their country.

And in Liberia a similar campaign involved Liberian rapper Takun J (full disclosure: I was tangentially involved and in support of this project), and efforts to curb rape and sexual abuse in his country.

The Takun J project was a heartfelt plea from the rapper, wanting to share the story of hardship of a young woman he met. In my opinion Takun’s sincerity goes a long way to get the message across to his large following of urban male youth. At least more convincing than D-Banj as a farmer.