Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 431

Nigeria’s Gay Problems

Oh my … what a week it has been; and it’s still only Wednesday. Egypt and Thailand are threatening to burn over democracy, Australian Opens is threatening to burn over heat strokes, John Kerry has been insulted more than once by other foreign leaders, African asylum seekers in Israel keeps protesting their treatment by the Israeli government (something which they never did against the African leaders that turned them into asylum seekers in the first place), Governor Christie, Beiber and Kanye are all linked to bad behaviour … what a midweek! But let’s raise our hats to the biggest global news of the week thus far, after all this is Africa is a Country, not Earth’r’us: Nigeria, that giant town in Africa, declaring its disdain for any form or likeness of homosexuality.

All peace-loving and weary Africans were barely coming out of mourning for Madiba (yes, we do need a month for mourning) when we were jolted back to surreality with the news that Nigeria had enacted one of the farthest hate mongering laws against any Nigerian who is not inclined towards opposite sex monogamy, polygamy (as long as it is between one man and several women only), and pedophilia (national senators in Nigeria actually think this is a sport).

Under the new Nigerian law, it is illegal to engage in an intimate relationship with a member of the same sex and to attend, or organize, or operate a meeting of gays and gay organizations, including private clubs. How in heaven’s name will some of the same politicians who passed this bill survive it? That was a joke by the way!

The purported law was enacted on 7 January 2014 but somehow all the journalists and governance watchdogs in the country missed this news until a week later. Apart from showing what a sorry state of affairs governance is in the country, this action by President Jonathan Goodluck, or Badluck for the innocents he keeps punishing, is in line with his new year surprise gimmicks — anyone remember the fuel subsidy removal debacle a couple of years ago? Do not hold your breath for national protests against this law.

Of course this new law, apart from showing that too many Nigerians spend way too much time on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter engaging in battles of words and egos, is encouraging the use of “big grammar” by Abuja big men. Here is a quote from Mr. “PhD” Reuben Abati, spokesperson for the president and former activist/journalist in another lifetime:

This is a law that is in line with the people’s cultural and religious inclination. So it is a law that is a reflection of the beliefs and orientation of Nigerian people … Nigerians are pleased with it.

Who am I to question the authority of a whole PhD that is the mouthpiece of the country? What is not being announced though is that there are several other legislative bills in line with the people’s cultural and religious inclination that are awaiting the president’s signature. Sources in the presidency indicate that following the success of this “Gut the Gays” law, we should be expecting some of these laws to come through in coming weeks.

Following is a sneak preview of some of the bills awaiting GEJ’s signature:

1. A law criminalizing the current Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi, and anybody found sympathizing with him in words or thoughts. The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) has decided that Mr. Sanusi’s latest actions including blowing the whistle on the unexplained disappearance of over $10 billion from the federal coffer goes against the people’s cultural inclination towards corruption and non-transparency.

2. A law banning any female who is neither related in any form nor having some sexual affair with government officials from running for any political office, being appointed to a federal position or awarded any government contract as this goes against the people’s cultural inclination towards nepotism and non-recognition of women for their skills and talents.

3. A law criminalizing any form of open or public letters to the president by ex-presidents and their sycophants. Once this law is passed, only sycophants of the president can issue open letters to the president. Ex-presidents and prominent statespeople speaking openly against the president goes against the people’s cultural and religious non-accountability inclination.

4. A law criminalizing any form of actual performance by state governors especially when they give the impression of performing better than the federal government. Such action is unbecoming of elected officials and goes against the people’s cultural and religious inclination toward non-deliverance of public goods and governance.

5. And finally, a law legalizing (yes, a positive law at last) the forced or purchased wedding of the rich and powerful to underage girls in and outside the country. Such unions, unlike the morally repulsive homosexual ones, will be recognized in the country even if not sanctioned in country of origin. This behavior apparently will be a reflection of the beliefs and orientation of Nigerian people and the Nigerian people will be happy with it.

Beefing with Mugabe

To test the patience of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his government, Russian artist Petro Wodkins built a meter high gold statue hoping he could offer it to the man in question. It’s not because he wants to start a beef with the man he calls a dictator, but because “Robert like GOLD.” Wodkins, not his real name, is a provocative artist who does not take no for an answer. He got himself invited to an exhibition in Harare, but when the organizers saw the work he was proposing and his request to hand over his gift in person, they disinvited him. when his request to hand over his gift in person was denied he still decided to travel down to Harare, equipped with hidden cameras to shoot a video to a song that mocks Mugabe and of course the golden statue.

He showed it around Harare and ordinary Zimbabweans loved it. The authorities did not react too well to the video shoot. According to the Zimbabwean website Nehandatv.com, the government pulled down the statue and chased down the artist who, according to the project’s website, escaped. As for the video, of course you can watch it online.

The Black Manager

The announcement that Clarence Seedorf will be the new manager of AC Milan in Serie A immediately makes him the highest profile black person managing a football club right now, right?  AC Milan is a big club–they have won the European Champions League seven times– so this is a big deal. Though no other black manager has come close to the heights Seedorf has achieved here–except Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona (2003-2008)–we wondered whether we could make a list of at least 10 black managers who were in charge of club teams in the top leagues (and by this we mean Europe). We could only come up with six others.  If we missed anyone, let us know, but we don’t have high hopes.

Frank Rijkaard. After a storied playing career that included Ajax and AC Milan, he coached the Dutch national team and Sparta Rotterdam (the other team in Netherlands’ second city), before he was named FC Barcelona manager. He stayed for 5 years and after a slow start (after one season he was in danger of being fired), won La Liga (twice), the Spanish Supercup (twice) and the UEFA Champions League (once). He was fired after another embarrassing lost to Real Madrid.

Colombian Francisco Maturana, managed a number of national teams (Peru, Ecuador) including his own country twice (Colombia, with whom he had the most success, winning a South American championship and qualified for the 1994 World Cup). Club-wise his highest point was coaching Atletico Madrid in La Liga for one year. Sadly, his tenure at Atletico Madrid (the poorer cousins of Real, who rumor had it ) was uneventful and he went back to South America.

Chris Hughton, the son of a Ghanaian postman starred at Tottenham Hotspur as a player, before he entered management. He managed Newcastle United (in the Football Championship) but was let go when the team made it to the Premier League. He has had two other spells in the Premier League, with Birmingham City and now Norwich City. Right now, he is the only black manager in the Prem.

Born in Bamako, Jean Tigana, a member of the French national team who did not win the World Cup during the 1980s (they should have), later coached at Lyon (where he also played) and Monaco in Ligue 1, before he was hired by Mohamed Al-Fayed to coach Fulham (took them to the UEFA Cup), but was fired (they accused him of paying too much for certain players, he sued and won.) He later went to coach at Besiktas and in China. That was his last job.

Ruud Gullit, one of the best players of his generation (clubs included PSV, AC Milan, Sampdoria and Chelsea) managed Chelsea for a season and a half in the mid to late 1990s before he was sacked. He went on to manage Newcastle United, in the MLS and in Russia. Not sure how to interpret this, but Gullit is remembered as the first top flight football manager with dreadlocks.

Fabio Liverani, so far the only “Italo-Somalo” to play for the Azzurri, Liverani played for many clubs in Italy (including a five-year stint at Lazio, a club with a long racist tradition). Last June he was hired as head coach of Genoa but he lasted just seven games in charge and was fired in September.

Finally, there’s Paul Ince, who managed Blackburn Rovers (yes, that’s a big difference from AC Milan and FC Barcelona) for half a season, but in the process  became the first black English manager at a Premier League in 2008. Yes, that late in the day.

How not to write about Duke Ellington: a reader’s guide

A week ago, my friend KLW, a distinguished New York jazz critic, called to ask if I had read Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on Duke Ellington (and the Beatles). I had not, nor did I plan to. The prospect of Gopnik writing on something you care passionately about is always more than mildly dispiriting. KLW, however, was insistent. “Listen to this,” he said, and began to read portions of the piece, a review of Terry Teachout‘s new Ellington biography. KLW is a calm person, not easily roused to anger, but his irritation was palpable. Having now read the piece, I can hardly blame him.

Those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about jazz often bemoan how little critical attention it receives in magazines like The New Yorker. But no attention would almost be better than the condescending “praise” of a critic like Gopnik.

Reading Gopnik, I was reminded of something Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in a recent post for The Atlantic:

I came up in a time when white intellectuals were forever making breathless pronouncements about their world, about my world, and about the world itself. My life was delineated lists like “Geniuses of Western Music” written by people who evidently believed Louis Armstrong and Aretha Franklin did not exist.

Gopnik knows that Ellington exists. He also knows that Ellington’s creativity, the inimitable stamp he left on all the music he orchestrated, does not lie solely, or mainly, in the notes he put on paper: “We seem to need new categories of value, and another kind of meditation on what originality is.” (Read: categories other than those applied to classical music.) Still, the essay seems to announce that, at last, someone not beholden to the jazz world has come along to explain why this peculiar music, this music that can’t be evaluated according to the old and still coveted (Western, classical) categories of value, merits consideration.

Perhaps to reassure his (white, middle-class) readers that he hasn’t been taken in, Gopnik begins by taking a swipe at jazz writers who have allegedly been handicapped by “liberal piety”. Out of said piety, jazz writers have produced “apologetics” for jazz, and “apologetics are the enemy of art criticism.” Yet over the course of its history, jazz hasn’t suffered much from liberal apologetics. The contrary seems more plausible: that for decades, racism kept white critics from taking jazz seriously. (And that history isn’t over, either.) Does Gopnik realize that for years, Chet Baker frequently ran ahead of Miles Davis in critics’ polls, or that the search for a great white hope has deformed jazz criticism far more deeply than “liberal piety,” or that Coltrane’s sound on the tenor was routinely described as “ugly”? The piety that Gopnik deplores — if “piety” is the appropriate word for a belief in equality — is part of what allowed critics to recognize that jazz, a music that grew out of the blues whose major innovators have largely been African-Americans, is an art form worthy of respectful attention and analysis.

Gopnik never spells out what he means by “liberal piety,” but he hints at it when he complains of the “ideological passions that can encumber jazz: not everything has to be seen as an allegory of persecution and salvation.” I wonder whom he’s referring to. Few critics have described jazz as an allegory of “persecution and salvation,” or engaged in special pleading, as he implies. Even at the height of free jazz, when the avant-garde was championed as if it were a political cause in its own right, there was often ferocious debate over the merits of individual performers. Gopnik obviously hasn’t read John Gennari’s superb history of jazz criticism, Blowin’ Hot and Cool.

And whom does Gopnik urge us to read instead of these defenders of the liberal faith? The “Tory Philip Larkin.” Larkin, of course, is unfailingly entertaining, never short of the acid quip. But he was also a curmudgeon who hated almost everything after Charlie Parker, whether it was the “passionless creep of a Miles Davis trumpet solo,” or the “terrier-shaking-a-rat-school of Archie Shepp (a white rat, of course).” To these ears, that line about Shepp sounds like a bitter old white man’s piety; do we really think it preferable to (or more productive of critical honesty or fairness than) “liberal piety”?

As for Gopnik’s portrait of Ellington, it is superficial at best, and demeaning at worst. Ellington is depicted as a well-dressed operator, a thief of other people’s work whose suit became a “strait jacket.” Oh, he was also a cad. (Well, he didn’t lie about it: “music is my mistress,” as he put it.) We learn of Ellington’s cool managerial style when he fired Charles Mingus, but not of the impeccable social grace (and stiff upper lip) that enabled him to say, when he failed to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1965: “Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young.”

Ellington’s greatest recordings, Gopnik says, were short tunes recorded in the 1930s and 1940s, and mostly “tinny”. But then most of the records made in the Swing Era were tinny (and short). It’s not exactly wrong to say he achieved his peak in the early 40s, but that judgment has been reshaped, if not eclipsed, by the reappraisal of his extraordinary work of the 50s and 60s. Many of those pieces are suites and film scores that are anything but tinny thanks to modern recording technology. The majesty of late Ellington has been explored by Stanley Crouch and other Ellingtonians, but Gopnik seems to be unaware of it.

He seems no more aware of Ellington’s influence as a pianist. Ellington, he says, was merely OK as a pianist: another cliche of an older (and superseded) school of critics, never shared by musicians. An entire school of jazz pianism grew out of Ellington’s work: the work of Monk, Randy Weston, Jaki Byard, and Cecil Taylor, among others, is unimaginable without Ellington’s example. Monk devoted a record to his tunes; Cecil Taylor has spoken frequently of Ellington’s “orchestral” style at the piano; Coltrane teamed up with him on a memorable record. Again, one wonders: is Gopnik aware that Ellington has been an enormous influence on the playing — not merely, or mainly, the repertoire — of younger pianists like Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran?

Perhaps Gopnik simply hasn’t listened to much post-Ellington jazz piano beyond Bill Evans, about whom he wrote an admiring piece some years ago. That piece was a lyrical celebration of the recordings that Evans made at the Village Vanguard in 1961 with the drummer Paul Motian and the bassist Scott LaFaro. Not only was it rapturous, it had none of the condescension that mars Gopnik’s discussion of Ellington. (It takes nothing away from Evans’s remarkable achievement to say that there has always been something off-putting about the way he’s lionized by certain critics, as if it took a white man to turn jazz into a modernist art form.)

But it’s not, finally, the errors or assumptions that are most troubling about this essay: it’s that entirely undeserved tone of magisterial (indeed “breathless”) authority. It’s an unhappy reminder that if the subject is a jazz musician, even a figure as towering as Edward Kennedy Ellington, the usual critical standards are suspended.

Nelson Mandela and how we talk about the state in Africa

I have heard the question posed again and again. But there may be a problem with the question, because it already presumes to know in advance what the problem of the state in Africa. It may be better to ask what effect Mandela has had on the idea of the state in Africa and what his leadership means for how we assess the state in Africa.

… The first point to recognize is that most states in Africa were formed as a consequence of independence struggles. State power followed long and bitter anti-colonial struggles, with the promise not only of building a nation, but also enabling a public sphere. The consequences of these struggles have had an enduring and lasting effect on the political formation of the state in Africa. The second is that many of these states came into being at the height of the Cold War. And the ideological struggles of the Cold War have had devastating consequences for the shape of African politics.

Mandela is one of the last in that generation of leaders to come out of this mileu and in some sense his lesson is an important one. He recalled what the struggles of the twentieth century were principally about. In the aftermath of a long twentieth century, he reminded us that Africa would have to change its concepts if it was to remain true to its anti-colonial convictions. His was a reminder that Africa could no longer rely on the scripts of the Cold War. The Cold War left in its wake mangled bodies and fractured subjects and political formations across Southern Africa. In fact apartheid was a project of the Cold War and its devastation was felt in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. If one thinks about apartheid and what its consequences were in Southern Africa those were the consequences of the Cold War. Liberation movements and post-independent states were marked by the effects of the Cold War.

What Mandela offered us was a possibility of re-inventing the concept of the political. We’ve got to think about other modalities for building democratic societies, one’s that are cognizant of the dehumanization of race and underdevelopment. But we have to think of these in ways that do not simply repeat earlier scripts of resistance. We need new scripts, new concepts and new questions.

But let me address the fantasy of the West that it is better off because it has a change of leadership every so often. To determine the importance of Mandela along these lines is to lower the bar on what we expect from our leaders. We should not measure a democracy in terms simply of a change in leadership. Rather, the health of a state should be measured in terms of leaders who leave office with a significant shift in political discourse that affirms and actualises as far as possible a theory of change. That’s the sign of great leadership…to leave behind a stronger set of possibilities in one’s wake.

Source.

File Under: Mahmood Mamdani on South Africa’s much vaunted Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Political scientist Mahmood Mamdani disagrees with RW Johnson (remember him?) about the South African TRC; Johnson now writes letters to the London Review of Books (he used to write for them):

Because the TRC focused on perpetrators and overlooked the beneficiaries of mass violations of rights abuses – such as the pass laws and forced expulsions – it allowed the vast majority of white South Africans to go away thinking that they had little to do with these atrocities. Indeed, most did learn nothing new. The alternative would have been for the TRC to show white South Africans that no matter what their political views – whether they were for, against or indifferent to apartheid – they were all its beneficiaries, whether it was a matter of the residential areas where they lived, the jobs they held, the schools they went to, the taxes they did or did not pay, or the cheap labour they employed. Because the TRC was not a legislative organ, because its decisions – except on amnesty – did not have the force of law, it did not face the same political restrictions as the negotiators at Kempton Park. At the same time, the TRC had access to state resources and was beamed into South African living rooms in prime time. It should have educated ordinary citizens, black and white, about everyday apartheid and its impact on the life chances and circumstances of generations of South Africans. This would have brought home to one and all the rightness and necessity of social justice. In the end, the TRC addressed itself to a tiny minority of South Africans, perpetrators and their victims, the former state operatives and the latter political activists. It ignored the experience of the vast majority of South Africans.

Source.

Thanks to Eusébio, it’s common for European nations’ football fortunes to depend on African players today

Historian Eric Hobsbawn once wrote of the centrality of national soccer teams to national identity in Europe, that “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” And that allows it to represent a more inclusive image of the national idea, as in the case of France’s 1998 World Cup victory with a team dominated by black and Arab players. But it was Eusébio and his Mozambican, Cape Verdean and Angolan teammates that first gave a European country a different image of itself on the football field.

Portugal’s national team remains a platform for gifted African players caught in the complex legacies of centuries of colonial expansion. Today, Portugal’s most exciting young talent is the outrageously skillful Galatasaray winger Armindo Tué Na Bangna, commonly known as Bruma, a player born in Guinea-Bissau who moved to Portugal as a child. And few people know that Madeira, where Cristiano Ronaldo was born, is effectively an African island.

Some insist that Eusébio was not an African player at all, arguing that he cut his connection with the continent when he left for Lisbon in 1960. Eusebio himself never saw it that way, calling Portugal his “second homeland.” National identity has become increasingly fluid and complex in the post-colonial era of migration, not least on the football field.

“I spoke to the great Eusébio a couple of years back,” wrote football journalist Tim Vickery upon learning of the player’s death. “He told me—and I’m sure he meant it—that he could die happy after seeing the 2010 World Cup. He was so happy to see that the continent of his birth had been able to stage the tournament which helped make his name.”

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has observed that international soccer allows for “a kind of nationalism that expands as your country loses.”

In her case, as soon as Nigeria is knocked out, she transfers her support to the next African team. In the 1960s, those triumphant years of liberation when African nationalism was at its zenith, Eusébio and his astounding talent, claimed as passionately by millions of Portuguese as he was by millions of Africans, epitomized the new modes of belonging that characterize our age.

* This is an excerpt from a piece we wrote for Al Jazeera America on the occasion of Eusebio’s passing. Read the rest of the piece here.

Happy New Year!

We’re taking a well deserved break. Back on January 11th.

Top Music Videos of 2013

Ah, 2013 was good for the beautiful creature that is the music video. From big budget studio productions to creatively bootstrapped independent visuals, the year provided a bumper harvest. And with the magic of youtube channel subscriptions, music videos became ever more accessible. The incredible pace of production made it nearly overwhelming to keep up, but we were able to cope and now present to you the top videos of 2013.

Undoubtedly one of the songs of the year, “Khona” marked the comeback of kwaito group Mafikizolo and features the rising stars of South African dance, Vintage Cru, who we recently interviewed:

Creative, stylish and clever, Nigerian Temi Dollface delivered to us her “Pata Pata”:

Takeifa, a genre-defying band of siblings from Senegal, rocked us with “Supporter”:

Alec Lomami, child of the DR Congo now living in Cape Town, was joined by Sammus and Badi Banx for his video game-inspired “C’est La Vie (CLV)”:

Ethiopian-Israeli Ester Rada melded her smooth vocals with ethio-jazz to create “Life Happens”:

Always on point, though especially so in 2013, the brilliant mind of Rwandan-Belgian Stromae brought us the sentimental masterpiece “Papaoutai”:

EL got spiritual with M.anifest in the desert for the gorgeously silhouetted “Hallelujah”

Sinkane, with his Sudanese roots, turned up the heat in his ethereal, kaleidoscopic, entrancing song “Warm Spell”:

Gael Faye shows just how effervescent Bujumbura, Burundi can be in “Bouge a Buja”:

Singer Yegna, with the help of Haile Roots gives us a peek into colorful world of popular Ethiopian music with “Abet”

Honorable mentions:

Lindiwe Suttle – “Kamikaze Art”

Daara J Family – “Celebrate”

Iyadede – “Not the Same” 

Jojo Abot – “Hex”

Zwart Licht – “Vanaf Nu”

Akwasi ft. Rob Dekay – “Een Wedstrijd”

Burna Boy – “Yawa Dey”

Just A Band ft.Octopizzo and Stan – “Dunia Ina Mambo” 

Dj Djeff feat Nacobeta, Agre G e Game Walla – “Mwangolé”

Ja Nee: South Africa in 2013

My favorite South Africanism is an Afrikaans expression: “Ja Nee”.

The expression – “Yes/No” in English – has contested meanings. For some, it signals agreement in a conversation, “Ja Nee, you’re right.”

The expression is also used to signal hesitation: “Ja nee, it depends.” When reality is too stark, hesitation creeps in. We hesitate not because we’re too lazy to express opinion, but because sometimes, things are usually more complex then well-packaged tabloid headlines. When someone tries to solicit a comment in this instance, “Ja Nee” comes in handy as a fallback gimmick.

Urban legend holds that the expression originated around a dinner table in an Afrikaner home. A tough question was asked to the family member with fundamentally different political views. The dude’s views probably went against the dominant narrative of Afrikaner Nationalism and the rogue Dutch Reformed Church of the day. The question was asked and the poor fellow – careful not to offend – muttered “Ja Nee”. Nothing else was said.

2013 was no ordinary year for South Africa. Our noisy body-politic, aha moments in sports and pop culture sketch a South Africa difficult to express. In trying to figure out if 2013 meant anything real – in tangible terms – for South Africa’s social order, “Ja Nee” is my response.

As common parlance goes, “things could’ve gone better” or “things could’ve gone worse.” This is perhaps South Africa’s problem, there’s always enough to make noise out of and too little of it makes sense.

1. And the Oscar goes to…

There was a missed opportunity for authentic reflection when the world learnt that Oscar Pistorius, South African paralympic champion, had shot Reeva Steenkamp. The gaze fell on Oscar as our blue-eyed boy who let us down. Chief Magistrate Nair held that Oscar’s lawyers had met the criteria for proving the “exceptional circumstances” required by South African law for Oscar’s release. Bail was granted at R 1 million ($112,000), partly revealing the bias South African’s justice system has to the wealthy. Reeva became a side-character, an unfortunate loss forgotten in the ruckus.

2. Corruption? Call it something else, man.

For the most part, South African media often reports corruption as a plague unique to the public sector. Corruption can exist nowhere else except here, for some. But there’s also a different shade of scandal, not dark enough to be scorned at, that crept up in 2013. Cartels they call them. Fifteen construction companies contravened sections of the South African Competition Act of 89 of 1998. The contracts in question, valued in R 30 billion, we rigged and fixed. The reportage of the affair was interesting. ‘Constructiongate’ – the unimaginative tag for the affair – was public knowledge as early as March 2007. South African media gave the matter a side-eye, indignation was lacking and the size of the penalties? Too small.

3. What’s your number, Number 1?

After his victory at the ANC’s National Congress in Mangaung, Jacob Zuma probably resolved that he would go all out in 2013. When the year started, Nkandla was already etched in South Africa’s vocabulary. The lad called Moral Outrage came out and shrieked: “How can one man spend R 200 million in public money for security upgrades for his own home?”

Zuma, our fall-boy, has good friends and comrades. Some help pay his bills, and some cover-up and spin for him. After a long-drawn-out investigation, the Security Cluster concluded that there was no wrong doing on Zuma’s part. Fire pools, culverts and air-conditioners were all part of ‘security upgrades’ on the Presidents’ residence. Right, hey?

We will say nothing about Zuma’s gaffe on roads in Malawi. Cause ya’ know, this is not Africa.

4. Nouveau Rooi Gevaar

‘Rooi gevaar’ was a trope used to invoke alarmism about the ‘communist forces’ and South Africa’s liberation movement during Apartheid. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and South Africa’s huggy moment in 1994, the term fell away from popular national discourse.

On 10 October 2013, a new ‘Rooi Gevaar’ was born. 250 protestors armed with red balloons paraded Pretoria. Their cause? Well, they wanted to “raise their voices against the oppression of and violence against White South African minority.” Unbelievable.

5. Free, Nelson Mandela

With the click of a button, obits, tributes and vanity shards were rolled out. The great icon of South Africa’s liberation, Nelson Mandela is dead uDalibhunga, the founding MK commander and the man once asininely called a ‘terrorist’ was hagiographed as a benign old man. For 10 days, Mandela’s memory was condensed a teddy bear – a benign old man fond of children and giving people hugs. Mandela the revolutionary and great political strategist was forgotten. Most of us milked the moment, there was a Mandela everything – from car mirror covers to concerts – we all claimed Mandela’s heirloom. Cheese.

As the story goes, the ou at the dinner table in the Afrikaner household eventually said something more substantial when his family members begged for his comment. “Nou se ek fokkol verder. Die twee woorde is mos genoeg.” [I will say nothing else. The two words are enough].

“Ja Nee” is my conversation fallback ruse for South Africa in 2013.