Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 441

A Hollywood studio is making a film about Pele

Dramatic films about football–with few exceptions, say “Sixty Six” or “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation“– are usually a bust. It seems hard to recreate on-field action or to make connections to larger themes about the nation, identity politics, institutional violence, capitalism or the romance of the beautiful game. And nowadays professional footballers’ lives off-field can be regimented and organized, drained of any real drama. Mario Balotelli, or before him Lilian Thuram or Eric Cantona are major exceptions. Lionel Messi, arguably the best player in the world right now, is quite a bore, with little politics to speak off except when he is setting shell companies in South American to not pay taxes on his millions. So we are not sure what to expect from the new biopic “Pele,” about the life of Edson Arantes de Nascimiento, who emerged as probably the world’s best player between 1958 and 1970 (when he won the World Cup three times; the only player to have done so) and, in the view of some, is the greatest player of all time. (Post the 1958 World Cup, Brazil’s Congress declared Pele a “non-exportable national treasure.” We suspect the new film may do better than most dramatic films about football.

Film industry site Variety reports (it also posted the still from the film embedded above) that shooting is almost done and the film will come out just in time for the 2014 World Cup.

So why is “Pele” different? For one, though the film is financed by an American studio and directed by two American filmmakers, those filmmakers are the Zimbalist brothers, who directed the documentary “The Two Escobars,” which even the Colombians we know admit is a very good film. One of them also lived in Rio before where he made a documentary about music culture, “Favela Rising.” Secondly, it uses a mostly local cast in the major roles; Pele is played by two Brazilian actors (as a child and a young man respectively) and Seu Jorge (yes, him) plays Pele’s father, who played professionally for Fluminese. Finally, the film gets the themes right: Michael Zimbalist told Variety the film links Pele’s story with that of Brazilian national identity: “It was the birth of the legend that parallels the birth of the Brazilian national identity, coming off the 1950 (World Cup) loss (to Uruguay) in Maracana stadium.”

We’re disappointed though that the film will only focus on Pele’s early life: as the promo material on the producer’s site reads: from “… his impoverished youth to his unlikely rise to futbol stardom in 1958.” Basically, it will stop right after the World Cup finals in Sweden which Brazil won 5-2 and in which the then-17-year old Pele starred. The producers are not saying why the film ends in 1958, but we can suspect Pele, who is known to be very image conscious, may have something to do with it. Also, his life after 1958 gets way more interesting. He got injured early on in the 1962 World Cup (Brazil still won as Garrincha starred) and in 1966 Brazil was eliminated in the first round. The 1970 World Cup—when Brazil beat Italy in the final—would be the climax of Pele’s storied career.  When he finally left his longtime Brazilian club Santos (where he set most of his records, among them 1281 goals in 1363 matches) to play in a foreign league, he chose the Cosmos of the so-so NASL in the United States when he was already semi-retired. His post-football career has been marred by his conservative politics or his penchant to have his name linked to any product so long as he earns money. This is in stark contrast to a player like Diego Maradona, who for all his personal excesses always has had better politics. Which is perhaps why some fans remain divided over who–Pele or Diego Maradona–is the greatest player of all time.

The #BullshitFiles: An Open Letter to the New Yorker

Following the publication of Elizabeth Rubin’s profile of Shannon Sedgwick Davis (“How a Texas Philanthropist Helped Fund the Hunt for Joseph Kony”, posted October 21, 2013), many of our readers have raised concerns about the New Yorker’s fact-checking process, as well as its apparent lack of interest in the legal and ethical implications of funding private military operations with secretly managed funds. Given the public proliferation of “crowd sourced” militarized humanitarian ventures, we question your decision to publish a recycled defense of mercenary-activity-for-humanitarian-intervention, despite its record of failure in ongoing conflicts in Central Africa.

We are particularly surprised that you gave Elizabeth Rubin an outlet. Since the late 1990s, Rubin has used liberal platforms like The New York Times to paint a line between “freewheeling mercenaries” and private military companies. She argues the latter should be distinguished if we can “regulate their accountability and conduct” (as she said in a Times piece published on February 4, 1999). Though Eeben Barlow (in the photo above)—world-famous mercenary and founder of Executive Outcomes, the model on which all private military companies operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are based, according to his publisher–has thanked Rubin for her enlightened perspective (Executive Outcomes, page 396 for example), guilt and emotional manipulation too often fill in for the promised discussion of regulation and accountability in Rubin’s journalism. Even in her 1999 article (a response to the war in Sierra Leone), Rubin chased the distinction with a facile and non sequitur link to the Rwandan genocide:

What is needed is a debate about whether we can distinguish freewheeling mercenaries from private military companies and regulate their accountability and conduct. If we could have saved hundreds of thousands of Rwandans from genocide by spending $25 million, wouldn’t it have been worth the price?

The problem—as many other deeply concerned observers have said—is that whether we call these groups mercenaries or private military contractors, we still need to know who they are accountable to. If they are efficient, and in the hunt for Joesph Kony that is a big “if”, then who are they efficient for? According to your column, the secret, private military sent on a training mission around the Great Lakes was accountable to the Ugandan generals, Jason Russell, some friends from Goldman Sachs and the “agricultural maverick” Howard Buffett.

This profile is vacuous at best, at worst it is a labored attempt to legitimize unregulated, para-state military actors based on caricatures of family values, progressive Christianity, and basic human empathy. Through Rubin, Davis is a “passionate, small blond woman from Texas”, “all mom and all passion, driven by a progressive Christian faith” whose plan to secretly fund mercenaries was rejected by politicians who didn’t understand her vision and humility:

Advocacy groups and human-rights analysts working in Africa’s Great Lakes region have great respect for her work. Government officials are more wary. Not because they don’t like her or what she’s up to—I’ve never met anyone who didn’t—but because they don’t know how to process it all. “It all sounded so ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’ ” one U.S. official said—a reference to Joanne Herring, the wealthy Houston activist and talk-show host who teamed up with the Texas politician to train and arm mujahideen fighters to take on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. (Julia Roberts played her in the movie.) Davis couldn’t be less like Herring. She’s no socialite, and she has avoided any press out of a conviction that this was the Ugandans’ fight, and that her role would be misinterpreted.

Julia Roberts aside, Rubin never addresses the State’s concerns about building the capacities of autonomous military groups. She begs ignorance about the Ugandan generals, the conditions under which the L.R.A. developed, the history of the regional conflict, and its stakes. Instead she (once again) celebrates Barlow’s skill and compassion.

In this profile, Eeben Barlow’s experience running death squads for the Apartheid government is smoothed over as a “colorful past.” This could hardly be in worse taste. Who are you trying to kid, and why?

Barlow was second-in-command of the 32 Battalion, which was secretly formed under Vorster in the 1970s to destabilize the pro-communist government in Angola. Known as the Terrible Ones in Portuguese, his unit boasted the highest “kill rate” of the elite Apartheid military units, and was later investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after its soldiers were charged with attempted rape, and several incidents of sexual harassment. From the South African border wars, Barlow was recruited for the infamous CCB, where he reportedly spent his time evading international sanctions to buy and sell South African weapons by setting up a complex web of front companies. Writing in Harper’s Magazine in February 1997 Rubin did see fit to explain that:

By the time the CCB death squads were exposed in 1990 under President F. W. de Klerk, Barlow had already established Executive Outcomes as a counterintelligence consultancy

And

For elite commandos, who had reason to fear prosecution for apartheid political crimes, E.O. provided a golden parachute into exile and salaries three times higher than those of the peacetime national army.

But in your article, Rubin’s attempt to distance Eeben Barlow from his work and reputation forces her to construct elaborate dinner parties, involving Barlow’s Buddhist son watching Jason Russell describe the horrors of child soldiers to his son, and somehow through a mystical connection with the peace-loving Buddhist feeling a “personal bond” with Barlow. Incredibly, Rubin explains that Davis “navigates on instinct and connection”.

It began when she met his wife and teen-age son, Jay, a Buddhist who urged his father, after they watched an Invisible Children video together, to help stop Kony. He reminded Davis of her own son—“all heart.” Barlow himself is a complicated character; he has mellowed with age, and has adopted the role of a lecturer and wise man on failed states, African conflicts, and counterinsurgency. For this mission, he even cut his trainers’ salaries in half.

We’re not sure how saying Barlow has “mellowed” as he agrees to conduct secret training operations for the Ugandan generals, financed by a secret group of billionaires with potentially substantial agricultural interests in the Great Lakes Region has any more meaning than praising Barlow for his compassion and generosity, when “expenses” and “half an undisclosed trainer’s salary” are no indication of the amount of money involved in this operation.

Either way, this kind of fawning journalism reflects poorly on the New Yorker and your readers deserve better.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

Obiang’s son offers Equatorial Guinea’s national team a bonus of $6,7m if they beat Spain in friendly

We’re beginning to think the higher-ups at the Spanish FA didn’t really prepare themselves for what they were getting themselves into when they decided to schedule–at short notice–a meaningless friendly football match for La Roja against a group of Brazilian professionals (sorry Equatorial Guinea’s national team) in Malabo. When the announcement was first made last week, very few media outlets noticed that there was something wrong about scheduling the match in what amounts to a family-run, police state. But by the weekend Spanish (and other) media had picked up on the story. So much so that an El Mundo journalist dubbed the country’s president “a hooligan.” The Spanish FA (and Obiang’s various PR firms) probably thought that’s the end of all the attention, except they had not reckoned with Teodorin Obiang, the President’s son.

If you’re wondering  who Teodorin is, he’s in his late 30s or early 40s and the country’s Second Vice President (basically heir to his father), former agricultural and water affairs minister and the head of state security.  He’s also a part-time US resident. If you want to study up on Teodorin, we’d suggest reading this 2009 front-page story in The New York Times or Ken Silverstein’s long post on Foreign Policy.

Anyway, El Mundo now reports that Equatorial Guinea’s only TV station (owned by Teodorin) announced he had told the head of the national football federation that he’d give a bonus of €5 million ($6,7 million) to the national team  if they beat Spain. Of course this would all come out of the government’s budget which the Obiangs treat like their personal bank account. We wonder what he’d offer the team if they win an actual competitive match (he offered €751,265 to the team if they beat Libya in a first round African Cup of Nations tournament match in January 2012). But we also think Teodorin might be bluffing given Spain’s current position in world football against that of Equatorial Guinea–ranked 119th by FIFA. In any case, this is not the first time, Teodorin has acted like the public purse is his private bank account. Just google his name. One Blog listed at least nine of the bizarre things he’s paid with the people’s money (these include: Michael Jackson’s “Bad Tour” glove, a 16th century gold vermeil elephant once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, renting a $700,000 yacht to throw a party for his former rapper girlfriend Eve, houses, expensive cars and a Gulf Stream jet.) To that we can add the record company that produced no music, white tigers he rented for a party (!),  15,000 DVDs (a Guardian reported calculated that’s about 41 years worth of watching films), rugs for his Malibu house ($59,850), and spending $1 million during a night of partying in Cape Town. This is who is hosting Xavi, Iniesta, Sergio Ramos and Casillas et al, for a game on Sunday.

Obiang’s son now offering Equatorial Guinea’s national team a bonus of $6,7m if they beat Spain in friendly

We’re beginning to think the higher-ups at the Spanish FA didn’t really prepare themselves for what they were getting themselves into when they decided to schedule–at short notice–a meaningless friendly football match for La Roja against a group of Brazilian professionals (sorry Equatorial Guinea’s national team) in Malabo. When the announcement was first made last week, very few media outlets noticed that there was something wrong about scheduling the match in what amounts to a family-run, police state. But by the weekend Spanish (and other) media had picked up on the story. So much so that an El Mundo journalist dubbed the country’s president “a hooligan.” The Spanish FA (and Obiang’s various PR firms) probably thought that’s the end of all the attention, except they had not reckoned with Teodorin Obiang, the President’s son.

If you’re wondering  who Teodorin is, he’s in his late 30s or early 40s and the country’s Second Vice President (basically heir to his father), former agricultural and water affairs minister and the head of state security.  He’s also a part-time US resident. If you want to study up on Teodorin, we’d suggest reading this 2009 front-page story in The New York Times or Ken Silverstein’s long post on Foreign Policy.

Anyway, El Mundo now reports that Equatorial Guinea’s only TV station (owned by Teodorin) announced he had told the head of the national football federation that he’d give a bonus of €5 million ($6,7 million) to the national team  if they beat Spain. Of course this would all come out of the government’s budget which the Obiangs treat like their personal bank account. We wonder what he’d offer the team if they win an actual competitive match (he offered €751,265 to the team if they beat Libya in a first round African Cup of Nations tournament match in January 2012). But we also think Teodorin might be bluffing given Spain’s current position in world football against that of Equatorial Guinea–ranked 119th by FIFA. In any case, this is not the first time, Teodorin has acted like the public purse is his private bank account. Here’s some ways he’s wasted public money. One Blog listed at least nine of the bizarre things he’s paid with the people’s money (these include: Michael Jackson’s “Bad Tour” glove, a 16th century gold vermeil elephant once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, renting a $700,000 yacht to throw a party for his former rapper girlfriend Eve, houses, expensive cars and a Gulf Stream jet.) To that we can add the white tigers he rented for a party (!),  15,000 DVDs, rugs for his Malibu house ($59,850), and spending $1 million during a night of partying in Cape Town. This is who is hosting Xavi, Iniesta, Sergio Ramos and Casillas et al, for a game on Sunday.

Shameless Self Promotion: T.O. Molefe makes New York Times debut

The New York Times gave us swivel-eyed loons like Nicholas Kristof, Tom Friedman and humility tsar David Brooks. But we’re forgiving people at AIAC and despite this we let them borrow the Rt Hon T.O. Molefe to show them how it’s done. One of two dozen new “international” columnists, he made his debut on The New York Times website yesterday and has been a regular at AIAC for some time. We saw plenty of people on social networks congratulating Molefe yesterday. This is a mistake of course: they ought to be congratulating the New York Times instead. For his first NYT column, he wrote about neoliberal politics in Cape Town, where he lives. Here’s an excerpt:

South Africa’s progress toward realizing the values of social justice and substantive equality embodied in its Constitution has been agonizingly slow. Twenty years ago after this country was reborn after more than three centuries of rampant and institutionalized racial discrimination, it remains mired in economic disparities.

Unfortunately, despite evidence showing that the economy almost tripled in size over the past two decades and inequality worsened, pundits, business leaders and policy makers, including [the opposition Democratic Alliance, which rules Cape Town], continue to insist that growth heals all. It just needs to be made more inclusive, they say.

The solution, they say, lies in deregulating the labor market to get people into jobs — regardless of whether those jobs are secure or allow people to live with basic dignity — and relaxing exchange controls to give South African capital greater global mobility, because it will all trickle down to the poor in the end.

They are wrong. The solutions they propose have been tried elsewhere and have failed. But such arguments are particularly infuriating because they relegate to a side show the goal of remedying the racial and economic inequality created by colonialism and apartheid — those same forces that pushed Ms. Boltney and millions of others to the city’s periphery — out of sight.

Since its rebirth, South Africa’s has had in place the moral and constitutional basis for ending inequality and poverty in the most direct and equitable manner possible: redistributing wealth and income from the rich minority to the poor majority.

But, instead of pressing ahead with this, the country’s leaders succumbed to a false global doctrine that — using the World Economic Forum’s archaic assessments of competitiveness — views the basic human rights protections contained in South Africa’s Constitution and labor regulations as factors that reduce the efficiency of markets. Such egalitarian laws, in this view, prevent the country from competing for foreign direct investment with countries like India and Indonesia, which do not have the same progressive founding ethos of social justice and human dignity.

Rather than acting as champions for the global human rights agenda, South African leaders across the political spectrum keep parroting the false doctrine of growth, deregulation and jobs at whatever cost.

 

Obiang Who?

Amidst the worst economic and social crisis Spain can remember, there is an iconic institution living its most glorious days. The Spanish national football team, commonly remembered in the past for sour losses and unforgettable mistakes, has taken world football by storm after winning a World Cup and two European Championships in the last five years. This indisputable success of a golden generation of players has raised the team to such heights of praise and public importance that any criticism is rare. Anytime a problem rears its head–for example, the accusations of a private party in a Brazilian hotel during the Confederations Cup–the buzz is quickly downplayed and conveniently buried by more urgent affairs. This time the situation is a bit more weighty.

Not that the friendly game against Equatorial Guinea scheduled for next Saturday 16 in Malabo has been the talk of town, but the decision to play in Obiang’s turf raises obvious questions about the ethics of a unique team that has been pictured here and abroad as a pristine bunch of humble geniuses, often involved in humanitarian campaigns and all sorts of goodwill gestures that come with fame nowadays.

The initial announcement of the match was met with little commentary as Sean blogged here last Friday (later that day some media, including The UK Guardian, picked up on the story). By the weekend (Saturday), more journalists were weighing in. Alberto Rojas, an El Mundo journalist who has traveled several times to South Sudan, Somalia, DR Congo or Rwanda, wrote an article on Saturday–titled “A ‘hooligan’ named Teodoro Obiang,” in which he wrote that “the longest-serving president in Africa uses football as an international showcase of his kleptomaniac regime shielded by its huge oil reserves.”

The more influential El País published an extensive article (“The dangerous liaisons of La Roja“), focused on the commercial ties between Spain and Equatorial Guinea as a plausible reason for the match:

Spain maintains diplomatic relations with Equatorial Guinea, has an embassy there, is the third commercial client of the country–after USA and Italy–and is the second provider of Guinea–after China.

The not-so-transparent governing body of football in Spain, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (REFF), is responsible for the national team’s season schedule, with friendly matches being one of its most lucrative operations. This time, both the game in Malabo and the one in South Africa will be free of charge. The REFF secretary general said yesterday:

We collaborate in many areas with the Guinean federation, which has asked us many times to play there. Now the conditions to make it happen were present and the game will be a major economic help for them. We will play for the Guinean people.

The feeling is disappointing. Almost no one cares about the implications of this match in Malabo, knows where Equatorial Guinea is or, even worse, who that old smiling guy is (in the photo, second from the left) who has invited La Roja to play in his country.

On the Journalistic Value of Internet Map Memes

At the Washington Post, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a complex issue, when color-coded in a way that reassured Americans of their innate Superiority over inferior Peoples, could always be relied upon to get way more Hits than any actual Reporting.

Before long, the Washington Post announced that it had abandoned Journalism forever. The following Generations, who liked Reporting but were not so fond of the Study of Supremacist Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that these Maps were Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered them up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of those Maps, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Discipline of The Cartography of Bullshit.

* With sincere apologies to Jorge Luis Borges.

How about booking a night in this ‘shantytown’?

Where else, but in #SouthAfrica. There are times when even we here at Africa is a Country are speechless. Who comes up with offensive stuff like this? Emoya Estate in Bloemfontein, South Africa’s judicial capital, is a private game reserve, a luxury hotel, a conference center, and a spa. We learn all of this from the banner on its website. But with a little perusal, we also learn that this Free State resort offers accommodation in a Basotho village and a shantytown. In the former, for roughly half the monthly household income of an actual Basotho family, one can stay in a gorgeous suite complete with stone masonry, a fireplace, DSTV, air conditioning, wifi, and pool access. Not even the façade of the structure or the layout of the “village” resembles anything Sotho, though it does remind me a bit of clay-shingled condos in southern Florida.

But, wait, it gets worse. See, for a price nearly equivalent to the median monthly income of a South African domestic worker, you can stay for a night in a real informal settlement! I mean, just because these shacks have “under-floor heating and wireless internet access” doesn’t make them any less real. These aren’t just shacks or shanties though; some people call them Makhukhus! Go ahead and Google “Makhukhus” and see how widespread and authentic the term really is. (Mokhukhu is the Sesotho word for shack.)

If the concept itself weren’t offensive enough, check out this introductory gem from the description on the resort’s site:

Millions of people are living in informal settlements across South Africa. These settlements consist of thousands of houses also referred to as Shacks, Shantys (sic) or Makhukhus.

Most offensive of course is the naturalization of informal settlements as some sort of indigenous habitat. No one wants to live in a shack, not a single damn person. This is a housing type and spatial form that emerges from necessity, precisely because there’s a worsening housing crisis in South African cities – not because this is how some select ethno-cultural group chooses to live.

I’ll leave to the side the racist implications of this township tour without a township. The falsehoods continue:

A Shanty usually consists of old corrugated iron sheets or any other waterproof material which is constructed in such a way to form a small “house” or shelter where they make a normal living.

There’s nothing waterproof about a shack. That’s why every winter as the rain begins to fall, people literally move their shacks from flooded sections of settlements to drier land, hoping to secure a livable patch, however temporarily. It’s also why most shacks have buckets on the floor to collect dripping water if they’re lucky, and if they’re not, they wake up early every morning and shovel out the flood like the Danaïdes in reverse.

Then there’s the layout of the “town,” which doesn’t resemble any South African shantytown I’ve ever been to. Rather, it recalls Adam Kuper’s widely cited description of Iron Age Bantu settlements, what he called the Central Cattle Pattern.

I could go on all day, but I’ve leave it there. For more, check out Sipho Hlongwane’s brilliant takedown in the Johannesburg daily, Business Day. Here’s to hoping that this informal settlement is bulldozed and its residents are relocated to Blikkiesdorp.

Coda

While certainly not as bad as the white colonial themed wedding complete with black servants in fezzes, a white photographer capturing a white couple in wedding gown and tux in the Emoya shantytown is a close second. “Elizna & Johan,” we read, “is one of those young sweet, gentle & loving couples.” Here they are sharing a cuddle against the strategically mismatched corrugated surface of a shack larger than any structure I’ve ever seen in an informal settlement:

And here they are, after a long day’s leisure, reclining against a zinc façade.

Isn’t it cute how the room numbers are meant to resemble enumeration markings on real shacks? You know, the numbers that the municipality paints on front doors to give informal settlement residents a place on the waiting list. I wonder if this settlement has shacks without numbers scheduled for demolition?

P-Square are Investigative Journalists

For a while now we’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Tumblr called ”Shit The Nigerian Elite Wastes Nigeria’s Money On.”

Since the country’s vast piles of cash are certainly not being spent on decent public health or education, improving the woeful national power supply or preventing planes from falling out of the sky, the super-rich in Nigeria have got to spend it on something.

Most of the source material for the Tumblr would come from Linda Ikeji, Nigeria’s hugely successful chronicler-in-chief of million dollar champagne bottles, vast Lekki mansions, grotesquely expensive wrist-watches and international shopping sprees of all kinds including her own (her sister recently posted Linda’s receipts online after she paid in cash for some crazy expensive designer guff in Dubai).

A real zinger this past week came courtesy of much-beloved duo P-Square (the brothers Peter and Paul), who posted a series of photos to Instagram of the two of them lounging in some kind of palace. Nobody is sure exactly whose house it is but Ikeji claimed it was “definitely the home of a top government official”.

P-Square (and really any Nigerian celeb in the same situation) are doing a kind of investigative journalism, whether they know it or not, by posting pictures from inside these kind of homes. Where paper trails are impossible to uncover and appropriation of funds is systemic, the best available mode of exposé is to show in as much detail as possible how the money is being spent. Of course, it would be nice to know who the owner of the house is, but the fact that we don’t know means it comes to stand as evidence of the venality of the political class as a whole.

Checking out the comments underneath Ikeji’s post, lots of readers were amazed by how “great” it is to be rich, but lots of others pointed out that this kind of absurd opulence is simply proof of corruption.

There was also a clear split between prosperity gospel types and those with a more austere faith. Here’s a sample from the comments section:

Moni is gudd oooooo. People way get am shud enjoy, as for us way stil dey hustle, God’s time is de best

living the good life GOD BLESS NIGERIA WHAT A HOUSE

This is what they aare using nigerias money for THIEVES!!!

Holy ghost fire!!!….I must be rich ..see chair. God just drop an everlasting tunnel of blessings into my life IJN. Faaaayyyyaaaaahhh. It’s so.

Tax payers money….I am afraid oo my people…end time things.

Well thats naija for u. A place were Government officials live on our collective wealth and yet some people in this same country can’t afford complete meals and basic health care. SHAME!!!

This boy na fool I swear, you won’t see Jayz or Kanye showing off like dis. Local boy

If na government official get this crib. Im dey mad, Na government official or na royalty im be.

Sometimes I just wonder why we Nigerians are rich and yet we live like poor people. Imagine how magnificent the interior of the house is. All in the name of comfort of the top officials without remembering the poor masses. I just hope tinz get beta 1 day.

Abeg see dinning room o, dat dinnin table sef go fit feed someone for months, God will judge every single person.

The last word on this goes to an “Anonymous” observer, who vented thus:

May GOD punish all Nigerian politicians.

Stealing the lives of their children.

Bad people.

Weekend Music Break 60

Wherever the sun is in the sky, it’s the right time for new music. Here’s this week’s collection.

French producer Débruit’s entrancing beats act as a surprisingly strong compliment to Sudanese singer Alsarah’s mesmerizing vocals. Gorgeous otherworldly visuals in the video for “Jibal Alnuba” off the two artists’ new collaboration album aljawal الجوال (The Traveler), blend with the music to make the whole ensemble an impressive creation.

Fata, Mbaye Dieye and Waly Seck demonstrate just how naturally hip-hop blends with popular Senegalese Mbalax rhythms in “Nguenté”.

MC/Singer Esperanzah Denswil from Holland by way of Suriname transforms into her captivating, resurrected alter ego Pink Oculus in her new single “Sweat”. And she certainly knows how to weave a story: “Legend has it that Pink Oculus once made a journey through the Egyptian desert with just a pouch of gold dust, 8 pairs of phoenix wings and a drink of water. This journey lasted 13 days and 13 nights and when she had found her way back to her homeland all her hair had gone from black to bright pink.”

The Finest Lady of South African house DJ CNDO delivers another addictive track with “Intokazi”.

Elevating Cameroonian hip-hop are JOVI and Eko Roosevelt in the jazz-infused “Bush Faller”.

Color saturated footage from the cellphone of South African producer MUZI acts as fitting visuals for the intense driving energy of his banger “SYMBOLS”. Download MUZI’s Bundu FX EP here.

Mozambican singer Kakana’s voice exudes positive vibes amidst vibrant colors in “Xiluva”.

Young South African singer Nakhane Toure proves he’s one to look out for in his passionate first single, “Fog”. In the video, simple black and white visuals show how complex identity can feel.

Leather and levitation characterize the high energy Duas Caras & Trez Agah track “Um em um milhão”.

Kanana and Rabbit are the Kenyan Bonnie and Clyde in “Ni Mapenzi Tu”.

And as a bonus this week we have the new single from Ghanaian singer Jojo Abot, the unique electronic-jazz fusion “Aim Straight”. With such a dynamic voice, Jojo is poised for takeover.