Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 444

The first rule of Halloween: Blackface and “Africa”- themed parties are out

Halloween, with its increasingly global appeal, is here again and that means children and adults alike get to dress in flamboyant costumes and overindulge on their vices. But through costumes and theme parties associated with this day, people attempt to take on identities other than their own. By assuming new identities, the characters and pop culture icons that are resurrected and creatively imagined demonstrate current social trends and more importantly act as a unique reflection of how people see each other. The ingenuity of make-believe can be amazing, but sadly, far too often, costumes become distasteful reminders of social discord (and the reason for its perpetuity) as well as the pervasiveness of ignorant and blatantly racist stereotypes.

A number of attempts have been made this year to advise revelers in making wise costume choices. There are lists of racist costumes to avoid and even examples of people pulling off costumes of characters and celebrities with a different cultural background than their own.

One hard and fast, non-negotiable rule to keep in mind when creating your Halloween masterpiece: blackface is never hip. Never. If you have any questions there’s a handy flowchart that can help.

Yet all the discussion on social media hasn’t stopped some ignorant people from shamefully embracing racist representations of other cultures. Considering “Africa” is an imagined fantasy-land in many peoples’ minds limited to wild animals, exotic “tribes” and colonial nostalgia, any “Africa”-themed party or costume will likely be a serious disaster. For some reason, ideas of Africa, when recycled and represented by outsiders, have a sinister tendency to take the form of the most simplistic and exaggerated stereotypes.

Let’s take the “Disco Africa” party thrown in Milan, Italy by a renowned fashion photographer Giampaolo Sgura on Saturday, October 26. According to one enthusiastic blogger who was at the event, “all fashionable people in Milan have been preparing for this event for a month.” Even the famous fashion designer Alessandro Dell’Acqua showed up (he’s the guy above with the zebra woman). He was in blackface dressed as the golliwog mascot of an old racist Italian licorice commercial … and he wasn’t the only one. Dell’Acqua’s images have now been removed from the websites that first celebrated them. At a time when black models already feel tokenized and discriminated against on the runway, and while the Italian state lets migrants from African countries die in its waters, let’s take a look at how the elite of Italy’s fashion community perceive “Africa”:

If these pictures did not satisfy your “Africa” party fetish just use the hashtag #discoafrica on instagram to help you get your fix.

Natasha Ndlovu, a British-Zimbabwean fashion blogger and model had this to say when she saw the images:

So, um, ok did these grown men miss the whole discussion on how offensive black face is? I know some of you are saying, but Natasha, this is more an American thing. But readers, there are these wonderful mediums called TV, books and the internet that have made is possible for even Bjork in her Icelandic hide-out to know that blackface is not fucking ok ! OK? And this is not the first time people in the fashion industry have been accused of doing black face. Did they not learn from their previous editorials, using white models to role-play black women by spraying them a darker shade? Remember the ‘African Queen” editorial? Oh yeah that’s right, myself and other black models were on vacation that day, so we just weren’t available for the shoot.

Things like this really PISS me off because as a black person and a black model, I struggle to find work and be valued in an industry that only cares about the color of my skin when they want to chuck a bright-neon bathing suit on me because, as the saying goes, “it goes well with your skin tone”. Just imagine the amount of times agencies have told me they can’t sign me because they already have a black girl that looks like me (yes, this has been said a few times) or that the clients they work with don’t hire black models.

While costumes of poor taste offer clues about social challenges in the societies that we live in, they say even more about the simple minds that bear them. Knowing these costumes play into generalizations and stereotypes of ignorant minds, let’s avoid the same mistakes with our critiques. It’s also not productive to get offended for the sake of it, we have to ask ourselves why these issues of representation persist and how we can address them together.

The New South African Family Film

The South African family film, “Felix!,” premiered earlier this year at the Durban International Film Festival, before making the rounds on the international film festival circuit. It tells the story of a young boy, Felix Xaba, who lives in an unspecified township in the Cape Town environs (it looks like Langa). As for his first name, Felix, is named after his mother’s employer, Felix Soames, a wealthy, white man for whom his mother works as a domestic laborer. Felix  gets a scholarship to an elite (read: white) private school (the set resembles SACS and Bishops) after his namesake pulls some strings and the all-white admissions committee makes their requisite condescending remarks. Felix aspires to be a great jazz saxophonist like his late father, much to his mother’s chagrin. Already adept at playing the penny whistle, Felix soon recruits two of his father’s former band-mates to teach him how to read music and play the sax in time for his school’s jazz concert.

Here’s the trailer:

“Felix!” was directed Roberta Durrant and written by Shirley Johnston — two ‘liberal’ white South African women. Durrant built a career making laugh-track sitcoms for South African public television, while Johnson, who lectures at a Cape Town film school, wrote for local soap opera “Isidingo.”

The film’s reception among festival, South African, and mainstream audiences has been good, with the work being described as ‘hopeful‘ and ‘Billy Elliot with Cape Jazz.‘ It won the Audience Award at the Durban International Film Festival, among other awards. It is however oozing with tokenism, condescension, misguided liberalism, and deeply, deeply problematic white South African Victorian and Christian-influenced fantasies of their post-apartheid society. It’s a film you’re supposed to take children to, but on many levels it is more disturbing and insidious than even the most adult works of cinema. This is a good, old-fashioned idyllic portrayals of Africa, Africans, and happy poverty.

Much like Durrant’s previous work, the film centers on the struggle of a black South African to fit into white South African society. In other words, the challenge the protagonist must face is that of integrating into a white world. Other than a seemingly drunk coloured man, the first people to speak in the film (and therefore the ones who set the tone for the rest of the film) are a team of white South Africans arguing over whether this black child should be admitted into their school. Hence, the liberal white vision of an acceptable new or ostensibly post-racial South Africa is one in which racial integration occurs on their terms. Treating white and non-white cultures as distinct units, the conundrum of liberal white South Africa lies in this idea that a post-racial society can only be achieved through the adoption of white South African ideals, culture, and norms by non-white South Africans.

Even though Felix’s mom cleans the house of a white man whose walls are covered in tacky ‘tribal art,’ who treats his dog more like a human being than the woman who cleans his floors, and makes her pose with African masks and spears, the director sees her film as having nothing to do with race and her white protagonists as respectful of their non-white compatriots. When asked in an interview whether the film takes on racial issues due to Felix’s mother’s job as a domestic servant for a white man, Roberta Durrant responded:

No, the film is not about racial differences in society since Minister Dondolo who has a high social position is a black man. And the situation that a black woman is cleaning a white man’s house is completely normal, but it is also ordinary that a black woman is cleaning a black man’s house. What always matters is to treat the people around you with respect, no matter if they are black or white. And in “Felix,” Mr. Soames treats Felix’ mother very respectfully and supportively. What is more an issue in the film is the difference between upper and lower class in South Africa: Felix who comes from an unprivileged social class gets the chance to show his talent and to live his dream.

I think Ms. Durrant does a better job of exposing the sort of flawed “postracial” politics and blissful ignorance that underscores this film than I ever could, so I’ll leave this quote alone for now. Suffice it to say that I feel this film falls way short of hopeful. It is an interesting study of the white, liberal South African psyche and visions of society, if nothing else.

Weekend Music Break 58

Your weekly dose of 10 new music videos. First up, from Kenya, Muthoni The Drummer Queen’s ode to Nairobi:

M.anifest, “Ghana man since 19 kojo-hoho”:

Indocile is a hip-hop crew from Liège, Belgium:

South of Belgium, representing the Congolese diaspora in France, new work by Black Bazar:

Ol’Kainry (representing Benin) and Youssoupha bring their version of that Pusha T & Kendrick Lamar ‘Nostalgia’ video from earlier this month:

Davido’s Skelewu already had an instructional dance video (accompanied by some controversy), but it comes with a new story now:

Cape Town’s winding mountain roads were made for longboarding — assuming you’ve seen this one already:

DJ Kent gets help from pop duo The Arrows on ‘Spin My World’:

Toro y Moi (an AIAC favorite) remixed Billie Holiday a while ago:

And a last South African tune to get your weekend started, courtesy Character, Oskido and Mono-T: ‘Inxeba Lendoda’:

Soweto Pride

Today, Johannesburg will host its annual Pride event with a march and other festivities. The 2013 event, titled, “Back To Our Roots,” was rescheduled in September and moved to the well-heeled Sandton district of the city. Yet both the new title and venue will likely not eliminate last year’s controversies. The 2012 Pride angered and disappointed many when the organizers violently turned away black activists who called for a one minute silence in honor of those black lesbian-identified women whose sexual orientation and gender identity had put their safety and their very lives at risk. (See last year’s coverage here.) Sexual violence targeting lesbian, black women has been a constant specter in South African society, although the frequently used term “corrective rape” remains contested, as activist Sekoetlane Phamodi has pointed out earlier this year. More than a decade after black lesbian activists founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women (FEW) to claim the rights of equal protection under South Africa’s constitution, targeted sexual violence still challenges these claims. The attempt on the part of activists with the One in Nine campaign to bring these issues to the fore of the 2012 Pride, and the resultant violent and disappointing response, underlines the daily challenges of life at the intersections of queerness, blackness, and township life.

To demand visibility and claim a queer identity in an environment structured by violent homo- and lesbophobia (Muholi’s term) as well as long-existant racial inequities is a tremendous challenge in South Africa. The original Pride celebrations in Johannesburg in the early 1990s were in this way a bold claiming of public space by people marginalized by their orientation (and just as often by their race, gender, and class identities as well). It is in this vein that a response to 2012 Pride, the Soweto Pride March attempted to “reclaim our space within Pride” through marching and celebrating not just sexual orientation but also the many other intersectional struggles and victories of black lesbians. Visual activists Zanele Muholi & Zandile Makhubu of Inkanyiso Queer Media created a fantastic series of photos documenting Soweto Pride. The many different figures in Muholi and Makhubu’s artwork capture a wide range of queer, black identities in celebration in Soweto.

These photographs are another part of Muholi’s larger work on documenting black lesbian life in South Africa. Her photographs of queer South African women have received numerous mentions in international news media, particularly for their varied (and often vulnerable) depictions of her subjects. Muholi and Makhubu’s work on the Soweto Pride shows a wide array of Pride celebrators in various outfits, poses, and moments of celebration. A celebration of solidarity and love in the midst of difference appear to be a common theme within the pieces.

Indeed, the images suggest much in common with the claims of a populist organizing group, the newly-formed Johannesburg People’s Pride, developed primarily in response to the results of the 2012 Johannesburg Pride. In their manifesto, People’s Pride called for a pride celebration that exists both as “a Political movement for social justice and social change” and that operates as “a microcosm of the society we wish to live in, and not a mirror of the divided one that we currently live in. We wish Pride to be a space that all can access, where all can be free, andwhere every voice is important.” Johannesburg People’s Pride celebrated as part of the larger Soweto Pride, and then held its own, pointedly political march on Constitution Hill on October 5.

Mozambique: How serious is Renamo’s pro-war rhetoric?

On October 4th, the peace accord between the opposition Renamo and the party in power, Frelimo, signed after more than a decade and a half of civil war, celebrated its 21st anniversary. After several violent incidents over the past year and an attack by Frelimo on Renamo’s current base in the country’s central region this week, Renamo canceled the peace deal and armed men attacked a police station. Several media outlets made it sound as if Mozambique is back on the brink of civil war, and the US has demanded dialogue between the leaders to deescalate the situation. How serious is Renamo’s pro-war rhetoric?

Renamo has threatened to return to war many times over the last years. “Canceling the peace deal” is the newest version of a threat that Renamo has used in the past to put the Frelimo government—in power since independence—under pressure. This threat is frequently withdrawn, as happened this time, and Renamo leaders keep reassuring the people that they do not want to wage another war against the government. As Joseph Hanlon, scholar and author of several books on Mozambican history and politics, has noted in a commentary on recent developments, history has to be taken into account to evaluate what’s currently happening in Mozambique. This is not a sudden escalation of Renamo-Frelimo relations, but needs to be seen in the context of Renamo’s difficult transformation into a political party after the end of the civil war in 1992 and Frelimo’s strong grip on power.

Renamo was a serious competitor in post-war elections, and almost won the presidential ticket in 1999. While international observers declared the electoral process to have been free and fair, Renamo claimed that Frelimo had rigged the elections. Since then, Renamo repeatedly accused Frelimo of election fraud and pursued a strategy of maximalist demands, threats and boycotts to try to influence politics outside of electoral processes. Renamo’s major concern has been Frelimo’s growing strength and power, and its own decreasing resources and influence. While Frelimo developed into a strong political party, similar to European parties in structure, Renamo’s leadership is detached from its popular base and lacks resources. Many of Frelimo’s party leaders are successful businessmen and—in contrast to Renamo’s leaders—have benefitted from Mozambique’s discovery of vast natural resource wealth and steady economic growth. Moreover, Frelimo has recently made efforts to control the media more closely and has put pressure on two independent media outlets to replace editors that had been critical of Frelimo.

In protest against his party’s increasing marginalization after the 2009 elections, during which Renamo lost a large number of votes, Dhlakama retreated to the northern province Nampula. After some time off the political stage, Dhlakama returned in 2011 with threats to reassemble demobilized combatants in camps and stage large-scale demonstrations to “peacefully” overthrow the government, so that the country no longer “belongs to Frelimo” and can be “returned” to the people. After a clash between Renamo and Frelimo security forces at Renamo’s headquarters in Nampula in March 2012, where hundreds of Renamo supporters had assembled and presumably waited for money for a “second demobilization,” Dhlakama moved to the central region, district of Gorongosa, close to where the central base was located during the war. A couple of hundred war veterans still lived in the area and had been waiting for Dhlakama’s orders. Since his return to Gorongosa, the tensions between Frelimo and Renamo have risen, and several violent incidents occurred in surrounding areas over the past year. In April, three people died when armed men attacked a bus in Sofala province in the central region and five more people died in clashes between Renamo and Frelimo in the same area; in June, two people died when armed men blocked the main North-South highway and attacked trucks and a bus, for which Renamo assumed responsibility.

Renamo’s recent activities focus on the local elections scheduled for November 20 this year. Dhlakama demanded changes to the electoral legislation that currently gives an advantage to Frelimo, but Renamo’s proposals weren’t accepted in parliament. Since then, Dhlakama decided to boycott the local elections, and his and other Renamo leaders’ rhetoric sometimes even implies that they want to disrupt the elections and make it impossible for people to vote at all. Several rounds of high-level talks between Renamo and Frelimo did not bring solutions that could be accepted by both parties, as Frelimo is not willing to meet Dhlakama’s maximalist demands. Thus relations have clearly deteriorated. Renamo’s spokesman Fernando Mazanga said that the government’s attack on Renamo’s base this week equaled a declaration of war, as the attack was not conducted by the Rapid Intervention Forces (those previously involved in actions against Renamo), but by the army.

These tensions suggest that violence is likely to escalate. However, Renamo is weak—in terms of political impact, financial resources, popular support, and military resources. Dhlakama prevented the rise of talented party leaders, who then left the party and joined the new opposition party MDM. Dhlakama did not use the parliament to reach his goals or accepted offers from Frelimo, always trying to get a better deal. Renamo has lost the control of municipalities, has no mayors, and only 51 members of parliament left. This also means that it has fewer financial resources, as parties receive financial support depending on the number of members in parliament. There is limited communication between the party leadership and its base in the rural areas, and thus not much mobilization to support Dhlakama’s extreme positions. During interviews I conducted in 2011 and 2012, former Renamo combatants told me they had never heard of Dhlakama’s plans to stage massive demonstrations and that they don’t want another war. Some people say though that the young people who haven’t seen the hardships of war might be willing to take up arms. Renamo could exploit grievances arising from resettlement through the exploitation of natural resources, rising inequality, and rising prices for basic necessities. However, Renamo’s demands don’t speak to young people’s concern, there is no mobilization, and the party is militarily weak—Renamo no longer has the foreign support from South Africa that kept the war going. The same is true for Frelimo: no one wants to return to war, and the small national army has few resources (however, Frelimo is in negotiations with France to buy trawlers and patrol boats for over US$300 million).

In the end, therefore, it’s unclear what will follow from Dhlakama’s threats. Carlos Serra, professor at Mozambique’s national university Eduardo Mondlane, can think of four scenarios: low-intensity warfare, medium-intensity warfare, a “Savimbi-style” renewal of Renamo’s party without Dhlakama (Jonas Savimbi, leader of the opposition force UNITA in Angola, died in 2002), or a fragile peace. The editor of the Mozambican @Verdade, a newspaper which has repeatedly criticized Frelimo’s authoritarian tendencies, accuses Frelimo of seeking to kill Dhlakama by attacking Renamo’s base, as he is the “only stone left in [President] Armando Guebuza’s shoes.” In @Verdade’s eyes, Dhlakama’s death—or even his removal from the party’s leadership—would mean an end to any real opposition to the ever more powerful Frelimo party.

Several analysts claim that what Dhlakama really wants is not power, but money and a “piece of the cake” of the natural resource wealth. As long as Dhlakama puts Frelimo under pressure and Frelimo refuses to share the spoils, a deescalation is unlikely. Skirmishes and attacks are likely to continue to disrupt people’s lives, especially in central Mozambique. Frelimo’s security forces closely monitor Dhlakama’s movements, and Renamo does the same with Frelimo’s forces, which provokes the other side. This tit-for-tat can easily get out of hand, and criminal gangs might take advantage of the fragile situation. As Alex Vines, long-time observer and author of several books on Renamo has stated, Dhlakama’s strategy is risky, as it is a breeding ground for miscalculations by both Renamo and Frelimo security forces.

What’s really needed is a mediator who has the trust of both Dhlakama and Mozambique’s President Guebuza to prevent further misperceptions. Until Frelimo is willing to make concessions and Renamo willing to accept them, however, there is a long way to go.

UPDATE: Silicon Valley and its Awkward Relationship with “Africa”

Immigration is almost always about the hustle. Whether you are a professor, a student, or a musician, you have to work hard to both pay rent and deal with a plethora of patronizing ignorance. And being an immigrant from Africa adds another layer of frustration. Everyone here knows about the misperceptions and negative imagery cast on Africa and Africans.

It is no different in this beast we call the Bay Area. Indeed, it is a strange place; diverse regions separated by bridges – both physical and psychological. There’s San Francisco and its epicenter of hipness; Oakland and its rich history of social movements; and Silicon Valley, with its quest to save the world one African at a time. They are all so close to one another, yet so far away – both connected and disconnected. And the region is transforming at breakneck speed.

Beneath it all is the huge amount of money flowing into “innovative” technological solutions to global problems. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple set the stage for the Gold Rush. Thousands of idealistic young people are now flocking here with dreams of striking it rich. Some make it, most don’t. Nonetheless, there’s been a natural attraction between the region’s so-called liberal dynamics and the influx of computer nerds. And they are linking up to save the world; tech devices with charity ideologies. I mean, hey, why not save children and, at the same time, make lots of money doing it?

Of course, the Bay Area is not just full of twenty-somethings wearing Toms shoes. The region is blessed with vibrant communities from around the world, including many from Africa. Artists, students, teachers, bankers, drivers, and entrepreneurs from all over Africa reside here. They organize festivals, open restaurants, host concerts, and do business.

For all the development folks fighting Nigerian corruption, alleviating Kenya’s water shortage, and hugging Ghana’s orphans (all on an iPhone app), this seems an invaluable resource – people in your neighborhood, trained in different fields, with in-depth experience growing up in the countries you operate in.

But no, there is hardly ever any thought to reach out, to collaborate, to ask, or to share ideas with Africans in the Bay Area. There is a huge disconnect between Americans working in Africa, and Africans working in America – though they are often in the same building.

Why? Africans based in the Bay Area aren’t considered “really” African. And the white development industry prefers “real” Africans. You know, the Maasai; the residents of Kibera. A Kenyan lawyer in Berkeley or a Senegalese filmmaker in Marin County just isn’t exciting. They’re not exotic. They’ve lost touch with their African roots. They’re too Westernized, obviously.

So they prefer to stay in their office and Skype with their partners on the ground. The African ground. To be fair, many of these Africans in the Bay Area live in Black American communities. And for us white people, that is just not a comfortable place to be.

The same can be said for academia. Stanford University is the hub for start-up culture. It’s ubiquitous. And as a student in African Studies, I was placed in a unique and awkward position. We were supposed to be the counter voice to the tech people. While they sought simple solutions to big problems, we were there to remind them of Africa’s complex historical and social context.

But I realized that we were not much better.

My friend, colleague and teacher Kwame Assenyoh (UC Berkeley) argues that the underlying premise of African Studies, for many who study it, is that there is a “pure” Africa to be highlighted. And to find the “real” Africa, we need to strip away any transgressions such as hip-hop or Western clothes. This, he argues, is essentially nonsense. Influence is very fluid and has historically transcended borders in all directions.

Indeed, a university professor will spend 20 years teaching Congolese history, but never know about the Congolese dance parties and film festivals in town. Students will fly to Dakar, learn Wolof, and write dissertations on Senghor, without ever hanging out in the huge Senegalese community down the street.

Therefore, in both the development and academic worlds of the Bay Area, local Africans are sidelined. But it makes sense. It’s hard to speak for somebody when they are standing right next to you. Nobody wants to admit that the student from Liberia working at the Best Buy in San Jose is more qualified to work in your NGO than you are. And it’s awkward when you have to explain to an Angolan chemistry student why you spent four years studying their country. You’ve crafted your comparative advantage, and you want to keep it. So you conveniently forget about them. They aren’t the African you prefer. They complicate things – and we all know how much Silicon Valley loves clean and simple solutions: bright, colourful apps and cozy websites.

It was with this background that I worked with my colleagues to create this simple, short video piece:

Did I make this piece to speak for the African immigrant in the Bay Area? No way. I at least try to not be overtly hypocritical. Do I think people sit around and lament: “Man…I hate that white people think I’m not African”? Not at all. They surely have better things to do. But I did want to show that the Bay Area is full of some pretty damn cool people, with pretty damn cool histories and futures. Rather than neglect, we should rather embrace the murky grey identities and convoluted positions we all find ourselves in. And the techies and academics better get their act together.

And of course, I wanted to address my own biases and insecurities.

But, indeed, as said in the final line of video, “thank you very much, [they] already have.” In other words: “Thank you white liberals for your concern, your papers, and your films. But we’ve got it taken care of.”

The video’s subjects:

Nana Osei-Opare

Born in Ghana and raised in South Africa and New Jersey, Nana is currently a PhD student in Los Angeles, studying African intellectual history.

Brenda Mutuma

Born to Kenyan parents in a small farm town in California’s Central Valley, Brenda studied political science at Stanford University. In her summers she splits her time working at a canning factory and Forever 21. She recently spearheaded a campaign in Detroit that focuses on food security in the U.S.

Francisco Garcia Hristov

Francisco was born in Ethiopia and raised in Kenya and Namibia. His father is a Mexican diplomat, and his mother a Bulgarian pilot who flies tourists to game reserves around East Africa. Now in San Francisco, Francisco is pursuing his passions of skateboarding, rock n’ roll, and photography. His blog.

Nancy Oppongmea McClymonds

Born and raised in Ghana, Nancy studied performing arts at the University of Ghana. She toured the country with Abibigroma, a theatre-for-development company working in rural areas. She is now based in Oakland, and works with various Bay Area dance ensembles. Another video of her can be found here.

The San Francisco Bay Area and its Awkward Relationship with “Africa”

Immigration is almost always about the hustle. Whether you are a professor, a student, or a musician, you have to work hard to both pay rent and deal with a plethora of patronizing ignorance. And being an immigrant from Africa adds another layer of frustration. Everyone here knows about the misperceptions and negative imagery cast on Africa and Africans.

It is no different in this beast we call the Bay Area. Indeed, it is a strange place; diverse regions separated by bridges – both physical and psychological. There’s San Francisco and its epicenter of hipness; Oakland and its rich history of social movements; and Silicon Valley, with its quest to save the world one African at a time. They are all so close to one another, yet so far away – both connected and disconnected. And the region is transforming at breakneck speed.

Beneath it all is the huge amount of money flowing into “innovative” technological solutions to global problems. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple set the stage for the Gold Rush. Thousands of idealistic young people are now flocking here with dreams of striking it rich. Some make it, most don’t. Nonetheless, there’s been a natural attraction between the region’s so-called liberal dynamics and the influx of computer nerds. And they are linking up to save the world; tech devices with charity ideologies. I mean, hey, why not save children and, at the same time, make lots of money doing it?

Of course, the Bay Area is not just full of twenty-somethings wearing Toms shoes. The region is blessed with vibrant communities from around the world, including many from Africa. Artists, students, teachers, bankers, drivers, and entrepreneurs from all over Africa reside here. They organize festivals, open restaurants, host concerts, and do business.

For all the development folks fighting Nigerian corruption, alleviating Kenya’s water shortage, and hugging Ghana’s orphans (all on an iPhone app), this seems an invaluable resource – people in your neighborhood, trained in different fields, with in-depth experience growing up in the countries you operate in.

But no, there is hardly ever any thought to reach out, to collaborate, to ask, or to share ideas with Africans in the Bay Area. There is a huge disconnect between Americans working in Africa, and Africans working in America – though they are often in the same building.

Why? Africans based in the Bay Area aren’t considered “really” African. And the white development industry prefers “real” Africans. You know, the Maasai; the residents of Kibera. A Kenyan lawyer in Berkeley or a Senegalese filmmaker in Marin County just isn’t exciting. They’re not exotic. They’ve lost touch with their African roots. They’re too Westernized, obviously.

So they prefer to stay in their office and Skype with their partners on the ground. The African ground. To be fair, many of these Africans in the Bay Area live in Black American communities. And for us white people, that is just not a comfortable place to be.

The same can be said for academia. Stanford University is the hub for start-up culture. It’s ubiquitous. And as a student in African Studies, I was placed in a unique and awkward position. We were supposed to be the counter voice to the tech people. While they sought simple solutions to big problems, we were there to remind them of Africa’s complex historical and social context.

But I realized that we were not much better.

My friend, colleague and teacher Kwame Assenyoh (UC Berkeley) argues that the underlying premise of African Studies, for many who study it, is that there is a “pure” Africa to be highlighted. And to find the “real” Africa, we need to strip away any transgressions such as hip-hop or Western clothes. This, he argues, is essentially nonsense. Influence is very fluid and has historically transcended borders in all directions.

Indeed, a university professor will spend 20 years teaching Congolese history, but never know about the Congolese dance parties and film festivals in town. Students will fly to Dakar, learn Wolof, and write dissertations on Senghor, without ever hanging out in the huge Senegalese community down the street.

Therefore, in both the development and academic worlds of the Bay Area, local Africans are sidelined. But it makes sense. It’s hard to speak for somebody when they are standing right next to you. Nobody wants to admit that the student from Liberia working at the Best Buy in San Jose is more qualified to work in your NGO than you are. And it’s awkward when you have to explain to an Angolan chemistry student why you spent four years studying their country. You’ve crafted your comparative advantage, and you want to keep it. So you conveniently forget about them. They aren’t the African you prefer. They complicate things – and we all know how much Silicon Valley loves clean and simple solutions: bright, colourful apps and cozy websites.

It was with this background that I worked with my colleagues to create this simple, short video piece:

Did I make this piece to speak for the African immigrant in the Bay Area? No way. I at least try to not be overtly hypocritical. Do I think people sit around and lament: “Man…I hate that white people think I’m not African”? Not at all. They surely have better things to do. But I did want to show that the Bay Area is full of some pretty damn cool people, with pretty damn cool histories and futures. Rather than neglect, we should rather embrace the murky grey identities and convoluted positions we all find ourselves in. And the techies and academics better get their act together.

And of course, I wanted to address my own biases and insecurities.

But, indeed, as said in the final line of video, “thank you very much, [they] already have.” In other words: “Thank you white liberals for your concern, your papers, and your films. But we’ve got it taken care of.”

The video’s subjects:

Nana Osei-Opare

Born in Ghana and raised in South Africa and New Jersey, Nana is currently a PhD student in Los Angeles, studying African intellectual history.

Brenda Mutuma

Born to Kenyan parents in a small farm town in California’s Central Valley, Brenda studied political science at Stanford University. In her summers she splits her time working at a canning factory and Forever 21. She recently spearheaded a campaign in Detroit that focuses on food security in the U.S.

Francisco Garcia Hristov

Francisco was born in Ethiopia and raised in Kenya and Namibia. His father is a Mexican diplomat, and his mother a Bulgarian pilot who flies tourists to game reserves around East Africa. Now in San Francisco, Francisco is pursuing his passions of skateboarding, rock n’ roll, and photography. His blog.

Nancy Oppongmea McClymonds

Born and raised in Ghana, Nancy studied performing arts at the University of Ghana. She toured the country with Abibigroma, a theatre-for-development company working in rural areas. She is now based in Oakland, and works with various Bay Area dance ensembles. Another video of her can be found here.

South Africa’s a Continent

South African president Jacob Zuma’s visit to Malawi in August appears to have renewed his appreciation for the quality of the roads network in Gauteng, South Africa’s smallest yet wealthiest province. Speaking at a listening session in the lead up to the launch of the ANC’s manifesto for next year’s election, Zuma, in his capacity as the party’s president, urged Gauteng residents to be responsible and to take pride in the quality of the province’s highways. He said it was only fair that Gauteng residents pay the electronic tolls (e-tolls) to use the provinces recently upgraded highways instead of threatening to boycott the system when it goes live in a few weeks.

To drive his point home, Zuma said in a series of off-the-cuff remarks, “We can’t think like Africans in Africa, generally. We are in Johannesburg. This is Johannesburg. It is not some national road in Malawi.”

Predictably, Zuma’s political opponents are drawing all the mileage they can from the remarks, both for their potential to cause a diplomatic imbroglio with Malawi and to drive a wedge between the ANC and its voter base angered and opposed to e-tolls. Zuma’s spokesman and the ANC tried to spin the remarks as having been taken out of context, but they got Africa-checked. And South Africans have reflexively pilloried Zuma for expressing what’s a commonly held sentiment here: South Africa isn’t in Africa. It’s somewhere else. Somewhere better.

A decade ago it became trendy for South African businesses to say, mimicking their European counterparts, that they’re expanding “into Africa” and to have divisions dedicated to businesses Africa.

Satellite television provider Multichoice, owned by the Naspers conglomerate, has a subsidiary named Multichoice Africa, which, from the profile on its website, “provides multi-channel pay television and subscriber management services in 48 countries in sub-Sahara Africa and the adjacent Indian Ocean islands.”

South Africa, which is ring-fenced from the company’s Africa business, isn’t counted in these 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Standard Bank, one of the country’s largest and oldest banks said, after winning Global Finance magazine’s best foreign exchange provider in Africa award for 2013: “Being successful in providing foreign exchange services requires so much more than an intention to expand into Africa. Standard Bank is delivering successfully because the bank has invested not only funds, but many years in steadily building our African presence and capabilities.”

Where the bank thought it’d been operating until expanding into Africa is anyone’s guess, but it sure as hell wasn’t in Africa.

Further on: “Standard Bank Group is not only the leading foreign exchange provider in its home market of South Africa…it also has a network that spans 18 countries in Africa and 13 countries outside of Africa.”

There you have the delineation: South Africa, Africa and outside of Africa.

We understand what they’re trying to do and say, but it’s coming across as though they believe South Africa isn’t part of the African continent. As one of the biggest producers of culture in South Africa, corporate South African perspectives have probably bled and dovetailed into how South Africans generally view their place in Africa.

As AfriPOP editor Phiona Okumu wrote last year, “Mzansi’s economic and, it seems, cultural dominion affords its citizens a similarly lazy and arrogant outlook (as Americans). When they describe someone’s origins as “from Africa” they mean a land far away, homogenised into one country by untold suffering.”

In short, Zuma hasn’t said anything South Africans didn’t already believe about themselves and their country.

Receiving significantly lesser attention is Zuma’s remark that Gauteng can’t remain under-developed like Rustenburg, the closest town to Marikana, where the police last year gunned down striking miners in what’s looking increasingly like a pre-mediated act. It was a particularly callous remark, considering a recent report from the Bench Marks Foundation that said the government’s failure to hold Lonmin to account for the shifting goals in the mine’s social development reports was a contributing factor to the unrest across Rustenburg’s platinum belt and the mining sector in general.

But the issues surrounding the Marikana massacre and underdeveloped mining communities don’t fit in the narrative of South African exceptionalism, so it seems that South Africans think it’s better not to call too much attention to them.

Heaps of Scrap for Africa

We were almost convinced it was a spoof when we stumbled upon the following video.

Entitled ‘Go For Africa’ the video features a number of Dutch people loading a sea container with old stuff and scraps of iron. Destination: Africa. The video starts off with two volunteers explaining what they’re doing and what they’re loading.

Very early on project leader Jan explains the aim of the project while we see the actual objects that are being sent. Like a 50-year-old Polish turning lathe. “In Africa they will be really happy with it,” Jan explains. Or a sewing machine because “that’s a complete income for a family over there.”

The following 4 minutes of the video is comedic footage of the truck getting stuck in the snow whilst picking up the container for Africa.

We don’t doubt the good intentions of the people behind ‘Go For Africa’, but their ideas of Africa show there’s some work to do in the Netherlands too.

Tal National represents Niger

Hamadal Issoufou Moumine (also known as Almeida), the leader of the Nigerien band, Tal National, begins his concert at Artisphere, a venue outside of Washington D.C., by asking the audience if they know where Niger is. There’s a cacophonous mess of unintelligible shouts, to which he listens patiently, before telling the crowd that the country is in West Africa. He continues educating the audience throughout the evening. Between two energetic songs, the dance floor is packed and sweaty, and he asks if anyone knows how many ethnic groups are based in Niger. No one does.

In Niger, Tal National are already well established and loved for their music. But Almeida says that through their songs, they also want to make the country familiar to the world, as warm and peaceful place. “We want people to know Niger,” he explains in French. Despite the dynamic cultural history of the country, and its current line-up of talented artists, international media tends to focus on the country’s devastating rates of poverty and child mortality. Ongoing analysis speculates on the possibility that the country will become “the next Mali.”

The music is bright; electric guitars, vocals and drums layer dynamically on top of each other. The songs, Almeida explains, are in national Nigerien languages and about topics to which everyone can relate: love, peace, and the beauty of women. At the base of Tal National’s music are traditional Nigerien songs, adapted to the instrumental line-up of the band. Almeida cites the musical traditions of Chad, Senegal, Guinea, and Arab and Latin countries as other influences.

That isn’t to say that Tal National hasn’t faced major challenges in their 13-year history. Niger has no music shops which sell electric instruments; the musicians had to rely on people traveling abroad to procure guitars. Due to the lack of recording resources in Niamey, several years ago Almeida turned to Chicago to find a music producer to record and widely distribute their songs. They found and flew out producer Jamie Carter, who continues to work with the band today.

Their album Kaani is widely available and highly enjoyable. Listen to the single by the same name:

Order the full album online here or here and listen to it somewhere where you’re able to dance.