Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 450

The Story of South African Farming is a Women’s Story

The story of South African farming, especially small hold or small scale, independent, subsistence, emerging or peasant farming is a women’s story, and not peripherally or secondarily. It always has been and continues to be.

But you wouldn’t know it from reports on farming. Take the case of Kenalemang Kgoroeadira. In 2009, Kenalemang Kgoroeadira founded the Thojane Organic Farm. Last month, Kgoroeadira was awarded the title of Best Subsistence Producer in South Africa. Congratulations to her! Here’s how the Mail & Guardian covered Kgoroeadira’s accomplishments:

Kenalemang Kgoroeadira combined two passions — empowering women and farming — when she founded Thojane Organic Farm in 2009. This partnership has been a resounding success and has earned Kgoroeadira the title of best female subsistence farmer in South Africa. The 61-year-old started the project on a hectare of land as a cooperative of six members. Just three years later the farm produces tons of green beans, spinach and tomatoes, which is sold to local markets and school feeding schemes around Boekenhout village near Rustenburg, North West. Some of the produce is donated to hospices. The produce is healthy and environmentally sound because it is grown without the aid of chemicals, which can strip the soil of its nutrients. Instead, the farmers use fertilisers that are found naturally, such as chicken manure. This forms part of the co-operative’s commitment to maintaining agricultural systems that are similar to those found in natural ecosystems. The cooperative recently started a herb garden with rosemary, thyme, lemon grass, mint, lavender and garlic. Kgoroeadira says they plan to extract essential oils from these herbs to protect their crops. They also aim to supply retailers that sell organic produce, such as Woolworths. ‘Our mission is to train women and young people to become food producers,’ says Kgoroeadira.

It’s a good story. But somehow, when the focus shifts from Kenalemang Kgoroeadira to ‘farming’, the empowerment of women drops by the wayside. In fact, women drop by the wayside. That’s what happened in a recent piece focusing on “South Africa’s farming failings”.

The multi-media multi-panel exposé of the ways in which the apartheid legacy haunts South African farms and farming opens with a powerful interview of Kenalemang Kgoroeadira being her powerful self, and talking directly about women farming:

I used to go and till the land because that’s where we got food. Our grandmothers and our mothers used to pay school fees with a basket of eggs, and that means farming was very important to them. Because the history of this country, because of migrant labor, our parents, our fathers, were pushed to Johannesburg and all over to come and work, and the women remained in the rural areas and they tilled the land. And they raised their children, and they tended to the cattle, to the sheep, to the goats, to the chickens. They kept the home fires burning. I thought it is time for me to go back home, for me to re-Africanize Phokeng.

And that’s what she did, because it was the right thing to do, because it was time, and because the memories, the spirits, of ‘our grandmothers and our mothers’ inspired and compelled her.

The interview with Kgoroeadira is the longest interview of the six video interviews. It offers the most impassioned and insightful analysis about the State’s failures to support subsistence farmers appropriately. And hers is the single most powerful voice to be heard among the otherwise all male speakers.

And it is the first, last and only explicit reference to women. As Govan Mbeki wrote, so many decades ago, the women who engaged in the peasants’ revolt did so partly because they were targeted in particular ways by apartheid policies and practices. As the men were pushed here and there, the women tilled the land. Apartheid haunts the South African subsistence farm. Ask Kenalemang Kgoroeadira. She’ll tell you. The struggle continues.

Make Bono History

Firstly Bono is collaborating with brostep pioneer Skrillex to save the African children. (They were together in Ghana last month.) Secondly The Observer (or The Guardian; it’s the same thing) has just published what might just be the most revealing and absurd interview with the world’s most self-righteous tax-dodging man who never removes his shades. The article was titled “There is a difference between cosying up to power and being close to power,” something Bono apparently is an expert in. Of course the interview was conducted in some underground bar in Accra rather than in Bono’s land of origin, where he talked about his “25 years as an activist for African development” and the late Seamus Heaney.

For those whose hatred of Bono is as deep and visceral as mine or those who are merely looking for concrete reasons to despise on this particular celebrity do-gooder, be sure to check out Harry Browne’s devastating takedown The Frontman published by Verso as part of their Counterblast series — other targets put to the metaphorical sword in this series include such verbose and smug apostles of imperialism as Thomas Friedman, the late Christopher Hitchens and Bernard-Henri Lévy. 

For those who avoid the high cult of tech utopianism, platitudes and technocracy known as TED talks: you might not know that Bono now describes himself as a “factivist” or in the words of the mildly sycophantic Tim Adams interviewer a “nerd who is aroused by the statistics of development” or in the words of Harry Browne, “Human beings have been campaigning against inequality and poverty for 3,000 years. But this journey is accelerating. Bono ‘embraces his inner nerd’ and shares inspiring data that shows the end of poverty is in sight… if we can harness the momentum.”

This data that so arouses Bono, according to Harry Browne, is mostly fantastical in nature.

Bono clearly takes great pride in his ability to get such diverse elites as the hawkish republican senator Lindsey Graham, former Bush jr cabinet member Condi Rice and the aforementioned EDM superstar Skrillex together in exotic locales like “this beyond-cool village bar” in Monrovia.

Bono also likes to boast about spending a lot of time with that famous humanitarian force known to the public as the US military — he has no qualms at all at courting these kind of interests and hanging out with such figures as General Jim Jones, Obama’s former National Security Advisor during Obama’s escalation of drone attacks on “militants” (anyone brown and male in the wrong place at the wrong time) in Pakistan.

When asked the tough questions like: ”The persistent liberal view would be that you should never get into bed with neocons under any circumstances … ?”, Bono always has the glib response:

Try telling that to the woman who is about to lose her third child to HIV/Aids. I know I couldn’t do that.

Or the woman who has lost her third child to a drone strike in Somalia or Pakistan. Or:

But isn’t the poverty that engenders these catastrophes structural – and created directly by the policies of some western governments? 

That these problems are structural is true. Of course it is. And you can always say that tending to the wounded will not stop the war. But the world is an imperfect place, you know. While we are waiting for capitalism to reform itself, or another system to emerge, or for these countries, as Ghana is clearly doing, to move toward the point when they don’t need our assistance, we have a problem. What you might call the situation on the ground. And our angle is really that we will use anyone who can help with that. When I came here, and visited hospitals with thousands of people camping outside for treatment, for drugs that were not available, I wanted to do what I could to make the madness stop. Watching lives implode in front of your eyes for no reason. Children in their mother’s arms go into that awful silence. And looking to the side and seeing the health workers and seeing the rage inside of them. I just thought: I’ll do what I can. And I will talk to anybody

That inside game sometimes looks like a cosy relationship with power…

It does confuse people. But there is a difference between cosying up to power and being close to power.

Really? In Bono’s world the causes of the very problems he is trying to solve are irrelevant to the solutions in the sense that many of these problems emerge because Bono’s friends are busy fucking over the very people he is trying to help in Africa on a fairly consistent basis.

Bono is a sinister piece of shit because he endorses a vision of social change as elite-driven technocratic solutions which can’t be questioned or critiqued because of the immediacy of intervening to save the poor black children. In other words he is part of rebranding the vision of such famously altruistic organizations  as the World Bank and IMF as part of an international aid campaign which can get on board rock stars, the Clintons and the Nelson Mandela foundation.

In effect it is reinforcing the same political arrangements which are responsible for the African debt crisis which Bono got his political start on in the first place. Bono of course doesn’t realize the irony of trying to make debt history by aligning himself with the World Bank and bankers. This vision of ‘humanitarianism’ or ‘aid’ is premised around billionaires throwing money at things and is all about the Übermensch figure of the philanthropist as the vanguard of social change along with the the celebrity rock star.

The ideological guise of “act now” obscures the necessity of understanding the actual political reasons for underdevelopment, famine and war on the African continent, Inter-imperialist rivalry and the new scramble for raw materials from Nigeria to Mozambique as well as the history of debt are subsumed under this dumbed-down vision of ‘humanitarianism’.

He provides a celebrity cover for imperialism and promotes a substanceless vision of development in which the agency of poor black Africans is non-existent. Instead they exist as passive subjects just waiting for Bono to parachute in and hand out same aid parcels. Oh and also he is a dick and proud tax-dodger in country (Ireland) which has just seen its economy collapse in debt crises brought upon by a rather loose and corrupt financial regime.

As Harry Browne once again succinctly puts it:

His significance, however diminished, is as a frontman, witting or not, for those who want to maintain and extend their dominion over the earth, and to make that dominion less and less accountable to the assembled riff-raff. That’s why it’s so important that he is not allowed to take ownership of the protest song in the same way he has previously seized, say, the color red or the idea of making poverty history.

Then there’s this from The Observer interview:

The other persistent criticism is about [U2's] decision to offshore part of their income through the Netherlands to avoid tax. Was it not hypocrisy for you to try to hold the Irish government to account for its spending while going through fairly exhaustive efforts to avoid paying into the Irish exchequer yourself?

It is not an intellectually rigorous position unless you understand that at the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. Tax competitiveness has taken our country out of poverty. People in the revenue accept that if you engage in that policy then some people are going to go out, and some people are coming in. It has been a successful policy. On the cranky left that is very annoying, I can see that. But tax competitiveness is why Ireland has stayed afloat. When the Germans tried to impose a different tax regime on the country in exchange for a bailout, the taoiseach said they would rather not have the bailout. So U2 is in total harmony with our government’s philosophy.

The good news however is people are fighting back against the scourge of Bono:

I was booed by all the young entrepreneurs in the audience who thought I was peddling this idea of a supplicant Africa, which I happen to think could not be further from the truth. In the very same week I was chased down the street in Germany by a bunch of anarchists at the G8 summit, wielding placards and shouting “Make Bono history!” – which even as I was running for my life I thought was a pretty good line. So: we are doing something right – we are annoying both the capitalists in Africa, and the anti-capitalists in Europe. The thing is, I am not an idealist, never have been, I am just quite pragmatic about finding solutions.

Even young African entrepreneurs in Tanzania, supposedly the sort of people Bono believes are key to ‘African development’, are joining the rapidly growing “Make Bono history” camp. This is at least heartening news.

Oscar Pistorius to be allowed to visit ailing Mandela–but without his gun

Controversial South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been granted permission to visit former President Nelson Mandela at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg. The former President and global icon (95) has been recovering at home after a long battle with illness saw him hospitalized in recent times.

President Jacob Zuma has announced that he took the decision to allow Pistorius to visit Mandela: “I came up with the idea. I feel this visit would be a good opportunity for the nation to collectively heal; after all, both Oscar and Madiba have been through adversity.” Zuma said.

The Olympic and Paralympic star, a double-amputee, will face trial in March 2014 for the alleged murder of his lover Reeva Steenkamp in the bathroom of his luxury Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day. Pistorius maintains his innocence, claiming it was a terrible accident and that he had mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar.

A spokesperson for Pistorius’ family thanked Zuma for allowing the meeting, scheduled for Monday, but said the family was disappointed that Pistorius would not be allowed any weapons into the Mandela home.

“We thank the new guy, Zuma, for giving Oscar this chance to meet with Madiba who is a hero like Oscar. FInally the authorities are coming to their senses and allowing Oscar’s life to return to normal,” said the spokesperson.

“Hopefully he can start competing professionally as well once we sort out this trial thing. However, we are quite annoyed and disappointed that Oscar will not be allowed to take precautions and protect himself when we go to Joburg. Everybody knows crime is crazy there. Even if it is Mandela’s house.”

Who’s Been Sleeping in My House?

South African television is fascinating. Every evening, as part of an ongoing anthropological investigation into the workings of the South African national consciousness, I take my dinner with an episode of 7de Laan (7th Avenue), a popular Afrikaans soap opera. The show is captivating in that it models a post-apartheid world around an expansive consumerist imaginary. So, the characters are often caught up in wondering about “spectacular” and “fantastic” materialist futures, about dream homes, parties and events, about eating and drinking and making merry, the exercises of consumption that hold the Laan together. As an elaborate fantasy of a conservative, white Afrikaans speaking audience, 7de Laan presents the quintessential ‘rainbow nation’ at work. It is a place without AIDS, homosexuality, bloody violence or rape. It is a place of cake and tea and of old fashioned family values. More importantly, it is a place without a past.

In the world of reality TV, the archaeologist Adam Ford has been exploring the place of the past all across Australia in the show Who’s Been Sleeping In My House? Over two seasons Ford has approached a number of families in a quest to unearth the hidden stories of their homes. In digging up the histories of these homes, he has found a great many things, including, “the bizarre story of a fugitive British MP who allegedly hid out in a Victorian family attic; a clandestine Nazi radio station that was suspected of broadcasting wartime secrets from the suburbs of Adelaide; a mysterious spy who was reportedly captured while on reconnaissance in the hills of Perth”. All over Australia, homes held fascinating secrets about the past. Who’s Been Sleeping in My House brings attention to the idea of the family home as a material locus anchoring versions of the past significant for collective society.

The show also allows us to try imagine the possibilities of similar forms of reality television in the post-apartheid present. We could, for example, speculate about whether a show like Who’s Been Sleeping in My House could pilot in South Africa? And what such a program would offer South African audiences? More importantly, we can wonder about the kinds of metaphors it enables for the interpretation of the South African past. For the producers of South African reality TV, I imagine, a show like this probably cuts too close to South African sensitivities about the past, and the related series of notions about property, ownership, dispossession, denial and racist exploitation to be of any commercial value. To dig into the foundations of the home is therefore not simply about unearthing exciting entertainment narratives. It is to ask difficult questions that unsettle the foundations of society.

Exploring domestic archaeologies can, however, also be a therapeutic, dignified enterprise. In Germany, for example, the conceptual artist Gunter Demnig has embarked on a campaign to unearth the broken, bitter histories of homes across Europe where Jews and other persecuted minorities were forcefully evicted and deported for execution, marking these sites with commemorative brass plaques. Inscribed with the names of these forgotten former residents, their date’s of birth, eviction and deportation, the Stolpersteine are commemorative stumbling blocks, mnemonic markers that stand in the way of modes of forgetting that often accompany the forging new collective futures.

Anchored into homes all across South Africa like 7de Laan, a fictional show like Who’s Been Sleeping in My House could create a similar opportunity to critically explore difficult aspects of the urban past. Handled carefully, such a show could undermine the superficiality of ventures such as the name your hood campaign by raising public awareness about forced removals, sites like Prestwich Place, and the bones buried beneath luxury homes built near Cape Town’s foreshore. Indeed, with little stretch of the imagination, we could even picture Gunter Demnig, the historical adventurer, making a cameo, perhaps even placing a commemorative Stolperstein, not to remind us about the domestic tragedies we’ve forgotten, but as a reminder that we should never forget.

Zimbabwean Diaspora Diaries

[Note from the editors: We came across photographer Benjamin Rutherford's series, Diaspora Diaries, and asked him to tell us more about himself and how the series came into being. Click on the images to enlarge them.]

I have been photographing for 3 years now. I began at the start of my degree in Photojournalism at Falmouth University in the UK, from which I graduated this year. I was born in Zimbabwe in 1990, I grew up on a farm in Chipinga, as well as on one outside Mazabuka in Zambia. I then attended high school in Grahamstown in South Africa where I first became interested in political art and current affairs. I left South Africa in 2009 due to my British Passport education visa expiring, thus I chose to study in the UK. I originally wanted to study fine art, yet after more research into photojournalism I shifted my attention to photography, so in a way I’m more interested in communication than I am in photography itself.

I chose to embark on this Zimbabwe-focused project specifically because I am a Zimbabwean. When I moved to the UK, I was surprised as to how little the majority of those that I met knew about the Zimbabwe situation, let alone where the country is. This quickly turned to frustration with what I thought was naivety and ignorance. However, after intensely studying media I felt that it was the media itself that was the main culprit, as being the source of this attitude towards ‘Africa’ — an idea that I explored and wrote about at length in my dissertation. I also noticed that many felt that it was only the ‘whites’ that were affected by the ZANU-PF policy changes in the late 90′s. I also found it interesting that many people chose to come to the UK, the former colonial power to find sanctuary. Yet unfortunately for many the UK is not very welcoming.

With this body of work I wanted to shownot only the story of Zimbabweans attempting to find a life here, but also to attempt to change attitudes toward the idea of what an Asylum Seeker and refugee is. I wanted to somehow educate the general public on the complex situations that these individuals face here in the UK, a country seen as a champion of human rights — a kind of wake up call that our British government policy isn’t so friendly either.

Crispin M’simbe, a Zimbabwean Asylum Seeker recently granted his Refugee Status, finds shelter in a friend’s car from the bitter cold and snow on the way to a Apostolic mass at the Hillsborough Stadium. Sheffield, 2013.

This first image above was taken during a trip to Sheffield for an overnight prayer gathering of more than 500 other Zimbabweans from across the UK. It was like a much smaller version of the Marange annual Gathering which attracts tens of thousands back in Zimbabwe. It was the first time I realised the scale of the sense of community that exists within the Zimbabwean Diaspora in the UK. For those who have never been to the UK before, especially for those seeking asylum it can be a surprisingly hostile place. So in terms of the image itself it has come to represent finding shelter from the less attractive attributes of the UK, one of them being the weather, which after five years of being the UK I still cannot get used to.

A few men sell white candles at the entrance to a monthly Apostolic gathering at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield.

Religion is vitally important to most Zimbabweans and plays a large role in our identity. I was very privileged to be invited to the mass, and this was a pretty lucky image to get. Those who belong to the African Apostolic Church take their worship very seriously so photography is most often not welcome. It is not permitted to take photographs during worship as it is feared that it will block the holy spirit from entering the room. So I had about a five minute gap for the evening in which I was allowed to take some shots before the start of prayers. This was the best I got out of seven images that I managed to take whilst being respectful that many in the congregation do not want to be in any photographs due to the sensitivity of their situation. I tried to achieve a sense of community, family and location, and the fact that I somehow managed to achieve this as well as with photographs of famous english footballers playing at the stadium in the background, I thought was sheer luck.

Patson Muzuwa, a prominent community leader within the UK Zimbabwean Diaspora, helps give legal advice to a Zimbabwean Asylum Seeker whilst doing a late shop in a huge supermarket before heading home to his family. Leicester, 2013.

Patson Muzuwa fled Zimbabwe in fear of his life after countless imprisonments during which he experienced horrific bouts of daily torture due to his affiliation to the MDC. After help from a journalist who helped him escape the country as well as bail him out of UK immigration detention who at first dismissed his story as a lie, he managed to achieve Refugee status and was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Many are not so fortunate so Patson now dedicates his life to aiding those who are seeking asylum, and are having trouble with negotiating their way through the often biased and inaccurate U.K. Border Agency (UKBA) system. This image has extra meaning for those that lived in Zimbabwe during the height of the financial troubles. Many supermarket shelves lay completely empty for months on end. The situation has vastly improved since then. I wanted to show how spoilt for choice those who live in the UK are, I also wanted again to provide a sense of location, a sense that the photos have been taken in the UK. Patson is also on his phone a lot, he has no office hours, he dedicates just about all of his time to helping others, and not only Zimbabweans. A drop-in centre for Zimbabwean asylum seekers that he helps run in Leicester welcomes anyone who could use his help and a hot meal, from Congolese to North Koreans.

Laurence Mbamarwo poses for a portrait outside the Zimbabwean Embassy.

Laurence is one of those less fortunate. He has been destitute in the UK since 1998 and has not spoken to or seen his wife or two sons since. In Zimbabwe he was arrested and jailed without trial for erecting posters advertising a teachers’ strike in 1997. He was jailed and tortured frequently for 3 months, all for names and addresses of MDC activists in his area. After his release he was threatened by not only ZANU-PF members, but also by those from the MDC who believed he may have leaked information. After his release he experienced what can be explained as undiagnosed PTSD, living in a constant state of fear and having received more death threats he fled to the UK where he was denied asylum after five months. After being kicked out of his council accommodation in Edinburgh that same day. Laurence is now a ghost according to government records. Unable to work legally, he relies on friends for shelter, money and food. A forced dependence all too common that causes many social issues amongst the Diaspora community. This is one of the few portraits that are in the series, but it’s one of the most important images. I prefer not to let my photography disturb or get in the way of any situation in my work. But after having a long conversation with him, I wanted to get a portrait of him alone. Not only did I want again to achieve the sense that this is in London, I mostly wanted to give  a sense of the loneliness that can come with being an asylum seeker, especially being destitute. I also wanted to give particular attention to his story.

Garie takes a photo of her son in their new home in Leicester.

Garie has now managed to rent a week after being granted 5 years to remain in the UK. She has been one of the more fortunate family cases thanks to Patson contacting local MPs to pay attention to her case and put pressure on the UKBA. Many women and their families are not so fortunate, with some having been detained with their children. A statement by the Home Office and UKBA on family human rights cases, who take up one fifth of the backlog, stated that, “human rights cases won’t be dealt with anytime soon”. This image came on my third trip up to meet with Patson. We went and visited Garie to see their new house. Family is a difficult situation with the UKBA, and they often get it very wrong. Yet here, thankfully it has worked out for this family, so I wanted to get a picture that simply put across the happiness of finally having a home. It was also important to push the fact that it’s not only individuals who are seeking asylum, often it’s a family seeking a better life for their next generation.

Crispin M’simbe (front) and Arthur Mube practice their Sunday Morning 9am prayers in Patson’s back garden while they wait for Patson to get ready for Sunday Church.

Crispin was a major football star in Zimbabwe, yet after becoming increasingly politically involved in the MDC he was targeted by the ZANU-PF youth militia, after enduring numerous assaults he was told to leave the country or he would be killed. When moving to the UK he unfortunately came to rely on drugs and alcohol, effectively withdrawing from society until he met Patson, who took him to church and drop-in centres. Crispin now bases the majority of his time around the apostolic church, yet his experiences still strongly affect him. This is one of the most important images that I have taken so far. It’s the only one that I have managed to take that creates a real sense of living in the UK yet still managing to stay connected to one’s roots, again also showing that religion for many Zimbabweans is very important. We were a bit late for Church, so Crispin and Arthur began their worship in Patson’s backyard.

Crispin M’simbe spends his morning reading the bible in the Leicester City Library. Leicester, 2013.

This image didn’t make it into a final edit, but it’s a personal favourite. I hadn’t previously arranged to meet up with Crispin yet on this trip, but we randomly met while on a visit to the Library. I was with Patson to meet up with a Zimbabwean lady who needed some legal advice. He sat by a window flicking through a bible. I thought it summed up his situation quite well. Crispin used to drink heavily, and normally during free time he would be in the pub but since his new found devotion to religion he finds escapism here.

A Zimvigil member helps set up a shelter for the day’s protesting outside the Zimbabwean Embassy. London, 2012.

The Zimvigil protest, popular with Asylum seekers, take place every Saturday without fail, rain or snow. This day was particularly cold, wet and miserable. Yet quite a number of people still attended, and many couldn’t fit under the cover. This image for me partially sums up the protest, the multiple knots of old string left behind from 11 years of protest, holding up an old beaten up Zimbabwean flag lying still and soaked in the English weather. The persistence, formality and the organisation, yet one can’t help but get the feeling that the fight against the ZANU-PF regime is growing tired.

Children entertain themselves on drums at a fortnightly drop-in session for Zimbabweans in Leicester, 2013.

The fortnightly drop-in session in Leicester is organised by Patson and Pelagio, a Zimbabwean lady. Basically it’s where everyone can catch up with each other, as well as hear the latest developments in UKBA policy and Zimbabwean politics that affect their situation. It’s also a great opportunity for their kids to meet other Zimbabweans their age. There is a real effort to keep Zimbabwean culture alive for the children, with everything from music to language. These drums were brought in by a local English lady who teaches music. I don’t think she was prepared for how good these kids were!

The argument over J.M. Coetzee

Literature should generate lively public debates — all scholars worth their salt will proclaim. We believe in the importance of culture and think that intellectual tussles over significant books, and not celebrity gossip, should grace the front page of newspapers. In reality, such prominent literary arguments rarely happen. Yet half a year ago, South African and international magazines as well as the online media exploded with such a debate — some have called it a feud — that has been flaring up periodically with follow-up responses. The original argument involved novelist and lecturer in creative writing Imraan Coovadia and his colleague at the University of Cape Town, Ian Glenn. The subject is J.M. Coetzee, arguably the best-known South African writer. His work, his legacy (now that he no longer lives in his native country), and the status of South African literature at home and abroad are the stakes in this heated exchange, which irrupted with the publication of the first authorized Coetzee biography.

Readers familiar with Coetzee’s work and style of writing must have been only mildly surprised when in his latest volume of autobiographical fiction, Summertime (2009), the author imagines himself dead. After all, in Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) he wrote about himself in the third person, distancing his aged authorial stance from his younger self; conversely, in Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) he foreshortened the gap between reader and protagonist through a demanding and difficult to sustain first person, present tense narration.

In Summertime a young scholar of English literature rummages through the deceased John Coetzee’s notebooks. He interviews the author’s friends and lovers to form a picture of the early 1970s, when the aspiring writer had just returned from the United States and was completing Dusklands. Coetzee has always subjected himself and his protagonists to rigorous scrutiny; in Summertime he imagines an unflattering portrait a lover might have given him — a scrawny man with an abstracted look, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and sandals: “There was an air of seediness about him too, an air of failure….I didn’t get close enough to check out his feet, but I was ready to bet the toenails weren’t trimmed”. Was the writer trying on, like a new hat, the uncomplimentary gossip that crops up after a literary master passes away? Or was it the self-confident pose of a literary god unswayed by trivial concerns?

This exercise in imagining his own posterity must have contributed something to Coetzee’s positive response to J.C. Kannemeyer’s 2008 request to complete an authorized biography. A doyen of old-school Afrikaans literary historiography, Kannemeyer is an unexpected choice for a biographer. There must have been no dearth of eager academics ready to take up this task. With a Nobel and two Booker Prizes to his name, the writer is at the top of the literary establishment, commanding the admiration of a large readership. Why did Coetzee grant access to his manuscripts, notebooks, friends and family to a scholar whose completed work, he must have known beforehand, would have favorable reviews describe it at best as factual, fine and monumental? Magisterial, as well — with all the heft of a backhanded compliment. Kannemeyer wanted to believe that Coetzee had been seduced by the idea of a look at his life and work from a minority literature perspective, the point of view of an Afrikaans scholar, someone removed from the world literature and postcolonial studies paradigms that are fashionable in English literary scholarship today. Perhaps it was a defying practical joke that threw a marrowless bone to an impatient public eager to know more about the reclusive writer’s life? Or was it a touch of undisguised thirst to build his own image, as Coovadia intimates in his essay, “Coetzee in and out of Cape Town,” published in the January issue of Kritika Kultura? Some of the answers to these questions have been lost as, in a reversal of the plot in Summertime, it is the biographer who passed away. The 2012 posthumous publication of the volume J.M. Coetzee: A Writing Life by J.C. Kannemeyer, written in Afrikaans and translated into English by Michiel Heyns, triggered the debate mentioned above — an exchange in part acrimonious and ad hominem, yet overall revealing of greater anxieties about the literary landscape in South Africa.

If his biographer has passed away, Coetzee is alive and productive in Adelaide. His 2002 departure from his native country to settle in Australia set off an open-ended argument on the role South African authors play in the global cultural imaginary, a debate now renewed with the further canonization of Coetzee in the first authorized biography. During the grim apartheid decades, readers abroad got their views of the injustice of that system from literary works as much as from newscasts, antiapartheid rallies and calls to boycott the government’s outrageous policies. But how does South African literature fare today, when most readers in the Western world probably know only the author of Disgrace? The fresh crop of writers that emerged or became established after apartheid ended — Zakes Mda, Zoë Wicomb, Ivan Vladislavić, Marlene van Niekerk and many others — or even the earlier generation of poets and novelists who had gained an international reputation despite censorship and banning — Mongane Wally Serote, Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Miriam Tlali, Lewis Nkosi — have slipped away from the international limelight or never reached it to the same extent their compatriot did. Academic curricula reinforce the same situation: there’s no lack of BA or MA candidates ready to write a thesis on Coetzee’s Levinasian ethics, and the author’s name on a reading list will often help fill up a class on African or postcolonial literature. Students will always enjoy reading Zoë Wicomb’s You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town or Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, yet these texts do not carry the same name recognition as Foe.

Why does Coetzee continue to represent South Africa in the eyes of a global readership even when he lives far away in Adelaide? How does one pull away from the snowballing effect of the myth-making surrounding the author, when other excellent writers remain less known abroad? These questions are at the core of the debate that exploded earlier this year between Coovadia and Glenn. Is this mythologizing process deterring readers from assessing Coetzee’s latest works as books that should stand or fall on their own merit? — asks Coovadia. The problem is, he argues, after the Nobel Prize and the second Booker, Coetzee’s oeuvre has been treated as a religion — the ultimate word on South Africa and suffering, even when the texts lack direct reference and relevance to the lives of his fellow citizens. His recent works are not really being reviewed but simply added to the Pantheon.

Earlier in his career, when the world knew him only as first time Booker Prize winner and author of Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Coetzee pointed out how wrong it was for him, a writer of the white minority, to be repeatedly invited to speak on behalf of the oppressed majority. At the time when Coetzee’s international audience was growing, his allegorical rendering of power, knowledge, and subtle forms of complicity did not fit in with what and how his compatriots associated with the antiapartheid movement were writing. South African literature of the 1970s and ’80s was often seen as an instrument of the struggle. For leftists, it was a tool to raise the consciousness of the people, to make them aware of the government’s fear-inducing tactics, and to teach them ways of standing up for their truth. Poets recited their latest lines at political rallies. Plays that tackled racism and social inequality roused the audience jam-packed into township halls. Novels, like Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter or Alex La Guma’s In the Fog of the Season’s End, were liable to be deemed subversive and banned. The immediacy of the message shaped the choice of literary genre. Few had the leisure and space to write novels in the crammed tin shacks they shared with their families, and few had the time to read them.

In this context, the pristinely crafted sentences of Coetzee’s prose, his morally tortured characters, his reflection on forms of domination and complicity appeared a different species altogether. Yet the writer had defended his approach, refusing to make literature ancillary to history and to write in a realist vein. “[T]he story is not really playing the game you call Class Conflict or the game called Male Domination or any of the other games in the games handbook,” the writer said in one of his most quoted essays, “The Novel Today,” disparaging the call for direct relevance.

Coetzee’s novels of the 1980s and 1990s did present the South African reality, albeit in oblique fashion. The meditation on torture in Waiting for the Barbarians, which today reads so à propos in the wake of Abu Ghraib and the enhanced interrogation techniques scandal, was also a direct comment on the 1977 death in detention of Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. In this novel set on the frontier of an unnamed empire, innocent fisher folk are tortured to death and the euphemisms concealing the murderous scene are a haunting echo of the report following Biko’s death in police custody. “A scuffle ensued during which the prisoner fell heavily against the wall. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.” The language of officialdom in South Africa was chock-full of euphemisms disguising sinister scenes. There is also the obsession with the frontier, the dread of a barbarian invasion and its destruction of a way of living — a reminder of the early 1980s fear that South Africa’s left-leaning neighbors would unleash the rooi gevaar, the red menace. If in Age of Iron Coetzee for the first time attended directly to the tense mood of the mid-80s State of Emergency, his readers were surprised to see the author turn away from the local scene in the year of its most glorious transformation. The 1994 novel The Master of Petersburg looks at an imaginary incident in Dostoevsky’s life, but speaks volumes about the position and role of a writer in a newly reconfigured political field, like the one in South Africa at the time. And then, of course, there’s the impeccably written yet often misread Disgrace.

When it came out in 1999 it did very well on the international market, winning Coetzee the second Booker. At home, the ANC expressed disappointment in what they narrowly read as a novel suggesting the victimization of white people. Lucy’s rape by three black men was taken as the revival of the old black peril cliché. It is both sad and surprising that some readers felt Coetzee portrayed David Lurie, no less a rapist or misogynist, in a sympathetic light. And as Coovadia points out, it is outright baffling that there are a couple of academics who would even take pride in being the inspiration for the protagonist. Whatever influenced Coetzee’s decision to relocate to Australia in 2002, one hopes it is not associated with the book’s reception in South Africa. Only a very thin-skinned writer would take offence at Thabo Mbeki’s literary criticism, Coovadia observes.

What startles once again is the discrepancy between the negative or absent reaction to the novel among South Africa’s general readership and its canonization in academia, both at home and abroad. Coetzee’s work, it has been said, reads well in translation, whether transposed to a different language or cultural context. It is part of the cosmopolitan literature that, as one critic put it, is born translated — readily imbued with the values and literary codes that appeal to a global readership. There is, of course, a less generous but no less compelling interpretation: books that become household items in a global literary market play by the rules of neoliberal capitalism or are unwittingly incorporated into these worldwide circuits. They sell well to a mostly privileged Western audience and do no favors to the national literature from which they arise.

This is what Coovadia’s essay reminds us to consider. Shouldn’t we look afresh at how Coetzee’s work is evaluated and what is being inferred about South Africa based on his corpus of work? What are the energies that promote his novels, and what does this setup do for his compatriots, whether established writers or young people entering university to study literature?

There is by now a good-sized mini-library of academic exegesis on Coetzee’s works and the ink is still flowing from the scholars’ pens, augmenting the image of the great South African novelist. While at times unjustifiably harsh — it suspects Coetzee of being frugal with love for his fellow human beings by dint of spatial proximity to other misanthropic lecturers — Coovadia’s argument hits the nail on the head. After producing some of the best literature in the world during the 1980s and 90s, is the Coetzee of Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), or Diary of a Bad Year (2007) still measuring up to his earlier achievements? And in a pedagogical light, what does it mean to hammer students at the University of Cape Town and elsewhere around the country with the same works and authors, even when they are perceived as less relevant? Why not teach and promote the works of Zakes Mda, Ivan Vladislavić, Mandla Langa and Lauren Beukes — award-winning writers that really speak about and to contemporary South Africans?

On forums and social media, those outraged by Ian Glenn’s attack on Coovadia have compiled honor rolls of South African writers, a proof that the country’s literary prestige does not rely solely on the reputation of Coetzee, as Glenn intimated. Lauren Beukes, Sifiso Mzobe, Damon Galgut, Ivan Vladislavić, Mandla Langa and others have been invoked for their recent contributions. As for Glenn’s response to Coovadia’s essay, there is little that needs to be said about it. It amounts to nitpicking on formal issues, spelling and uncorrected typographical errors, and identifying a couple of facts that the author of the original essay got wrong. It ends with thinly disguised racial stereotyping. About one thing Glenn is correct, though: Coovadia’s essay, and I would add the enthusiasm it generated, has little to do with the person John Coetzee. It is a symptom. It is not a symptom of “individual, racial and generational” animus, as Glenn would want us believe. It is a symptom of a younger generation of writers and intellectuals tired of seeing their literature measured in internationally recognized prizes, always held up to the standards and logic of global recognition and a putative universal quality — that old colonial yardstick. The mechanisms that grant star quality to an author, make certain forms of literature desirable, or even provide formulas for what will sell well and what will win applause are not separate from the neoliberal undertows of a global book market. Coovadia’s iconoclastic essay — and it’s no easy task to shake up the image of a great writer even when it has become cloyed by sycophantic admiration — is the symptom of new cultural and critical energies bursting to reshape the South African literary canon and the way it is viewed in the world.

This is an edited version of an essay that first appeared in Berfrois. You can revisit the whole exchange in full — chronologically — here, here and here.

Some of my best friends are braaiers

I have always felt uncomfortable with the idea of a ‘National Braai Day’ in South Africa, and the accompanying media bombardment of feel-good messages, advertisements for meat and beer and chat shows where braai (BBQ) recipes are exchanged. We are told that to braai on the public holiday Heritage Day (24 September in South Africa) as this will ‘strengthen South Africa as a nation’. (And to those Afrikaners who phoned in to the radio station yesterday to say the day has nothing to do with politics: you might do well to remember that you only have today off because the Zulu’s wanted to commemorate Shaka.)

Let me state it upfront: I have nothing against braaiing. I love to braai. Some of my best friends are braaiers. When I lived in the UK, the mere idea of meat grilled over a proper fire (not those tin foil boxes you used to burn pork sausages into submission on rainy summer days) used to make me physically homesick. But the idea of Braai Day makes me feel ill at ease for the same reason that those beer ads with multiracial buddies drinking Castle on top of a skyscraper in New York to the tune of Toto’s ‘Africa’ left me uncomfortable. Because it makes us believe we have already arrived in fantasyland. Sure, the purpose of parties, like those around braai fires, is to make us forget reality for a while (that’s probably why they are so popular). But to elevate a party to national heritage status is problematic because it could get us stuck in the gap between the ideal and the reality, and even make us feel quite comfortable there, munching away at our boerewors and braaibroodjies.

People will probably call me cynical and a spoilsport. After all, Braai Day has a champion in the morally unassailable Desmond Tutu. This year, Jan Braai lit a fire under the sea and changed the names of towns to become ‘braai relevant’. There is even a national braai day anthem, for crying in a potjie. I would feel more comfortable with a statement of intent–such as, let’s organize a braai with someone who speaks a different language than us–rather than the ubiquitous feel-good messages (a lot of them corporate-sponsored of course) about how braaiing is supposed to be the one thing that unites us. The usual line is that some people call it braai, others call it Shisa Nyama, others call it barbecue, but – hey, Shosoloza! – it’s the one thing we certainly have in common. This might be true in a trivial sense, but to say that this activity unites us, is more or less the same as saying that just because we all drive on the N1 we are all going to the same address.

And even if braaiing was something we all did have in common, isn’t it quite a depressing thought that it might be the only thing? And is that now a heritage worth a national campaign? Not our resistance to colonialism and apartheid, not our allegiance to the land, not even that our continent is the cradle of humankind – but the dripping of fat in a fire?

But, for a moment yesterday I thought I should suspend my criticism and succumb to fuzzy feelings of rainbow nationalism. My son came home from school with a coloured-in South African flag adorned with slogans such as ‘Being South African means treating everyone equally’. Yes, I thought, human rights is something worth braaiing about. I enjoyed having the afternoon off to watch him run around the athletics track. Across the street, a group of students (all of them white from what I could see) were noisily having a braai. Listening to music, laughing and drinking. It sounded jolly, and I joked with a friend that perhaps I should walk over and ask for a piece of wors in exchange for an extension on their essay due date. But as we walked back to the car after the athletics practice, a bunch of young black kids suddenly came speeding past us. It took me a second or three to realize what was happening. The penny dropped when I saw, behind the group of running kids, the security guard and a student in hot pursuit. ‘Come back here, you &@#%!’ the student, shouted. He was shirtless, clearly a bit drunk, and very angry. It looked like one of the kids might have stolen something from him, probably his cellphone. In a moment of supreme irony, the screaming student addressed the fleeing kids in Xhosa: ‘Yiza! Yiza, you &$%@!’ As a middle-class citizen of this poverty-stricken town I know the irritation of having stuff stolen repeatedly. But I am also familiar with the sight of kids begging on street corners, people rummaging through my rubbish, and the desperation of unemployment. Today the vivid juxtaposition of revelry and desperation, excess and hunger, braaiing students and loitering children just became too much for me. And my heart sank when I realized that when–-not if–-the kids get caught, their crime will probably only breed more violence.

I don’t see anything wrong with lighting a fire and having a good time. But let’s not allow the smoke to get in our eyes. Let’s not forget that we’re still a nation of people who can afford a chop –and-dop, and those who can’t. Perhaps braaiing is after all the perfect activity to remind us that inequality is the first heritage we need to overcome.

* Image Credit: ’Street Party, Saxonwold’ (from the series Security), Mikhael Subotzky, 2008.

Kenya’s Westgate Mall Attack and the Politics of Spectacular Violence

The masked gunmen who stormed Nairobi’s Westgate Mall on Saturday did one thing right. In targeting a site at the epicenter of elite consumerism in the upscale neighborhood of Westlands, they galvanized worldwide attention. As the mainstream media offers us a play by play of the unfolding hostage crisis, and as my Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds are flooded with declarations of anger and sorrow–sentiments I of course share–two things are apparent.

First, the extent to which the more privileged and educated segments of our world community find certain forms of violence in certain locales to be horrifying and objectionable. Second, the classed and racialized framings that shape our understandings of the issue at hand. Together, these notions work to differentiate between human lives that are worthy of grief, and those that are not.

What is it about the targeting of innocents on islands of privatized leisure like Westgate that strikes such a strong emotional chord across the world? Is it not that the majority of us who (have the ability to) log in every hour for updates see ourselves in the victims, knowing that we regularly occupy these very spaces?

Perhaps it is in this vein that we can make sense of the deafening silence in the context of the transnational plundering of neighboring Somalia—a country that readers of the New York Times and Kenya’s Daily Nation have been conditioned to see as representing the antithesis of liberal cosmopolitanism, as requiring external tutelage in the name of ‘peace and stability’, and whose ongoing destruction is more commonly understood as the work of Somalis themselves rather than the product of a complex assemblage of internal and external actors with competing political and economic interests.

How is it that the presence and violence of certain actors in the region–whether the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) and its African Union ‘peacekeeping’ (AMISOM) partners in Somalia, or US and Israeli forces ‘advising’ the KDF in Nairobi–is normalized in our collective imaginaries as legitimate, while exceptional violence by non-state actors against upper-class Kenyans and expatriates triggers such immediate outcry?

Just three months after its invasion of Somalia in October 2011, the Kenyan military reportedly claimed the lives of at least 700 Somali ‘militants’. UN reports have documented black market sales by peacekeeping troops of arms intended for the Somali government to oppositional groups including Al-Shabaab, and Human Rights Watch reports of indiscriminate mortar and rocket attacks by AMISOM in civilian areas, leading not only to loss of life but also repeated displacement.

If up to 3,000 AMISOM forces have died since the peacekeeping operation was launched in 2007, one can only imagine what the number of Somali casualties might be. Our implicit acceptance of the ostensible humanitarian logic underlying such destruction amounts to what Talal Asad has referred to as the ‘etiquette of death dealing’, characterized by nods of regret for such ‘unfortunate’ loss of life.

Witnesses to yesterday’s attack in Nairobi reported that the suspects ‘looked like Somalis’ and ‘chanted Allahu Akbar as they entered the building.’ The spectral and racialized image of the terrifying Muslim (and explicitly non-Kenyan) Somali is here conjured once again to capture liberal anxieties, while the security apparatuses of Kenya, Israel and the United States are visually and rhetorically incorporated into cosmopolitan imaginaries of peace-keeping and secular diplomacy.

If we are to believe that the Westgate attack was the work of Al-Shabaab as the organization itself claims, does this not demand consideration that this weekend’s tragedy might be a political response to a transnational project of state-sanctioned violence in neighboring Somalia? Is it not Somalia that has been the epicenter of a ‘war zone’ and not Westgate mall, as the New York Times claims?

Given the amplified surveillance and suspicion of Kenya’s Muslim minorities since 9/11, one can’t help but dread how widely the tentacles of this war zone will extend, whether onto the streets of Mombasa or into the homes of Eastleigh. The targets of ‘just’ violence deemed so integral to secular modernity will be lucky to garner an ounce of the empathy we have all expressed in response to the tragedy at Westgate.

Charles Burnett and Govt Sponsored Biopics

Most of you may know for his brilliant films “Killer of Sheep” and “To Sleep With Anger,” among others. But now it has been announced that Burnett is teaming up with the Algerian Ministry of Culture and the American company Cinema Libre to make a film focusing on the life of Algerian leader and national hero, Abd El-Kader. Emir Abd El-Kader became known as the father of the modern Algerian state after uniting various factions and leading the resistance against the French colonial invasion in the mid-19th century.

This is not the first time the American director has worked with an African government to produce an official biopic. Back in 2007, Charles Burnett collaborated with the Namibian government on “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation,” which told the story of Namibia’s first president, Samuel Nujoma and the nation’s fight for independence from South Africa. If his film on Namibia is any indication, those expecting a film of the same quality as “Killer of Sheep” will be sorely disappointed. By most accounts, “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation” (check out the trailer here) was utterly frustrating, dry, and clocking in at an excruciating 161 minutes, better suited as a PBS miniseries. The film starred Danny Glover who, given his involvement in the Africa Liberation Support Committee in the 1970s, had a deeply personal connection to the Namibian liberation struggle. However, the film turned out to be a complete waste of his talent.

Moreover, one cannot avoid consideration of the fact that Algeria’s current government has a less-than-stellar reputation and a penchant for making its dissidents disappear. It makes you wonder what kind of message and nationalist narrative a film co-produced by the Algerian Ministry of Culture might convey. It also begs the question of what might be the motivation behind their collaboration with an American director and production company.

* BTW, Algeria’s government is no stranger to collaborating with filmmakers. “Battle of Algiers” was a 1966 collaboration between the newly independent Algeria and the Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo. But that was a different time.

Smells like Brazil

For the past week I’ve perused a steady stream of facebook posts about Movimento Revolucionário’s peaceful protest planned for Thursday September 19, 2013. A week prior to the planned ‘manif’ (Angolan shorthand for manifestação or protest), police arrested seventeen year-old activist Nito Alves when he went to collect t-shirts he’d ordered (ostensibly for use at the event on the 19th) that allegedly defamed the president and incited violence. Speaking to Makangola his mother, Adália Chivongue, declared “the problem in this country is that if someone speaks the truth they are imprisoned or killed. So the President had my son imprisoned because of the t-shirts? Because of this they can kill him?….If anything happens to my son, I’ll become a revolutionary.”

As Shrikesh Laxmidas noted in a piece reporting on the Angolan National Police’s promise to crackdown on the youth protest, “though small in number, the Angolan Revolutionary Movement has survived a police clampdown and attacks by pro-government groups.” We’ve covered some of their activities here, here, and here. Last week President José Eduardo dos Santos held a forum with 3,000 youth, no one in the MR received an invitation. Not surprising perhaps, given that the President, in the first television interview (albeit pre-recorded) granted in twenty-two years (not, by the way, to an Angolan television station or journalist but to a private Portuguese station – SIC -with brown-nosing journalist Henrique Cymerman), described these young people as “frustrated” and “failures at school” when asked about the Movement that emerged in March 2011.

Strange then that what the President deems such a lackluster group of social misfits would merit such an outsized response. Time and again they and their supporters have been subject to beatings, prison torture, disappearances, and infiltration. On the 19th the state sent out the kaenches (muscled up, private, plain-clothes forces) and the regular uniformed national police. Elias Isaac, director of Open Society in Angola, earlier this month pointed to a worrying increase in police violence against citizens. Referring to violence against prisoners at the Viana prison he asserted that “it’s a demonstration that we have a system of police and governance that believes in repression, violence, torture, and the physical punishment of people, which is an aberration in a democratic State and a rights-based State.”

Our own Claudio Silva described the scene Thursday on his Facebook page as a “comedy”–thousands of armed police to protect the President against some fifty-odd, if even that, “frustrated” young people. With all the police sabre-rattling prior to the event, Amnesty International sounded its alarms. Precisely the kind of international attention the MR loves and the PR detests, especially as Angola vies for a spot on the UN Security Council. To say nothing of the irony of its membership on the UN Human Rights Council. Rafael Marques told Radio Despertar (between 7.10-14.45) that the state is MR’s best promoter.

Reginaldo Silva, a Luanda based journalist and political commentator, in a FB post on the day of the manif, mused that “with all this political apparatus, it’s easier and easier to create political facts in Angola with a world impact, without a big investment.” And once the dust settles, some “comunicólogo” will show up to give us lessons on “the non-events/non-facts” (a little Rumsfeldian, isn’t it?).

If world impact was the goal, Friday they hit the jackpot. Three journalists went to court to attend the arraignment of the 23 activists arrested before the protest got underway. Rafael Marques de Morais, of makangola, Coque Mukuta (VOA), and Alexandre Neto Solombe (VOA, VP of National Committee of the Angolan Syndicate of Journalists, and President of Media Institute of Southern Africa -Angola) began to interview the activists as they were released from court. The Rapid Intervention Police – heavily armed, numbering over 50 – surrounded and detained them, despite the papers of release issued by the judge to the activists and the fact that the journalists had done nothing, except their job. They were taken to the headquarters of the PIR and beaten up while still in the police trucks. Solombe recounted their ordeal to VOA:

They made us lie down–and they walked on top of us with their boots on … on our heads … each of them, at least 100 kilos … When we received our phones and cameras back, we realized the state they were in – some with the lenses torn off….We’re very angry. Very annoyed … This is the first time I’ve traveled in PIR cell car units. This is first time I’ve experienced this level of violence against citizens. So don’t tell me that the police are treating people well.

The PIR then transferred them to the Provincial Police headquarters where, after about an hour, they were released following an apology. The journalists stayed on to lodge a complaint against the police for damage and destruction of personal and professional property.

Thus far, aside from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the greatest news flurry has been in the Portuguese press where even the football paper, A Bola, reported on the detention of Marques. Leading up to the protest, earlier in the week, in Germany, the Green Party questioned Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s government about its relationship with the Angolan government.

Sousa Jamba, an Angolan writer and journalist who lives in Florida, received 37 phone calls and 230 messages asking about Rafael Marques. He posted that he’d been watching a heated debate among Angolans ensue on FB. One Angolan said that the world is only paying attention because Marques is an intellectual who writes books and studied at Oxford whereas illiterate zungueiras (ambulant vendors) are picked up and beaten every day by police and no one says ‘boo.’ Central Angola’s comment: “What’s surprising about that? Hasn’t it always been that way everywhere and won’t it continue to be? Only when the common practice reaches people with visibility does the world stand up. It’s a waste of time to blame the world for not paying attention to us when we aren’t capable of emitting more than an angry opinion from the sofa!” This riposte was the most liked.

Commentators suggest that police presence in the street will remain high as long as the World Championships in roller hockey, that kicked off this week, continues. The Angolan government spent $89 million on new pavilions: “officials say the 16-nation event will boost employment and attract interest from the country’s youth.” Protestors and theirs supporters disagree. Among them, MCK who posted this auto-critique (that would have made the old MPLA proud) on his FB page. Smell like Brazil?