Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 455

The Love Affair between Nigerians and Arsenal

The love affair between Nigerians and Arsenal is an enduring one. Other English teams are also popular in the country, but the attachment many Nigerian football fans formed with the club during Nwankwo Kanu’s five year spell at Arsenal has withstood the frustrations of following the Gunners in the past few years.

Following Arsenal’s impressive win over their high-spending local rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, Nigeria’s former vice-president Atiku Abubakar tweeted the following:

This was just what I needed: An @Arsenal win to lift me up at a moment like this

Context: Abubakar is a leading figure in Nigeria’s ruling PDP party (neoliberal, right-wing), which has been tearing itself apart at its convention in the past 48 hours and split just a few hours ahead of kick-off at the Emirates Stadium.

Abubakar is by no means Arsenal’s only powerful supporter in Nigeria. The cement tycoon Aliko Dangote, thought to be worth $20 billion, is also a Gunner. And just yesterday Naija Twitter King Tolu Ogunlesi “signed” for Arsenal, outing himself officially as a Gooner (prompting historian Max Siollun to ask why Nigerians had never felt the same affection for Bolton Wanderers on the basis of Jay-Jay Okocha’s exploits at the Reebok Stadium — answers on a postcard, please).

Kanu was a dream of a player, a two-time African footballer of the year. He won an Olympic Gold medal with Nigeria in 1996 and two English league titles with Arsenal.

Last year I compiled a list of the greatest goals scored by African players in the English Premier League since its inception in the early 90s. Kanu came in at number two, behind only Tony Yeboah. Here’s what I wrote about him:

Two nil down at Stamford Bridge, with 15 minutes left, Kanu came up with an incredible match-winning hat-trick. Great goals can be judged in lots of ways. One is their level of difficulty, and what Kanu did against Chelsea in the dying minutes of that match was something just extraordinarily difficult. Chasing an overhit Davor Suker pass, Kanu somehow kept the ball in play as he blocked Albert Ferrer’s blasted clearance at point blank range with a stretch of his long left leg. Chelsea keeper Ed De Goey charged out and cornered him on the by-line, and it seemed Kanu’s only option was to try to cut the ball back for Overmars and Suker waiting in the middle. Perhaps that’s what De Goey thought too, because Kanu sold the Dutchman the most languid, the most delicious of dumbies. As De Goey slid for the ball, the Nigerian danced inside him, trod in a large puddle that gave up a visible splash, and from the narrowest of angles sent the ball skimming just over the heads of Marcel Desailly and Frank Lebouef and into the top corner of the far post.

It was the best goal the great man would score for Arsenal, though this defence shredding burst of skill against Spurs and this exquisite back-heel-on-the-run against Middlesborough were also pretty special.

*Originally published on our new Football is a Country Tumblr. Our Football Department will be tweeting from FutbolsaCountry from now on.

Township “Living,” White People and the Limits of “Empathy”

If a white family spends a month in a shack, it’s called “brave,” an exercise in “empathy,” and above all, deemed newsworthy enough to gain international coverage. If a black family spends a lifetime in a shack, it’s called South Africa, and it certainly won’t make the paper.

I groaned as I opened David Smith’s Guardian piece on the white family that spent a month in a shack in Mamelodi, one of the largest African townships in South Africa, with close to half a million residents living on the outskirts of Pretoria. Smith writes:

Nearly two decades after racial apartheid bit the dust, its legacy persists in spatial segregation between affluent suburbs and neglected townships, with millions of black people still commuting from the latter at great expense of time and money.

“It’s just so easy to live in a bubble in South Africa and especially for the middle- to upper-class to build higher walls rather than building bridges,” Ena continued. “This is a way to create empathy, a way to build bridges and a way to see how the majority of this country lives. It really is very easy to be oblivious of it.

In the era of ubuntu, this is standard fare. There are two ways to read this kind of claim. First, there’s what I like to think of as the “new age” position (no relation to the old SACP organ or the Gupta rag): the problem lies not on the terrain of the structural, but rather in the subjectivities of South Africa’s residents. If only people – and by this, they always mean white people – would acquire that magical disposition called empathy, everything would be fine.

This sentiment, while surely well intended, is ultimately a symptom of white narcissism. The very framing of the position requires white experiences and the transformation of white subjectivities, with Mamelodi’s black residents rendered passive scenery. At best, they appear in the narrative as bearers of disbelief.  While in theory this understanding of “empathy” is tied to knowing the other, as it plays out here, the focus is entirely on the shock of whites out of place.

The “new age” position then renders blacks for whites, much like the concept of diversity so popular in American discussions of de facto segregation in public education. Rather than actually talking about integrating schools, “diversity” shifts the focus toward the level of experience. No one uses the word to describe a handful of white kids in a black school, but as soon as there are people of color in a white space, it becomes “diversity,” a valuable learning experience for white people. Diversity, rather than an end, becomes a means – white people can “broaden their horizons” or some other platitude, and hopefully they’ll develop some empathy. What of actually integrating the schools? It’s in the same “to do later” stack of papers as desegregating residential areas in South Africa.

But there’s a second reading of the quote, the liberal reading, that is actually worth engaging. This position assumes that there is a logical progression from empathy to the overcoming of the structural legacy of apartheid. But note well the way that this progression is developed in Smith’s piece:

Many also expressed hope that the media coverage would move politicians to action. Nkambule’s niece, Velly, 27, said: “I was very glad they came to see how we are suffering here and how much we spend on taxis and paraffin. The community is very happy and we wish they could stay forever.”

It’s not actually about knowing the other as a precondition for desegregation. The appearance of white people in the township means publicity, and publicity means hope. When a handful of white people end up living in Blikkiesdorp, or when an insignificant number of white people live in shacks on the outskirts of whatever city, or when Zuma gets all rainbow nation and upgrades a dozen white people’s shacks outside of Pretoria, the white media eats it up. It’s pretty shocking that it takes a troupe of Aryans play-acting poverty to attract some coverage of the housing crisis in this country, but what did you expect? Empathy?

“They said it was a designer shirt and I shouldn’t wear it here, so I took it off,” he [the dad] says. “I need people to see that I am here and living like they are.”

Township “Tours,” White People and the Limits of “Empathy”

If a white family spends a month in a shack, it’s called “brave,” an exercise in “empathy,” and above all, deemed newsworthy enough to gain international coverage. If a black family spends a lifetime in a shack, it’s called South Africa, and it certainly won’t make the paper.

I groaned as I opened David Smith’s Guardian piece on the white family that spent a month in a shack in Mamelodi, one of the largest African townships in South Africa, with close to half a million residents living on the outskirts of Pretoria. Smith writes:

Nearly two decades after racial apartheid bit the dust, its legacy persists in spatial segregation between affluent suburbs and neglected townships, with millions of black people still commuting from the latter at great expense of time and money.

“It’s just so easy to live in a bubble in South Africa and especially for the middle- to upper-class to build higher walls rather than building bridges,” Ena continued. “This is a way to create empathy, a way to build bridges and a way to see how the majority of this country lives. It really is very easy to be oblivious of it.

In the era of ubuntu, this is standard fare. There are two ways to read this kind of claim. First, there’s what I like to think of as the “new age” position (no relation to the old SACP organ or the Gupta rag): the problem lies not on the terrain of the structural, but rather in the subjectivities of South Africa’s residents. If only people – and by this, they always mean white people – would acquire that magical disposition called empathy, everything would be fine.

This sentiment, while surely well intended, is ultimately a symptom of white narcissism. The very framing of the position requires white experiences and the transformation of white subjectivities, with Mamelodi’s black residents rendered passive scenery. At best, they appear in the narrative as bearers of disbelief.  While in theory this understanding of “empathy” is tied to knowing the other, as it plays out here, the focus is entirely on the shock of whites out of place.

The “new age” position then renders blacks for whites, much like the concept of diversity so popular in American discussions of de facto segregation in public education. Rather than actually talking about integrating schools, “diversity” shifts the focus toward the level of experience. No one uses the word to describe a handful of white kids in a black school, but as soon as there are people of color in a white space, it becomes “diversity,” a valuable learning experience for white people. Diversity, rather than an end, becomes a means – white people can “broaden their horizons” or some other platitude, and hopefully they’ll develop some empathy. What of actually integrating the schools? It’s in the same “to do later” stack of papers as desegregating residential areas in South Africa.

But there’s a second reading of the quote, the liberal reading, that is actually worth engaging. This position assumes that there is a logical progression from empathy to the overcoming of the structural legacy of apartheid. But note well the way that this progression is developed in Smith’s piece:

Many also expressed hope that the media coverage would move politicians to action. Nkambule’s niece, Velly, 27, said: “I was very glad they came to see how we are suffering here and how much we spend on taxis and paraffin. The community is very happy and we wish they could stay forever.”

It’s not actually about knowing the other as a precondition for desegregation. The appearance of white people in the township means publicity, and publicity means hope. When a handful of white people end up living in Blikkiesdorp, or when an insignificant number of white people live in shacks on the outskirts of whatever city, or when Zuma gets all rainbow nation and upgrades a dozen white people’s shacks in the East Rand, the white media eats it up. It’s pretty shocking that it takes a troupe of Aryans play-acting poverty to attract some coverage of the housing crisis in this country, but what did you expect? Empathy?

“They said it was a designer shirt and I shouldn’t wear it here, so I took it off,” he [the dad] says. “I need people to see that I am here and living like they are.”

On Sunday night, Aminata Touré was named Prime Minister of Senegal

On Sunday night, Aminata Touré was named Prime Minister of Senegal. True to Touré’s style, .

A new Prime Minister forms a new cabinet. It was thought that Touré would have the cabinet by the end of the week. She had it by Monday evening. That’s how Mimi Touré, as she is called, works.

Touré is called the Iron Lady. Every woman who rises to a certain level of government becomes an Iron Lady in the press. The men are, well, just guys.

Whichever mineral flows through the veins of Aminata Touré, she has spent all of her adult life working as a human rights and women’s rights activist, who has worked in Senegal and around the world on women’s issues and, more generally, at the intersection of social and economic justice struggles.

Until Sunday’s appointment, Touré was Senegal’s Minister of Justice. As Minister, Touré became well known, and largely popular, for far-reaching anti-corruption campaigns that reached deep, far, wide and high into the previous government’s ranks. She brought Karim Wade, son of the previous President, to trial and then to prison. She oversaw the arrest of Chad’s former President Hissène Habré and made sure the subsequent trial wouldn’t wait for decades to occur.

From her early days, from her adolescence, to the present, Touré has been an activist, a militante, and a footballeuse who played for the Dakar Gazelles. At university, Touré worked with the Communist Workers’ League. Since then, her militancy has turned to family planning, both in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and around the world, working most recently with the United Nations Population Fund. At the UNFPA, Touré was Chief of the Gender, Human Rights and Culture Branch. There, she pushed and pulled to get all sorts of people, agencies, governments to begin to think and act more seriously about “gender mainstreaming”. Touré understood that, from the State perspective as well as from an analytical point of view, women’s reproductive rights are part of the governmental budget process, and so the two have to be synthesized. She has argued that women’s empowerment and gender equality are key to any kind of health program. She has argued that access to health is a human right, and that that human right is first and foremost a women’s right. Repeatedly, she has shown the world that, if not another world, then a better world is possible … now.

And she has worked to make the now happen … now. And she has often succeeded.

In her new cabinet, Touré appointed Sidiki Kaba as the new Minister of Justice. Kaba is the former head of the International Federation of Human Rights. His appointment has already come under attack because of his support for decriminalization of homosexuality. So, he’s got something going in his favor.

While Senegalese women’s groups have hailed the appointment of Aminata Touré to Prime Minister, they also note with some dismay the mathematics of her Cabinet: 4 women, 28 men.

It’s an important and newsworthy moment for Senegal and beyond, unless of course you rely on the Anglophone press. There, in the land of all the news that fits to print, nothing happened in Senegal.

But something is happening. A feminist, women’s rights, reproductive rights, human rights activist with a history of accomplishments has become Prime Minister of Senegal: Aminata Touré.

These are the days

These are the days when a white man with a gun needs a license to shoot a deer but not to hunt a black teen through the streets of suburbia, or to kill a young black man for listening to loud music;

When police deputies are licensed to shoot a black man for committing the crime of retrieving cigarettes from his car outside his home in the middle of the night;

These are the days when corporations are people and people are commodities to be sold and outsourced in the open markets;

When the banks that build homes in quick sand get bailed out as the people sink deeper and deeper into joblessness, homelessness and debt;

These are the days when corporate America can tell American workers to stop complaining because they too would be part of the 1% percent if only they lived in Haiti, or Kenya or Uganda;

When on reality television undercover bosses in blue-collar overalls get to mime workers for a day, but workers never get to be the bosses for life;

These are the days when the revolutions we sprung eat their young in Egypt and Libya, and Obama keeps his cool but drones on about Pakistan where he kills Pakistani children to keep ours safe;

These are the days when the United States has to reassure Russia that it will not torture or kill US citizens seeking asylum in the Kremlin yet Guantanamo Bay remains open for business;

When we are told that truth can become a terrorist bomb in our midst and whistle blowers are enemies of the state;

These are the days when immigrants are enemies at the gate, the days of a black president whose smile is a façade, behind it hope for the powerful and wealthy and hopelessness and spare change for the poor;

These are the days of welcome to a post-racial transparent America unleashed. Please Watch your Step!

Press Freedom in Liberia

“Your spirit appears to me to be anarchical. I remember during the last Administration, you were critical and censorious of it. When it comes to the present Administration, you are occasionally censorious and critical of it. I have never known you to compliment any administration, but you always look for what you think to be weak spots in it. I think this is an evil spirit and an evil eye which will not do you or the country any good. Supposed every or most persons had the same spirit, what would happen to the country!”

President William V.S. Tubman

In 1951 when muckraking Liberian school-teacher and journalist Albert Porte wrote an open letter to the Liberian president questioning his purchase of a luxury yacht on the nation’s dime, President Tubman wrote back, accusing Porte of having an anarchical spirit and inviting him for a cruise. 

Porte’s status as the conscience of pre-civil war Liberia is rarely disputed. The story goes, he always kept a toothbrush around when reporting, in anticipation of a night in jail. Today he’s cited by Liberian journalists as a model to emulate, the grandfather of modern Liberian journalism both figuratively and literally. Kenneth Best and Rodney Sieh, rival publishers of Liberia’s two most prominent newspapers are both blood descendents of Porte.

Beyond family and profession, Sieh shares with Porte the great ability to get under the skin of Liberia’s elite. Currently, Sieh sits under guard at Monrovia’s JFK hospital where he was taken last week after catching malaria during a prison hunger strike. He was striking to protest the closing of his paper, and his incarceration, by a Liberian court bent on extracting a $1.5 million US libel decision from him. While the money is meant to compensate former agriculture minister Chris Toe after FrontPage Africa reported on his rather dubious dismissal from government, many Liberians believe it is intended to shut down Sieh, and his paper FrontPage Africa for good.

I worked at FrontPage Africa in 2011/2012 through the organization Journalists for Human Rights. It was during this time that Sieh was first thrown in jail for contempt of court. I wrote about it for the CPJ blog here, and the phenomenon of libel used as a tool of censorship here.

If Liberian journalists are sometimes accused of not living up to the ideals of Albert Porte, more often they are accused of being Albert Porte poseurs.

“He thinks he’s Albert Porte,” people would say about Sieh. “But he’s no Porte.”

In fact there are some telling parallels between Sieh and Porte. In 1975 Porte wrote a critique of the Finance Minister, Stephen A. Tolbert–who happened to be the brother of Tubman’s successor, President William Tolbert–accusing him of using political office to advance his considerable business interests. The minister sued Porte for libel and was awarded damages of $250,000 US. Stephen A. Tolbert died in a plane crash soon after and the case was closed.

A New York Times article from 1973, “Freedom of Expression Taking Hold in Liberia”, describes Porte’s lonely crusade under the True Whig regime as coming to an end. The article profiles a new generation of journalists and critics testing the opening of free speech in Liberia at the time. A young assistant to the Minister of Finance is described as mounting one of the most critical public speeches yet. The young woman is Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, then part of the new guard of dissidents and critics, now the President of Liberia.

It’s difficult to say where she fits into this. The decision to imprison Sieh is one for the courts, but in 2010 she stepped in to broker a deal that saw Sieh get out of jail. This came after widespread international outrage. Since that time, FrontPage Africa has been instrumental in reporting on a string of corruption scandals leading back to her administration as well as publicising the lack of action she’s taken in prosecuting corrupt officials. So while she is not directly responsible for Sieh’s imprisonment, there’s not a lot of incentive to get him out either.

In 1975, the public backlash around the Porte’s libel case lead to the formation of Citizens of Liberia in Defense of Albert Porte or COLIDAP, one of Liberia’s first civil society organizations. If there’s any silver lining, Sieh’s legal troubles have spurred organizing around press freedom issues from students at the University of Liberia and the Press Union of Liberia. After the verdict, hundreds of protesters tried to block the car transporting Sieh to prison.

With FrontPage Africa shut, the powerful of Liberia have more room to maneuver, but hopefully not for long.

* Top image of Rodney Sieh via the New Narratives documentary project.

Israel’s Uganda Plan

Last month we blogged about the revelation that a number of African countries (dubbed “third countries”) are on the verge of signing an agreement with Israel to absorb African asylum seekers currently in Israel. These asylum seekers were mostly from Sudan and Eritrea and could not be sent there, so Israel was looking for “third countries” to take them. In return, Israel offered the new host countries “benefit packages” that include weapons and other arms.

On Thursday, the Israeli paper Haaretz reported that the “third country” is Uganda, and an agreement has been signed. According to Haaretz, Israel refuses to expose the details of that agreement but as far as it knows, the country would fund the flights of “immigrants to Uganda and their absorption there.” Haaretz also reported that the Israeli government would also provide deportees with a grant–about $1500.

Israel’s Justice Ministry clarified that the attorney general of Israel, Yehuda Weinstein, has approved the agreement with Uganda after hearing from Hagai Hadas, who was appointed Israel’s chief negotiator by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Justice Ministry brought up again the misused term “voluntary return” and emphasized that this is the only kind of repatriation that is talking place for the time being.

Human rights organizations in Israel were quick to issue a statement in which they doubted the reliability of the story, stating “Uganda is not a safe country for refugees from Israel, and that there is no way to ensure the safety of those deported there”. More importantly, Uganda’s government denied the existence of such an agreement (“There’s no way Uganda would enter such an arrangement”).

This morning Haaretz published that there is no agreement, only “talks.”

The Haaretz revelation is not something new. The last couple of years, there have been several publications that implied or directly discussed the efforts Israel is making to find a country that would be willing to absorb asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea.

In June 2008, it emerged that the prime minister and foreign affairs minister at the time (Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni respectively) approved a plan to try and transfer asylum seekers, mainly from Sudan, to African countries. According to Galei Zahal, the ministry of foreign affairs contacted all the African countries Israel has diplomatic connections with, among them Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin and offered a payment in return for absorbing thousands of asylum seekers living in Israel.

In October 2010, Netanyahu ordered resumption of the talks with African countries regarding the matter. According to a senior official in the ministry of foreign affairs, Israel was willing to pay millions of dollars for the cause. Ynet reported that Netanyahu was considering appointing someone to be a negotiator.

In May 2012, Parliament member and the chairman of the “Deportation Now” movement Danny Danon announced that he is working on a bill that would ensure that 80% of the “infiltrators” will be out of Israel in two years. According to the bill, one of the methods would be transferring “infiltrators” to Eastern European and African countries.

In August 2012 Netanyahu appointed the former senior Mossad official, Hagai Hadas, to lead the “repatriation” efforts.

In December 2012, Yedioth Ahronot reported that Hadas has recently visited secretly a few African countries with the purpose of finding a destination for this plan. The article also mentioned that in November 2011, Israel contacted the prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, and asked him to absorb a group of asylum seekers. “Sure,” Odinga laughed, “I’ll take yours and you’ll take mine, I have 800,000.”

In February 2013, imprisoned asylum seekers received a letter suggesting they go to Uganda. According to The Hotline for Migrant Workers, an Eritrean detainee in Saharonim prison was told that he “must go to Eritrea or Uganda and there is no other way out of here.”

Following this move, last March, one Eritrean went on a flight to Uganda, which was funded by Israel, but was denied entry to the country. Refusing to go back to Eritrea, he was sent to Egypt and was arrested there.

NGOs suggested the purpose of an ambiguous agreement with Uganda is to delay the High Court of Justice from ruling on the petition calling for the abrogation of the Prevention of Infiltration Law and to pressure asylum-seekers in Israel to leave Israel, even if it meant risking their lives.

Haaretz‘s story last week follows an announcement by Interior Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, that Israel, right after the Jewish Holidays, would initiate a big operation to deport immigrants from Sudan and Eritrea and would take measures against those who refuse to leave Israel.

Sa’ar mentioned that among other measures, Israel would stop extending visas and would start enforcing laws to prevent employers from hiring asylum seekers. According to Sa’ar, Israel would encourage “voluntary return” of asylum seekers in the cities and in the detention facilities. “All these measures we are taking will increase the numbers,” promised Sa’ar.

This won’t be first time that Israeli officials fantasize about transferring refugees to other countries. As historian Tom Segev writes in his book 1967 (pp. 536-539):

Few Israelis knew about the transfer project. Everything was done secretly, as if it were something to be ashamed of…

Upon departing the country, the emigrants had to leave behind the identification cards they had received from the military government. They also had to sign a form declaring, in Hebrew and Arabic, that they were leaving willingly.

…As it turned out, most of refugees did not leave Gaza in return for plane ticket. Mass deportations were more or less impossible, because diplomats and the world press were always watching. But there was a third way. A senior official in the Foreign Ministry Michael Comay, wrote to ambassador Harman that the military governor of the Gaza Strip, Mordechai Gur, was pushing people to leave Gaza by eroding their standard of life; he said Gur himself had admitted to this.

Weekend Music Break 52

Further left field than the “Million Miles” video for Tunde Adebimpe and his TV On The Radio band you won’t get them this week, but Myspace won’t let me embed it. Damn. No worries, here are ten other videos. First up, set in Cape Town, a creative video for Alec Lomami, Sammus and Badi Banx (also known as “The Belgian-Congolese Connection”):

Another Belgian connection here, with roots in Rwanda: Stromae’s new album is a hit. Trust the YouTube numbers for this video (35 million views, and counting), the local press, and his other videos:

There’s South African Ill Skillz, representing Gugulethu:

Moving to Tanzania, Africanhiphop.com shared this new Saigon/Deplowmatz video recently. Child of a diplomat:

Kenrazy — Kenyan label Grandpa still putting in the hardest work — has a new tune out:

This one via GetMziki: Shikow FemiOne freestyles on Nairobi’s Home Boyz Radio with Dj Finalkut:

Loving these understated beats from Ghanaian Joey B:

A rare and beautiful South African collaboration between Jet Black Camaro’s shoe-gaze guitars and inspiring vocals courtesy of Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness:

More guitars: Malian band Tamikrest wowing European crowds in this video for “Imanin bas zihoun”, a new song off their forthcoming new album. Soon out on Glitterbeat Records:

And a Tiny Desk Concert from Buika, who brings “La Noche Mas Larga” and “La Nave Del Olvido”:

5 New Films to Watch Out For, N°30

From the director and singer-actors of the 2005 film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha comes a new “opera” film. Unogumbe/Noye’s Fludde follows the plot of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde work but moves the action from medieval England to present-day South Africa.

Nomads is a musical documentary by Mohamad Hanafi, produced by the Goethe‐Institut’s Sudan Film Factory (also check out the Factory’s other recent work). It tells the story of a group of artist friends working as mechanics in Khartoum. Here’s a trailer:

The starting point for German filmmaker Eva Weber’s Black Out documentary is the “nightly pilgrimage” hundreds of Guinean school children undertake, “searching for light” at the airport, petrol stations and wealthier parts of Conakry. (Here’s a facebook page detailing the power failures in Guinea.) The film has been winning prizes since it started doing the rounds at festivals earlier this year.

Another prize-winning documentary is Dieudonné Hamadi’s first long-feature film, Atalaku (Lingala “The Caller”*), in which Hamadi follows pasteur Gaylor making a living by convincing people in Kinshasa to vote for “his” candidate during the 2011 elections. No (English) trailer yet, but here’s a fragment:

 

And also set in Congo is Avec le Vent (With the Wind), a documentary by Belgian researcher Raf Custers about foreign investors who continue to still do pretty much what they want in the Congolese mine industry.

* Footnote on the translation. According to Arizona M. Baongoli’s Lingala Learner’s Dictionary: Lingala-English, English-Lingala (p.5), “atalaku” is “A kind of rapper in Congolese music; a singer who speaks the words during show time while other singers are dancing; e.g. Atalaku Bill Clinto ayebi mosala na ye malamu. (The rapper Bill Clinton knows his work well.) / The term “atalaku” comes from Kikongo language and it means “look here, look at me”. It is derived from the verb “ku-tala” which means to look, to watch, to see. It first appeared in Congolese music in the early 1980s. The term was initially associated with a popular music dance step but later came to refer to the accompanist singer who is in charge of injecting words, yelling and shouting during the second part of a song which consists of a fast paced dance sequence. In French “atalaku” is also known as “animateur”. Some of the very first atalakus were used by Zaiko Langa Langa and later many others followed. Some of the most popular atalakus in recent history include Bill Clinton Kalonji, Juna Mumbafu, etc. Atalakus play a major role in “mabanga” or “dedicates”. That is why they are also known as “mobwaki-ya-mabanga”.”

There you have it. Thanks to Joshua Walker.

South African photographer Kitty’s puzzling characters

A good photo tells a story – a great photo keeps you guessing. And that’s just what Kitty’s images do: they’re mysterious, and interpretation of them lies, mostly, in the viewer’s eyes. Or, as Diane Arbus puts it, “The thing that’s important to know is that you never know.”

Recently held at NIROXProjects in Maboneng, and curated by Steven C Dubin, Professor and Head of the Arts Administration Programme at Columbia University (NYC), ‘Developing Characters’ consisted of 80 photographs which were sourced from over 1400 negative slides produced by Kitty’s Studio in Pietermaritzburg between 1972 and 1984. The subjects, who were mostly black and Indian, were photographed by Singarum Jeevaruthnam Moodley, aka Kitty (1922-1987). Moodley was a staunch anti-apartheid activist, and his business premises not only served as a photo studio, but also as a hub of anti-apartheid activity. His images also provide a view of black South Africans during the struggle that hasn’t been documented before. 

Dubin says the value of the exhibition lies in its counter-narrative. “Not to minimise the struggle, but people also had day-to-day lives. The studio was a place to escape and imagine other lives – a different life below the radar, which was not just political. Kitty’s studio is the only place where tribal and contemporary culture merge and are portrayed.” He adds the studio was right on the line between the ANC and IFP, and KwaZulu-Natal was a “hotbed of violence” at the time – but there’s a stillness and sense of safety in the studio, which couldn’t be found outside its doors.

How Dubin acquired this archive of negatives was, as he terms it, “a wonderful accident”. Thirteen years ago, he visited South Africa, and fell in love with the place. “I loved the sense of urgency and transformation,” he adds.

Dubin has been visiting South Africa ever since. In 2011, he bought a stack of old photos from a shop in Cape Town. He showed it to a friend of his in Joburg, just before leaving to return to the US. She, in turn, told him that she had a collection of negatives that were sitting in her garage, and that she should “just give them to him”. It turned out she’d had these slides for about 15 years, and, according to her, they had been thrown out from a KwaZulu-Natal museum.

After the death of Moodley, the head curator of the museum asked Moodley’s son-in-law about selling the studio’s negatives. The museum had an interest in “Africana” and the curator felt that Moodley’s collection would be the right fit, as it depicted many Africans decked out in animal skins and beadwork. After much pestering, Moodley’s son-in-law gave in, and agreed to sell the negatives to the curator.

The curator quickly realised that obtaining Moodley’s photos was a big mistake. Although there were many images of people in traditional attire, there were also, curiously, photos of Zulus sporting elements of popular western culture; a hybrid of sunglasses, suits, and spears. She panicked, as she’d paid quite a lot of money for the collection, and she decided to sort the photos into two piles: one ‘Zulu’; the rest tossed out.

“She obviously didn’t do a good job, because I’ve got some of the Zulu stuff. More importantly, I’ve got the images where people are combining contemporary and traditional culture, or images where the same person is Zulu in one photo, and modern in the other. If you were to go to that that museum today and look at what they’ve got, you’d have the mistaken notion that between 1972 and 1984, all the Zulus in Natal were walking around in traditional attire – which is not true, ” says Dubin. He adds that the curator is still, to this day, embarrassed about what she did. “She really laments it – she was young. But she’s really happy that I have them.”

The people in Moodley’s photos seem real and close – a stark contrast to the stoic and detached subjects on colonial-era postcards that were displayed in a vitrine. A heading read: “12 delightful snapshots of African native life”, with photos of bare-breasted, expressionless black women, effectively reduced to tribalised objects. Dubin decided to display these postcards as there are some visual parallels to Moodley’s images, especially when it comes to props: for example, women holding unopened umbrellas make numerous appearances in his shots – as they do in the postcards. It’s interesting to note that, according to an exhibition held at IZIKO Slave Lodge in Cape Town (Siliva Zulu, 2012), the umbrella was a sought after item in Zululand during colonial times.

The vitrine also displayed Zulu beadwork, which Dubin says, gave important context, and was not intended to provide an ethnographic frame of reference. Beadwork appears in Moodley’s photos, where the sitters are wearing traditional attire. In fact, the beads offer some clues as to what the intentions of the – mostly enigmatic – sitters were. In Zulu culture, beadwork is loaded with meaning. In one of Moodley’s images, a man wears a beadwork tie, the pattern’s meaning loosely translated to “talk loudly what you want”. In another, a couple is depicted, with a sombre-faced woman in traditional clothing. Her beads mean “a heart that is not happy” and “forgive”, while the man wears a western jacket and collared shirt.

‘Developing Characters’ gave rise to many difficult questions, many of which have equally difficult answers. In a panel discussion held just after the opening, many views were heated. According to Dubin, one black woman felt “very anxious and ambivalent” when viewing the images, while a male member of the audience was “tired of seeing bare-breasted women, the objectification of the black body”. It also can’t be denied that there is a gender gap in Moodley’s photos: most of the women are not as comfortable with the camera as the men, and they are more docile. For me, the most striking image is that of a Zulu woman wearing traditional Zulu female attire in one frame, but in the next she’s in Zulu male attire. This would’ve been extremely transgressive, yet her motives – and her identity – remain unknown.

The most pertinent question that rises is whether or not it’s ethical to display private photos of people who can’t be traced – and there is definitely an element of voyeurism, however unintentional.

A young Indian Elvis, his white pointy shoes laden with swag; a black man’s peace sign bling hangs around his neck, his hands propped self-assured on his hips; a middle-aged black woman’s scars peek out beneath a delicate blouse, her eyes have seen things they shouldn’t have; the only white family, clearly middle-class and comfortable with themselves, an anomaly in the exhibition. These photos were essentially keepsakes, meant for private viewing and dissemination. But they were hung on a gallery’s walls.

Dubin has consulted many lawyers, both in South Africa and the US. He tells me that copyright rests with each individual sitter, not Moodley’s family. So, potentially, someone could sue him. He’s also very careful about what can and can’t be displayed on the Internet. “It’s a private decision for someone to view an image in a gallery. I’m trying to keep it as respectful as possible … the woman who gave me the photos specifically asked me not to do anything that would embarrass or humiliate the sitters – that’s the last thing I would do. Some people do feel that it is a violation, and I understand that concern,” he says. “It is unsettling, but the alternative would’ve been for me to have kept these images in the box that I found them in.”

Dubin says, despite its controversial nature, the response to the exhibition was largely positive. “Some people were resistant because I’m from the outside, but I’ve also been told that I’ve done something which no-one here has thought to do.” He also tells me that the phone rang off the hook with people contacting him. “I received an sms which read: ‘Thank you so much. Our wedding pictures were taken by Kitty in ’72. So much of our history hasn’t been told, and we really haven’t had an opportunity to grapple with it – until now’.”

He tells me this is the most exciting and engaging project he’s ever done. “I’ve looked at these people every single day for the past two years – I don’t tire of looking at them.” The main appeal of the exhibition lies in its controversy: the fact that we, for the most part, don’t know the intentions of the sitters – and possibly never will. There are hints, clues, and just plain speculation, but, as Dubin says, “it’s a mysterious puzzle that we’ll never unravel.”