Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 456

The founding father of African history in France

I have been reading Pascal Bianchini’s superb book on Jean Suret-Canale (1921-2007), the founding father of African history in France. Suret-Canale’s 1962 book Afrique noire: L’ère coloniale 1900-1945, Bianchini writes, ‘made him known to a generation of African intellectuals and activists.’ Quite simply Suret-Canale changed the face of African history for African activists, students and intellectuals. He taught many early leaders of nationalist movements in West Africa in the Communist Party inspired study groups, the Groupes d’études communiste. Suret-Canale was an active trade unionist during the extraordinary strike of railway workers on the Dakar-Bamako line in 1947 (the subject of last century’s greatest novel God’s Bits of Wood). Though a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party, his work was not marked by dogmatic party formulas. On the contrary, Bianchini describes his approach as a ‘defence of a type of “idealism” but always based on the discovery of empirical elements, opposed to a strictly materialist conception, where historical facts are inscribed on pre-established formulas.’ Perhaps it is crude to draw these comparisons but Suret-Canale could be described as the French Basil Davidson, though his books are notable for their academic rigor. He was spurned by the French academy, only qualifying at 57 for the position of maître-assistant (a junior lecturer), and not allowed to supervise students or teach African history. A remarkable man. Has anyone come across his name or work?

Happy Birthday Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson would have been 55 today. His immense talent and his impact on pop music aside, Jackson mostly dressed like a character from a 19th century British fantasy mixed with Peter Pan and his style on- and off-stage often veered to that of the stereotype of the stereotype of a third world dictator — complete with shiny medals (like a showbiz Muammar Gaddafi). That said, Jackson, despite his attempts to disfigure his “African” features, had a complicated relationship with the continent. Yes, he loved being photographed with African dictators (like Omar Bongo) and children in “African” garb and he was forced to pay Manu Dibango for willfully borrowing from Dibangu’s hit “Soul Makossa,” but his first forays there (like a 1974 trip to perform in Senegal; the subject of a new documentary) suggested something else.  Wherever he went, crowds adored him (even Mandela liked hanging out with him), packed stadiums, or made songs about him. Even Dibango, described him as “un artiste exceptionnel, le plus talentueux et ingénieux.” But it’s in his music videos that we see the contradictions and tensions more clearly. The video for”Remember the Time” (below) is a case in point. Though it resembled too much Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America“-like vision of Africa (the video actually starred Murphy) mixed with mild Orientalism, you could not look away and marvel at his creativity:

Same for  “Liberian Girl” with its Indiana Jones mock-up:

Happy birthday Michael.

“We’ve got Ferraris in Africa, what they gon’ say now?”

About 2 months ago, the filmmakers Rod Stanley and Chris Saunders posted a video entitled “JOBURG PARTY! A snapshot of South Africa’s new youth underground” on video sharing site, Vimeo. The video was accompanied by this description: “Over two days and nights in Johannesburg, South Africa, we travelled to illegal rooftop parties, warehouse raves, street fashion shoots and poolside jams to meet some of the young musicians, DJs, zine publishers and artists set on taking the SA scene global, and asked them how the city’s youth culture is changing.” The 8 minute video features music by a range of Johannesburg bands, performers and artists, including Dirty Paraffin (who talk about all “tribes” meeting up in Johannesburg), Richard the Third, Desmond & The Tutus (one of them is grateful to the police for security at their party), MJ Turpin (he talks a lot about “individualism” and “choice”), Jamal Nxedlana of the CUSS Collective, Khaya Sibiya (AKA Bhubessi) as well as a gabby rapper, Chocolate, who makes the comment of the title right at the end of the video.  The video was soon shared on social media with very little commentary.

There you have it. Since we can’t miss an opportunity to talk about pop culture, we convened an “office seminar” (for those who don’t know that’s when we send a topic around to some contributors of AIAC for comment). So here it goes.

Lindokuhle Nkosi:

I saw this a few weeks ago. Besides having a “Chris Saunders” filter all over it, there’s a lot I found problematic about this. It actually only features one group of people (Dirty Paraffin) and their friends. This isn’t a snapshot of anything, it does not give the idea of anything larger than cool kids drinking in their parents homes, or white people in the CBD or central business district (look how cool we are) which does this “scene” a bit of injustice.

No-one has been able to look at what is happening in Jozi holistically. Most of the people who look at it are either trying to paint it as a “trend” or they’re focusing on the “Arts on Main“ and Braamfontein vibes. The whole creating pockets and island of “safe and cool” in the CBD.

Also, what’s with the comment by one of the Desmond and the Tutus band members that “we got some police downstairs,” with no sense of irony?

That said, another short documentary on Dirty Paraffin, gives a better representation of who they are.

Duane Jethro:

Creativity and cultural consumption filling a kind of void in political consciousness.

TO Molefe:

A friend would describe the sentiment of…uhm…of particularly the young black kids in that video as part of the successes of the national stupidification project, a lobotomizing of historical context from South African society, particularly pop culture and the ethos of those at the coal face of creating it. I struggle to think up another reason for why a Zulu boy from Soweto would describe “the new Joburg,” his craft and that of his peers as having “no stigmas” and “not being caught up on Apartheid.” It sounds, weirdly enough, like how that guy who created the ‘Jong Afrikaners’ photos, Roelof van Wyk, imagined the neutered-of-history young Afrikaner image he depicted.

There’s also some economics at play here. I don’t know Khaya/Bhubessi (the aforementioned Zulu boy from Soweto), but there’s quite a bit of commercial success to be had in punting rainbow nationalism using revolutionary rhetoric and figures and claiming cred as the authentic voice of urban (read: black) Joburg (because who is your audience otherwise? what purchasing power do they have?). This watered down, non-aggressive, individualist, look-what-I-done-did-son version of a “transformed” urban Joburg fits comfortably within the vice-grip of neoliberalism pervading every other aspect of this country’s imagination. In its conceptualization, we live in a meritocracy, where your hustle more than anything else determines your rewards. Sadly, that’s not reality, but for this all not to come crashing down, we’ve got to believe that we’re self-made. There’s enormous, unspoken pressure, I imagine, on South African artists to toe this line, especially when looking towards the United States for inspiration and models of aspiration.

Dylan Valley:

I think T.O “K.O.’ed” this one, Lindokuhle too…

However, I will say the film is disjointed and and seems like a by-product of (a few) other things–photo and  music video shoots, etcetera. While I am a fan of most of the people in the video, a more holistic picture of Joburg youth culture needs to be done. It is very very presumptuous of the filmmakers to present this as the “Joburg scene” … To their credit they do call the video “a snapshot”, an apt disclaimer.

SHOUT OUT TO GOOGLE! SHOUT OUT TO FERRARI!

Percy Zvomuya:

Two points:

This Bhubesii (Zulu from Soweto) cat reminds me of an anecdote I heard at one of the first seminars I attended when I got to South Africa. The late critic Lewis Nkosi was, I think, launching a novel or something at Wits University. He was talking about his early days in the US; this one day he was in a loo, peeing, when this American guy said to him, “you must be Zulu.” Perhaps he had seen his penis, or he happened to look different to the Americans he saw around and in the American imaginary, any African (whether he speaks Lozi, Kikuyu etcetera) is a Zulu…

Isn’t it strange how we all think our generation has got it better than the one that came before it? Of course, that’s nonsense: every generation more or less gets it good or bad, more or less. But that’s part of the self replicating logic of capitalism that makes you think, if you work hard at it, you will make it. And these Model C kids have been force fed that doctrine. Look, race is so last year, if you work hard, you can fill up the dome. In general, I generally dislike cars, so this comment must be taken with a huge shovel of salt, but I don’t take anyone seriously who thinks a Ferrari in Africa is a sign of progress. So there.

What’s Wrong With English Reality TV?

In the spirit of recent posts on AIAC about reality TV shows in Germany and Italy which use Africa as background to national television’s asinine imagination, I’d like to step back a few months and check out one of England’s own televised fits of historical delusion.

BBC Two aired a two-part Africa special of their popular motor vehicle show, Top Gear. The show’s premise is pretty simple: three men with cars. In the special, the three hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, went to Africa to find the definitive source of the Nile. Before arriving at their starting point, Small Rural Village, Uganda, each bought a second-hand car for under £1500 in England. The first few minutes are spent describing their cars (and repeating the brands) and putting down each other’s choices through clever insults and witty banter. From there they set off on their epic quest for the source of the Nile. After driving through Rolling Hills, Rwanda, they eventually find it in an anticlimactic moment of discovery: a “puddle” in Middle Of The Serengeti, Tanzania:

There are the usual things to point out: all the ways the show comes replete with sunsets, broad brushstrokes in the place of precise descriptions, “bad Western characters” (in this case American tourists) and exotic food. Food is given so much airtime relative to people that the show doesn’t really give us the starving African or any other familiar trope in too much depth (though Rwanda’s genocide and the illegality of homosexuality in Uganda are things we hear about). The “locals” – as people not on Top Gear’s crew are constantly referred to even as the location changes and even if people are from elsewhere (as with the Ugandan soldiers they meet in Rwanda) – are shown as not much more than confused most of the time; sometimes they are helpful. Overall, though, there don’t seem to be much by way of “locals” to begin with. With few exceptions, Africans are blatantly absent from this African adventure. They are also absent from the show’s version of African history, which is told as a series of European discoveries.

It’s not all bad. I don’t mind, for example, that Clarkson compares his penis to a press stud after a particularly cold shower. I kind of like that he does. They also hold no humanitarian pretensions, for which I am genuinely grateful.

Some of the banter, too, is laugh-out-loud funny. That they mock each other also extends to mocking themselves and, for a few brief moments, even making fun of the history in which they place themselves (they muse that Victorian explorers were on a well-funded gap year). But this is as much credit as I can give it. This self-awareness as inadequate heirs to British exploration history, and the passing occasions of not placing Livingstone and Co. on a pedestal, is never extended to a self-awareness of themselves as heirs of the violence and silencing that British exploration has entailed. Instead, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the three hosts whole-heartedly adopt the macho-man gentleman explorer persona.

This is managed most effectively through the creation of their white manspace: their cars. After spending one night in a dingy hotel (and I’m sure the producers spent a while finding the dingiest within a 5-mile radius) at the side of the road in Outside of Touristville, Uganda, they decide it would simply be unbearable to use such accommodation on a regular basis. They spend a good part of the next day – on a whim, of course – converting their cars into mobile homes. It’s impressive: between the three of them, they manage to have three bedrooms, one of which is particularly lush with a plush mattress and white sheets of Egyptian cotton and duck down; a kitchen with running water, a kettle for tea as well as cooking appliances; a living room with a library of books about English explorers and of English poets, maps, a globe, a telescope and even a tool workshop; an upstairs sitting room (a chair on the roof of one car); and a bathroom with a toilet and shower set up. It’s truly incredible to think you can fit all these building blocks of civilization, not to mention the classic tools and symbols of colonial domination, within the confines of those modest brought-from-England cars. These are the cars which give “the familiarity of home, here,” Clarkson noted as he indicated the anonymous African landscape.

The Do-It-Yourself ethos is paramount. Clarkson, Hammond and May are shown sewing, welding and woodworking. It all promotes a particular brand of English male respectability: relying on nothing but themselves and what they can carry within their bubble of Englishness. When something goes wrong with May’s car, for example, he says you’ve got to work with what you can find in the bush, which apparently is nothing because he ends up stealing a bit of Clarkson’s car to do the repair.

These mobile vessels of English civility come to have personalities. Near the end of their journey, Clarkson, Hammond and May get sentimental and reflect on their quest and particularly what their car has meant to them, concluding that what makes them special is that you come to think of the cars as people, as “a mate.” They are survivors. Sold off because their previous owners had assumed their imminent death, they proved themselves in Africa where, unless the roads are Chinese-built, it’s so bad that Clarkson was led to declare “No car is built to survive conditions like this. None. Not one.” But these cars made it. Cue the violin-laden inspirational road trip movie music. Slowly fade and transition to action sequence music, overlaid by engine-revving sound effects.

Perhaps it’s for the best that Africans had minimal presence in the show, since the imaginations of those who put it together seem more capable of personifying the inanimate than understanding the full human status of non-English people. Perhaps they should simply not have gone to Africa in the first place. Even better would have been two episodes of Top Gear which were capable of satirizing their position not only in English history, but in Africa’s as well. Instead, Africa, through the exclusion of its people and history from its geography, is used as background to white English gentlemanly machismo.

Will the UK ever give up on its racist immigration policy?

There have been lots of stories in the British press recently related to immigration, and these have made it clear that a sentiment still exists that is opposed to the familiar xenophobia with which the topic is usually discussed in the UK. For a moment it has seemed that perhaps not everyone around us is okay with the detention, deportation and ultimate killing of people on the grounds that they are not from here, were born somewhere else, or have a different skin colour and are deemed ‘undesirable’ because of it. However a liberal anti-racism that seeks small changes in immigration policy – a fine-tuning of just how it is we execute the barring of entry to and forced removal from this country – does nothing to end the violence of that system, but is rather a position that chooses to participate in it with a sense of moral acquittal.

This sort of response to stories like the Home Office’s racist van – driven around parts of London with a message to the black population that read ‘In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest’ – and the attention drawn to the routine harassment of that same population by the UK Border Agency’s immigration officers often comes in a form that appeals to ‘diversity’ as the ideal to be upheld, instead of the enforcement of legislation regarding lawful status to remain in the UK.

Yet if we are to properly bring to an end the situation where a person can be deemed to be illegal, we must abandon the notion of diversity, that is itself racist. Choose to defend the presence of ‘illegals’ not because they’re just nice to have around, but because you appreciate that the suffering borders inflict is intolerable. No one is illegal, full stop.

It is a good moment to be reminded of the race and class based analyses of post-war British immigration policy by writers such as Ambalavaner Sivanandan, who describe the state’s changing tolerance towards different groups of foreign labourers as linked importantly with economic interests. The argument that immigration legislation since the Nationality Act of 1948 – which gave British citizenship to the citizens of the colonies – has been aimed at achieving control over the import of labour from the (ex-)colonies is a convincing one. How Black people came to be policed – as those who slip most easily into being judged ‘illegal’ – when they did move to the United Kingdom and, later, during the sixties and seventies crisis, when ideas changed regarding how much Black labour was necessary, has also been analysed in the work of writers such as Sivanandan, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy.

Whilst we have witnessed an intervening history that led to a remoulding of the earlier immigration acts, the discussions and observations from these thinkers remains germane given that the form of oppression has changed little. In order to keep up with what is deemed acceptable regarding racism for the liberal state, as well as the changing role of government’s guardianship over the market, the relevant laws and policing have adapted. Yet in the run up to the 2015 general election we see the UK Labour party is still able to promise another immigration act to ‘put an end to workers having their wages undercut illegally by employers exploiting migrant labour.’ Even in the language of progressive anti-exploitation we can see clearly the effect Labour’s policy will have on those who would like to work here but are not allowed and how this is a continuation in the same spirit as all previous immigration bills. Invariably it is concerned with the maintenance of a profitable economy. One change is clear however: whilst previously the language of race relations was used as a justifier, that ideology is now stripped away and the fact that economic dramatis personae are the main concern — rather than humans, and especially Black humans — is plain to see.

Understanding immigration controls as policing allows us to make sense of, and is perhaps most vividly noticeable in, the most brutal and traumatising examples of its enforcement. Sivanandan notes in ‘From immigration control to “induced repatriation”’ (1978) that in the 1970s the House of Commons (all party) Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration recommended ‘”the police, the Immigrants Service Intelligence Unit and other authorities” should be given powers to seek out illegal immigrants and overstayers’. In July 1993 40-year-old Joy Gardner was killed by police at home in front of her children because she had overstayed her visa. Police had restrained her with a body-belt and 13ft of tape around her head in order to force her removal from the UK, resulting in a coma and her eventual death. Last Saturday the friends and family of Joy Gardner came together for the anniversary of her death to call for justice alongside the friends and family of another victim of police killing, Mark Duggan. The killing of Duggan in Tottenham in 2011 highlighted that police violence in the enforcement of immigration law is a continuation of the brutality they inflict on the day-to-day lives of Black people.

Today immigration removals are undertaken by UK Border Agency (UKBA), an outfit that is hard to distinguish from the police. During their ‘spot checks’ and searches for ‘immigration offenders’ they wear similar uniforms and carry much of the same equipment that police do. Yet, despite repeated findings of ‘institutional racism’ and their clear structural role in policing Black communities, the constabulary has found it easy to reject allegations of entrenched racism. It isn’t as easy for their partners-in-policing at the UKBA to hide behind such claims as they target Black people throughout the country each day.

The findings of the inquest into the death of Jimmy Mubenga have made it even harder for the immigration industry to feign respectable non-racism. Last month an inquest jury found that Jimmy, a father of five ordered to leave his family and return to Angola following a prison sentence for his involvement in a nightclub scuffle, was ‘unlawfully killed’ by the guards escorting him on his deportation flight. After prolonged restraint the three guards had suffocated him to death as they tried to muffle his cries for help from passengers and staff on the British Airways flight. Through the inquest it came to light that some of the G4S Deportation Custody Officers contracted to remove Jimmy from his home and family, those that became his killers, had racist text messages saved on their phone. Evidence was heard that the texts were shared widely amongst UKBA staff and their hired police from G4S.

Some of the “jokes” were read out in court by G4S guard Terry Hughes: “Did you know that the words race car spelt backwards says race car? That eat is the only word that if you take the first letter and move it to the last it spells its past tense ate? And have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in illegal immigrant and add just a few more it spells out fuck off and go home you freeloading, benefit-grabbing, kid-producing, violent, non-English speaking, cocksuckers and take those hairy-faced, sandal wearing, bomb-making, goat-fucking, smelly raghead bastards with you. How weird is that?”

The racist texts are thoroughly unsurprising given the conditions of immigration laws that come to judge Black people as less than human and the policing violence that subsequently comes to confirm that they are indeed less than human. Jimmy was to be removed as he had committed a crime for which he had served time in prison, allowing the Secretary of State to classify him as no longer ‘desirable’ in the UK. A similar fate currently awaits Trenton Oldfied who was imprisoned for ‘public nuisance’ after an aquatic protest during the Oxford v. Cambridge boat race in 2012. He committed a crime that in the eyes of Theresa May marks him out as a threat to public order, again allowing her to deem him ‘undesirable’ and to muster the state’s capacity to police public order to send him ‘home’ – away from his partner and new-born baby in London.

Trenton is white and will likely face a qualitatively different violence than his Black counterparts, but the ‘go home’ message resonates clearly. The racist van that has upset so many only serves to restate and clarify what we have known for decades – ‘if you want to live in peace, go home’. But this is all in the name of another ‘peace’, that of British order and capital’s continuing ability to exploit. That there has been a small awakening to the racism of immigration control so close to the second anniversary of the August 2011 riots is opportune. It allows thinking of immigration policing in the same continuum as the state violence that brought about that disorder. Our response to UKBA should thus take the same form: No Justice, No Peace.

“People are going to know who Bob Hewitt is, how sick he is.”

The most recent episode of the US cable channel HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” aired a story about a group of women who accuse the South African tennis player and commentator Bob Hewitt of sexually abusing them when they were children. Hewitt was their tennis coach at the time. One of them, Twiggy Tolken, who lives in Johannesburg, tells interviewer Mary Carillo (also a 1970s professional tennis player): “People are going to know exactly what he’s all about; who he is, how sick he is.” This is the second time HBO did an insert on the allegations. They also go to Hewitt’s house in the Eastern Cape province, where he refuses to see them. Here’s the promo with Tolken:

Hewitt, who had migrated to South Africa from Australia, had a very successful career on the professional circuit. He won both men’s and mixed doubles in all four Grand Slams tournaments, with among others Billie Jean King. (BTW, Hewitt can also claim to be a Davis Cup champion with South Africa in 1974. However, Real Sports failed to mention that South Africa only won the Davis Cup by default after India withdrew from the finals as a sign of protest against South Africa’s Apartheid policies.)

The abuse of young girls allegedly happened in the 1970s and 1980s when Hewitt began training young tennis players.

Hewitt’s vile actions were first exposed in 2011 when one of his victims — she was a 15-year old tennis prodigy when he abused her — told her story to the Boston Globe. Real Sports aired its first report on the allegations against Hewitt in November 2011. He was indefinitely suspended by the International Tennis Hall of Fame right after. The Real Sports report charges teammates of Hewitt, the childrens’ parents as well as tennis administrators in South Africa, with neglecting to act against Hewitt sooner. Ray Moore, a Davis Cup teammate of Hewitt, regrets on camera that he did do not enough to expose Hewitt — who Moore describes as abrasive and argumentative — at the time.

There’s been some progress with the case: two weeks ago a South African court charged Hewitt with two counts of rape and one count of sexually assaulting a minor. There are also attempts to charge him in a US court.

Controversy surrounding the National Theatre in Lagos

The National Arts Theatre is visible from the motorway system which connects Lagos Island and the mainland: an iconic modern structure which rises, it is often noted, like the peak of a military cap from the surrounding parkland. On the first day of the four-day Eid public holiday there are no arts to be seen: the theatre and the art gallery operating within are both closed for business, guarded by relaxed-looking men in military uniform. The park is full of children walking, running, sitting, playing; smartly dressed children shooed by their mother, clip-clopping along the pavements; colourful stands sell snacks and drinks; miniature bottles of liquor scattered in the grass. This enthusiastic misuse of the site reflects some of the reasons for which it has, in the last two decades, become a huge problem for the Federal and State Governments.

The Theatre was built during the military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo, by a construction firm working from a plan of the Palace of Culture and Sports in Vama, and finished in time for the Second World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977. Until recently the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC) printed elegant and ambitious books of Nigerian, African and international black culture from an office in the Theatre. The sale of the building in 2001 was a significant part of Obasanjo’s programme of privitisation when he returned to power as Nigeria’s elected President. The idea of the sale prompted furious protests from many Nigerians. Wole Soyinka, whose fable of abusive sovereignty, King Baabu, premiered at the theatre the same year, said “You can liken this to a horrendous fate suffered by the black race, pauperised and victimised by public office holders who transform power into an instrument of repression and oppression”.

Having failed to convince the public that privitisation would be beneficial, but nevertheless still incapable of fulfilling the ambition of the site’s original architects, buoyed by the oil boom of the 70s and inspired by a program of cultural nationalism and black internationalism, the state has remained an unhappy steward of the site. The theatre appears to have lost its status as a beacon of cultural nationalism: there’s a National Gallery of traditional arts, two cinemas showing films. Try-outs for the popular tv dance competition, the Maltina Dance All happen in one of the cinemas; the main auditorium has been closed for decades.

In April this year, a new controversy around the use of the Theatre site arose, and quickly became emblematic of the fraught relationship between culture and development in Lagos. This April there were more rumblings after rumours circulated that the National Theatre would be sold by the Federal Government and replaced by a five-star hotel. Following an outraged response, the Lagos State Government promised to challenge the federal government’s decision. The federal government eventually made it clear that they were proposing the development of land surrounding the theatre — where the Lagos Rail Mass Transit Project is already under construction — into a hotel, restaurants, offices, shopping malls.

On one of the plots adjoining the Theatre lies the Artistes Village. A “para-statal” organisation, the village was built by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation on land set aside for use in FESTAC and intended to become a vibrant part of the city. This is one of the communities threatened by the state government’s plans for redevelopment of the National Theatre site. The village offers a valuable example of the resilience of culture in Lagos, whose artists are given little support in from the state, showing the resilience necessary to survive and create.

Click to view slideshow.

Aremo Tope Babayemi, aka Baba Tee, (pictured above) is busy preparing to leave for the Osun festival but before he leaves he has come to welcome us to the Artistes Village, where he is the coordinator. Baba Tee, who tells us he was the original percussionist for UB40, also runs a performance space, The Little Theatre. One of the first institutions in the village, it was built in 1986 and holds regular events. As with most of the activities of the village, their performances are open to outsiders but primarily made for the extended community of artists.

Baba Tee sees the village as a rare example of a community which supports itself; he says about his younger colleagues, Jude Udueni and Shaggy Don: “if they were lesser men they’d be out doing “419” [email scams], pimping, robbing.” Instead they are Chairman and Secretary of the village, both writers who have been working at the village since it started properly in 1996.

The artists in the Village see the government as out of touch, “officials in plush offices with no sense of artistic energy.” While the National Theatre stands, in one minister’s memorable phrase, as a “gigantic empty shell”, here in the Artistes Village an creative community has been living for the last twenty years. “This is where the content is.”

Sixty people — not only artists but dancers, writers, sculptors, musicians, animationists and filmmakers — work in the village. In addition to the many artists’ spaces, there are three recording studios, six dance studios, a theatre school and a run-down National Art Gallery which contains relics from FESTAC. Jude says the government gives the artists subsidised rent, “the only thing we all enjoy.” They say FESTAC Town, originally built to house the FESTAC visitors, is too expensive for most artists. Even those unaffordable streets are now neglected, its internet cafes are now the epicentre of the “419” email scams.

The government’s threat to concession the land on which the Village is built represents, Baba Tee says, “a failure of management on behalf of government: too much and too little: instead of admitting it they put in political appointees and expect results. They put us in double jeopardy. The presidency are imposing this executive recklessness.”

The artists circulated news of a protest about the plans on July 29th, which took place in the style of the Turkish duran adam (standing man) protest. This idea came from Tümay Kilincel, a German-Turkish dancer-choreographer who was staying in the village while on a teaching fellowship in Lagos. The protest was well documented in the Nigerian media, whose busy association building is conveniently nearby.

We walk down the shaded corridors of the studio complex, past a small courtyard wherecolourful costumes are drying in the sun, and turn into a room in which three men and a woman are moving, almost too much for the small space, choreographed to a remix of Beggin’ by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons. This is the Emmanuel family, preparing for their next audition on the Maltina Dance All. As we watch them Jude explains that he sees the village as a kind of laboratory, where practitioners of different kinds of arts can meet and collaborate.

In another corner of the village an unguarded door onto a workshop presents work by a sculptor from Benin (pictured below): animal and human figures carved out of wood. There are several FESTAC masks, named after the mask originally used for the festival’s logo.

Click to view slideshow.

I ask about the government office on site, charged with running the complex, and the artists say “we have a good relationship with them, but they are government. They are breaching the national contract of arts and culture.”

The artists see Chief Edem Duke, the Minister for Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, doing little for the arts. In a city which has seen rapid and noisy development in business and enterprise, unprofitable activities struggle to make a claim for themselves.

Walking back past the entrance to the village we encounter the recording artist Zule Zoo singing with his friends, one playing the guitar, some dancing, some sitting. While we listen to them sing I talk to Jude about his practice, making theatre for school-children.

We enter the workshop of a sculptor introduced as Mr Smart, whose negative moulds covered the floor with dismembered limbs. The only finished work visible was a small prototype model of a shackled slave, highly varnished.

Mr Smart (pictured below), who has been working in the village since 2009, believes the government threaten to concession the village land “would show they are ignorant and unserious”.

“All my years here I’ve never sold anything to someone walking by. Working with performing artists has inspired me a lot. I have used shots of them with my work. We all work together. This is the only place you get the visual arts, performing artists, producers all together.”

The value of the village, it seems, is not its economics but the strength of its community which the government subsidy — and the artists’ determination — makes possible.

“The government didn’t bring you here. They’ve been messing with FESTAC Town from day one. It’s meant to be the original artists village. This is just an incidental artists village.”

As we leave Mr Smart asks my companion, “where are you from?” And then adds, with a model-maker’s eye for form, “I like your nose.”

Out the back of the studio another man is working on a fiber-glass bust. Behind him runs a canal, full of rubbish, an oil patina sparkling in the midday sun, and a pig wades through, its snout held just above the water, navigating between refuse. The government now claim the artists have failed to take care of their area, using this excuse to validate their attempt to repurpose the land. In the Village, however, there is much evidence that its inhabitants care for their private and communal spaces.

We find Benjamin Graves (also pictured below), his hands lined with cement, fixing the step outside his studio. He’s lived in the village since 2001, but his studio is more recent, and reflects his new interest in music production. Once a dancer with the national dance troupe he has started to record tracks, which he describes as Afro hip-hop; he plays us one on his computer, dancing in the tight space of the cubicle with serious intensity.

As we leave the village on the road leading back to the National Theatre, we encounter a man wearing a furry waistcoat who is introduced to us as Jolof Rice, a clown, and he dances past us, making lewd gestures.

Click to view slideshow.

In recent interviews, Chief Edem Duke, the minister leading the case for redevelopment, has spoken out against the current use of the theatre site.

“I am a bit a flustered when I saw that the National Theatre Lagos has become a den for all kinds of unholy activities, the environment completely compromised and has become a habitat for hoodlums and undesirable elements,” he lamented.

Anecdotes such as this one from the Nigerian daily newspaper, This Day — an account of corruption by pseudo-officials working on the theatre site — correlates Chief Duke’s story. But the minister insistently confuses that corruption with the resistance of the Village.

The minister said, “If they are proper artistes, they would not be dwelling in that kind of squalour and projecting an outward façade that they are creative people when that place is literally being turned into a brothel of some sort. That must not be a benchmark for artistes for Nigerian community.”

Culture in Lagos has a precarious relation to the rapid development of business and construction. It is difficult to be optimistic about the government’s plans for new construction in a city where a thriving community like the Village is threatened with destruction to make way for a luxury hotel. In time that hotel may have its own art gallery, as several hotels in Lagos do, but it would be unlikely to offer artists the diverse and invaluable support they receive in the Village. The state’s attempt to clear the “undesirable elements” out of the National Theatre site and prepare the way for a new cultural quarter, may destroy a rare community which exists for culture and where culture exists for the community.

Photography by Nick Hagen (more from the National Theatre and Artistes Village here).

Zambian skull found in London art gallery

The gallery description of Pratchaya Phinthong’s 2013 art-work, ‘Broken Hill’, includes the body of a living Zambian man. ‘Plinth, perspex, replica skull, paper document, copper nails, postcard and a guide – Kamfa Chishala.’ The Thai-born artist’s work has transported Chishala, a museum guide from the Lusaka National Museum, to the Chisenhale Gallery in east London (until September 1st).

Phinthong’s work is concerned with the ways in which human bodies become the material of history, “examining” the exhibition leaflet says, “how historical narratives are performed through objects”. In ‘Broken Hill’, the opposite is also true: an object is performed through a human narrative. This work presents a replica of the ‘Broken Hill’ skull, a unique and contested object in the history of pre-history.

The visitor enters the space where the replica skull is presented alongside its custom-made box, and the museum guide springs to work, giving his own introduction to the object. Chishala takes the visitor to one wall where the official documentation allowing the replica skull to leave Zambia is presented. And when he has finished we talk informally about his journey here and experience of London until another visitor enters.

Discovered in 1921 in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia), the original skull resides in the National History Museum in London, who made this replica for the Lusaka National Museum. The skull, also called the Kabwe skull or fossil, was used to describe Rhodesian man, or homo rhodensiensis. This species lived between 300,000 and 125,000 years ago, and are considered to be the direct contemporaries to the homo heidelbergensis, reconstructed from the remains found near Heidelberg in Germany. The ‘Broken Hill’ skull has been a critical object in the identification of the ancestors of homo sapiens in both Africa and Europe. The difference, now, is that a European museum does not entrust to Zambia care of the pre-history of their land.

In order to remove the replica from Zambia, Phinthong had to offer a replacement – the replica skull is, apparently, a major attraction at the museum – which the artist found on the internet. Bringing the replica to London, Phinthong and the Chisenhale Gallery have manufactured a superfluity for the city which should embarrass the National History Museum. London now has an excess of ‘Broken Hill’ skulls. The second, replica skull may teach us more – about pre-history, and its politics in the present – than the original skull.

Weekend Music Break 51

It’s Afropunk Fest weekend in Brooklyn and a few of us at AIAC will be partaking in the madness. Resident DJ Chief Boima will be hosting the After Dark Africa Latina party tonight at Brooklyn Taphouse from 10pm til late. If you can’t make it Afropunk this year don’t worry we’ve got a very solid collection of videos to generate an instant music festival wherever you happen to be getting down.

On a nostalgia tip, Olugbenga revisits his old stomping grounds on the streets of Lagos around the Ojuelegba Bus Stop in the Andy Okafor filmed video “Silver Pixie, Iyawo Mi”. This was Olugbenga’s first trip home since he was 15:

Philadelphia producer King Britt has this to say about his afro-futurist electronica project Fhloston Paradigm, “It walks the line of duality, both science fact and science fiction. It is the future of the now moment. The purpose is to transmit the omni-versal message of divine abstractions into aural pleasing tones.” He explains the video for Chasing Rainbows is a “sprained fable of a wanderer who is her own congress. Can time pry dance from the preface of no more?”

Afrikan Boy, still terrorizing London, channels Fela in “Hit Em Up”:

We’ve got a fantastic collection of South African Driemanskap live footage for the track “Hosh/Hosa”:

Somali sisters Faarrow show us they were down with music from a young age when they go back home in the Studio Africa-produced video “Say My Name”:

Ghanaian singer Sala gives us a club ready track with “Today Na Today”. And if you need any ideas, the well shot video, filmed at a garage, will show you how to move:

You know how musicians are always reading lyrics off of their phones these days when they’re recording in the studio? Basotho hip-hop artist Juvy and friends take that to the next level in the hilarious video for Sotha:

The title of Berlin-based Ugandan singer Jaqee’s new track says enough — “Dance”:

Talented Ghanaian singer Paapa demonstrates his lyrical depth in “Write for Me”. This is a guy to pay attention to:

Tanzanians Nay and Diamond let us know the music scene in Bongo is still very much fly with “Muziki Gani Part 2”:

And finally, for Sathima Bea Benjamin, the legendary Cape Town jazz singer who went home to the ancestors this week, we have her epic masterpiece “Africa”. This song comes from her Songbird LP that was rereleased by Matsuli music just last month. Ms. Benjamin gave a few rare performances at the Mahogany Room and Tagore’s in Cape Town for the occasion. Download an audio recording from the Tagore’s show here, her swansong in this world.

Share your favorite new videos in the comments below.

That TIME story that South Africa may outlaw spanking at home

On 30 July freelance reporter Melissa Locker reported for TIME Magazine that South Africa’s government, in cooperation with some notable children’s rights NGOs, is drafting a bill that would outlaw spanking at home. If the bill passes, South African parents lose their freedom to corporally punish their children, just like teachers did seven years ago. The article quotes Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, from the pro-ban camp, who argues for child protection, and an anti-ban spokesperson from the Christian organization Focus On The Family, whose weird notion that for most children “the removal of pleasures or privileges is actually more painful than a spanking” is supposed to represent the anti-ban camp.

Right.

That’s about all the author chose to cover in the 200-odd word article. But there is a whole lot more to say about ‘spanking’ in South African homes, though.

To get an idea of what TIME is talking about, a bit of background and context doesn’t hurt/might help/does wonders. According to a study by RAPCAN, a Cape Town-based children’s rights NGO, 57% of interviewed South African parents (from all backgrounds, ages and income brackets) smacks or spanks their children with their hands. Thirty- three percent use a belt or other object. Corporal punishment, as presently condoned by South African law, means inflicting “moderate and reasonable chastisement on a child for misconduct provided that this was not done in a manner offensive to good morals or for objects other than correction and admonition”. In other words, the parent or care taker gets to decide whether his physical violence is in accordance with acceptable corrective intentions and with the morals he himself deems ‘good’ to positively shape the child’s behavior. But ‘spanking’, the seemingly innocent term TIME chose for its headline/title, is only one part of the story. A story that also includes (and is certainly not limited to) “hitting children with a hand or object, kicking, shaking or throwing children, scratching, pinching, biting or pulling their hair, forcing them to stay in uncomfortable positions, locking or tying them up, burning and scalding” (some acts that the UN CRC include in their definition of corporal punishment).

TIME also forgets to mention that, because of its unique history of institutionalized colonial and apartheid violence, South Africa happens to be one of the most violent countries in the world, its injury death rate being twice the global average. Women and children are the most vulnerable to this violence. Current and accurate statistics on violence are difficult to obtain, partly because much of the violence happens within the homes and goes unreported. But research and reports by several NGOs and service providers give us a solid clue about the extent of the violence that children face. In 2012, for example, the mental health and trauma centre Ekupholeni, which is based just outisde Johannesburg, helped 501 sexually abused children, of whom 148 were between two and seven years old. And in 2011, the South African Medical Research Council organized a meeting on youth violence, which revealed that “for children of all ages, the apparent manner of death was primarily the scourges of violence and traffic – 35% and 20% respectively”. The data also showed that violence was responsible for 10% of children’s deaths. Over 30% of violent deaths of 5 to 9 year olds were caused by fire arms. Of overall youth violence, around 40% of deaths are said to be caused by sharp objects, blunt force objects and fire arms.

And according to UNICEF, between 2010 and 2011, no less than 54.225 crimes against children (younger than 18 years old) were reported. 84% of these cases involved violent acts against children by someone known or trusted by the child.

While it might be tempting for many to drop these numbers in a separate violence file, and treat the well-intended spank on the bottom by a parent or care-taker as a separate issue, the simple fact that both categories involve intentionally inflicting physical pain on children demands for the relationship to be taken seriously. Violence against children doesn’t take place in a vacuum.

Unlike what TIME’s choice of wording implies, these realities go way beyond the use of “a flat hand on a child’s bottom”. What this tells us is that a ban on corporal punishment is not about some nanny state being unhappy about the occasional ‘slap on the bottom’, but that a highly vulnerable group of citizens might finally get the legal protection against types of violence that is not allowed against adults.

Some have expressed their annoyance with this, in their eyes, inappropriate conflation of corporal punishment with violence. Others call the debate on corporal punishment needlessly polarized and propose that, rather than being ‘pro’ or anti, we might want to think about allowing limited forms of corporal punishment. With the harmful ‘flat hand on the bottom’ type of spank in mind, this seems a sensible statement to make. Until the boundaries between violence and acceptable corrective pain need to be set. (When does a constructive spanking turn into abuse? What does a responsible bruise look like?) To separate corporal punishment from ‘actual violence’ in a country where fatal violence is a reality in all too many households, and try to define what ‘acceptable’ physical harm actually means is not only an unachievable and undesirable undertaking, it also ignores the roots of corporal punishment and how it has historically intertwined with often lethal state violence. Corporal punishment was one of the many violent tools for the colonial and apartheid ruling class to instill discipline and maintain control. At white settler schools , for example, boys were (for a long time) disciplined physically to harden them and maintain white supremacy. Corporal punishment, then, can at least partly be seen as one of the left-overs of nearly 350 years of white minority rule, which shaped much of today’s normalized violence. And there are many more reasons, not just historical ones, to reject the idea that corporal punishment and violence against children can be treated in isolation. If you grow up in a world where pain is intentionally inflicted on others in order to correct them or to resolve some sort of conflict, chances are you grow up thinking you can treat others, such as your girlfriend, that way too. If the aim of spanking a child is to instill good morals in them, (and we understand good morals as non-violent ones), corporal punishment is likely to have the exact opposite effect. As Lorenzo Wakefield, a researcher and expert on children’s rights, wrote in reference to a recent study of the University of Witwatersrand “there is a strong link of convicted perpetrators of rape — especially those who raped young children under the age of three — who were all corporally punished when they were younger. Research has shown that children who are physically punished or humiliated are more susceptible to carrying out acts of violence in their adult years”.

And there are more studies that confirm this correlation. But this hasn’t convinced everyone that children need this kind of protection. Some have played the Christian card to contest the proposed ban, when others view corporal punishment as a cultural right. But since both culture as well as religion are a matter of interpretation (and culture is never static anyway), they can and have been used to defend the ban as well.

Khaye Nkwanyana worries that “if this law is passed it will represent the power of the resourceful lobbyist NGO that stands in range against the entire society. It will represent the will of the University of Western Cape against the entire South African society. And as active South Africans we cannot countenance such a tendency where those with money can impose their will and cultural choices to all of us”.

Which begs the question: who is part of this ‘entire’ South African society? Do children count too? Because, as we look at some recent numbers, about a third of South Africans is under 18 years of age. (Some say 0-14 year olds alone account for 28,4% of South Africans). So if we talk about the ‘entire society’, what is their place? Are they citizens or simply possessions of the entire adult society? And since the entire discussion is about their fate, who has asked them how they feel about it? Next to a few outdated studies that present some accounts by children who describe the degrading and abusive treatment they had suffered, the actual opinions of children are nowhere to be found in mainstream media.

Some teachers, on the other hand, put forward more instructive concerns by complaining that the ban on corporal punishment in schools has led to a decline in discipline. Which can either mean that corporal punishment is the only way of maintaining order and disciplining children, or that it is the only method they know.

Corporal punishment perpetuates South Africa’s crisis of violence. The proposed ban sends out a strong message that children are more than the possessions of their parents and that they have a right to the same legal protection from violence that is granted to adults. They also deserve the chance to voice their opinions, get represented in the media and participate in the debates that affect them.

Is a ban the answer to the violence that children face? Will it reduce the levels of violent young deaths? Or stop the well-intended smacks on the butt? Probably not. After all, despite the ban at schools, it appears to still be widespread there too. Which is why South Africa needs a serious campaign that educates entire society on alternative disciplining methods. Methods that, unlike corporal punishment, will teach children about desirable behavior in a constructive and effective way.

If the South African government takes it responsibility to protect its children seriously, it should intensively work with children, NGOs, care takers and teachers to develop, support and sustain campaigns that offer alternative, child friendly alternatives to corporal punishment. One NGO who works on positive parenting programs and develops parental guides is Childline South Africa. Their resources for parents can be downloaded here.