Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 468

Rick Ross is a Country

Yesterday outsized rapper Rick Ross (twitter handle: “Mastermind”) tweeted two pieces of exciting news at once: firstly that he had landed “in the beautiful country of Africa” and secondly that the anticipated release of labelmate Wale’s album “The Gifted” was getting a lot of buzz. At least two things didn’t make sense. How has Ross (no relation to AIAC’s  btw) not figured this thing out for himself yet? We know he’s already been to at least three African countries — South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria. And even then, why didn’t Wale, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants to the US and who is probably (?) traveling with Ross, intervene to prevent the man with the dollar signs in his name from thrusting his foot so forcefully into his mouth? In any case, Twitter did not waste time in ridiculing Mr Ross. Below we’ve listed some of the responses to Ross’ gaffe; they range from writer Teju Cole, comedian Trevor Noah, to assorted fans of the man who calls himself “Da Boss”. See if you can spot the theme that emerged.

Just landed in the beautiful country of Africa..I can tell you that the world is excited for #TheGifted

— Mastermind (@rickyrozay) June 24, 2013

@Wale Rick Ross said Africa is a country and you’re African, did you correct him?

— Midnight (@BeeYeezy) June 25, 2013

@AfricasaCountry Ross is a large man. He can’t just land in one of your puny countries, there’s bound to be spillover.

— Teju Cole (@tejucole) June 24, 2013

@tejucole @AfricasaCountry If he landed in Lake Victoria, how many countries would flood?

— siddhartha mitter (@siddhmi) June 24, 2013

As big as he is, Rick Ross should know the difference between a continent & country.

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 24, 2013

You can’t blame Rick Ross for thinking Africa is a country. He’s bigger than Sudan and we still think he’s a person.

— Robin Wood (@_wangwe) June 24, 2013

Someone take a wild guess at which African country Rick Ross has just landed in? Don’t say Jamaica please.

— Mbasu Tweets (@ItsBuddhaBlaze) June 24, 2013

Of course, if you want premium-quality scorn you have to ask the Nigerians. The music video Rozay shot in Lagos in September met with the frostiest of receptions from the townspeople. The place to go, as ever, was the comment section of Linda Ikeji’s blog (we blogged about it at the time).

“My prayer,” wrote one reviewer, “is that lightning will strike Rick Ross and hailstones will wipe out his entire family even to generations yet unborn.”

“Dis one wen fat like balloon,” concluded another. “Dirty he-goat.”

The only saving grace for Rick is that his wasn’t even the barmiest “landing in Africa” tweet by an American musician. He’s going to have to try much harder if he’s going to take that title off Lady Gaga.

I AM IN AFRICA WE HAVE NOT LANDED YET BUT I THINK I SAW A GIRAFFE ALTHOUGH IM PRETTY SURE IM SEEING THINGS BECAUSE IM SO EXCITED!!!! ahh!!!

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) November 27, 2012

* Elliot Ross contributed to this post.

Actual questions from a South African journalist

“Mandela was a terrorist, yet he became an hero and international icon. Do you think the media and the way they portrayed him had something to do with this?… Why would the media choose to see the good in what he has done rather than focus on the bad?”

Sometimes you have to despair at what is the result of a mix of factors: ineptitude, juniorization, but also often the result of long held and widespread attitudes journalists share about the struggle for liberation. I did point out that reading some history might be a good idea.

Tuleka Prah’s African Food Map

The genesis of the idea was simple and uncomplicated. I was looking for a recipe online and was generally disappointed with what I found. Many links were unnecessarily verbose, cluttered in structure or layout and displayed alarmingly poor imagery. At the end of the day, I could not remember what I was searching for and instead found myself watching videos of animated dinosaurs. It was frustrating. So I decided there and then that instead of getting annoyed about it, I would see what I could do. Thus in 2012, I started a project called My African Food Map.

Like I mentioned earlier, this would be simple. I would make a website which would become a trusted reference point for popular African recipes. I thought, “The best way, of course, is to go directly to the source.” I would visit as many African countries as possible and find out what the four most popular dishes were. Then, I would take pictures of the finished meals and their ingredients, and post the recipes online.

All of it would be free to the reading public and as easily accessible as possible. I also thought, “Well, I’d definitely be interested in knowing how to prepare the dishes and in seeing how each stage of the cooking process looks. So, how about including a video for each featured recipe?” This is the process through which “My African Food Map” was conceived.

I could also break down the thought process of how I came to the idea of doing four dishes per country, with at least two months for featuring the details around the dishes; i.e. the country and the ingredients in their uncooked form, but I will not do that. We have only just been introduced and I do not want to geek out so early in our relationship.

All of these thoughts took place in the space of about 30 minutes. And so, as usual, I had an idea but no money and no realistic possibility of making it happen. It was the middle of spring of 2012. With these constraints, the best solution was to start off in a country where my accommodation would not be a problem and where I would have a family to fall back on in case of any emergency. My father is from Ghana and my mother is from South Africa, so those were the two countries I could start. I chose Ghana – another thought process referred to in an interview I did earlier this year.

In October of 2012, I put “My African Food Map” in the public domain for the first time. The period from then until the first video upload in January 2013 was a tough and exhausting period for me. I was using a camera I got a week before I left Europe for Africa, I paid for things using an overdraft I technically should not have had, and had to deal with the results of power cuts, internet problems and blown adapters from electrical surges. To top it all off, the individuals I wanted to interview to bring these dishes to life – the folks that would make the “my” part of My African Food Map – had very different ideas about keeping appointments, etc. Thinking about it now, I am amazed at the whole episode: Figuring out the camera, editing with a damaged computer – in the heat and with power cuts, and sticking to my film-edit-upload schedule; everything about this project has been a small miracle.

Now it is the beginning of summer 2013 and I am in awe of the fact that this idea now exists in “real life,” as well as at the growing and overwhelmingly positive support it has generated. Although I am very passionate about My African Food Map, the support I am receiving is the main reason I am motivated to continue. In many ways, I am still where I was last year this time: looking for funding or sponsorship and hatching plans to travel to the next country, with no idea of how this might happen. Determination and stubbornness obviously have a large majority in the parliament of my mind and so I know I will be in East Africa soon, learning and completing the next set of feature recipes.

I love food. I love African food, which I suppose you do too. So it is a great pleasure and honor for me to be able to share this project with you, and I only hope I can continue to stimulate excitement and curiosity for African food through more featured recipes, in the foreseeable future.

The sun is shining and my favourite park beckons, so I will end at this point. My next post here will be from Kenya.

The left winger

It always seemed to me that the left legged player got a place in a football team for no other reason other than that he was left-legged. In the makeshift fields of my youth, the left winger occupied a forsaken part of the field, with overgrown grass and other debris tossed from the centre of the field. The right leggers had the rest — which is to say the best — of the foot-trodden pitch to themselves.

Chilean-born writer Roberto Bolaño, acting as both witness and participant, doesn’t harbor prejudice against left or right wingers. How could he? He was, after all, right-handed but left-legged, a condition known as laterality or cross-dominance.

In “Caracas Address,” a lecture he gave after being awarded the Romulo Gallegos prize, Bol­ano began: “When I was little I played soccer. My number was 11, the same number as Pepe and Zagallo in the Sweden World Cup, and I was an enthusiastic but pretty bad player, though my shooting foot was my left foot and the conventional wisdom is that lefties are always useful to have in a match.”

It doesn’t help matters much that the leftie’s right leg is, normally, dead. (“Chocolate leg,” Arsenal fans called Robin van Persie’s habitually useless right leg. Van Persie, to be sure, is an exceptional player.) But imagine the combination of a so-so left foot coupled with a comatose right one getting into the team for no other reason except that he is comfortable on his left foot.

That aside, the left-sided player has the problem of a directional nature. Let’s turn to Bolaño again: ”For example, when the coach said ‘Pass to the right, Bolaño’, I didn’t know where I was supposed to pass the ball. And sometimes, playing on the left side of the field, at the coach’s hoarse voice, I even had to stop and think: left, right. Right was the soccer field, to shoot left was to kick the ball out of bounds towards the few spectators.” Try it with lefties: tell them abruptly, say, while driving, to “turn right” and see how long it takes them to work out which side is their right.

And yet it is the left foot which is fetishised, the recipient of prizes, garlands that start at the ankle reaching up to the waist. In fact all the foot clichés I can readily reel are the one to do with the left foot. The first time I saw the cliché “cultured left foot” was in a piece about Uruguayan genius Alvaro Recoba. Or “trusty left foot” or this somewhat over-the-top praise poem in the Guardian rumour column about which-player-is-going-where: “Arsenal are looking at…Uruguay striker Alvaro Recoba, whose left foot is currently writing a thesis on humour as subversion in the oeuvres of Hungarian émigré poet George Faludy, just to prove exactly how cultured it is.”

Perhaps despite our veneer of acceptance, we are still primitive. It’s not too long since left-handed people were forced-beaten, even to use the right hand. So to hide our prejudice, we couch it as praise. Or perhaps like the superstitious ancients, we are still in awe of the left-legged player, an occurrence that happens once every ten times.

The last words come out of the mouth of the late African novelist, Chinua Achebe.

A passage in Achebe’s magnificent novel, Arrow of God talks about mastering something that you can even do it with your left hand. The colonial administrator has summoned the priest Ezeulu, the novel’s chief protagonist, to his compound. In one of the offices, a young white man held a pen “writing, but with his left hand. The first thought that came to Ezeulu on seeing him was to wonder whether any black man could ever achieve the same mastery over book as to write it with the left hand.”

When Ezeulu is able to go home after a few weeks in detention, he instructs his son Oduche to go the white man’s school. “When I was in Okperi I saw a young white man who was able to write his book with the left hand. From his actions I could see that he had little sense. But he had power; he could shout in my face; he could do what he liked. Why? Because he could write with his left hand. That is why I have called you. I want you to learn and master this man’s knowledge so much that if you are suddenly woken up from sleep and asked what it is you will reply. You must learn it until you can write it with your left hand.”

* This piece is published here with kind permission from the new South African website, The Con.

Senegalese award winner tells France to shove it

Bousso Dramé is a young Senegalese woman who recently won a French language competition organized by the French Institute of Senegal. She was awarded a return flight ticket to Paris and a training in documentary film-making for winning said competition. She however renounced the whole thing after finding herself on the receiving end of vexing and humiliating comments from employees of the French Institute and of the French Consulate in Dakar.

This could have ended there and nobody would have ever known about it. But unlike those who have been in her shoes before her, Bousso Dramé penned a candid and eloquent open letter to the French Consul-General in Senegal, first published on DakarActu and later republished on Rue89, that has been making the rounds of the French-speaking African net. This letter, translated in English below with her consent, explains politely but firmly why France can keep the visa, the flight ticket and the training.

She makes clear that her decision, in her own words, is “not a sanction against individuals but against a generalized system” in which visa applicants are met with suspicion and contempt before anything else, and that she renounces “in the name of those thousands of Senegalese who deserve respect”. Those words have brought her much praise from fellow anonymous visa applicants and Africans in general. They have however been met with more interrogations than approval from French readers who have been asking what she is refering to exactly.

Indeed her letter speaks volume to those who already know what she is putting her finger on but appears elusive to those who do not. She did go into more details in the interview that she gave to Jeune Afrique. More than the clerk at the French Consulate who reportedly told her “she wasn’t paid to hand out smiles” — the kind of rudeness one can face in any (French) administration no matter who you are, it is the “recommendations” from French Institute staffers that are most telling: because she would be “representing the French Institute”, she would have to “behave” and resist “shopping temptations” despite a “very generous per diem”. The concerned White man telling the little Black girl to keep clear of his world’s niceties for fear she be bedazzled into oblivion… Sounds familiar yet?

But that’s not all. What Bousso Dramé faced was not just your run-of-the-mill neocolonial paternalism, she also got a taste of the discrimination faced by many migrants applying for visas when her request to stay three days longer than the training required, to visit friends and family, was denied. “Nobody looks like a prototype of illegal migrant,” she was told, implying that anything out of the tightly controlled schedule was suspicious activity, meant to evade the authorities and remain in France.

This kind of behavior is not just morally appalling. It also goes to show how out of touch with the reality of migrations French authorities are. Despite the pervasiveness of migrant bashing in French political discourse, all evidence points to the fact that migrants contribute more to their host country economically than they receive. In other words the idea that one more migrant in the country is one less job for a French national is deluded: it is not a zero-sum game as has been proven in the UK and in the US. In fact the reason the last OECD report found that France was currently an exception to this rule is not because there are too many migrants but because, after large numbers in the 60′s, immigration declined in the 80′s, making it more difficult to pay for the previous generation. “Raising employment levels for migrants would actually increase the fiscal well-being of countries.”

Bousso Dramé represents the future of Senegal: young, highly educated and determined. It is with people like her that France and other former colonial powers will talk and negotiate ten years from now. Singing the praises of this young new African middle class generation is easy on paper, and we have seen plenty of that recently. Yet when time comes to act on it, this generation is met with the same harrowing attitude as its forebears. Except times have changed and the Bousso Dramés of the continent are unafraid to say “no, thank you” and move on without France. As far as Senegal is concerned, this is all very good news and confirmation that the Nouveau Type de Sénégalais called forth by Y’En A Marre comes in all shapes and sizes. It is however a pity and an outrage that France has not yet come to terms with such a simple reality.

Open letter to the French consular and diplomatic authorities in Senegal: No, thank you.

To His Excellency the Consul-General, To the Director of the French Institute of Senegal,

My name is Bousso Dramé and I am a Senegalese citizen who, on this day, has decided to put pen to paper so that a message that I care deeply about can be heard loud and clear.

Out of interest for the language of Molière, I decided last April to take part in the 2013 National Spelling Competition organized by the French Institute as part the Francophonie Prizes. The competition brought together a few hundred candidates, aged 18 to 35, in the French Institutes of Dakar and Saint-Louis as well as the French Alliances of Kaolack and Ziguinchor. After some written dueling about an excerpt of L’Art Français de la Guerre [The French Art of War] by Alexis Jenni, which received the 2011 Goncourt Prize, I had the honor to be declared the winner of said competition. I was rewarded with a Dakar-Paris-Dakar flight ticket and a CultureLab training in documentary film-making at the Albert Schweitzer Centre.

During my short life, while being open as the citizen of the world that I am, I have never ceased to defend my pride of being a Black and African woman. It goes without saying that I absolutely believe in the bright future of my dear Africa. I am equally convinced of the necessity to put an end to prejudices that prevailed about Africans and Africa due to the colonial era and the difficult contemporary situation of this continent. It is high time for Africans to respect themselves and to demand they be respected by others. This vision of a certainly generous and open, but also proud and determined, Africa, demanding the respect that it is owed and that it has been denied for far too long, is a strong conviction of mine that enables me and literally carries me forward.

However, during my numerous interactions with, on the one hand, some staff members of the French Institute and, on the other hand, civil servants at the French Consulate, I have had to deal with conscending, insidious, sly and vexating behaviors and remarks. Not once, nor twice but multiple times! I have really tried to ignore these behaviors but the appalling welcome I have been greeted with at the French Consulate (a “welcome”endured by most fellow Senegalese applying for visas) has been the last straw that, unfortunately, broke the camel’s back.

As an authentic individual who does not know how to cheat, a difficult but necessary decision became an obvious one for me. An all-expenses-paid trip, even the world’s most beautiful and enchanting one, is not worth the suffering that my fellow citizens and myself endure from the French Consulate. No matter how exciting the training, and God knows this one really appealed to me, it is not worth the pain of enduring these kinds of behavior unfortunately widespread under African skies. As a matter of coherence with my own value system, I have, therefore, decided to renounce that offer, despite being granted a visa.

Renounce symbolically. Renounce in the name of those thousands of Senegalese who deserve respect, a respect they are being denied within the walls of these French representations, and on Senegalese soil moreover.

This decision is not a sanction against individuals but against a generalized system which, despite the ever-increasing list of complaints from my fellow citizens, does not seem inclined to question itself.

Furthermore, I find it particularly ironic that the partial headline of the training that I will not attend reads: “Is France still the homeland of human rights? To what point are French citizens also European cizens and cizitens of the world?” It would be, without a doubt, an interesting subject for a documentary shot from an African perspective and I hope that I will have the chance, by way of other means, to participate in a CultureLab training in the future.

I shall thank the French Institute nonetheless, for this competition initiative, which in my opinion deserves to continue to exist, and even to be held more frequently in order to stimulate the intellectual emulation between young Senegalese and for the pleasure of those who love the French language, among which I count myself.

To the lady clerk at the France Consulate’s visa counter – I do not know your name, but regarding that visa that I will not be using, let me tell you: no, thank you.

Proudly, sincerely and Africanly yours, Bousso Dramé.

Weekend Music Break

It’s been far too long since we had a music break. So without too many words, we’re going to jump right in with what’s been on our radar for the last couple weeks. In a fascinating illustration of cultural appropriation, Ugandan artist Vampino presents himself as a powerful Dracula-figure, surrounded by obedient disciples.

Unstoppable in the Angolan dance music scene, DJ Djeff festively traverses the streets with TLDreamz in “Undi Da Ki Panha”.

Always pushing the visual envelope, director Clarence Peters doesn’t disappoint in “Bigger Better Best”, the new video for Port Harcourt rapper Pucado. Peters takes us for a ride with his camera as Pucado keeps us guessing with his syncopated lyrics.

Fresh off his triple win at the South African Music Awards, Khuli Chana finds a few friends as he cruises through Joburg in the upbeat video for “Mnatebawen”, meaning “it’s nice to be you.” Joined by children, churchwomen and an unexpected mapantsula dancer, Khuli, backed by KayGizm and Fifi Cooper, urges us to “do you”.

Emboldened by a dance crew that’s got his back, Naija rapper May D revisits the colonial era in “So Many Tinz” to rescue his love interest from a cruel captor with true Nollywood flair.

Attempting to fill the twisted niche in West African music left vacant with the untimely passing of Nigerian artist Goldie Harvey, Ghanaian singer Eazzy shows that she’s starting to lose it, in the best way, with her video for “Scream”.

A new Zaki Ibrahim, hot out of the editing suite.

In “Provo E Gosto”, Angolan kuduro crew Os Lambas proves there’s nothing scarier than a partner who smells infidelity. Impressively, the fear is somehow channeled into the most insanely energetic kuduro dance moves yet seen.

Always well-produced with a consistently solid flow, Kahli Abdu tells it like it is with Kid Konnect for the track “No Love”.

Lastly, we head to the beach in Tanzania with former MTV Base VJ Vanessa Mdee. She shows us just how smooth Swahili can sound in “Closer”.

Back next week!

Luanda Can Cook

I have always been into food and restaurants. I blame my parents. My mother is an excellent cook – my uncles swear that her home cooking is “better than restaurant food” – and it was not uncommon to have my aunts and uncles drop by our Luanda house during the two hour lunch-break we inherited from our Iberian colonizers. My father started taking me to restaurants at a young age; one of my earliest memories was going with him to the now extinct Barracuda restaurant on the end of the Ilha, a peninsula that juts out of Luanda bay into the Atlantic Ocean and is today the playground of Luanda’s elites. In its hey days, Barracuda was one of the only decent restaurants in town.

Luanda’s restaurant scene suffered greatly during the country’s Marxist and civil war years. However, since peace was achieved in 2002, the city’s gastronomical offerings have exponentially increased. Luanda, known as the most expensive city in the world for the thousands of expats that now live there, now boasts restaurants for many tastes: Scandinavian cuisine at Kafe Stockholm, Mexican fare at Sabor do Texas, sushi at Asia Lounge or Shogun and Italian style thin crust pizza at Capricciosa, just to name some.

In 2009, realizing that there was no English-language guide or reviews for the city’s burgeoning restaurant scene, a group of French expats started a blog called Luanda Nightlife. It explored the city’s restaurants, clubs, lounges, and bars. They visited the various establishments and reviewed each place on the blog. It was of course an amusing read. As several have been there will attest, many Luanda restaurants have notoriously inadequate service, most are unjustifiably overpriced, and the vibrant nightlife scene in of itself is something else to behold. These Luanda Nightlife blokes left no stone unturned on their blog; reviewing everything from the posh restaurants to the street food at the end of the Ilha. It just so happened that the English language version of the blog was so good that many Angolans started following it. For a lot of us abroad, it was a great way to keep an eye on new restaurants and bars and know where to go to when we visiting home.

Eventually, the expats had to return home. I had become acquainted and friendly with them by then. So I was not displeased when they asked me if I wanted to take over the blog. Since then, some friends and I have made the blog more Angolan-friendly: all our new posts are bilingual (English and Portuguese) and we started to translate the very detailed and expansive catalogue that our friends had left behind.

Today the majority of the sites visitors are Angolan; and even restaurants and bars have begun to take notice of the blog site. We hope that it becomes the main hospitality resource for Luandans and visitors alike who want to go out but are unsure of how to go about it. In a rapidly changing city like Luanda, it is important to be able to catalogue all of its eating establishment, or at least those that our wallets and stomachs allow. I believe that restaurants contribute to the identity of a city, so this has been an immensely fulfilling journey.

Just three weeks ago, we interviewed Jorge Alves, the Portuguese chef at Chill Out, which is amongst the most popular and iconic restaurants in Luanda. Catering to moneyed residents, the restaurant is known for its eclectic décor, beachside location, party scene, and increasingly, its food. As in various high-end restaurants in Luanda, the chef is Portuguese, perhaps highlighting the trend of Portuguese professionals increasingly coming to Angola for work. During the interview, Chef Jorge spoke frankly about the reality of being a chef in Luanda. Below is an excerpt of the interview in English.

Luanda Nightlife: When did you get the opportunity to work in Angola?

Jorge Alves: About two years ago I was contacted by some friends who told me about the opportunity to work at Chill Out and I could not resist this different type of challenge and the experience of working in Africa, a continent I had never been to before.

What difficulties did you find in Luanda? Were you expecting them or was adaptation difficult?

The difficulties I have encountered are the all too common lack of electricity and water, the occasional shortage of certain products in the supply market, and the inflated cost of supply here have been the biggest challenges. There is also a lack of a qualified, skilled workforce with proper training in hospitality. These were problems that I was specifically warned about and I am lucky to be able to work in a very well structured establishment put in place. This allowed me to adapt quickly.

What steps do you take to mitigate these difficulties?

With regards to the electricity and water supply, there really is not much to do. But with the suppliers we have been trying to create a close relationship based on trust. With regards to a qualified work force, if there is no supply of skilled labor in the job market, we will have to train our employees ourselves, in the restaurant. I have to say that I am very proud of the quality of my kitchen team.

How would you define Chill Out’s cuisine? What is its target market?

At Chill Out we serve fusion cuisine that is based on Portuguese/Mediterranean gastronomy with a strong Asian influence and increasingly Angolan overtones. We primarily cater to an upper-middle class clientele.

What are the biggest advantages of working in a restaurant in Luanda?

It is in the midst of a society that is experiencing considerable economic growth. More people have the spending power necessary to eat out. Another advantage is that the restaurant industry here is rather young and there is still a lot to do and many opportunities to explore.

How familiar are you with Angola’s culinary tradition? Do you feel that it is represented in Chill Out’s menu?

I am starting to get more and more familiar with Angolan gastronomy, and I have my workers to thank for that. Several times now we have served dishes with an Angolan identity, such as the calulu de gambas (a traditional Angolan shrimp stew) with funge (fufu) served in skewers, or even desserts that incorporate Angolan flavors such as the combination of funge and peanuts.

Recipe: Moamba de Galinha with Funge (fufu) (Claudio via Verena Gois)

Cooking time – 1 Hour

Serves 4-6 people

Ingredients for Moamba

2 onions

3 tomatoes

900 gr moamba

1 chicken, cut into small pieces

200 grams of eggplant

200 grams of okra

Palm oil

Chop the onion and tomatoes and cook in a pan with a bit of palm oil, to sauté for a few minutes. Chop the eggplant and add to the moamba sauté along with the chicken cut into small pieces. Add salt to taste. Let it cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or so, then add the okras, halved. If necessary, add a bit of water. Let simmer for another 20 minutes or until the chicken is soft and the sauce thickened.

Ingredients for funge

600gr water

300 gr fuba bass drum

Heat a pot of water and heat until boiling. Then add the cornmeal in portions, stirring constantly and forcefully, until dough is smooth and consistent. If necessary add a bit of boiling water, and start again. Serve with moamba.

The Poo Fighters

Around the world, people struggle for adequate, decent toilets. In schools and prisons across the United States, women struggle to find decent and private toilets. Women farm workers struggle and fail to find anything like a toilet in the fields. Even women Senators can have a tough time finding a place for relief. When it comes to toilets, it’s a man’s world … everywhere. Remember that. Toilets are a human right, an essential component of human dignity, everywhere. Not just in the ‘developing world.’

Recently, toilets have been big news in South Africa, in particular in the Western Cape, where shack dwellers and their supporters have taken to throwing and dumping human feces in protest of the deplorable state of toilets and the deplorable toilet of State services. And so people have weighed in with both glee and great insight on the “toilet wars”, on the politics of shit, and on shit and social justice. In fact, the toilet wars of Khayelitsha have been going on for over a decade, and so no one is particularly surprised that the shit has finally hit the fan.

But there is something else going on here, and that has to do with the concept of “informal settlements”. The phrase “informal settlement” suggests transitory and transitional, and, to a large extent, absolves the State of any responsibility. After all, it’s informal. Here’s an even better, more pungent articulation: it’s a “reception area”. Welcome to the Ileni informal settlement, in Keetmanshoop, nestled among the quiver trees in southern Namibia. Watch your step.

The story is the story you know, if you know the story of informal settlements. In January 2012, people tired of waiting for the city, in this case Keetmanshoop, to do something, to allot them land that it said it would allot, the promised land. Tired of waiting, they moved in and set up shop, or shack, on municipal land. The city issued an eviction order. The “land grabbers”, which is how the local media refer to them, ignored the order. Then, the order was delayed because the place to which they were going to be evicted was just brush. Finally, the bulldozers came and off they went, to Ileni “reception area”.

Ileni informal settlement has all the markings of an informal settlement: “dangerous illegal electricity connections”; shack fires especially in winter that seem to target the vulnerable, like children; and no toilets to speak of. Or worse, unspeakable fake toilets.

And that’s where the residents of Ileni informal settlement are today: “buckets and bushes cater for Ileni residents.” Women, like Erica Tsuses and Sofia Boois, are in charge of the ‘bucket system’. The family uses the buckets, in the home, as a latrine; holes are dug; faeces and urine are buried; more holes are dug; and it goes on and on. Keeping this system operational is women’s work. Protesting this system is women’s work as well. Whether or not “sanitation needs” are covered by the Namibian Constitution, and whose Constitution covers toilets anyway, the “sanitation needs” of girls, women, and the whole community matter. Girls are particularly affected, women are particularly affected, and everyone is particularly affected. Ask the residents of Khayelitsha, ask the residents of Ileni. These sites are neither “informal” nor “reception areas.” They’re living breathing communities where the residents are tired of being treated like shit.

Even after the Mau Mau case the British will never stop kidding themselves about the crimes of empire

Torture comes cheap for the old imperial powers. Just £2,670 was paid out this month to each of the 5,228 elderly Kenyans judged eligible for compensation as the British government finally settled a case it has attempted to block every step of the way (between 2005 and 2011 it insisted that officials had “misplaced” or “forgotten about” a secret archive of 2,000 boxes of files detailing late colonial abuses from all over the world). With characteristic cynicism, the government briefed journalists that there would be an apology, and then never made one. Despite prominent reporting of that phantom apology, there has been merely an expression of “regret” from William Hague, and an insistence that “a line be drawn” beneath this awkward national embarrassment. Unfortunately, at least in the British national consciousness, it looks like that is exactly what is happening.

Our colonial torturers, like those who survived our abuses, are old and dying (like the Scot Ian Henderson CBE, torturer-in-chief in Kenya in the 1950s, later nicknamed the “Butcher of Bahrain”, who died this month). If a meaningful public reckoning with the crimes of our empire is ever to take place while the last of the perpetrators and the victims are still with us, then it has to happen now. Yet even in the face of overwhelming documentary and testimonial evidence of the scale and brutality of our imperial sadism, this reckoning is simply not taking place. Many of us Britain have our heads so stuffed with jingoism that we can’t make any sense of this part of our history, and so choose to ignore it.

We know from our official reports that we roasted people alive. We know that the salient feature of the way that we tortured was our preference for overtly sexual techniques. One of the five who brought the case, Jane Muthoni Mara, had bottles filled with boiling water pushed into her vagina (a technique that was not at all uncommon). Like many of the men awarded compensation, Paolo Nzili and Ndiku Mutua were castrated.

As a society, we have been nowhere near appalled enough by these revelations. I find myself at a loss to know what it would take for us to properly face up to our past. Whether in Kenya half a century ago or in Iraq this past decade (Baha Mousa’s murder bears striking similarities to the kinds of abuse recorded in the Mau Mau files), we just can’t seem to take our history of torture seriously. The national frenzy for vacuous expressions of “support” for “Our Boys” — regardless of who they are fighting or how — has created a public sphere in which anything but the most craven deference for the British armed forces is taken as a traitorous slur. Blair’s wars have somehow deepened and popularised our collective postcolonial melancholia.

We have a national fairytale that Mau Mau was really about the rape of white women and white infants butchered in their beds. That cover story is proving hard to budge from the popular imagination, and somehow “Mau Mau” remains a shorthand expression describing their brutality, not ours (just read the comments). The BBC made an excellent documentary, “Kenya: White Terror“, over a decade ago now, and it deserves a prime-time re-run now that the case has been settled (don’t miss the segment from 32 minutes in where former prison official Trevor Gavaghan silently eyeballs the interviewer when confronted about his abuses).

Cristina Odone’s unpardonable column in the Daily Telegraph (newspaper of middle England, older expatriates, military history enthusiasts and colonial nostalgists, which was also the first to report on the case back in 2005) was typical of the scornful reaction to the compensation claims two years ago. Odone characterized the claimants as ungrateful natives, merely scrounging from the British as usual, and their lawyers as engaging in a kind of historical ambulance-chasing.

I know a little about the Mau Mau because my parents lived in Kenya just as their reign of terror drew to an end. Local farmers, black and white, lived in fear for their lives during the 1950s and into 1960: rapes, pillaging, arson and torture were routine. Although they are now being reinvented as freedom fighters, my parents remember that when the British colonial authorities tried to stamp out the Mau Mau rebellion, many native Kenyans were as grateful as their adoptive compatriots (or evil white imperialists, whichever you prefer) [...] proof that the colonial government, with the explicit support of the Westminster authorities, carried out systematic human rights abuses is yet to surface [...] Leigh & Day [the law firm] have spotted what some might feel is a lucrative niche: in our self-hating culture, where the Prime Minister felt he should publicly apologise for the legacy of the British Empire, the “victims” of colonial rule – deserving or not – will have the blessing of public opinion in their fights for compensation. Any chance of an apology from the Mau Mau?

Odone hasn’t written on the matter since. Neither has there been a cheep from our dunce of an Education secretary Michael Gove, who gave the job of overhauling our namby-pamby history curriculum to noted bigot Niall Ferguson, whose ultra-thin skin is of course matched only by his mindless rah-rah enthusiasm for the British Empire. Our history syllabuses have in fact been in need of reform for a long time — we learn about Nazi Germany and the European theatre of the Second World War ad nauseam, and very little else, which is one reason why young people in Britain are as likely as their grandparents to suffer from  (and therefore with our own role as history’s perennial heroes).

The American media hasn’t paid much attention to the case either (though David Anderson wrote a great column in the New York Times on some of the wider ramifications). Barack Obama hasn’t said a word, despite journalists like the Guardian’s superb Ian Cobain reporting that Obama’s own grandfather was tortured by the British:

Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods.

Who knows? Perhaps President Obama has his own reasons for not wanting to say too much about the torture and extrajudicial killing of “military age males” classed as anticolonial insurgents. Never mind that he is himself the beneficiary of decades of black radical struggle in America that took inspiration from the Mau Mau’s fight against the British. History sometimes seems to move very fast.

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Here are a few more interesting links on this topic:

– Historian Caroline Elkins‘ research, especially her 2005 book Imperial Reckoning, has played a major role in getting a measure of justice for survivors of British abuse. Bernard Porter reviewed that book as well as David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged in the LRB (most of the British press were at pains to discredit her findings at the time — Neelika interviewed her colleague Faith Naina about this a couple of years ago). One assumes Elkins’ next book will be quite something.

– Since his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, Enoch Powell has been adopted as a poster-boy for racists and xenophobes. But he is less well known for a speech he gave in parliament following the Hola massacre in 1959. Well worth reading (by the standards of colonial speechifying), here’s a highlight:

I would say that it is a fearful doctrine, which must recoil upon the heads of those who pronounce it, to stand in judgment on a fellow human-being and to say, “Because he was such-and-such, therefore the consequences which would otherwise flow from his death shall not flow.”

– We’re excited about Amira Tajdin’s new short film, His to Keep. The blurb: “It’s 2012 in Kenya and the British judicial system has granted the Mau Mau Freedom Fighters the right to sue the British government for the crimes it committed against these men and their families during the nation’s fight against colonial rule/ the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950′s. In the highlands of Limuru town, Wamiti (David Nganga) sits listening to this news. An ex Mau Mau veteran, he is overcome with a mix of emotions that he can’t fully process. In an attempt to deal with the ghosts this news piece brings back to life, Wamiti delicately delves back into his past fighting back the hurt he’s been shutting out for so long.”

Here’s the trailer:

– Lastly, here’s the full text of an extraordinary letter by David Larder, the first registered British conscientious objector against colonial warfare, recently published in the Guardian following the settlement of the Mau Mau case:

I doubt if all the secrets of the Kikuyu uprising will ever be known. Young soldiers were brainwashed into believing they were fighting in Kenya for our glorious empire. Sixty years ago I was there as a 19-year-old national service officer. I am delighted that the government has given some token compensation for Kenyans who suffered torture (Britain’s brutal past exposed, 6 June). I still suffer from memories of the British apartheid system there and numerous instances of arbitrary killing and brutality by British forces, Kenya police and Kenyan African Rifles. In reality we protected land-grabbing British farmers and enriched UK companies.

Young troops were encouraged to shoot any African on sight in certain areas. Prize money was offered by senior officers for every death. The brains of one young black lad I shot with no warning (by orders) landed on my chest. He had no weapons, only a piece of the Bible and part of an English-language primer in his pocket. Before I burned his body near the farm where he had been working, I was ordered to cut off his hands, which I did, and put them in my ammunition pouches, as we’d run out of fingerprinting kits. Of course, he was recorded as “a terrorist”. I was told to shoot down unarmed women in the jungle because they were carrying food to the so-called “Mau Mau” – a word they never called themselves.

The whole of this Kenyan tragedy was predictable. Although Kenyan black troops had fought for the British in the second world war, they were rewarded with their land being taken away, no press or trade union freedom, suppression of political movements and slave-like conditions of work, which I witnessed. Yes, some black Kenyans did turn on others for not rising up against such indignities. But many of those who were killed were local chiefs and their supporters, who had co-operated with hugely rich white farmers. However, the revenge killings by the colonial authorities were totally disproportionate – with bombing raids, burning of villages and the forced movement of thousands of families onto poorer land, in the name of “protection”. Very few white people were killed by Africans.

But it wasn’t just the black people who suffered. I remember telling my company commander that a young soldier whose medical records showed he was only fit for clerical work should not go on a military exercise. I was laughed at. He was forced to go. After three hours’ steep climb through jungle, he died in my arms, probably from a heart attack. Because I remonstrated, I was ordered to take a donkey and carry his body, which kept slipping off, for nearly a week to deposit him at HQ on the other side of the Aberdare mountains. His mother was told he was a hero who’d died on active service.

I was sickened by my experiences. I disobeyed orders and was court-martialled and dismissed from the service. I actually thought I was going to be shot. Stripped of my uniform, I was told to make my own way home. Then I wrote to Bessie Braddock, the Labour MP, and was put back in my uniform to fly home in a RAF plane. After campaigning around the country for Kenyan independence, I received new call-up papers, because I had not finished my national service. I then decided to stand trial and become the first British man allowed to be registered as a conscientious objector against colonial warfare. History has proved me right. With these expressions of “regret” by our foreign secretary, I now feel vindicated for being pilloried as a “conchie”.

The flag-bearers of dub in South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa, has been undergoing somewhat of an electronic music revival over the past five years. The initial boom happened in the early 2000s when, aided by the pioneering African Dope record label, artists such as Felix Laband and The Constructus Corporation (an earlier incarnation of Die Antwoord) suddenly found themselves at the centre of discussions at high school and college campuses across South Africa. The label’s roster of gifted musicians demolished club shows and festivals everywhere they went, leaving critics with no choice but to declare the entire operation ‘the future of South African music’.

Yet , dub maestro and co-founder of the label, says that it wasn’t so easy. “The market just wasn’t ready for it”, he revealed during a chat we had recently. However, judging from the talent emerging currently, it is hard to imagine a more receptive scene than Cape Town for all things electronic. Names such as Dank, Christian Tiger School and Card On Spokes (who also plays jazz as Shane Cooper) gig regularly on the club circuit.

An interesting facet of the scene has been the rise of dub. Pioneered by Lee “Scratch” Perry, the music has gone on to influence a range of genres across the globe. Cape Town also has its small but increasingly-influential set of producers; the afore-mentioned Fletcher, Pure Solid, and 7FT Soundsystem are all names worthy of consideration in this regard. Here’s a taste of 7FT:

For Damian Stephens, music and mission go hand-in-hand; they are the yin-yang brothers who confide in each other, sharing ancient secrets of meditative techniques and means to undercut the system. This England born-and-bred designer/producer/deejay started off as China White, releasing minimal techno tunes under the now-defunct Djaxed Up Beats label in the early nineties. After moving to South Africa in 1994, he lay low from music, re-emerging in 2003/4 as Dplanet, a name he’s gone on to reveal was influenced by Afrika Bambaata and Soul Sonic Force’s “Planet Rock“. When Dplanet’s not busy being an artist or running his design firm, he handles Pioneer Unit, a six year-old independently-run imprint based in Cape Town.

In the Max Joseph-directed short film “12 Years of DFA: Too Old To Be New, Too New To Be Classic“, the narrating voice informs us that “the entire global operation of DFA is currently run by two people.” This is exactly how Pioneer Unit operates. Dplanet handles the musical side of the label, while Spo0ky, his partner, casts a keen eye on its visual output – from the elegant packaging of Driemanskap’s 2009 breakthrough album, “Iqghabukil’inyongo“, to the series of intriguing videos from the likes of Ben Sharpa, Rattex, Jaak, and the afore-mentioned Driemanskap whose video, “Camagu” (a phrase often used by traditional healers to pay homage to the ancestors), currently sits at around 59, 000 views on YouTube:

Dplanet and Spo0ky are also musical accomplices, collaborating as the DJ/VJ duo Pure Solid, a dubwise manifestation of Dplanet’s roots in early dub, techno, and Hip-Hop releases of the eighties and nineties. He once told the story of how he’d go to dances organised by two white Nyabhingi Rastas. “They spoke in a heavy patois accent, yet had never been to Jamaica”, he said. Jah Shaka’s soundsystem is still a vital point of reference for him. Pure Solid sees Dplanet utilising the template of dub, “the drum and the bass“, to make overtly-political commentary on the state of affairs in South Africa. If indeed the music is the message, then Pure Solid are worthy contenders in the category of bands who deliver it capably.

In December 2012, Pure Solid performed at Synergy, a music festival in Cape Town. Below are the notes I took while watching their set on a sunny Sunday morning:

“Alternating seamlessly between real-life imagery and technicolour vectors and geometric figures, Spo0ky’s work is both appealing to the senses, serving as the perfect counterpart and companion to Dplanet’s audio mash-ups. Dplanet’s a maverick at audio manipulation. Listening to a live Pure Solid set is akin to witnessing the planets collide, only in hyper sped-up time; the panning, the sirens – soundsystem culture version 2.0. Witness current political commentary when Pure Solid’s refix of Alborosie’s “Police” as Spo0ky’s visual cut between live footage and re-enactments of the toyi-toyi with the caption Marikana strike serving as the chilling undercurrent.”

Six months have elapsed since that performance; Pure Solid have done two tours, recorded a French-South Africa exchange project featuring Konfab, Jaak, and Driemanskap’s El-Nino – all of whom are, it must be pointed out, Pioneer Unit recording artists – to celebrate the tenth year the French-based Jarring FX label has been doing work with Cape Town-based artists. Electronic music wunderkids Markus Wormstorm and Sibot are among some of the artists with whom the French have done work. Pure Solid also performed at this year’s Cape Town International Jazz Festival. Recounting how the booking happened, Dplanet says:

“We were at the end of our first 4DLS European tour. It was our last gig, which was at IOMMA on Réunion Island. We had to change venue because the organisers realised that we couldn’t do video projections at the venue they originally intended for us to be at – which was outside.

“The change in line-up meant that we were performing after a Maloya (traditional music from Réunion) band and before Susheela Raman, which we thought was going to be quite a culture shock. The venue was packed to it’s 1000 person capacity with families and, I’m assuming, Susheela Raman fans.

“Anyway, we did our thing and it was quite disconcerting because, while no one left, people didn’t exactly go wild with excitement either. We got a small polite round of applause after each track. Most people just stared in what looked like disbelief.

“We came off stage thinking it was a bit of a disaster, but we gave it our best so what could we do? We went to the VIP lounge to get a beer and the large delegation of South Africans gave us a standing ovation. We literally looked behind us to see if someone famous had walked in behind us. One of the South African delegation was Rashid Lombard who immediately told us that he wanted to book us for the JazzFest. We thought that maybe he’d got carried away with the spirit of the occasion and it would never really happen. We saw him again the next day and he was still claiming that he loved our show and would definitely book us. He obviously saw the skeptical look on my face because he immediately called his daughter, Yana, who handles all the bookings, and she confirmed that he wasn’t joking.”

The “Cape Town Effects” project, a result of that French connection, is ready; in fact, the artists involved have just recently returned from their European tour. For a teaser, listen to Konfab and El-Nino’s “All rise” below.

Fletcher (above) has also just released a free project of seventeen dubs, or rather according to his , “subsonic rumblings, glitched out melodies and frequencies from other dimensions.” He shared the following on working with Cape Town reggae godfather, Zolile Matikinga (alias Zoro):

“Everyone’s come up under Zoro; Teba, Dillinger, Crosby, they all learned from Zoro. Zoro’s special, [he] doesn’t write nothing down, ever! [He] steps up, does his choruses, and then he says ‘play it back, play it back’. And then he listens to it again, and then he does his harmonies; high, medium, low. Then he’s like ‘cool, run the verse’. [He] gets his words inside his head, lays it down. So Zoro’s a pleasure to work with, because you’ve finished a tune in thirty minutes. If you’ve got a riddim and you give him five minutes with the riddim, he’s got the tune. Zoro’s amazing, that’s how Zoro works!”