Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 483

Nigeria: How many Twitter activists make one vote?

In the last week I attended a conference of ‘Future Leaders of Nigeria’, and one of the facilitators made a very interesting statement, “Politicians do not value the number of followers you have on Twitter, they value the number of people you can bring to the table when it matters.” That proposition was proved beyond reasonable doubt on Saturday when the FCT Municipal Elections took place.

You see, for far too long, the conversation among assorted Twitter warriors has been about how “we intend to give the PDP (the ruling party) a bloody nose in 2015.” On the evidence of Saturday, and following the provisional results declared, I can say with all confidence that the PDP will bounce back even stronger than it currently is.

You see, on Saturday, turnout was high in rural FCT, while in Abuja Municipal, the “posh” area, a lot of the middle/upper-middle/upper class folk that I spoke with (over the phone of course) complained that the weather was too bad, or that they were not registered in Abuja, or that they didn’t know the candidates, or most outrageously, that the elections were not important enough!

Now let’s look at some of these complaints in detail.

First, the weather was too hot. Really? For an election that would determine how your area is run for the next three years or so?

For those who complained that they didn’t know the candidates, I will digress a little and tell a sob-story. In Lagos a few years ago, plans were drawn up for the Ibeju-Lekki Expressway which was going to be concessioned out after constructions. According to the state government, those plans were displayed in public for months, and a grand total of less than 10 people came to acquaint themselves with those plans. Those who came, felt that the plans were good, so the government went ahead and began construction. Still, silence. People only began to make noise when the road was complete, and the toll gates were erected. For a plan that had been approved by all legal bodies?

It is the same mentality that follows our attitudes to our municipalities. We are all so focused on GEJ [for non-Naija that's Goodluck Jonathan, current president--Ed] and how he is pardoning #DSPAlams that we forget that the biggest damage to our country is done at the local level. Two quick questions here. First, who is the chairman of the local government in which you reside? Second, is it GEJ that will come and pack the filth at the entrance to your street?

This particular point dovetails into the final point about people who couldn’t get their ar–s out of bed on a “holiday” because the elections weren’t important enough! What rank stupidity! While you are so busy trying to chase a huge rat, the little rat next to you is gradually growing into a big rat.

And this is the problem with so many Twitter crowd members, they live in their comfort zone and are not about to lift a finger to get out of there. So, while we complain and moan on Twitter and Facebook, the real leaders of tomorrow are busy getting their hands dirty, getting involved in their local politics, getting to know, and getting themselves known by, the people who matter.

New York African Film Festival 2013

Still from “Nairobi Half Life”

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the New York African Film Festival. The Festival–from April 3rd to the 9th at Lincoln Center–is still the longest running, and probably most significant, African film festival in North America. (I’ve helped out on the festival in the past, so I’m biased.) It is worth remembering what the festival’s executive director and founder and executive director, Mahen Bonetti, has achieved. In a 2004 interview–around the time I first met Mahen–with the UN Chronicle, she said that before she started the festival, “there were very few opportunities for American audiences to see African cinema.”  There were lots of  images of Africa circulating in the media at that time, but  they were mostly negative and decontextualized. And as she wrote much later: “Those of us over the age of thirty probably remember well, the images of famine in Ethiopia that had become so pervasive in the news media. Africa, in the US at least, seemed to be known only for famine, war, AIDS–an unreasonably skewed reputation, which sadly, we still struggle to counteract.”

There are now tons of African-themed film festivals in North America and Western Europe, but they all this owe this festival a debt of gratitude. To assess the impact of her work, in 2o10 Mahen was awarded France’s Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Letteres). NYAFF now runs programs all year round, including a traveling series and school programs, but the festival is still the highlight on the African film calendar. Props to Mahen and her team for keep doing this. So what’s on offer this year?

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Still from “Death for Sale”

As usual, the festival features a mix of classics (“Guelwaar” from the Father of African Cinema Ousmane Sembène as well as “TGV” by Moussa Touré) along with films by a new wave of African directors (“Death for Sale,” “Burn it up Djassa,” “Nairobi Half Life” and the short “Boneshaker” by Frances Bodomo).

The festival provides audiences with insight into the future of African film by spotlighting the filmmakers making waves on the Continent today. Hot new directors Lonesome Solo and David Tosh Gitonga bring a gritty and realistic view of street life in Africa’s urban areas to their respective tales “Burn It Up Djassa” and “Nairobi Half Life.” Faouizi Bensaïdi’s crime drama, Death for Sale, follows three friends as they embark upon a jewelry heist in a Moroccan port city to escape a hopeless future.

This year’s festival will also feature the US premiere of “Dolce Vita Africana,” a documentary about legendary Malian photographer Malick Sidibe. According to the PR, “the film depicts the life and work of the man whose iconic black-and-white images from the late 1950s through 1970s captured the carefree spirit of his generation asserting their freedom after independence.” The festival will also feature the historical drama, “Toussaint Louverture,” about the African slave revolt in Haiti for independence from France in the late 18th century–the first and only successful slave revolt in the Americas. As we know Haiti’s been made to pay for it ever since. (The program includes another Haiti-themed film, “Stones in the Sun”–still just below–about Haitian immigrants in New York City.)

Other new films on the program include “Land Rush” (foreign investors buying up African land), “Fueling Poverty” (the failings of the oil industry in Nigeria) and “Virgin Margarida,” on the the stories of women who endured the Mozambican “re-education camps” in the 1970s.

Images from the tumblr project, Everyday Africa, will be exhibited at the Roy Furman Gallery next to the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Century from opening night through April 25t. The project started by photographer Peter DiCampo and writer Austin Merrill are “of contemporary African life taken by smartphones from various photographers.”

All screenings will take place in the Walter Reade Theater on 165 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam). Tickets for New York African Film Festival screenings go on sale March 7, 2013 at the Film Society’s box offices and online. Single screening tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members.

Angola: One Party, One Voice

Angola is a country that has been ruled by the same party, the MPLA, since independence in 1975. The party has effectively transformed itself from a socialist bloc into a purely capitalistic organization with a diverse array of business interests and impressive market-savvy, all thanks to the barrels upon barrels of oil the country has been endowed with. In order to even begin to understand Angola’s politics however, one must first attempt to comprehend just how powerful and ubiquitous the MPLA is. O MPLA é o povo, e o povo é o MPLA (“The MPLA is the people, and the people are the MPLA”) is one of their most cherished slogans, originating from the time Angola was a single-party state between 1975-1992. If even just symbolically, it effectively demonstrated that in the MPLA psyche there was not even a need to separate between party and state and citizenry. The slogan speaks to the core about how the MPLA is so ingrained in Angolan civil society.

The country’s flag and the ruling party’s flags are virtually indistinguishable, all 18 provincial governors are appointed by the President and belong to the ruling party, and virtually all Ministers, government officials, judges, professors in state universities, and journalists in state media belong to the MPLA. Even Akwá, arguably Angola’s greatest professional football player, appeared in an election campaign ad for the MPLA dressed in the full national team uniform and scored a penalty kick after an overweight player dressed in UNITA’s colors had missed his. Akwá then became a Member of Parliament for the MPLA.

People in Angola usually blame the opposition for allowing this hegemony to go on unchecked, claiming that they are weak, bereft of ideas, and just as corrupt as those who they want to depose. Although true for some of the parties out there, most people are simply not aware of opposition party activities because these activities are not broadcast in national media. And when they are, the material is usually manipulated so that it loses its impact. In effect, the opposition is blockaded in traditional media.

Since the 2012 elections however, the opposition parties have showed renewed vigor and strength. Perhaps buoyed by their improvement in the polls (in 2008 MPLA won the elections with 82% of the vote to UNITA’s 10%, while in 2012 they only managed 72% to UNITA’s 19% and CASA-CE’s 6%), they have become more active in Parliament and more adept at ruffling party feathers. Last month for example, CASA-CE went beyond merely complaining about the murky circumstances behind the new Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund, arguing that the President did not have the power to arbitrarily create new funds by decree, and actually took the issue to court (it was defeated, of course).

At the beginning of last week UNITA went where no opposition had gone before: they lodged a criminal complaint against President dos Santos and several senior members of the MPLA for charges related to the most recent elections, which the opposition and several rights groups consider to have been seriously flawed. Among the several charges against the President and his collaborators is the charge of High Treason.

What’s always fascinating to watch when such opposition initiatives occur is MPLA’s reaction. It usually goes something like this: within days the MPLA will issue a statement that will be reproduced in all state media, including the country’s only daily newspaper, the country’s news agency (ANGOP), state radio, state and private television, and private newspapers. Subsequently, Angolans from all walks of life will come forth and repudiate whatever it is that the Party is repudiating. It is truly a sight to see and a testament to just how much control the MPLA has over the national discourse. Sports stars, musicians, party spokespeople, members of parliament, television stars, and, much more worryingly, priests and other religious figures come out in support of whatever it is that the party is supporting at the moment. Even semi-literate kuduro artist Nagrelha has been asked for his views on matters of national policy (he sided with the ruling party).

In the blanket coverage and universal repudiation that ensues, there is no room for public discourse on the matter. There is no second opinion, no dispute of facts. There is no debate, no argument. The other voices in the conversation are simply not heard – it’s almost as if they don’t even exist. Tension is ramped up and before long the rhetoric of war is brought up. The party of the Architect of Peace, as dos Santos has come to be known by, invariably invokes the war rhetoric. Just last Friday for example, the ex-UNITA co-founder who went over to the MPLA in 2008 alluded to the war and said that UNITA should just be glad that they are still alive and thank dos Santos’ for his magnanimity.

Perhaps most distressing of all for our young democracy is MPLA’s mostly explicit but sometimes also subtle reinforcement that questioning the powers that be, debating their policies, making use of our rights, courts and institutions and otherwise participating in the democratic process as concerned citizens (or political parties) is somehow a danger to the stability of the country and could plunge it back into war (note the recurring war theme). It’s no secret that corruption is rife in Angola and trust in our public institutions is now woefully low. An engaged and critical civil society is necessary for the normal functioning of a State and is an integral part of the democratic fabric of a nation. So are strong institutions that have the respect and support of said civil society.

Unfortunately, the government abhors the former and has disenfranchised the latter.

Angola is a nation of bright minds, brilliant writers, exceptional musicians, and a civil society that, almost 11 years after war’s end, is ready to have its voice heard. It’d be nice if the government understood that. It’d be nice if they ceased with controlling all aspects of national discourse and national media and treated us as a democratic society that is capable of free-thought. It’d be nice if they respected us as citizens.

My Favorite Photographs N°15: Indira Mateta

Indira Mateta is a young Angolan photographer who is taking her first steps in professional photography, transforming her hobby into a promising career. In 2008 she won the BESA Award for Photography in Luanda and has since had her work appear at the Teatro Elinga, the Catholic University of Angola, Oscar Ribas University, Instituto Camões de Maputo and the União de Artistas Plásticos Angolanos, among others. She was also featured in a documentary by Angolan photographer Kiluange Liberdade and writer Ondjaki, ‘Oxalá crescam pitangas’. Indira is the first Angolan photographer in this series: 

My name is Indira and I’m the daughter of a nurse and a journalist. I was always the one responsible for taking pictures of family events, including travels, meetings, beach days, baptisms and so on. I have three brothers and because I am the oldest, my father used to entrust me with the responsibility of registering all the special family moments during my childhood and adolescence.

I had different types and brands of cameras, until I won a photography contest and bought my first professional camera with the prize money. This was the beginning of my journey as a professional photographer.

For this post, when you asked me to choose five pictures from my entire ”arsenal” of photographs, I thought it would be very difficult. But it was actually easier than I thought. I just started visualizing in my head the moments and the images that were of the most importance to me in my journey.

The first three images deeply marked me because they are the reason that I even had the opportunity to become a professional photographer in the first place. I took all three of them with a very humble camera, which I didn’t replace until my father encouraged me to participate in that photography contest back in 2008 — which I won with these three images.

The first one (above) was taken in Kwanza Sul province in Angola during an unforgettable road trip. Capturing the atmosphere of the small provincial villages with my camera was a priority for me, as I felt the necessity to have references from a different place and capture the daily life of a more rural environment, an environment which is completely different of what I am used to in Luanda, where I always lived. The depicted scene captured my attention for two reasons: because of the way they do laundry and because I could confirm that normally our country and many others tend to separate tasks in a very sexist way, and only women are doing this particular task. I don’t agree with it but that’s another story for another day!

The next two images above and below were taken in a very specific point in time. Back in 2007 Angola was experiencing the atmosphere that went along with hosting the African Basketball Championship. In every corner of the country we saw big and small basketball games because our skillful national basketball team inspired people. Basketball is a sport that Angola dominates in Africa, only recently broken by Tunisia. So everybody always loved the national team, including these kids from my neighborhood. They were playing on an ordinary weekday. What captured my attention was the fact that they didn’t have the proper basket, and as usual in poor places, people have to be creative — they were not an exception.

This next photo I took in Kwanza Sul as well, a few years after the first road trip mentioned in the first picture above. This young man saw me taking pictures and asked me to take individual pictures of him and his friends, all of them using the same broken sunglasses. But this one became my favorite picture. I was traveling by road with friends and it was very nice for me to take pictures after I attended my first photography workshop in Luanda with a Brazillian photographer, João Paulo Barbosa. It was him who really helped me with the more technical aspects of photography. This particular image is special for me because at that time I already knew the meaning of aperture, for example, and for the first time I had the ability of seeing that in this photo.

Lastly there is this image, which is actually quite dear to me because it was an exercise in a photography workshop that I attended in Luanda at the Alliance Française. My teacher was Nabil Boutros, an Egyptian photographer and a very kind person now based in Paris. He is very demanding, has incredible photography experience and does the type of photography that I like. Attending this workshop was very important in my development as a professional photographer. This photograph was taken at Ilha de Luanda in front of a primary school:

The children were playing on the beach just across the street, during recess. I asked them to take pictures of them while they were playing and they accepted with smiling faces and started playing with enthusiasm, as they were attracted to the camera and loved the fact that they were being photographed.

For more work by Indira (Hindhyra) Mateta, see her Tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook pages.

Football fan Percy Zvomuya makes sense of the ascension of Pope Francis

Post by Percy Zvomuya

As Pope Francis supports San Lorenzo (nickname Los Santos), a team in Argentina’s Primera Division, what better way to dissect his ascension to the papacy than by way of football.

The pope as intellectual

For the first time in the Catholic Church’s 1,300 year history the Catholic church has a Jesuit as its head. Officially known as the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits are the most intellectual order of priests. You could argue that the church, finally, has caught on with football that for a few decades has accepted geeks, nerds and intellectuals, people at ease with ideas and numbers.

In the book Soccernomics, journalist Simon Kuper and academic Stefan Szymanski write about the revolution that was pushed through by computers and number crunchers. It’s not a coincidence that one of the first modern managers to adopt this was the professorial Arsene Wenger, holder of a Masters degree in Economics and a “keen mathematician”.

Long before management consultancies like OptaPro and Prozone had become fashionable, Wenger was using a computer program called Top Score which “gave marks for every act performed during a game”. Now OptaPro collects match data for most leagues in the world. They know how many kilometers each player ran in each match, the tackles he did, and the passes he completed, with which foot. In fact, as Sean Ingle of the Guardian wrote, no club will sign a player without using these statistics.

The False number 9

I want to think of Pope Francis as something of a “false nine.” Ok, I might be stretching it, but hear me out. The Guardian defined this liminal position as “a player who appears to be playing centre-forward, but drops deep…”

Even though Pope Francis was celebrated as the first non-European pope, he is actually an Italian. You might call him a “false Italian,” a “false Argentine” even. Bergoglio’s father was an Italian immigrant who settled in Argentina, a technicality that players like Juan Sebastian Veron and others have exploited before. (There are exceptions: Sampdoria starlet Mauro Icardi, even though he is eligible to play for Italy, says he wants to play for Argentina.)

Inside left / inside right winger

One of this season’s premier league sensations is Tottenham Hotspurs’ Gareth Bale. Even though he is left-legged, he likes to play on the right and then drift inwards. In fact, some of the most exciting footballers playing at the moment base themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the field and then drift towards the center. Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo is right-footed but prefers playing on the left. Likewise, Lionel Messi of Barcelona is left-footed but likes snaking his way from the left to the right.

Guardian football correspondent Jonathan Wilson has written about how Arsenal’s coach Herbert Chapman didn’t like the touchline hugging winger. Chapman preferred the winger who drifted inwards, arguing that  inside passing was “more deadly, if less spectacular [than the] senseless policy of running along the lines and centering just in front of the goalmouth, where the odds are nine to one on the defenders.”

What to make of allegations that Pope Francis was complicit in Argentina’s dirty war of 1976 to 1983? A book by journalist Horacio Verbitsky alleges that Bergoglio, as head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, withdrew the protection enjoyed by two leftwing Jesuit priests Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, exposing them to the wolves. The two were subsequently abducted by the junta and jailed.

Yet this is the same man who turned down a chauffer driven car because he prefers going around in a bus. Or the official palatial residence he was entitled to, instead preferring a simple flat. About a decade ago when he was ordained as cardinal, he told the Argentine faithful not to fly to Italy to see him ordained but instead give the airfare to the poor.

So is Pope Francis a right-leaning clergyman who drifts inwards or is he a left footer who drifts towards the political right?

Smoke

When white smoke emerged from the chimney at the Vatican it was a signal to say the cardinals had reached a decision. Earlier in the day, black smoke had risen up into the sky signifying a split decision. Funny, extremist football fans, unaffectionately known as ultras who are massed in the stands ignite flares to scare the opposition, create a sulphorous atmosphere in the stadium and, some say, a mark of their identity.

Call me by my real name

I have always found the system of Popes naming themselves after previous popes intriguing. The Pope who resigned is Pope Benedict XVI; the one before him was Pope John Paul II. When the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla was chosen to be pope, he opted to be called John Paul II in honor of John Paul I who was in office for 33 days.

It’s something that’s common in football. Is he Brazilian? Does he score a lot of goals? Is he black? Then he is the new Pele.

Is he a giant? Is he a holding midfielder? Is he Franco-African? Oh, so he must be the new Patrick Vieira. The Vieira moniker is one that has been bequeathed on players such as Abou Diaby, Blaise Matuidi, Alex Nyarko, Leroy Fer. Not surprisingly, the new Vieiras turn out be anything but the Arsenal legend. There is a case though for these players to simply discard their names and become Patrick Vieira XVI or whatever.

Is he Argentine? Is he a genius on the pitch? Is he tempestuous? Does he have a ‘cultured left foot’ or its less fetishized counterpart? Is he stocky ? Then he is the new Maradona. This is a title that has been bequeathed to players like Pablo Aimar, Ariel Ortega, Sergio Aguero (the fact that Aguero is married to Maradona’s daughter made the comparisons even easier), Juan Roman Riquelme and Lionel Messi. The Barcelona forward was thought to be Maradona XI before we realized that he is actually Messi I.

Even though he is the first Pope Francis, his doubles could be St Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of animals) or Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus.

Weekend Music Break

We hardly ever feature Brazilian music, and even less their take on Afrobeat. The above tune by the Abayomy Afrobeat Orchestra dates from last year, but the video’s new. Hope to see more from them. We’ve got 9 more videos lined up for you this week. Ugandan duo Radio & Weasel came up with this: 

Nigerian artists are flocking en masse to Cape Town’s seaboard to shoot their videos (taking cues from Congolese artists ten years ago). Clearly not just for “the light”. Davido’s ‘Gobe’ one more example:

Lagos’ SDC Commandant Obaifeiye Shem’s clumsy reply when asked on TV about the address of the website of his Service was that “my Oga at the top” knows it. The rest is history (as is he, it seems). Your viral Naija meme of the week:

M3nsa and Sena repping it for Ghana:

Tanzanian bongo flava from Belle 9 (call it pop): ‘Listen’:

Also from Tanzania is duo Aika & Nahreel who got themselves a dance hit with ‘Usinibwage’:

Kenyan bongo sounds, here’s ‘Bum Kubam’ by Nikki Wa Pili featuring G Nako. Quite the video:

More Kenyan Hip-Hop by rapper Rabbit in ‘Adisia’:

And switching gears, this video by Just A Band:

H/Ts this week to @Birdseeding, @nemesisinc and GetMziki.

5 African Films to Watch Out For, N°19

Vers la forêt de nuages (“To the cloud forest”) is a film by Robin Hunzinger, who tells a story about his Ivorian wife Aya and their son Tim (in the image above), travelling in Côte d’Ivoire to pay tribute to Aya’s father who recently passed way. The film intends to offer a portrait of and an “initiation” to the country. Follow the production of the project on its Facebook page. Here’s a first trailer: 

The director of Pars et Reviens Tard (“Leave and come back late(r)”) Aurylia Rotolo (with help from Xavier Deleu) first met the documentary’s protagonist, “Régis,” while in Tanger, Morocco. Cameroonian Régis — a professional football player in his home country — had plans to make a living in Europe but wasn’t gonna risk his life crossing the Mediterranean Sea illegally. When Moroccan clubs turn out not to be too keen to give him a contract either, he returns home:

For reasons so far unknown, a screening of Jews of Egypt was banned by the Egyptian National Security earlier this week. The documentary is a portrait of the lives of the Egyptian Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century until their second grand exodus after 1956. “An attempt to understand the change in the identity of the Egyptian society that turned from a society full of tolerance and acceptance of one another … and how it changed gradually by mixing religious and political views into a society that rejects the others,” in the words of the film’s director Amir Ramses:

Downtown Tribes is a short documentary created and directed by Amirah Tajdin, and produced by Wafa Tajdin of 8486 Films, commissioned by STR.CRD and shot at their “Urban Street Culture Event” last year (where Dylan and Antoinette also interviewed Just A Band). Loyal AIAC readers will have fun spotting the many familiar faces:

And A Batalha de Tabatô (“The Battle of Tabatô”) is a first-time feature by director Joao Viana exploring music, magic and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “post-colonial angst” in Guinea-Bissau. We’re still interested though, because that same review remarks Viana’s combining “a strong eye and rich subject matter”. Here’s a first teaser:

And here’s another one.

Mali needs heroes at the moment–even cinematic ones will do

Mali is short of heroes at the moment. War in the north has produced very few, only villains aplenty, some of them in uniform. The same holds for Bamako’s deep, existential political crisis. Many people have tried to seize the moment; few have risen to it. So it’s good to be reminded of someone like Ibrahima Ly. Ly’s been gone a long time, but Ibrahima Touré’s feature adaptation of Ly’s powerful novel Toiles d’araignées (Spiders’ webs) just won two prizes at FESPACO, Africa’s prestigious biennial film festival. I haven’t seen the film and we can’t find a trailer online (some shaky images here), but Ly merits the recognition, and Mali needs his memory. So who was Ibrahima Ly?

Born 1936, in Kayes, western Mali. Died 1989, in exile in Senegal, having fled the regime of Moussa Traore (1968-1991). In between time, he’d been a leader of African students in Paris, taught math in Bamako and Dakar, and spent four years in Moussa’s prisons. He’d published one novel, started another, and left us a model of dignity in suffering.

Ibrahima Ly was one of Africa’s first ‘prisoners of conscience,’ an early subject of Amnesty International’s Africa campaigns. He and a dozen others signed what might be Mali’s most important political tract, “la Farce électorale du 2 juin 1974.” The election might have been a farce, but Moussa was not joking. Prisons, beatings, torture followed. The thin man looking out at you is tougher than he might appear. Tough enough, even sensitive enough, to capture the pride torturers take in their profession. From Toiles d’araignées: “As for us guards, since our real chiefs left, we don’t have whips worthy of the name. We have to make do with strips cut from old truck tires. The country is screwed.”

Ly is not at the center of his novel, humanity is. More specifically, Mariama is. She’s a young woman forced into a marriage she rejects. Prison is the price of her rebellion. Mariama endures the electric shock treatments we know others went through, and she also endures the silence: “The screams worried no one in the country. Everyone had left pity, even compassion, behind and entered the harbor of indifference by the bridge of powerlessness, cowardice, and dehumanization.”

If that was true, Ly helped to change that. Words from a volume dedicated to his memory: “Diarama Ly. You’ll always remain with us. We’re preparing new solidarities, to provoke necessary ruptures. The duty of the generation will be accomplished.” Heavy words from a man who knew both dissidence and power. Alpha Oumar Konaré signed them in 1989. Two years later, Moussa was overthrown. Alpha won one presidential campaign, then another. He left office over a decade ago. He and so many others are silent now, in Mali’s moment, for reasons good and bad. Meanwhile, even if Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore shares a lot with Ly (militant, math professor, former prisoner of Moussa…), the country lacks the intellectuals it could once be proud of. Or so says my good friend Isaie Dougnon (who is one of them).

I haven’t seen Toiles d’araignées. But I suspect Mali needs it.

Why is there a news media blackout about political repression in Djibouti?

Guest Post by Abdourahman Waberi, Ali Deberkale and Dimitri Verdonck

On the eve of the legislative election of February 22, 2013, in the Republic of Djibouti, Hafez Mohamed Hassan, a 14-year-old schoolboy, was shot dead by the secret service of President Ismaël Omar Guelleh’s regime while he was taking part in a demonstration organized by a group of teenagers protesting the lack of sports facilities in their region of Obock. This is what happens when Djibouti is preparing for an election: Bullets and blood are meted out for those who demand free, transparent, and fair elections. The regime has had a monopoly on local media for the past 36 years, and the French media could not be bothered to deal with the undeniable question of repression in its former colony where France, in fact, retains its largest foreign military base.

For more than 10 years, and particularly at the dawn of each election, political opposition members, unionists, teachers, human rights activists and regular citizens in Djibouti have suffered brutal repression at the hands of the police and Djiboutian intelligence. During the presidential election of April 2011, the toll of this repression was the heaviest in the country’s history: Several dozen young protesters were killed, with hundreds arrested and detained for months. Former European Commissioner Louis Michel, who was in the region at the time, urged the European Union to condemn the repression.

The legislative election was just held in Djibouti. For the first time in ten years, six opposition parties joined in an unprecedented coalition, the Union of National Salvation (UNS). In honor of the occasion, Daher Ahmed Farah, president of the Movement for Democratic Renewal and Development and a very active coalition spokesman decided to end a nine-year forced exile in Belgium, risking arrest and imprisonment by Djiboutian authorities that, quite rightly, fear the hope he represents for a population kept down by the dictatorship.

During the electoral campaign season, the population overwhelmingly took to the streets of the capital and other cities to demand change. The situation in itself is quite remarkable, and already constitutes a small revolution. Given the magnitude of civilian mobilization, regime provocations multiplied, leading to numerous arrests and the banning of several public gatherings. However, the intimidation was nothing compared to what happened in previous elections, the last of which saw hundreds jailed in an effort to quash resistance. Just as the French media failed then to denounce the scandalous imprisonment of opposition demonstrators, today it did not highlight the regime’s unexpected position; one can legitimately wonder whether the regime is about to strike harder, upon the release of fraudulent election results, and if there is a risk of plunging the country into a scenario like Syria.

The day after the election, unanimously mimicking the AFP broadcast, some media unquestioningly reported the figures put forward by the regime and noted that the elections were conducted peacefully. Others, with a dash of paternalism, highlighted the maturity of the Djiboutian population. To complete the picture, they could even have added that the temperature was 104 Fahrenheit and the wind was light…

With a little luck, then, some readers of French media know that elections just took place in Djibouti. Among them, some are still wondering what is at stake in this historical election. As for the viewers of TF1, France 2 and Canal+, they wouldn’t have heard of the election in Djibouti. None would have learned that the day after the election, the Djiboutian regime resorted to its old habits again, arresting demonstrators en masse, detaining those most in the way (some 300 people, including 37 women and a child, at the time of writing this) and trying, by any means necessary, to silence the voices of political opposition leaders under house arrest and any news of the unprecedented popular protests. Above all, when it is most needed (now!), no one seems have bothered to analyze the post-election situation of a country that’s seems off the map, alive only in the thoughts only a handful of divers attracted by the seabed and a few soldiers remembering women they slept with in our port city.

The European Union is the largest provider of funds to Djibouti, where it has decided to strengthen its presence. Like Japan and the United States, France pays 30 million Euros annually to the regime for the lease of its military base in conjunction with the bilateral and multilateral aid it provides to Djibouti. Meanwhile, embezzling of public funds is so commonplace in Djibouti that the World Health Organization was forced, a few months ago, to suspend aid allocated to combatting HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in deplorable conditions, dying of AIDS and cholera. Half of the population lives without shelter as nine out of ten people are homeless in the rest of the country. Water is scarce due to a lack of distribution. Sanitary conditions are disastrous. Unemployment keeps rising. Corruption is widespread. Ultimately, humanity has disappeared at the hands of a dictator and his insatiable lust for power and money.

The maintenance of French authority in Djibouti requires an intensification of France’s attention to human rights and democracy. Similarly, there must be a requirement that no 14-year-old schoolboy is killed, no mother raped, no father tortured, no brother executed, that his sister is free to vote, and that the will of the people is valued when expressed with such conviction and clarity as it has been these past few days in Djibouti. Furthermore, it is time for France to understand that in the difficult regional context of the Horn of Africa, the present regime in Djibouti no longer offers a guarantee of stability. On the contrary, the regime is now a serious threat to the stability not only of the country and the region, but also the security of foreign assets. Djiboutian President Ismaël Omar Guelleh, who had wanted to invite one of his closest friends, Sudanese President (and fugitive from the International Criminal Court) Omar El Bashir to the country during his third inauguration in April 2011, has reached the end of his run. Having neither the stature nor the culture of Abdoulaye Wade, the former Senegalese president, who stepped down peacefully after his electoral defeat last spring, it is feared that the Djiboutian President considers Djibouti his personal property and will cling to it at all costs. There are real risks of seeing the regime kill, torture and harshly repress peaceful demonstrators in the coming days.

* This article was originally published in French on La Règle du Jeu. It first appeared in English at Warscapes and was translated from French to English by Nathalie Fouyer.

Who killed Thomas Sankara?

Burkina Faso’s president, Blaise Compaoré (that’s him above posing in between Michelle and Barack Obama at the UN a few years ago), is receiving some mixed PR right now. The Telegraph in the UK has said that even with a murky past, Compaoré may be shaping up to be West Africa’s chief negotiator in regional conflicts. Some sources remain non-plussed. Peter Dorrie argues in African Arguments that Compaoré may be helping to “resolve” conflicts that he’s already benefitted from. Some in France, however, are hoping to stir this up even more. 

A few weeks ago a French MP, André Chassaigne, announced he would press the French National Assembly to create an inquiry commission to investigate the 1987 assassination of Thomas Sankara. Chassaigne, a member of the Communist party (yes, it is significant that he is not from the ruling party or the main, conservative, opposition party), is following up on a letter written by 12 Burkinabe MPs in 2011, who’d asked for the commission.

Sankara, who was the president of Burkina Faso for four years until his assassination on October 15, 1987, brought in a tremendous amount of reform in a short period. Literacy and vaccination programs were launched, and Burkina Faso was nearly completely self-sustaining. Compaoré, who some implicate in Sankara’s assassination, came into power immediately after.

It is worth repeating what Chaissaigne told journalists in regards to his proposition to the Assemblée Nationale of France:

France, to an as-yet unknown extent, is responsible for this assassination…I believe that France, which today claims to behave differently towards Africa under what I personally would call a virtuous circle, must tell the truth…We cannot leave the people of Burkina Faso, and more broadly speaking, the peoples of Africa in the dark about what really happened.

Meanwhile, Compaoré’s government is in a bind about recommending a national hero to the African Union as part of the organization’s 50th anniversary this year. Basically each country has to recommend one person. The only one outstanding is Burkina Faso’s nomination. There’s no doubt Sankara’s name deserves to represent Burkina Faso at the AU celebrations. While Compaoré gave Sankara a national honor in 1991 (along with three others), his regime is clearly embarrassed as well as skittish about honoring someone held in such esteem by large sections of the population — especially the youth — as well as beyond Burkina Faso’s borders.