Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 488

New short documentary on young artists challenging stereotypes about Africans in Toronto

In Between Stories is a short 2012 documentary directed by Roda Siad. Originally Siad’s Master’s thesis in Media Production at Ryerson University, the film offers a portrait of four young artists of African descent living and working in Toronto. The film draws a connection between one-dimensional media portrayals that focus on war and crisis in Africa, and negative perceptions of predominantly black communities in Toronto. The false depiction of Africa—and by extension Africans—as chaotic, violent, and dangerous, Siad’s film implies, leads to similar stereotypes being applied to Africans in the diaspora. The film’s subjects, however, offer a way out of this miasma. Watch it first: 

The four artists depicted in the film are creating works that often directly address and seek to counter both stereotypes of Africa, and of communities such as Toronto’s Regent Park. At the same time, their own intelligence, creativity, and talent demonstrate (and it is regrettable that, in some quarters, such a thing remains necessary) that there is much more to the African diaspora than crime and violence.

The perspectives of Africans living in Europe and North America (many of which can be found on this website!) provide a valuable counterweight to Western media portrayals of the continent. Too often, however, these voices are marginalized because disaporic Africans too are victims of stereotyping. (Not to mention the structural racism and sexism that sees most senior positions in the media filled by white men.) In Between Stories performs the important service of drawing attention to these problems and of giving voice to young Africans’ perspectives on Africa.

Is there football in heaven?

Post by Percy Zvomuya

When I was an adolescent I thought I was going to be a footballer. Instead, when I turned 13 I became a preacher. I told people about the great love that the Nazarene, Jesus Christ, had shown for humanity. But for what seemed the longest time, my becoming part of God’s team was prevented by a simple and yet very troubling question: is there football in heaven? 

We played football on makeshift pitches at school or on a grass field close to my home. Sometimes it would be plastic and paper balls, other times imitation leather, yet other times the leather ball. We played every day. On Saturdays and Sundays we played the whole day, from around 9am to around 5pm or for as long as light lingered on.

I was an integral part of Noah’s team. It was Noah — 3 or 4 years my senior — myself and a bunch of youngsters younger than us.  Now Noah was one of those truly gifted people who could do anything with the ball. He would come to the back to fetch the ball and dribble (or juggle) his way to the other goal. In this team I played at the back, keeping the wolves out, while up front Noah spread terror in the opposition.

We played mostly socially, even though at other times we betted small amounts of pocket money. Sunday, of course, was the day for the Lord, when the called went to His House from around 9. I wasn’t aware of the gospel according to Mexican legend Hugo Sanchez (also a Madridista, famous for his bicycle kicks); Hugo Sanchez chapter 3 verse 16 reads: “Whoever invented football should be worshiped as God.” Or the claims by British writer Anthony Burgess that “Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football”.

For years the puzzle I posed at the beginning was never an issue. It soon became when a woman was hired by my mother to look after me and my sisters when she was  away at work. The woman, then in her early 20s, was kind, soft spoken and multi lingual (she spoke Ndebele, Xhosa, Shona and English, of course). She was a first generation Zimbabwean, a descendant of South Africans who had trekked up to Zimbabwe in the 1950s or thereabouts, as missionaries or to look for opportunities.

Vatiswa (that’s not her name) went to a charismatic church, those churches for which proselytising is a central tenet. As in the cliché about charity, she had to begin “witnessing” about Jesus at home. The preaching might have started with encouraging us to bless our food. To the uninitiated, that’s code for praying before eating. The issue came to a head when her preaching became less subtle, more direct. But I had a riposte which she didn’t have a response for: I was willing to go to church. When I die I wanted, of course, to be accepted into heaven. But I have one question: is there football in heaven?

The bible didn’t provide much in the way of clues. No matter how literally you read verses like “therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12 verse 1). There are pointers of a field and spectators congregated in a heavenly Soccer City but I can’t see any sign of the ball. Certain things are clear from that verse: you can not play football clad in overalls, for one. Clearly marked tracks seem laid out, but of the ball I can’t see any sign. In Revelations 19, there is talk of a white horse and a jockey whose name is “Faithful and True” — as all football fans should be (the Argentines say “you can change your wife, but your club and your mother, never”). There is no sign of the football; yonder, horse racing seems to be a pastime.

Let’s return to the actual football. I was quite tall for my age, gangly with long limbs. Whatever deficiencies I had in my game were more than compensated for in other ways. I was very good at football played in the air: headers, acrobatic kicks, keepy uppies (I could do up to a thousand using both legs. When I got tired using my primary leg, the right one, I would switch to the left). As I write this, I think of the mantra by the late Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough “if God had intended for us to play football in the clouds he would have put grass up there,”

I am older now and, presumably, wiser. But that primal question remains mostly unanswered: is there football in heaven? And if there is, does God himself play? And if he does, what position he plays?

Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon’s line “If God existed, he’d be a solid midfielder” may gesture at some truth. Perhaps Eric Cantona knows better. After the death of George Best, the Frenchman said “After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from the favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left back.” God at left back? Was he running up and down the left flank like the Brazilian dynamo, Roberto Carlos? Or was Best such a nuisance that God couldn’t get past the centre line?

It’s quite possible he is a goalkeeper. The God who says (in Revelations 3 verse 7) “what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open” seems like a good candidate to have between the sticks.

But Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano, who might have been raised a Catholic, imagines God as a referee. There seems to be evidence in the bible: when Jesus returns, there will be a blast of the whistle… ok, ok, I exaggerate, a trumpet (“And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other”–Matthew 24 verse 31). Galeano likens the man with the whistle to “a tyrant who runs his dictatorship without opposition, a pompous executioner who exercises his absolute power with an operatic flourish. Whistle between his lips, he blows the winds of inexorable fate either to allow a goal or disallow one: yellow to punish the sinner and oblige him to repent’red to force him into exile.”

* Percy Zvomuya is a writer and journalist based in Johannesburg.

My Favorite Photographs N°13: Edward Echwalu

“To select FIVE images in a career of about 7 years is not easy,” Ugandan photographer Edward Echwalu writes in his email. “It was probably the most challenging editorial decision I have ever come across.” I took it as a gentle reminder we might be asking photographers the impossible in our “favorite photographs” series. That said, and after many tough choices by previous photographers, the results so far have always been revealing. Here are Edward Echwalu’s 5 favorite photographs, and some words on how they came into being:

The one thing I have learnt to love and hate about news photography, in other words, photojournalism from my personal experience is that we are quick to move on to the next “hot” item, forgetting some of the important events that have occurred. Photojournalism throughout generations has always been largely about the negatives in our localities. It’s always been about “Man bites dog” rather than the “dog bites man”.

Weird.Strange.Shocking.Insane events in your community or town sell much more than the positive. And these are the kinds of issues a photojournalist is bound to interact with day on a nearly daily basis. While it’s every photographer’s dream to have their photos featured in some of the world’s leading agencies, it comes at a cost over time, inform of post-traumatic stress. Too much of the negatives deny photojournalists a chance to live what I would call a normal life because all they have had contact with over years is the negatives.

It gets even more complicated being a photojournalist in Africa feeding foreign channels with African events. I’ve had it difficult pitching positive stories out of this beautiful continent. Nonetheless, I’ve always tried to balance both colour and grief in my career as a photojournalist.

To my first selection. The picture above rips through my heart. This picture makes me appreciate how precious life is. It makes me look down on every law enforcing individual in my country. It drives me nuts. Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, was already engulfed in chaos for about a month. The populace were protesting the high fuel and food prices that were making life unbearable. The traders, especially importers were also protesting the weakening shilling against the dollar. They were making lump-sum losses on their imports, largely from China.

So how did they do this? As a way of putting pressure on the government to act, the opposition played as the figure heads in encouraging Ugandans to leave cars behind and “WALK TO WORK” every Tuesdays and Thursdays. Largely peaceful at first, it turned chaotic four weeks later. On this particular day, this young trader was shot in my face. He held nothing. Not a stone, not a stick, and most definitely, not a gun. All he held was his voice. And that proved too dangerous for the gun wielding soldier who shot him twice in the stomach. A minute earlier he was full of life, fighting a genuine fight-a right. The next minute, he was gone. Gone for good.

Here, in the next photo, is Nancy Abwot. A young 23-old girl mother of one from Gulu, a district 350km north of Kampala. Nancy’s story is a hard one to take in. She was abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lords Resistance Army (LRA) at a very tender age of seven. In parts she narrated how “after being abducted I was assigned to Dominique Ogwen (wanted by the International Criminal Court) as a housewife. It was so painful. I felt as if they should have just killed me other than giving me to a man that old at a time when I didn’t have an idea who a man was.”

When she could not bear any more pain, she chose to escape. It was futile as she was arrested and tortured before being given two choices. Be shot and killed or have her lips cut off. Imagine yourself in her shoes. For such a narration, I needed a powerful portrait to sum up her feelings. Her white eyes hardly blinked choosing to look one direction at a time.

The African men have for long been blamed for not being by their wives, especially with regards to child delivery. Fair enough, it’s a rare scenario to have a complete involvement of the man. I have carried out a lot of commissioned work for a number of global health institutions in the East African region and so I have quite a clear picture of what a typical African delivery ward feels and looks like. Men are rare. The photo below was a unique case. And it happened quite randomly too. It was at about 10:00am at a health centre in Kamwenge, a district located 350km west of Kampala. I needed to take advantage of the soft early morning light to capture pregnant women coming for antenatal care. When the sun became harsh, I started packing my gear until I saw this frame:

The man was escorting his pregnant wife back to the ward from a short call while holding her drip. She was frail, in pain and could barely make the next step. His facial expression was bold and full of empathy. It was indeed a rare gesture from a man, in a rural health facility.

What’s the furthest you can go to protect your loved ones when they are clearly a danger to themselves? Tie them to a tree? The story of Nancy Lamwaka, a 13-year-old girl suffering from the “Nodding Disease” should challenge you to think deeper about what you could possibly do. Nodding disease does not have a cure. It attacks children under the age of 15. It makes children repel food. Children become semi-paralysed and can touch fire, cut themselves with ease, can drown without knowing. In all, they become semi-gods. Nancy has burnt herself a number of times, nearly drowned and is not showing any signs of improving. As such, painful as you might imagine, the father decided to keep tying her to a tree trunk every day spending up to 13 hours on a rope.

“It hurts me so much to tie my own daughter on a tree because in our tradition, it’s a taboo and unheard of. But because I want to save her life, I am forced to. I don’t want her to go loose and die in a fire, or walk and get lost in the bushes, or even drown in the nearby swamps,” her father, Michael Odongkara, sums it.

I have carefully chosen to end with something positive. Something that in genuinity, helps better explains the African life. From my experience, Africans are some of the happiest people in the world. And if you have travelled across this continent, you would testify to this. I took this beautiful woman in Lira, a town in Uganda located some 343 Km north of Kampala. I was initially more interested in the pot she was carrying. Pots are widely used in rural Ugandan households to store clean drinking water and for cooking. It’s made out of clay.

It was just another click that recorded a frame full of positive energy. And coming from a region which had suffered over 20-years of Joseph Kony’ LRA war, such is a sign of hope and post-conflict recovery.

More of Edward Echwalu’s work can be found on his blog “Echwalu Photography” and on facebook here. You can also follow “Echwalu Photography” on Twitter: @echwalu.

Andrew Dosunmu’s new feature film, “Mother of George,” is one to watch

Former fashion creative director, photographer and video music director Andrew Dosunmu is finding plenty of reasons to celebrate lately. Distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories recently scooped up the North American rights to his film “Mother of George” at the Sundance Film Festival. Cinematographer Bradford Young won two US dramatic prizes at the festival this year, one being for his stunning work in “Mother of George.”

In “Mother of George,” time is the antagonist.

The story is set in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, and the story stresses the complications of African immigrant life in New York City. The plot follows Adenike (Danai Gurira) as she struggles to conform to tradition with her new husband, restaurant proprietor Ayodele (Isaach De Bankolé).

In a colorfully rich scene opening on the couple’s wedding reception, Adenike’s pushy mother-in-law, (Bukky Ajayi) announces that the couple’s first born will be named George. Time presses upon Adenike when after 18 months, she remains childless. Mild-mannered Ayodele seems unperturbed by their childlessness, leaving his nervous wife alone. The responsibility of conception, in the Yoruba tradition presented here, lies with the woman. With Adenike’s mother in law suggesting that Ayodele’s brother get involved for a conception to occur, Adenike makes a desperate act.

Here’s Andrew talking about his background, the film’s genesis and its plot:

Danai Gurira–whom you may have seen as Michonne in the AMC series, “The Walking Dead”–has been praised by critics as having executed a masterful performance. The Hollywood Reporter says she seems “genuinely torn between Yoruba traditions and the modern world she now lives in.”

Here’s an interview with Danai Gurira alongside fellow actor Isaach De Bankolé:

Both old school and blog critics have only praised the film up to now.

Variety praises the director’s vision: “Dosunmu subtly uses the film’s ornate design elements to illustrate Adenike’s state of cultural flux, flooding the screen with jewel-colored African textiles to the point that their lavish patterns seem somehow reproachful, while Mobolaji Dawodu’s dazzling costumes slide tellingly across the spectrum from hip Afro-chic couture to fussy traditional garb.” But even more profound is cinematographer Young’s mastery. Variety humorously points out that “highly particular compositions and shimmering ochre-to-cobalt lighting schemes are almost exhaustingly exquisite” and that Young “is currently unrivaled in the under-informed field of illuminating darker complexions, expertise that “Mother of George” can claim in more areas than just its cinematography.”

Zeba Blay at Shadow and Act adds that Young “manages to heighten the human drama of the film with shots that experiment with the use of light and color in incredibly striking ways.” Abbéy Odunlami  of Black Cinema House equally highlights that, “as this stands out and proclaims itself amongst  ’the immigrant experience’ films, it equally leans towards being a “New York film.” Andrew Dosunmu continues to make waves for African filmmakers on American soil.”

This will be one to watch.

Has the line between caricaturing and relying on racist tropes been blurred in cartoonist Zapiro’s recent work?

Ah, greasy, beak-nosed men with unsavoury, five-o-clock shadows darkening swarthy jawlines, proffering gifts and currying favours. Good to see that the illustrious history that connects the stereotyping of Jewish people and Indians (particularly Indians in Africa) is continuing, at the hands of cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, better known as Zapiro. Shapiro’s work is beyond well-known in South Africa and abroad; he’s beloved for drawing Mandela as a figure of humility and humour large enough to love the caricatures Shapiro drew of him. Shapiro is also famous for lambasting political leaders who capitalised on Mandela’s (and the ANC’s former) glory to garner private fortunes, via under-cover deals. Enter Ajay, Atol and Rajesh Gupta, who journeyed to South Africa from Saharanpur, India during the 1990s to explore possible business opportunities in the country. And they found plenty of business with members of the ANC. 

Among the rumours swirling around the Guptas: that they brokered a deal that benefits them and Duduzane Zuma (the son of Jacob Zuma), becoming co-shareholders in a deal with China Railway Construction Corporation, and another “R9-billion empowerment deal” with Indian-Swiss megacorporation ArcelorMittal. (The Gupta family has set up a WordPress blog to establish the facts and address what they call “this ‘perception-mongering’” by the South African media here.) Given all this, it’s no wonder that the Three Brothers Gupta would become Zapiro subjects.

However, it’s the direction that the satirist’s pen took, when depicting Ajay, Atol and Rajesh’s features, to which we want to draw attention; whether that direction was taken inadvertently or not, the similarities between how Jewish people were/are depicted in anti-Semitic cartoons and Zapiro’s depiction of the Guptas are hard to ignore. The history of stereotyping Indians as the ‘Jews’ of East and Southern Africa is a long one. It’s a trope that is reflected in Drum writing in the 1950s and earlier, as well as in the writing of the brothers Naipaul. In North of South, Shiva Naipaul wrote, after visiting East Africa in the 1970s, ”the Asian is the eternal ‘other’” in Africa (readers: please feel free to supply us with details from V.S. and Shiva Naipaul). Making this odd linkage actually goes back as far as the 19th century, when missionaries like David Livingstone et al conveniently saw ‘Indians’ and ‘Arabs’ as exploitative forces preying on naive-yet-untrusting natives, thereby necessitating white intervention.

Paul Theroux, the travel writer, is also famous for detailed vignettes in which the persecution of Indians in East Africa is paralleled to the stereotyping (and eventual persecution) of Jews in Europe, even though he doesn’t explicitly say so (read this blog entry for a blow-by-blow comparison). In Dark Star Safari, there are multiple stories about Indians being spoken of in a denigrating manner, highlighting their propensity to be good shopkeepers who live a “rather secluded life–all numbers and money and goods on shelves.” Others are more crazy-ugly, such as a gem recounted by a man named Karsten on a dugout canoe ride, concerning the reason why Indians are so rich: they catch the biggest fish on the mighty Zambezi by using the chopped up parts of the heart of young Zambian maidens to bait their fishing lines, luring fish with diamonds in them. Each of Theroux’s narratives involving Indians have linkages to older myths about blood-libels, told about the Jews of Europe.

The comparisons have had enough impact that Asians in Africa sometimes refer to themselves as a group who experience the same dilemmas as German-Jewish people did, circa 1930s (see the National Museums of Kenya ethnographer, Sultan H. Somjee’s comments here). When I first read Theroux’s comparisons as a grad student, I thought, “Oh, right. That makes a sort of racist sense, masquerading as a sympathetic gesture of solidarity,” and left it at that. For the uninitiated, it may seem like a bit of leap between Zapiro’s Guptas and the figure of the Jew (men, ususally) in anti-Semitic cartoons. If you have doubts about the resonances to which I’m referring, have a look at some of these.

First, a woodcut from Pierre Boaistuau’s Histoires Prodigieuses (above). Dated around 1569, depicting a Jewish man poisoning a well into which the Devil is urinating. The image here isn’t clear enough to show the features, but you may get the drift.

Second, cartoons from the Nazi era certainly make the linkages between Shapiro’s Guptas and theirs clear: see here (Polish cartoon depicting Jewish people as fat/well off while blaming the poor for their poverty), and the one left, promoting the Nazi claim that the Jews were behind World War II, having orchestrated it to destroy Nazi Germany (The caption: “One eats the other and the Jew devours them all…”). Source: Lustige Blätter, a weekly German humor magazine; issue #29/1943.




Then there are more modern versions of this type of depiction of Jewish people, propelled by the state of Israel’s unconscionable actions against the Palestinians:

And finally some food to complicate your thoughts: in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming adaption of F. Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Bollywood patriarch Amitabh Bachchan (below) is set to play the Jewish character of Meyer Wolfsheim, whom Fitzgerald portrayed as a money-grubbing, crude, corrupt, hairy man with a pronounced Yiddish accent who continually insinuates himself into acceptable society via his business “goneggtions”:

We’re no apologists for the underhanded tactics of industrialists like the Guptas – and by all means, Zapiro, poke fun, expose, critique. But if you want to create Golliwog referenced-drawings when you critique black leaders or as stand-ins for black people (even as you mean to critique the very problem of such residual views in racist societies — a methodology of social critique employed by Anton Kannemeyer’s camp of cartooning), or keep getting endless laughs with, say, a president-with-a-shower-head, nose broader than a table top, or outlandishly pouty lips, I hope there’s space for us to point out that the line between caricaturing a public figure’s specific traits and a tendency towards relying on racist tropes might have been blurred.

* Thanks to Dan Magaziner for the reminder on Livingstone and the Naipauls’ references to the trope.

The Branding of Kaizer Chiefs

Post by Marc Fletcher

On March 9th, the latest edition of the biggest club game in South Africa gets underway. The Soweto Derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs always stokes a great rivalry between fans of the Buccaneers (Pirates) and the Amakhosi (Zulu for Chiefs). While Pirates were formed in 1937, Chiefs are in their relative infancy, emerging from a split with Pirates in 1970. Despite their short existence, Chiefs are the largest supported soccer club in the country. Unfortunately, the history of this fixture has been marred by two stadium disasters. In 1991, 42 people were killed at Orkney Stadium, while in 2001 the Ellis Park Stadium disaster saw 43 fans die.

But back to the game. As the game gets closer, so will the marketing increase. Take this commercial for mobile phone operator, Vodacom, tapping into Kaizer Chiefs’ brand:

The Vodacom commercial taps into the vibrant atmosphere that accompanies derby day. The chant of “Ayeye, liyez’ iKhosi” warns Pirates supporters to “beware, Chiefs are coming”. The eclectic range of makarapas, robes and costumes mirror the exciting sights of South Africa soccer supporting. Unlike many derby fixtures in Europe and South America, the Soweto Derby is a far less hostile atmosphere, with the focus of supporters on lifting their team through singing, dancing and the infamous vuvuzela.

Yet, the advert gives a very stylised and commercialised view of the derby. Set in Soweto, it reasserts Chiefs’ identity as a township club. While they originated from Phefeni in Soweto, in reality, Chiefs are no longer a township side but a national brand. The club is a commerical juggernaut offering a vast array of official merchandise to its millions of fans across the country. Replica shirts and training kit are prohibitively expensive, especially as the core demographic of SA soccer supporters are black, working class fans. This creates a tension between those who can afford authentic apparel and those who can’t; the authenticity of supporters becomes linked to the consumption of official merchandise. It is no longer merely a local derby game but one of national significance in which many supporters of both side avidly consume what the club sells. As one Chiefs fan said to me recently, “they know that we’ll buy it”. A pretty gloomy outlook for the relationship between fans and club.

And what on earth is a little boy doing running around Soweto with a smartphone?

Weekend Music Break

Let’s start with three club tracks. It’s Friday after all. Above is a track by the Owiny Sigoma Band, taken from the album ‘Power Punch’ (forthcoming on Brownswood Recordings). The Band is a collaboration between a handful of London-based musicians and Kenyan artists Joseph Nyamungo and Charles Okoko. You could dance to it. Next is another collaboration: one between Boddhi Satva (from the Central African Republic) and Oumou Sangaré (from Mali) who together recorded this video in Bamako:

And a re-edit of the video for London trio LV’s (with help from South African Okmalumkoolkat) ‘Boomslang’ track:

The next video for Fore’s ‘C’est pas bon’ tune blends echoes from Zimbabwe (which Fore calls home), Mali (sample by Amadou and Mariam) and Nigeria (where Andrew Dosunmu is from; the visuals for the video are lifted from Dosunmu’s 2011 film Restless City).

‘Voir sombrer ses fils’ is a collaboration between Burkinabé rapper Art Melody (who’s dropping a fantastic new record next month; we’ll remind you about it when it’s out), Joey Le Soldat and DJ Form. Akwaaba has the details.

This video was recorded in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and produced in Sweden. Marksmen’s EP is following soon. “Port Elizabeth Rap in outer space”:

A new film to watch out for is “La Cité Rose” (here’s the trailer; French release is scheduled for next month). The film’s soundtrack includes contributions by French artists Soprano, Sexion d’Assaut and Youssoupha. Here’s a first out-take:

Lesotho-based emcees Isosceles and Futuristic join forces as Olive Branch. ‘Stat Quo’ (video below) is a track off their project by the same name, available here.

A new video for Ghanaian hip-hop artist M.anifest (who you now also know as a football fan):

And finally, here’s a record to look forward to: Dan Auerbach (of Black Keys fame) produced Niger-born Bombino’s second international solo record (to be released on Nonesuch Records soon). The teaser, to say the least, sounds promising…

…if you like guitar sounds, of course. Dan Auerbach is a busy man, it seems, having also produced Valerie June’s upcoming record. But more about her in another post.

Did Goodluck Jonathan pay $1 million from anti-poverty fund to bring Beyonce and Jay-Z to Nigeria?

Whatever Jay-Z and Beyonce were expecting when they went to Nigeria in 2006, they can’t have seen this one coming.

If the document New York-based muckrakers Sahara Reporters have published is authentic, then they have just scooped one of the news stories of the decade. No doubt about it. It is alleged that in 2006 the most powerful man in African media, Nduka Obaigbena (known for hobnobbing with celebrities from Lil Kim to Colin Powell to Henry Kissinger) paid for the Knowles-Carters’ Nigerian visit by successfully soliciting $1 million of public money from none other than the current president, Goodluck Jonathan, when he was governor of Bayelsa State. And the kicker? In the letter they’ve published that money appears to have been paid out directly from the state’s “poverty alleviation fund”.

Here is the meat of their report (click through to see the original document):

SaharaReporters has uncovered a document indicating that a million dollars of Bayelsa State’s poverty alleviation fund was spent by then Governor Goodluck Jonathan on bringing American entertainers Beyonce and Jay Z to Nigeria in 2006. In a letter stamped and signed by Bayelsa officials, N150 million (approximately a million dollars in 2006) was released from the state’s poverty alleviation fund for the first ThisDay Music Festival in Lagos.

The document came to light after a controversy was ignited over how much money American “reality TV” star Kim Kardashian was paid for a brief visit to Nigeria [...]

SaharaReporters obtained a letter from Mr. Obaigbena to the Bayelsa State government soliciting funds from the oil-producing state ahead of Nigeria’s 46th independence celebrations in 2006. The publisher wrote, “We invite you to partner with us as co-hosts of the festival.” The letter added: “With a total budget of $10 million, the co-host is expected to contribute a minimum of $2.5 million (two million five hundred thousand USD).”

At the bottom of the letter, minuted by hand and signed by then Governor Jonathan’s aides as well as the Bayelsa State accountant general are the words, “Release N150,000,000.00 (One hundred and fifty million naira) only to be drawn from the poverty alleviation subhead.”

[...] SaharaReporters could not ascertain how much of the released funds was paid directly to performers at the festival. There is no indication that Beyonce, one of the few entertainment stars internationally famous enough to only need one name, was aware that her performance was being subsidized by the poor people of Bayelsa.

But during Beyonce’s celebrated rendition of the Nigerian national anthem, pictures of Bayelsa State were projected onto the wall of the Lagos concert venue.

According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, 47% of Bayelsans live in poverty. The World Bank says that per capita gross domestic product in the Niger Delta is significantly below the country’s average. According to the state’s own 2005 development strategy, 80% of rural communities have no access to safe drinking water, a key indicator in judging poverty. In Yenagoa, the state capital and Bayelsa’s largest urban area, an estimated two out of every five residents do not have access to safe drinking water.

In 2005, as part of its UN-approved strategy to combat poverty, the state promised to make a fund of N100 million available as soft loans and micro-credit to Bayelsans. The allocated fund was N50 million less than Mr. Jonathan approved for Mr. Obaigbena’s music festival.

The repercussions on this story will run and run. There were rumors and online whispers about the exorbitant fee paid to Kim Kardashian for her three-syllable “hosting” job last week and where that money may have come from. Many have long-suspected that there was something fishy about the growing trend for lavish big name jamborees, and Sahara Reporters have blown the whole thing wide open.

Here’s that expensive performance of the Nigerian national anthem by Queen Bey:

There’s been no response from Goodluck Jonathan, or anyone involved in the story, and of course we have to wait for them to have their say before drawing too many conclusions. Usual caution applies, and so far (unsurprisingly given the stakes of what’s alleged) the only verification in the piece comes from Sahara Reporters’ as yet unnamed sources. That said, Jonathan has some sizeable questions to answer (but don’t be surprised if the administration try simply to ignore this story). Jonathan looked pretty relaxed yesterday, spending the whole day holding hands with “The First Black President” at the opening of the vile Emirates-style haven for the rich, Eko Atlantic City:

The New York Times, in its enduring wisdom, published a glowing profile of Obaigbena  just two years after Beyonce’s visit, titled “Using Star Power to Repair Nigeria’s Image“. They called him “part Bono, part Diddy” and collected luvvy quotes from such shrewd observers as the head of Transparency International-USA (“There is reason to be cautiously optimistic” [regarding Obaigbena's anti-corruption efforts]), Naomi Campbell (“Nduka obviously has a remarkable vision, real passion and a special message”) and former Australian prime minister John Howard (“Obaigbena is striking a blow for the truer path”). On this occasion, I think it’s fair to venture that our midtown friends didn’t quite get “all the news that’s fit to print”. The same reporter who did the New York Times story, Angelo Ragaza, published a still-more adoring profile in Arise Magazine (proprietor: Mr N. Obaigbena) a few months later. For the record, he’s also credited as “the visionary behind Africa Rising.”

Shameful Self-promotion: Sean wrote an online essay for the SSRC on ‘New media in Africa and the Global Public Sphere’

The main takeaway from #Kony2012 is that it will probably retain some salience—despite the widespread criticism against the film and its makers—for how most people, including some Africans, will engage with Sub-Saharan African issues for the time being. However, more promising for media are the implications of #OccupyNigeria, a series of protests that brought that country to a standstill for the first two weeks of January 2012 following an announcement by President Jonathan that he would scrap a fuel subsidy that most Nigerians considered their birthright. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians streamed onto the street to join marches and rallies. The national strike was only suspended after the Government, following a deal brokered with trade unions, partially restored the subsidy. By most estimates #OccupyNigeria was the largest and most sustained short-term protest movement in any Sub-Saharan African country in a long while.

Media coverage of Nigeria during #OccupyNigeria mostly focused on alleged violence associated with protesters or linked the protests to the violence of Boko Haram, which stepped up its attacks during the strike. Certain “expert” voices in the West supported the government of Jonathan, especially his finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. They would quickly face the backlash of Nigerian protesters. Cases in point: Jeffrey Sachs and Ethan Zuckerman. The latter to his credit, backtracked from his initial thoughts.

Much of that pressure came from activists on social media; crucially in the Nigerian Diaspora. The latter also took their protests to the streets. Online activists targeted celebrities (Nollywood actors and popular singers like D’Banj) who were forced to declare their allegiance with the strike. Yet the real focus of the anger was directed towards Nigeria’s political class, especially President Jonathan and finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who were both lampooned and scoffed online. Two websites stood out: the Nigeria-based Chop Cassava (which produces video reports) and Sahara Reporters based in New York City.

Of these, Sahara Reporters has had a larger impact. Sahara Reporters has become a media force inside Nigeria largely because it is not in Nigeria. The website’s base in New York City places Sahara Reporters “beyond the reach of the politicians and corporations that the site often reports on.” What appeals to its readers and audience is the nature of the stories they report. As Mohamed Keita of the Committee to Protest Journalists told Al Jazeera English, Sahara Reporters provides, “eye witness accounts, just raw information about sensitive issues that the press in Nigeria is too afraid to publish or report.” These include, extensive coverage of a huge oil spill in the Niger Delta; revealing the corruption of a state governor who was eventually tried in a British court; and events around the illness, absence from Nigeria and eventual death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in May 2010.

Ordinary Nigerians have warmed to Sahara Reporters’ reporting and support it publicly. It has also attracted the attentions of those in power. In some instances, Jonathan’s office has released media statements directly addressed to the site. In one celebrated case, Sahara Reporters’ story of 32 aides accompanying Nigeria’s first lady on an official trip to an African Union summit in Ethiopia, resulted in the presidential spokesperson releasing a press statement aimed specifically at Sahara Reporters.

Some concerns have been raised about sensationalism in Sahara Reporters’ style of reporting and writing. However, the conspiratorial and mocking tone of Sahara Reporters’ coverage should not be surprising. The sensationalism or the partiality to sensational stories is simply a symptom of a current Nigerian reality: that people know that they are getting screwed by the political system, and that there is a “real” beyond what is visible, dominant or apparent.

What makes Sahara Reporters’ reporting “global” is not just the fact that it is transnational, but also the flow and counter-flow of information between New York City, Lagos and elsewhere in Nigeria. There’s also the reciprocity between Sahara Reporters’ editors, its audience, contributors, sources as well as its targets.

Read the rest here on the SSRC’s site.

What’s new in South America? Blackface is okay in Peru

Peruvian media have revived the debate regarding Negro Mama, a popular character of the prime time TV show El Especial del Humor. The show, aired on one of the country’s main TV channels, Frecuencia Latina, features actor Jose Benavides in blackface, wearing a prosthetic nose and lips as well as black, hairy gloves on his hands. His motto is “I might be a blacky, but I have my little brain” (Podré ser negrito, pero tengo mi cerebrito). To get a sense of his “humor,” see here and here for sketches of the Negro Mama. Despite its popularity, Negro Mama has been highly criticized by Afro-Peruvian organizations. They’ve played a key role in campaigns against Afro-stereotypes.

The most active Afro-Peruvian organization calling for an end to Negro Mama on TV, is LINDU (Centro de Estudios y Promoción Afroperuano). Last month they requested Frecuencia Latina to stop featuring the character.

So what’s so offensive about Negro Mama, apart from its black face and pronounced features? In an award-winning essay, Stanford University student Kiah Thorn argues that the more recent episodes of the show associate Negro Mama with robberies, violence, puns about herpes, the trafficking of cocaine and the penitential system. Negro Mama plays on the worst stereotypes associated to cultural and social attributes associated with Afro-Peruvians and uncritically exhibits these for the whole Peruvian nation to watch.

The public disapproval towards Negro Mama started in 2010, when LINDU filed a petition against Frecuencia Latina for the Ethics Tribunal of the National Society of Radio and Television, which in turn ordered the TV Channel to apologize to the Afro-Peruvian community. The government body stated that “the terms used by Negro Mama can be considered as authentic expression of hatred against a racial minority… And despite not invoking violence, the messages have a strong racist content.” (See here for a news report about the decision.) Along with a broadcasted apology, Frecuencia Latina issued a press release: “We value the people who might feel offended and Frecuencia Latina ows it to the audience and will always make an effort to serve everyone and not to offend anyone.”

Back then, Negro Mama followers started a fierce online campaign defending the character. Kiah Thorn explains that during this phase of the controversy the Que Regrese el Negro Mama (“For the Return of the Negro Mama”) Facebook page reached thousands of followers. However, you can still read dissenting comments on the group’s Facebook wall, such as this one written by professor Juan Navarro: “The bottom line is that, Peruvians of black race, feel outraged because JB (Jorge Benavides) presents Negro Mama as an “ignorant black,” in other words, he stereotypes the compatriots of color, and that is very wrong. This is why he must not return to TV, many kids see the character and make up an image in their minds, the incorrect image created by this comedian.”

In a 2010, the BBC reported “… the country’s most popular comedy show–referring to El Especial del Humor and Negro Mama–abounds with racial stereotypes that are familiar to the audience, which scarcely questions what they are watching.” The reporter, Dan Collyns, added that “… perhaps the biggest obstacle to ending racism is the fact that it is simply seen as a joke.”

Other media initiatives have also joined efforts to force the channel to withdraw Negro Mama from Peruvian television, such as the tumblr blog peruanista.tumblr.com, which has called attention to Negro Mama’s foul stereotypes: “On national television, a black-faced character depicting a black man, a proof that racism in Latin America is worst than imagined.” The site invites visitors to file a petition to several Government bodies.

The debate revived recently when several Peruvian online media sites quoted Monica Carillo, the founder of LINDU: “Jorge Benavides’s intention to improve his character aside, we consider that it has become a mark installed in the memory of the people 14 years ago. He–Negro Mama–is a clever one, but he is also delinquent and ignorant.” LINDU took the case further up to the Ministry of Communications and Transportation and is also working on a legislation to sanction racist attacks (see here and here for related news reports).

In the meantime, Peruvian social media continue to criticize and defend Negro Mama. The Facebook page Afro Noticias Peru recently posted an ad of the show El Especial del Humor, followed by the comment: ‘“Frecuencia Latina Thinks Big!?” No, it does not think big. The racist stereotyping by Negro Mama demonstrates the channel’s policy: the contempt toward the Afro-Peruvian people through messages that build a racist propaganda.’

But that hasn’t stopped fans of Negro Mama to continue lauding him online. Another Facebook page, “No to the censorship of Paisana Jacinta y del Negro Mama,” keeps posting tribute videos to Negro Mama. With over 19,000 followers, this page is a clear sign that the black-faced character might be with us for a little longer.