Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 506

Things we learn from VS Naipaul’s interview with The New Republic

It’s hard to be a Diasporic Indian sometimes. And Sir Vidiya in the news never helps. The New Republic’s book editor, one Isaac Chotiner, felt that V.S. Naipaul was the right person to seek out for commentary on the Arab Spring. Because “Many of his books are set in post-colonial societies—from Africa and South America to Iran and Pakistan.” And because “Naipaul showed a skepticism about revolutions and social change that gave him a reputation for pessimism and prescience” when others were “cheering the end of the age of empire.”

At home in his Kensington flat (obviously, as do many experts on the general demise of Africa, he lives Elsewhere), the Trinidadian-born author begins by telling his interviewer why he no longer spends as much time at his country residence in Wiltshite: because his cat died.

“Now that Augustus has died, I want to spend more time in London…It is too painful to be [in Wiltshire]. I think of Augustus. He was the sum of my experiences. He had taken on my outlook, my way of living.”

If only Augustus was the sum of V.S. Naipaul’s experiences. He may have napped a lot, sniffed a bum or two, and ended up on some “my cat is evil” video on Youtube, providing endless amusement for office workers. And if he were just the ordinary misanthrope and misogynist, almost-concurrently  exchanging recently deceased first wife (who died after a long battle with cancer; during her illness, he famously had many affairs, and gave an interview about his visits to prostitutes) for creepily-fawning new wife, Nadira—this, even while he finds abhorrent people’s suggestion that he gets a new cat to replace Augustus—we would just write him off.

But because he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, interviewers keep trying to paint him anew, bring him back to civility, using words like “complicated” or phrases like “brutally honest” to describe his erroneous pronouncements. They try to resurrect some semblance of his significance by referring to his capacity to produce books, invent a nice turn of phrase, bringing up his quite remarkable capacity for book-learning, and his general (perhaps even an exceptional) level of cleverness. And I’m certainly not denying him those things. I often wonder if people who write about Naipaul are only seeing their own gentle intelligence and capacity for compassion (as was evident in Teju Cole’s recent essay, ‘Natives on the Boat’, in the New Yorker).

Vidiya’s conclusions for the great energies of the Arab Spring?

“I think it’s nothing. You saw how it ended in Libya. It ended in a kind of mess, you know. It will happen elsewhere, too.”

And:

“I thought it was nothing really. It would come and go, and we’ll be back where we started.”

However, he continues to need the fawning masses, especially those in the very societies that he denigrates and dismisses — the infidel hordes from “Islamic” countries, the Africans — even if he says that “people coming up to one…it doesn’t mean anything.” Nadira Naipaul insists that he’s misunderstood because “he didn’t make the right noises about racism.” She also reminds us that all that fawning “does mean something to [Naipaul].” Naipaul, in her version of him, is “very moved by [people coming up to him]. Especially when people in Africa, or Pakistan, in other countries, in Islamic countries, when people actually seek you out and they start crying. … In Uganda, people actually came to seek you out and say thank you for looking at us and you are right.”

This is what Chotiner went to London to get? Two sentences about the “nothingness” of Egypt’s mass demonstrations, and how the Ugandans tearily thank him for “looking at them” and reassure him of his “rightness”? People. Let’s stop asking Naipaul for his opinions about revolutions and countries he’s never been to since 1964. The man wants to be a dictator.

Friday Bonus Music Break

Kuduro pioneer Sebem (fresh out of prison; he was in for repeated traffic violations, from what I understand) has a new video out (above); the clip’s rural setting is surprising, given kuduro’s over-all urban flow. Next, a Senegalese collaboration between Djibril Diop and Aida Samb:

Kenyan Jeraw draws inspiration and images from local blockbuster film ‘Nairobi Half Life’:

A new video for Belgian-Congolese (but mostly Bruxellois) rapper Pitcho — taken from his new album Rendez-Vous avec le Futur:

Earl Sweatshirt wrote a “letter” to his South African dad Keorapetse Kgositsile:

From Lesotho, a new video (shot in Mozambique) for Kommanda Obbs:

London-based, Douala-born “one-man band” Muntu Valdo has a new video — not sure why YouTube won’t allow you to embed it:

Swiss-Ghanaian singer/improvisational musician Joy Frempong “Oy”; you already know we’ve been following her work:

And two acoustic sessions to wind down. Guinea-Conakry-born, Canada-residing Alpha Yaya Diallo:

And Cape Town-based Beatenberg (whose debut record ‘Farm Photos’ you should give a listen as well):

Et voilà, back on Monday!

God takes the train to work too

Guest Post by Asanda Kaka

In 1986, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng decided to document “train churches” — the culture of mobile worship by working class black South Africans on the country’s commuter trains that continues till today. Mofokeng was traveling daily between his home in Soweto and his work as a dark room assistant at an Afrikaans newspaper in Johannesburg. At first he was annoyed by the practice — he preferred to nap — but soon warmed to its significance: “It captures two of the most significant features of South African life: the experience of commuting and the pervasiveness of spirituality.” Mofokeng’s photographs were taken when traveling long distances from isolated and dusty township homes to domestic and gardening jobs in white suburbs was the norm — residential Apartheid was enforced by law. Leaving in the early hours of the morning and returning to their families late at night, most had no time to attend church, and had no choice but to take God with them on their long train rides. Though legal Apartheid these days is a thing of the past, residential Apartheid — now enforced by economics — is still the norm and most black people still commute to mostly white suburbs for work. The culture of mobile worship continues to this day.

Today, the sounds of the gospel (accompanied by worshippers hitting the sides of the train and ringing portable bells) are still an invitation to come to church. Often heard from the side of the platform as the train pulls in and out of different stations, this signal helps believers to find the congregation while warning non-believers to stay away.

I remember as a child how irritated I used to get when I found myself in one of these church carriages. I felt like I was being bullied into Christianity; my right to remain atheist was being violated on my way to school. As I got older, these ways of doing things started to fascinate me. I remember always wanting to do a photo story about this kind of worship, ever since I knew I wanted to be a photographer and long before I knew who Santu Mofokeng was.

When I was asked by my photography mentor about what I would shoot if I had an opportunity to do my first body of work, the answer was simple. I wanted to take pictures of people preaching and singing in trains. A few days after our conversation I got on a 17:45 train from Brackenfell on route to Cape Town station with my heart racing and my mind thinking up answers to the questions I was sure to get as soon as I pointed the camera.

I didn’t even do research, I had all the research I needed from taking trains to school for most of my school life. My plan was to shoot first, answer the questions, apologize and delete any unwanted photographs. It was as simple as that. After at least two days a week, for three weeks on that train I had a lot of pictures, and I had gained new friends and a new point of view of what had always been part of my day to day life.

A few days later I went back to Santu’s body of work and I realized the similarities between us. Little has changed since he did his “train church” in 1986. The trains are still in the same condition. It is still the gardeners, the domestic workers, the cleaners and the black unemployed that crowd the trains en masse in search of a better living in the cities, even after 18 years of a new and democratic South Africa.

The prayer’s theme is still the same. To go home to a liveable house and to be able to make sure the family has something to eat. The only thing that has changed is that school kids now have phones that can play music and they’re not afraid to use them. As soon as the bibles come out, the earphones soon follow.

* Asanda Kaka is a Cape Town-based photographer who also works as a video editor for a news channel. To see more of her work, visit her Tumblr.

The delusions in decontextualising mental illness

The infamous psychiatric hospital Broadmoor, in the UK.

All cultures, past and present, have identified abnormal human behaviours – anomalous thoughts and actions – that once sustained tend to be judged negatively. Unable to participate or function within social life, psych behaviours are regarded disruptive to the person and the organisation of society. The boundaries drawn to distinguish between normality and madness are born and influenced by consensuses in culture moulded by beliefs, expectations, norms, the meanings assigned to thoughts and the expression of emotions. These agreements are central to registering unusual behaviour. For the West the dominant method for determining mental health relies upon the taxonomy of mental illness outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This, a revisable bible, categorises, defines and names madness from which the entire mental health industry has grown from, and upon which Western clinicians are reliant upon.



In November 2011, Rethink Mental Illness launched an independent commission, ‘The Schizophrenia Commission’ to review England’s capacity to provide the necessary care for people living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and psychosis. The collated evidence and research in ‘The Abandoned Illness’ presents a stark and dismal picture of mental health provision and detailed its broad failings. No group of people read as chillingly than the section dedicated to ‘Mental Health and Minority Ethnic Groups (BME)’. The section illuminates decades of mounting evidence into the disparity of care within BME groups in England. The report reiterates that people from ‘African-Caribbean and African backgrounds are more likely to be given a diagnosis of schizophrenia or psychosis’, between 4-10 times greater compared to the white population. In addition to elevated diagnosis rates, the BME groups are overrepresented in hospitals, with higher rates of admission under section and for higher rates of ’police involvement in their admission’. ‘Black people’ are ‘less likely to receive psychological therapy’ yet more likely to be forcibly restrained and prescribed higher doses of medication.

The commission heard evidence from research that the higher incidence rates of psychosis for people from African-Caribbean and African backgrounds living in the UK is not equivocal to that of their origin countries, claiming in the report that the ‘high rates aren’t found in the Caribbean’. This was an assertion propagated and extended in the press to include that ‘high rates aren’t found in Africa’ either. Such comparisons are founded upon studies carried out in these countries rather than the research deriving from the countries themselves. Three major incidence studies – often referenced in comparisons – conducted during the 1990′s in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados were undertaken by Western psychiatrists who entered these cultures searching for phenomena that conformed to the predetermined Western diagnostic categories laid out by the DSM. By applying these ‘standard’ diagnostic criteria they found the cited lower rates of psychosis than that of migrants in the UK. These studies defined culture, only in terms of geography, and almost completely neglected to include cultural factors in their measurements that might account for the observed differences thereby neglecting to establish whether these categories were meaningful or even relevant to the people in those countries. The research assumed Western psychiatry knows best and the robust definitions of mental illness in the DSM can be applied to any culture, without loss or distortion of meaning. The comparisons made undermine the serious concerns voiced by the BME groups that ‘mental health services are based upon a western understanding of mental illness which they do not share’ and specifically concerning the ‘reliability and validity of the diagnosis of schizophrenia’ itself.

The prevalence of mental illness on the African continent remains largely veiled due to the lack of reliable records in facility-based information systems. The data available can only be surmised in ‘estimates’ and in 2010 the World Health Organisation (WHO) said is was ‘difficult to get a clear picture as data collection was patchy’. But the essential message delivered by Professor Ndetei, founder and director of the African Mental Health Foundation, on October 18th 2012 at the University of Berkeley was: ‘All indicators from the available epidemiological data suggest that the patterns and prevalence of mental disorders in Africa are similar to those found in High Income Countries, but that is as far as the similarities go’. According to the WHO report of 2005, 50% of African countries have a mental health policy but many laws are outdated, with 70% of countries spending less than 1% of their total health budget on mental health. The lack of reliable data keeps the burden of mental ill health unknown keeping it out of the priorities of policy makers despite the economic and social costs.

Kenya is among the 70% of African countries that allocates less than 1% of their health budget to mental healthcare provision. Despite its own figures suggesting that one-quarter of all patients going the hospitals or clinics express experiencing mental health symptoms. However the people receiving care in Kenya are being met with a holistic approach to treatment that is discovering evolving benefits. By developing partnerships with traditional solutions Dr Frank Njenga, a Consultant Psychiatrist practising in Nairobi, and founding president of the African Association of Psychiatrists and Allied Professionals (AAPAP) says:

Psychiatrists who have Western-style training are only able to handle a small number of these conditions. So what we have deliberately and consciously done is to develop partnerships – firstly with traditional healers. They are the ones who come face to face with the huge majority of people who suffer from mental disorder. And we try to get them to understand that there are some conditions they treat better than we do, and some conditions we treat better than they do.

With no one approach competing in the belief that they offer the only, or most effective, treatment they are able to focus on adapting methods of care specifically for the service user. A malleability that does not strip patients of their culture in order to care for them, which the Schizophrenia Commission’s report underlines as woefully absent in the treatment of people from BME groups in England.

Dangerously, the various findings found by the WHO’s research in non-Western countries is still often cited as demonstrating the universality of mental illness, in the western classification model, thereby legitimising its application across cultures. But as the report clearly presents in the case of BME groups, neglecting to integrate – or better meld – cultural contexts into the DSM, the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness will continue to welcome: marginalisation, stigma, mistrust of Western services, appalling care and discrimination.

The diagnostic parameters need to be completely overhauled as they embody a Western mode of understanding which itself is culturally bound. The DSM blindly casts the same net over everyone regardless of origin, colour or background. It’s a frighteningly failed philosophy.

All the immigrants’ crimes in Italy

“Content is king,” say the marketers, and even racist bloggers are aware of the main principle driving traffic to a new website. That’s why a group of rightwing bloggers and activists behind the Facebook page Resistenza Nazionale and the blog Identità.com have launched a very special news aggregator: Tutti i crimini degli immigrati (“All the immigrants’ crimes”). The site collates online news about the involvement of foreign-born Italians citizens in any kind of crime in our country (Italy). They don’t just publish the RSS feeds of the stories on a unique webpage; they do real editorial work to present the news to their readers making sure they understand the “dangers” of being surrounded by immigrants.

The title of the aggregator’s news is usually reformulated in such way that you can’t doubt the origin of the people involved. This will be followed by a direct quote from the original news source (be it from a national newspaper or from a press release) and the pictures included in the posts are often not related to the news, but are remixed versions to serve a different purpose.

It seems that Tutti i crimini degli immigrati’s goal is to establish the idea that immigrants are dangerous for the Italian society. The same authors publish editorial posts in the blog ‘Identità Nazionale’ where their intent is usually the defense of a supposed pure national identity of Italians (white, born no matter where but with Italian blood in his/her veins) against the invasion of foreign people from all over the world. Special mentions are often given in opposition to the integration program implemented by the Minister of International Cooperation Andrea Riccardi, who takes the positive view towards a new citizenship law which allows children born in our country, no matter what the nationality of their parents, to become Italian according to the principle of the ius soli.

Here is what they write against his “insane” idea:

Per caso un Africano nato in Giappone, nasce con gli occhi a mandorla? No, perché l’ambiente non ha alcuna influenza sull’identità dell’individuo, se non trascurabile in ambito epi-genetico dopo decine di anni. Un Ghanese nato a Stoccolma, è identico ad un Ghanese nato ad Accra. / Pensate all’idolo attuale degli xenofili in crisi d’astinenza: Mario Barwuah Balotelli. Immaginate di non sapere chi sia e di incontrarlo per strada – si, lo so, ci sono incontri migliori – con lui un Ghanese e un Italiano: a chi somiglia Barwuah?

(Have you ever seen an African born in Japan with almond eyes? No, because the environment doesn’t have any influence on the individual identity, if not insignificant after many years …  A Ghanaian born in Stockholm is identical to a Ghanaian born in Accra. / Think about the current hero of xenophiles: Mario Barwuah Balotelli. Pretend not to know who he is and to run into him in the street – I know, you could imagine a better chance encounter – with him a Ghanaian and an Italian: who does Barwuah look like the most?)

For a few weeks now, the authors of Identità.com have been publishing posts on freedom of expression rights after the shutting down of the neo-Nazi website Stormfront. Four people were also arrested. The national press agency Ansa reports that the four editors are accused of “inciting racial and ethnic hatred on the site, which has regularly posted anti-Semitic and white supremacist propaganda.”

Last year it emerged that the murderer of two Senegalese immigrants in a market place in Florence had links to this group. Messages of sympathy started appearing on Stormfront’s forum from members who knew the killer and admired his “brave” act (the man was killed in action by the police).

Warnings have arrived also against Tutti i crimini degli immigrati: civic society organizations such as ‘Osservatorio 21 luglio’ who monitor the spread of violent and racist messages in the media have launched a plea to the authorities to shut down their activities online.

But what about mainstream Italian media?

Stereotyping immigrants and xenophobic reporting are widespread. It’s very difficult not to find an article or news bulletin which doesn’t indicate the nationality of the people involved. Even leftwing papers fall take part in this practice. The Left, who are supposed to be the most careful when speaking about immigration, often fall into the same trap to attract readers. One recent example was an ambiguous cover from the popular Espresso magazine (above). It combined the words “scandal” and “immigrants” on the cover with a photograph of a black man. However, when you read the story, it turns out the reporter actually did an expose about Italian citizens who ‘stole’ public money designated for refugee care. The government had spent €20.000 on each migrant, but none of them had directly received any of the money.

This, conveniently, was a story which Tutti i crimini degli immigrati did not report. 

10 African films to watch out for, N°15

The Professor is a fiction film by Tunisian director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud. Synopsis: Tunis 1977. Khalsawi Khalil, Professor of Constitutional Law is responsible to defend the official State’s position in a period of tension between the government and the Interntional League for Human Rights. One day, Khalil learns that Houda, one of his students with whom he has an affair, has been arrested in the south of the country with two Italian journalists who came to investigate on strikes in the country’s phosphate mines.

Al Djazira (“The island”), an Algerian short directed by Amin Sidi-Boumédiene which recently won “Best Film from the Arab World” at the 2012 Abu Dhabi film festival. No trailer yet, but follow the film’s Facebook page for updates.




Al-khoroug lel-nahar (“Coming Forth by Day”) is an Egyptian short film written and directed by Hala Lofty (her debut) about a mother and daughter looking after their stroke-ridden husband/father. A first review in Variety sounds promising:

The film Malagasy Mankany (“Legends of Madagascar”) by Haminiaina Ratovoarivony premiers in Antananarivo later this month. It’s a drama-comedy-cum-road-movie about Malagasy youth:

Technically not a film yet to come, but an interesting campaign of films used for the 2012 Dream City event on public art in Tunis last September. “The project aim[ed] to develop and support artistic creations in public spaces in order to promote the democratisation of art and social change among ordinary citizens.” They made a series of beautiful teaser videos in different colours: pink (with a Tinariwen soundtrack), red, green, yellow, and a general trailer (with a Massive Attack soundtrack):

Mijn Vader en Van Gogh (“My father and Van Gogh”) is a film by Inès Eshun about her father Isaac who’s been living in Belgium as “an illegal immigrant” for more than 20 years. Upon leaving prison, he finds he can no longer return to the room he lived in — a room also used by painter Vincent Van Gogh when he resided in Antwerp. Using Van Gogh’s letters, Isaac’s letters and the work of artist Johan Ojo, the documentary paints an untold story:

La charia ou l’exode, réfugiés du Mali (“Sharia or exodus, the refugees from Mali”) is a documentary by Arnaud Contreras who interviewed Malians on the run for violence in their home towns/villages, “none of [whom] mention the destruction of the mausoleums of Timboctou”:

In Sen Kaddu: Autour des cinémas de Dakar, Momar Diol and Thomas Szacka-Marier interview people in Dakar about their most cherished memories of cinema and cinema halls. This project was done at the occasion of Dak’Art Off 2012, the Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Senegal.

Le Maréchalat du Roi Dieu (“The Marshalcy of King-God”) is a documentary by Nathalie Pontalier, who tells the story of André Ondao Mba from Libreville, Gabon. Mba shares a house with his two sons but he is ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He has been painting murals for over twenty years — containing messages and mythologies that remain opaque to many.




And LUX is a film by French photographer Sébastien Coupy about rural Burkina Faso. It’s a collage of his photos, with commentary and voice-overs by Burkinabés about the many meanings and the scarce availability of electricity, “lumière”, light, LUX. A first fragment here, and a second below:

Al Walser For President

Vice Magazine recently ran an interview with Al Walser, the DJ who nabbed a Grammy nomination for a less than stellar performance on his song ‘I Can’t Live Without You,’ scandalizing the mainstream Electronic Dance Music (EDM) circle. If anything, his nomination sheds light on the disoriented state of the music industry. But, I would argue that the industry’s turning of (black) dance music (BDM) into a ready-made commercial genre for Las Vegas pool parties did that pretty well already anyway. If anything, with Al Walser the industry is getting what it deserves.

Interesting for our purposes, in the interview he reveals himself as a proud child of mixed African-European parentage. We see this most clearly in moments when he’s rubbing shoulders with some pretty big movers and shakers. On his hitting it off with President Obama, he says:

I don’t know if you know, but I happen to be from one of the smallest countries in the world, Liechtenstein. And I happen to be the first bi-racial from that country. I met Obama the first time at a fundraiser and we hit it off. He couldn’t believe I was from Liechtenstein, and you know, my mom was white and my dad is black, just like with him, and I grew up with my white family, just like him. There was a connection over being bi-racial. We hit it off. We had a really cool chat. It was great, he’s a great guy, I loved him.

And on his relationship with the Jackson family:

The first time I came to L.A., I stayed at Katherine Jackson’s house. Whenever they were in Switzerland or in Liechtenstein, they would stay at my place. Be it Jermaine, some of the kids… there’s tons of family footage, and we’re going to release it maybe one day. Originally it was my father who met Joseph Jackson in Africa, in Congo, like 20 years ago or so. And they talked about their sons and they invited us over. And Jermaine came to Lichtenstein many times, and we traveled around the world together. And because Jermaine at the time was living with his mom, at Katherine’s house, I automatically was “inside.” Michael would call in and I’d be at the table with Katherine, alone. Believe me, it was a very interesting time for me and I learned a lot. I’m forever thankful to the Jacksons.

These stories intrigued me so I did a little searching. His flickr page is filled with photos of him and various celebrities, including the following photo of him “in the Congo with government officials”:

It gets perhaps even a little more surreal in a video of Walser with Snoop Dogg, where he is helping the rapper collect a lifetime achievement award from a festival in Brazzaville. He’s obviously connected in some pretty high places, which makes me wonder what his relationship to the Congolese government is.

I also found a video for his song ‘African Queen’ which has many different versions, including the original below, a Euro Dance version, and a “Summer Mix” which approximates to the prevalent Afropop sound today.

Is his aim to market himself strategically to various niche markets, with the goal of dominating awards shows worldwide? There’s no question this guy’s been hustling.

I support his nomination 100 percent.

For South African news media, to be ignored is a fate worse than censorship

Silence in a relationship speaks volumes and in the relationship between the governing African National Congress and the South African news media, the former’s stony silence about the Mail and Guardian’s recent spread into the finances of Jacob Zuma, president of the party and the nation, is a voluble reminder of the history of hostilities between the two and its effects. The spread may also serve to renew calls for more stringent regulation of the media, not because the reports portrayed Zuma unfavourably as a ‘kept politician’ mere weeks before he is to contest for re-election but because of the editorial exception the paper applied to the reporting.

The Mail & Guardian last week revealed the details of a previously unreleased 500-page KPMG report compiled in September 2006 for the National Prosecuting Authority’s investigation into allegations of corruption against Zuma. The series of articles recounted in detail how Zuma regularly accepted financial assistance from an array of unsavoury and surprising characters, including his corruption-convicted former financial advisor Shabir Sheik and former president Nelson Mandela. Zuma, according to the report, received from these sources in excess of R7 million in less than five years, which he spent just as quickly to settle debts racked up to maintain his large family’s lifestyle and to upgrade his home in Nkandla, in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

Departing from the publication’s regular practice of offering pre-publication right of reply, the paper ran the articles without seeking comment from Zuma or any of the others named. Editor Nic Dawes headed off criticism for the deviation from normal practice with an editorial published alongside the articles. In it he expressed concern that his and other publications offers of a pre-publication right to reply, especially with material such as the KPMG report, which emanates from the investigations into corruption-riddled 1999 military arms acquisition deal, is treated by the state as an opportunity to prevent publication.

“Although we would have preferred to publish comments from those affected with the report, we are convinced that the risk of being prevented from publishing it at all was real,” Dawes wrote.

That, however, may not be enough to quell passable accusations that the country’s news media have thrown away all journalistic standards and ethics, as claimed by some of Zuma’s staunchest defenders and others within the ANC aggrieved by media practices in the country.

Recently planning minister and ANC national executive member Trevor Manuel penned an op-ed in the Sunday Independent taking public intellectual and former journalist William Gumede to task for a lifting quotes from a 2003 Business Day article which had later been corrected. The article quoted Manuel, who at the time was the minister of finance during the height of the country’s HIV/Aids pandemic, as saying government spending money on anti-retro viral drugs would be a waste of money. Manuel, the report said, told a closed parliamentary committee that “the rhetoric about the effectiveness of ARVs is a lot of voodoo and buying them would be a waste of limited resources.”

Other publications, journalists and columnists picked up the quote and Manuel was roundly condemned by ANC alliance partner Cosatu, opposition party MPs and HIV/Aids lobby groups. Manuel was incandescent with rage. He maintained that he’d said government’s approach to dealing with the pandemic could not rely solely on ARVs at the expense of measures to prevent the spread of the disease. And less than a week after the original report was published, Business Day editor at the time, Peter Bruce, corrected the misquote in his weekly column after checking parliament’s Hansard record. “Clearly Manuel didn’t say AIDS drugs were voodoo, which the headline said he said. So we must, and do, sincerely apologise,” Bruce wrote.

But it was too late. The correction notwithstanding, Gumede reproduced the quote in his 2005 book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, the first edition of which was vaguely referenced and saw him accused of plagiarism. The book has since been used as a source for other political biographies and the quote attributed to Manuel has continued to re-spawn.

Another incident which still smarts for the ANC’s leaders and members is journalist Fiona Forde’s 2009 article where Forde relied on a single source who claimed that Zuma’s deputy Kgalema Motlanthe, president at the time, had had an affair with a 24-year-old woman who was carrying his ‘love child’. The claim turned out to be false. Speaking in Cape Town in 2010 at special ANC branch meeting on media practices, ANC national executive member Pallo Jordan questioned the state of journalistic ethics and practice that allowed such a report to be published. He also questioned whose business it was anyway even if the story had been true. Journalists, he said, take public interest to mean anything the public might be interested in, which makes everything and anything in the public interest.

But these comments notwithstanding, Manuel and Jordan and others, like Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi, are the closest things to allies and sympathisers media houses have within the ANC alliance. Jordan, for example, did not support other ANC leaders’ calls for a media appeals tribunal, a statutory body mooted two years ago to mete out fines and other punishment for media indiscretions. But even they are wary.

In the op-ed, Manuel said, “Gumede, as a journalist at the time, failed at the first hurdle which would require him ‘to exercise exceptional care and consideration’. How does society balance these interests so that it knows that the comments in the media are fair and verified? Why do journalists believe that acknowledging a lapse in judgement and an apology can make things right? They are able to rebuild their reputation, as Forde has been able to do following this faux pas. But for the rest of us, the damage is done. Where does the onus rest?”

Others within the ANC alliance, however, are less willing to question and ready to act. SA Communist Party chairperson Blade Nzimande last month reportedly told a conference of the party’s commissars that instituting a media appeals tribunal should remain an option for the ANC-led government in the face of the offensive by a media that he says has thrown away even the pretence of fairness.

“They (the media) are not even following their own press code, by the way. I don’t know why the ANC has retreated on the issue of a media tribunal,” Nzimande was quoted as saying.

According to Dawes, not only were last week’s articles on Zuma’s finances based on an unimpeachable report, the decision to publish the articles with an offer of post-publication right of reply was to the spirit of the letter of the press code. He said the code frees a publication from offering pre-publication right of reply in instances where it has reasonable grounds to believe it would be prevented from publishing, or where evidence could be destroyed and sources intimidated.

A year ago Mail & Guardian published a blacked-out article in which it was alleged that Zuma’s spokesman Mac Maharaj lied to prosecutors investigating claims that he and his wife received kickbacks from French arms manufacturer Thales. The disclosure of the content of such interviews, made in terms of section 28 of the National Prosecutions Act, without the permission of the national director of public prosecutions is a criminal offence. When offered pre-publication right of reply, Maharaj used that provision to prevent the full details from being published.

“Sam (Sole), Stefaans (Brümmer), and I still face criminal charges over the Mac (Maharaj) report. That fact legitimately increases our concern that “investigations” into us may be used to confiscate material and to go after our sources. We were extremely anxious that they be protected from discovery, intimidation, and possible reprisal. Getting the (Zuma KPMG) report into the public domain reduces that risk,” Dawes added later by email.

Nonetheless the instances of actual media indiscretions to which Manuel posed his unanswered questions and the marginal cases, such as Mail and Guardian’s reports into Zuma’s finances, have created room the ANC to ignore news reports that in many other nations and organisations would have sunk a bid for re-election.

“We cannot dignify irresponsible reporting by the Mail & Guardian. This has got nothing to do with the public office and the office of the president,” ANC spokesman Keith Khoza told the South African Press Agency. And that was that. Zuma looks set to be re-elected next week and for their sins, real and imagined, the voices of the news media are howls in a hurricane.

Us and Them: Rape and Racism in India

A year ago, there was some minor hullabaloo created when African students in India were not permitted in some bars. But yeah, it remained a minor tempest. Most likely, prevalent attitudes towards Africans (and dark-skinned people in general) in South Asia didn’t change. A few days ago, I heard about the sexual assault of a Rwandan student in Delhi via Twitter, and asked Prasanto Kumar Roy, a Delhi-based writer to provide us with insight.

Guest Post by Prasanto Kumar Roy

On December 3, in the Indian capital of Delhi, five men gang-raped a 24-year-old Rwandan woman. They robbed and assaulted her when she was returning to her home in a residential area close to the University of Delhi.

The local police tried to keep the assault under wraps. They refused to file a “first information report,” or FIR, a prerequisite for action in a reported crime. Most bizarrely, they told her to “come back after two days.”

A non-governmental organization, which was assisting the Rwandan national seek asylum in India, escalated the matter. A senior Delhi Police officer ordered a departmental enquiry. The case was finally registered three days after the incident, and four of the five rapists tracked down and arrested. The police inspector responsible for the delayed FIR and action was suspended.

On the face of it, a series of things happened in this case. A rape, not uncommon in Delhi. A reluctance by the police to take action, even less uncommon. Pressure from a a non-governmental organization. Corrective action by the police, including punishment of the official responsible.

A closer look suggests a deeper issue: that of persistent racism in Indian society.

First, the crime. It’s likely that the men picked an African woman because they considered her “easier game,” a low-risk venture. They weren’t mistaken: the cops did not act – not without being ticked off by their seniors.

And while European or American women are far from being immune from rape in India, the chances of their being gang-raped with such impunity in Delhi would be much lower. A part of the reason is the lower probability of an African country assisting its citizens, or filing an official protest with the Indian government, when compared with, say, a European country.

Another reason for this presumption of lower risk by a potential rapist comes from the Indian media’s reaction to such assaults, and the latent institutionalised racism in our media. That same racism – based on the shade of one’s skin – is prevalent in the media’s mainstream readership, who are predominantly middle-class. When a university student is raped in Delhi, it hits the headlines. The police move much faster, partly in anticipation of media and public pressure, and partly as reflection of their own prejudice or sense of priority.

For many other classes of victims, including the poor and the not-well-connected, things move a lot slower. Those on the lowest end of the socio-economic pecking order have the most difficult time: the maids, municipal sweepers, construction workers. If one of them is raped, the chances of the police filing an FIR drop, and the media reports tend to be smaller, inside-page news items. Another class from where victims tend to trigger lower levels of outrage is the student community from the north-east of India. Because they have “Chinese” features, and favour Western dress and lifestyle, they’re considered exotic, “looser” and “easier game”. They are frequently the targets of sexual harassment, a crime often trivialized in India as “eve-teasing.”

The African student, thanks to the color of her skin and to her origins – a continent seen as backward by that same Indian middle class that is widely lauded for joining global modernity – is subconsciously slotted alongside those ‘lower classes’ of society.

Dozens, if not hundreds of students from African countries go to India for their university studies.
(Photo via 5 Dariya News)

In this country of largely brown-skinned people once colonized by white men, the color of skin remains a point of discrimination. “Fair skin” is considered an asset, and is prominently mentioned in matrimonial advertisements. One of the hottest-selling of all cosmetics in the country is Hindustan Unilever’s “Fair and Lovely” skin-lightening cream for women in India. The product was launched with television commercials showing depressed, dark-complexioned women ignored by men, who use the product and then suddenly find boyfriends and better careers. (The ads were criticized as racist and withdrawn in 2007.)

Even for the majority who are not consciously racist, a news item about an African student being robbed or raped would cause less consternation than about a victim that the reader could directly identify with as “one of us”. India has a large number of students from African nations, who travel here for undergrad and postgrad studies. In Delhi, many of them live in or near the University of Delhi. Are they less safe in India?

Giti Chandra, a professor at Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and former chair of the college’s sexual harassment committee (a mandatory body in every college in Delhi), says “they’re as safe as anyone else if they’re sensible.”

Meanwhile, African students looking to study in India need to be aware that Delhi, and much of India, is not always safe for women. Just like Indian women, they’ll have to learn some defense mechanisms, remember that there is safety in numbers, and know that when the police do not help, non-governmental organisations may actually push for some action.

* Prasanto K Roy (Twitter: @prasanto) is a Delhi-based writer 
on technology and internet freedom. He blogs here.

“Us” and “Them”: Rape and Racism in India

A year ago, there was some minor hullabaloo created when African students in India were not permitted in some bars. But yeah, it remained a minor tempest. Most likely, prevalent attitudes towards Africans (and dark-skinned people in general) in South Asia didn’t change. A few days ago, I heard about the sexual assault of a Rwandan student in Delhi via Twitter, and asked Prasanto Kumar Roy, a Delhi-based writer to provide us with insight.

Guest Post by Prasanto Kumar Roy

On December 3, in the Indian capital of Delhi, five men gang-raped a 24-year-old Rwandan woman. They robbed and assaulted her when she was returning to her home in a residential area close to the University of Delhi.

The local police tried to keep the assault under wraps. They refused to file a “first information report,” or FIR, a prerequisite for action in a reported crime. Most bizarrely, they told her to “come back after two days.”

A non-governmental organization, which was assisting the Rwandan national seek asylum in India, escalated the matter. A senior Delhi Police officer ordered a departmental enquiry. The case was finally registered three days after the incident, and four of the five rapists tracked down and arrested. The police inspector responsible for the delayed FIR and action was suspended.

On the face of it, a series of things happened in this case. A rape, not uncommon in Delhi. A reluctance by the police to take action, even less uncommon. Pressure from a a non-governmental organization. Corrective action by the police, including punishment of the official responsible.

A closer look suggests a deeper issue: that of persistent racism in Indian society.

First, the crime. It’s likely that the men picked an African woman because they considered her “easier game,” a low-risk venture. They weren’t mistaken: the cops did not act – not without being ticked off by their seniors.

And while European or American women are far from being immune from rape in India, the chances of their being gang-raped with such impunity in Delhi would be much lower. A part of the reason is the lower probability of an African country assisting its citizens, or filing an official protest with the Indian government, when compared with, say, a European country.

Another reason for this presumption of lower risk by a potential rapist comes from the Indian media’s reaction to such assaults, and the latent institutionalised racism in our media. That same racism – based on the shade of one’s skin – is prevalent in the media’s mainstream readership, who are predominantly middle-class. When a university student is raped in Delhi, it hits the headlines. The police move much faster, partly in anticipation of media and public pressure, and partly as reflection of their own prejudice or sense of priority.

For many other classes of victims, including the poor and the not-well-connected, things move a lot slower. Those on the lowest end of the socio-economic pecking order have the most difficult time: the maids, municipal sweepers, construction workers.  If one of them is raped, the chances of the police filing an FIR drop, and the media reports tend to be smaller, inside-page news items. Another class from where victims tend to trigger lower levels of outrage is the student community from the north-east of India. Because they have “Chinese” features, and favour Western dress and lifestyle, they’re considered exotic, “looser” and “easier game”. They are frequently the targets of sexual harassment, a crime often trivialized in India as “eve-teasing.”

The African student, thanks to the color of her skin and to her origins – a continent seen as backward by that same Indian middle class that is widely lauded for joining global modernity – is subconsciously slotted alongside those ‘lower classes’ of society.

In this country of largely brown-skinned people once colonized by white men, the color of skin remains a point of discrimination. “Fair skin” is considered an asset, and is prominently mentioned in matrimonial advertisements. One of the hottest-selling of all cosmetics in the country is Hindustan Unilever’s “Fair and Lovely” skin-lightening cream for women in India. The product was launched with television commercials showing depressed, dark-complexioned women ignored by men, who use the product and then suddenly find boyfriends and better careers. (The ads were criticized as racist and withdrawn in 2007.)

Even for the majority who are not consciously racist, a news item about an African student being robbed or raped would cause less consternation than about a victim that the reader could directly identify with as “one of us”. India has a large number of students from African nations, who travel here for undergrad and postgrad studies. In Delhi, many of them live in or near the University of Delhi. Are they less safe in India?

Giti Chandra, a professor at Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and former chair of the college’s sexual harassment committee (a mandatory body in every college in Delhi), says “they’re as safe as anyone else if they’re sensible.”

Meanwhile, African students looking to study in India need to be aware that Delhi, and much of India, is not always safe for women. Just like Indian women, they’ll have to learn some defense mechanisms, remember that there is safety in numbers, and know that when the police do not help, non-governmental organisations may actually push for some action.

* Prasanto K Roy (Twitter: @prasanto) is a Delhi-based writer 
on technology and internet freedom. He blogs here.