Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 590

TV Heads

'Kichwateli' ('TV head' < Swahili) is one of the many chapters in the BLNRB project. Contributors are Just A Band (read Siddharta Mitter's profile of the Kenyan trio here), street collective Maasai Mbili and the German electronic artists Modeselektor. The video was created by Bobb Muchiri (around the 5:00 mark neatly juxtaposing Nobel peace prize winner Obama's statement on the killing of bin Laden with the image of the late Kenyan Wangari Maathai — you connect the dots). No, TV Head's Kibera doesn't quite have the air of More's Utopia yet, referenced in the introduction, nor does Nairobi's CCTV monitored city center.

African media and gay rights

Though Western media used to be egregious with their gay stereotypes, they've gotten better over time. Though there are slippages. Here's an example.  Anyway, gross stereotypes about gay people are generally not acceptable on the airwaves, on TV or in print anymore over here. So what about African media? Let's take Nigeria.  One of my students, Travis Ferland (he's contributed to AIAC before), interviewed the Nigerian activist Ifeanyi Orazulike earlier this week in New York City about this subject. Video above.

In a separate clip Travis asks Ifeanyi about the relation between Western governments and agencies and agitating for gay rights on the continent. (That issue's been in the news lately with British prime minister David Cameron's announcement that his government would tie aid to African countries to their treatment of gays and lesbians.)

Angolan Independence

By Dan Moshenberg

On Friday, November 10, 2011, Angola marked its 36th Independence Day since the proclamation of independence, November 10, 1975. It's a few days later but better way to acknowledge the day than to focus on … Angola asylum seekers? By and large, the Western media paid no attention to Angola on Friday, but then again what else is new.

The great exception was Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which sported a piece entitled, "The `Mauros' who could not stay." `Mauro' is Mauro Manuel, an 18 year-old Angolan lad who was recently informed he could stay in the Netherlands, where he's lived, with a foster family, for the last eight years. Mauro wasn't given asylum, but, on Tuesday last week, he was allowed a reprieve. The Dutch Parliament gave him a student visa. What happens next is up in the air.

The "other `Mauros'" are women.

Amalia is 17, Tucha is 19. Their father was killed, for political activities, and the older sister was raped. That's when they fled Angola. They lived in the Netherlands for five years. Then, they were denied asylum and, after five years, shipped back to Angola. No matter that Amalia was 16 at the time, a minor. No matter that no one knows where their relatives are or even if they are. A year on, they still don't know if their mother is dead or alive.

"At the other end of the scale", according to RNI, is Engracia. 33 years old. Completed her education in the Netherlands, where she lived for 14 years. No political violence. Supported by middle class kin in Angola and the Dutch Refugee Council, who paid for her ticket back and gave her 2000 euros.

So that's the RNI Angola Scale: weeping, terrorized, impoverished failed asylum seeking girl, on one end; successful, entrepreneurial woman, on the other. On one end, desperately poor and with no apparent means of securing income; on the other, `gifted' handsomely, as a `returning refugee', by the largesse of Europe.

Really? That's the scale?

What about all those other women in Angola? What about the ones who organize, struggle, and keep on keeping on?

Women like Teresa Quarta, chairwoman of the Association of Angolan Women and Sports (AMUD), who argued this week that women athletes is all fine and well, but Angola needs to attend to developing and supporting women sports managers. What about women like primary school Maria Emelia and Rosa Florinda, women who don't deny that things are tough, that classes are overcrowded, that the country lacks sufficient numbers of trained teachers, that too many children are too hungry. Women teachers, across the country, who keep teaching, keep pushing, keep pulling. Factory workers, farmers and farm workers, nurses and doctors, women. Ordinary women. Women not defined by their encounter with the European state. Women defined as simply Angolan.

When they look for a model, when they look for a Queen, for example, they need not look to Queen Beatrix, of the Netherlands, nor to her mother, Queen Juliana. Instead, they could look closer to home. They could look to Queen Nzinga, Nzinga the Warrior Queen of the Ndongo and Matamba, that woman who overcame local structures, who defied and often defeated the Portuguese, who almost single handedly created a new state. Nzinga was not a saint, was not some pure or ideal woman. She cut deals. She allied with the Dutch against the Portuguese. She provided safe haven for runaway slaves while at the same time engaging in the slave trade. That's life. "It's complicated."

Nzinga was not a heroine nor is she an icon. She was a leader. Nzinga led in war, peace, commerce, politics, and life. Nzinga was an Angolan woman who led Angolans into action. Nzinga was an Angolan woman, who presaged not only Angola's national independence but also its national autonomy. Include her and her descendants into the narratives and `scales' of Angola.

Herman Cain's Libya

Herman Cain, Republican presidential candidate and white conservatives' idea of a real black man (in contrast President Barack Obama is "the son of an elite Kenyan and a white graduate student"), went to see the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel earlier this week. One of the questions they asked him was about Obama's in Libya policy.

Here's the video. Watch as Cain pauses for a long minute–that seems to be normal on the right–then launches into incoherent boilerplate.

Ingerland

Late last month the English goalkeeper David James wrote in The Observer that he was surprised at the accusations of racism against his national teammate John Terry. The latter was accused of racially abusing an opponent, QPR player Anton Ferdinand. James also claimed racism has been rooted out of the game a long time ago.  James suggested that racism was now limited to a small number of fans.   James was not alone in his assessment.

 Since James wrote that fans tweeting have abused Newcastle striker Sammy Ameobi ("your hand is nearly the same colour. #nigger" as the black soccer cleats favored by Ameobi), Anton Ferdinand again ("RT this you fucking BLACK CUNT, 1 England captain" with reference to Terry) and Frazier Campbell of Sunderland ("big fucking nigger"). Police are investigating. Only in the Ameobi case has there been arrests.

Bulgarian fans are racist.

Demba Ba

Demba Ba has a habit of falling to his knees post-goal and praying.

Via FIFA.com:

Premier League matches without defeat represents Newcastle United's longest unbeaten run in the English top flight since 1951. The surprise sequence has taken the Magpies up to third, with over six months having now passed since they last tasted league defeat. The star of their unlikely rise has been Demba Ba, who has already become the first Newcastle player since Andy Cole to score multiple league hat-tricks in a single season – a feat that not even Alan Shearer managed during his time on Tyneside. The Senegalese striker has proved to be one of the Premier League's most prolific predators since moving to West Ham United from Hoffenheim last season, accruing 15 goals in 18 starts for his two English clubs.

See also Goal.com on Ba announcing his intention to play for Senegal in the 2012 African Nations Cup in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon from January 21st to February 12th, much to his club, their fans and the Newcastle sports media's dismay.

Music Break. Cashley

Because we don't feature enough rap from Namibia.

"You're a South African, what's your story?"

New Zealand is often sold to prospective (mostly white) South African immigrants as "South Africa 30 years ago" (wink, wink). That version of an Edenic idyll is not entirely what a young South African found New Zealand to be recently in a local version of Occupy Wall Street in Dunedin. In a scene captured by amateur video (which made the rounds last week on the internets), an angry drunk protesting the protesters threatens to break down tents and generally makes a nuisance of himself. One of the vocal protesters–our equality-and-justice-minded South African immigrant–leads a chant against the intruder, and then decides to reason with the drunk. "You're a South African … What's your story?" asks the drunk. Perhaps he is appealing to some kind of shared kinship: privilege, siding with capital or power, or disdain for protesters. Saffers and Kiwis. Maybe, the drunk New Zealander is just confused about why a white South African would be protesting capitalism's evils, when one of the finest versions of all that capitalism engineers was what the South African republic was founded upon. Or maybe he's wondering why so many white South Africans seek refuge in what the man deems to be his country, and now, wants to protest …what?

Whatever.

See what happens next as the young South African gets to feel what it might be like to be a real squatter, living at the margin of the mercy of state, authority, wealthy people and the scorn of your fellows. For his courage, we hope our young protestor is fine.

Also here.

How Europe is Evolving Toward Africa

No, this is not about the anxieties of Niall Ferguson.

Anthropologist John Comaroff spoke at The Graduate Institute in Geneva about the themes that lie at the heart of (the introduction to) the latest book he co-wrote with Jean Comaroff, and which carries the same title as the lecture: 'Theory from the South: Or, How Europe is Evolving Toward Africa.' (Keynote starts 5 minutes into the recording; there's a Q&A in the last third, including some words about Lionel Messi.)

Brokeback Iceberg

Everyone loves an African animal story.

People get terribly upset when African animals are declared extinct (as was the Western Black rhino, last week), but when we see this video about saving the black rhinos, using helicopters, massive amounts of tranquilizers, and WWF's mighty funds, we get that lovely heart-warming feeling.

And we can't but go gaga over cute pet hippos who get to come into the kitchen and are treated to an aromatherapy massage, when the cat isn't even allowed in the lounge (warning to those who have a "I Dream of Africa" reveries and plan to copy these owners: a farmer in South Africa, 40-year old Marius Els, an army major, was bitten to death by the 1.2 tonne hippo he christened Humphrey and tried to domesticate on a farm in Free State province. And our family's pet monkey sat on a tree and threw mango seeds at visitors, while my pet whydah bird pooped on my sister with remarkable accuracy).

But more than all the animal folklore from Africa, we really love a gay African animal story.

In a story that has been dubbed "Brokeback Iceberg," the Toronto Zoo attempted to separate two male African penguins, who seem to have a penchant for homosocial interaction (keep in mind that African penguins do not live on icebergs, but on Southern African seashores swept by freezing Antarctic currents). People went berserk when the zoo announced that it had plans to wrench Pedro and Buddy "from each other's flippers and lock 'em up with females until they nest and take one for the team."

Now, due to "gay activists [in Canada] and abroad [who] have questioned how Toronto, which led the way in North America on gay marriage, could treat this pair of two-legged waddlers so badly," they've decided to forgo the concerns about conserving an endangered species.

AIAC is all for animal conservation–but not when penguin love is involved.