Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 592

Africa gets new football kits

By Basia Lewandowska Cummings

It is (sort of ) a nice project. Puma Creative invited ten artists to design a new football kit that 'celebrates Africa's unique visual identity and culture', with a strip for each of the partnering African national football teams: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa and Togo. The launch happened this week in London and the kits look alright when they are on, and from far away.

But up close, the 10 artists stuck to the format: for Ivory Coast we've got an elephant with a really long trunk across the chest:

For Cameroon, a nice Lion-King style graphic; about as impressive as a weak roar.

For Namibia, well, it is hot there, so it's a sun and a football.

Cameroon and South Africa (kit below) aren't even in the 2012 tournament, so not sure why they got a kit.

In the weird friendships between corporations and cultural institutions, the Design Museum in London is hosting an exhibition called 'Interpretations of Africa: Football, Art and Design', which sounds more like an excuse for Puma to show off their new 'collaboration' with local artists.

All in all- a nice colorful kit, but not much else going on. Hopefully football skills will compensate.

Here's a short introduction of the artists (video made by Puma):

David Cameron's gay rights

Fresh from insulting British women, Prime Minister David Cameron is now endangering the lives of gay people in Africa. Appearing on the BBC (with presenter Andrew Marr; they make quite a team) Cameron threatened to cut aid to governments of "countries that persecute homosexuals" unless they stop punishing people in same-sex relationships. Apart from the patronizing tone (also pointed out by What's Up Africa earlier today), the threat can only end badly as African rights activists warn in a statement:

These threats follow similar decisions that have been taken by a number of other donor countries against countries such as Uganda and Malawi. While the intention may well be to protect the rights of LGBTI people on the continent, the decision to cut aid disregards the role of the LGBTI and broader social justice movement on the continent and creates the real risk of a serious backlash against LGBTI people.

H/T: What's Up Africa, Nerina Penzhorn

Of blood & tears, ink & screen

By Abdourahman Waberi

What is the fil rouge running between Algeria's unforgettable freedom fighter and film producer Saadi Yacef ('The Battle of Algiers', shot by Gillo Pontecorvo in 1966 in the Casbah, was adapted from his true story), Somalia's poet and academic Ali Jimale Ahmed, Congo's notable novelist Emmanuel Dongala, French reporter and author Anne Niva and novelist and former former Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India Shashi Tharoor, to name but a few among the phenomenal team of writers, journalists, photographers, visual artists and activists assembled ? They all appear in the first issue of a brand new remarkable online magazine called WARSCAPES « motivated by a need to move past a void within mainstream culture in the depiction of people and places experiencing staggering violence, and the literature they produce ».

If it is always with huge pleasure and emotion that we readers welcome the birth of a promising publication, let's also show our solidarity. Let's support WARSCAPES and wish them long life.

Photo Credit: Victor Dlamini

Music Break. Badi

Remember Brussels artist Badi (BD Banx on the Héritage project or his Beasty Boys-styled video 'Jump')? He keeps a nice blog too.

Malema time

By Jonathan Faull

The levels of existing poverty, unemployment and material inequality in South Africa are politically and socially unsustainable. This much has always been true. For the country to flourish, democracy –in that well worn cliché –must deliver a "dividend" through the material improvement of the lives of the poor majority.

Towards this end, the ruling ANC has failed–under often difficult circumstances of course.  Massive housing, electrification, sanitation and social grants schemes – while admirable – have arguably transformed the masses into lumpen recipients of goods; clients to a system that perpetuates aspects of destitution without changing them.  Increasingly, the ANC's failures stretch beyond the confines of economic policy-making as the party –increasingly the preserve and battle-ground of elites–sets a course adrift from the grievances, concerns and aspirations of the very citizens they claim in their name.

The suspension today of Julius Malema, President of the ANCYL, and his rise and fall, must be read against this backdrop.

His rise was marked by an occasional penchant for tapping the zeitgeist: needling the nerves of big capital and the entrenched political elite (both black and white), while concurrently channeling the very real frustrations of poor and increasingly marginal South Africans.  His critique of crony politics, Zuma's leadership qualities, his trenchant–often ill-informed –hostility to those in the echelons of the economy and his calls for nationalization of the mines, lingering racialized privelege,  alienated elites within and without the ANC, but in a very real way his causes tapped the desperation of those trapped within the structural violence of South African poverty.

Ultimately, he overstepped, over-played, and was caught in a web of his own making.  He is, for the minute, politically a dead man walking, although the his shadow will continue to fall across the politics of the ANC in the run-up to Mangaung, and beyond.

The twittering classes, never a good barometer of South African opinion, are now ablaze with back-slapping mirth. And some analysts are overstating things.  But, the material conditions that grind the dignity from so many South African lives will be reproduced tomorrow, and the next day, awaiting a new "Juju" to give them voice.

Concha Buika sings about love

Whether you like Pedro Almodóvar's movies or not, there's no way around the sublime soundtracks that come with it. (Who can hear Caetano Veloso's interpretation of 'Cucurrucucu Paloma' without thinking of this scene in Hable Con Ella?) Almodóvar's latest film, El Piel Que Habito, features Concha Buika's renditions of 'Se me hizo facil' and (above) 'Por el amor de amar'.

Via Afro-Europe.

Gimme Hope

This is the second in a video campaign to promote the work of American ngo Mama Hope.

They work with local partners in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Uganda to fund the completion of schools, health clinics, children's centers, clean water systems and food security projects. The idea with this campaign–titled "Stop the Pity. Unlock the Potential"–is to tell "…  the story of connection instead of contrast and potential instead of poverty."  In Mama Hope's own words: "… People everywhere have talent and capacity, and people everywhere share a desire to be able to use those gifts to improve their lives and the lives of the people they care about."

Ah. Mirroring. a classic way of encouraging the feeling that the chasm between the smug, satisfied prick of Self and the other is not so vast.  Hey, there's nothing wrong with that.

But, like a church pastor I once knew said, hope is a combo action: you pray to God for the necessary fortitude, for whatever journey you want to embark upon. Then, you do the action. And be prepared for not reaching the goal you want. But you will achieve something–even if it's not what you want.

Lets hope that the makers of this video, for  Mama Hope do achieve the goal to "connection instead of contrast and potential instead of poverty." But without structural changes, Mama Hope may only be embarking on a difficult journey based on a prayer–without the action necessary.

* Spotted at Boing Boing where they love this.

Edgar Sekloka wrote a book

Taking up the fashionable concept of the book trailer, Edgar Sekloka, one half of French hip hip duo Milk Coffee & Sugar,* here previews, through a powerful poem, his recently released Adulte à Présent, a teenage novel about 15-year old 'la cadette' [the youngest] from Douala, Cameroon, and 13-year-old 'le fils' [the son] from New York, whose paths cross in the U.S. after 'la cadette' flees from her home country.  Here's my translation of the preview poem:

I don't hide myself

even when I say I'm talking about myself

but since we are all part of one another

I believe I'm talking about you

I'm talking about us

our individualism is universal

I talk about everything

it's a mess, it's confusing, insurrectional

it's spontaneous

explicit lyrics stand corrected

for in the face of the order's jokes

I am the force of the brothel

an impromptu bazaar

hard to explain myself

I'm not clear, nor concise

I'm like your life, I'm complicated

a poor man who calls himself bourgeois

a pagan who says he's from good faith

a sugar that says it's bitter

a Frenchman who calls himself Cameroonian

convoluted thinking

in Europe I'm a bikot [black]

in Africa I'm a béké [white]

but I keep on travelling

loosing myself, finding myself

talking slang, talking patois

I've got the flavour of a brown zebra

a bit hot and a bit cold

a bit black and bit white

always confused

because they don't believe me when I say I'm métis under my curly baldness

a bit like this, a bit like that

a bit like all schizophrenics

my folly uses my joy to shed my sorrows

I've made my modesty public

fucking nonsense!

I want to be known

but I can't stand them infuriating me

I'm an artist like you

an artist like everybody

but when I sing under a shower

sometimes the light abounds

and I might be sweaty, I'm still expecting to glisten

lurking in the shadows, waiting becomes a day-job

to wait: it teaches me to temper my haste

when we've got all, at once, it is hard to know how to fight

so I don't listen to the ones who flatter me too much

those who chat to much

the gaze of the neophyte is worth more than the sermons by the professional

professorial, paternalistic flukes

and I need to keep reminding myself I'm not the child of those industrials

my only links in the world of music

are with my sister Touria and my brother Picaflore

I'm not demagogic

I'm not saying the audience is my family

that my living room is a concert hall that sizzles

that I'm affiliated with a department

despite my cryptic thinking, I can't say whatever, never mind how

contradictory

like a heart against a brain

if I had to judge Men, the first would serve me as a provost

and reproach me for having too many affects

time would have us write poems with calculators

it's not what you want but you choose to undergo it

and I'm like you, a pseudo-martyr when my texts show their tariffs

but I accept the complexity of my incoherence

I am the nail that jams the machine that made it

my rap is the theatre of the absurd

in the end all this is a spectacle

it's true but I assume

you see, I've grown up and so did you

I've become an adult while shouting my adolescent writings

Here (in French).

*You know the track they did with South African Tumi & The Volume: Rise Up.

Cameroon meet America

Taking up the fashionable concept of the book trailer, Edgar Sekloka, one half of French hip hip duo Milk Coffee & Sugar,* here previews, through a powerful poem, his recently released Adulte à Présent, a teenage novel about 15-year old 'la cadette' [the youngest] from Douala, Cameroon, and 13-year-old 'le fils' [the son] from New York, whose paths cross in the U.S. after 'la cadette' flees from her home country.  Here's my translation of the preview poem:

I don't hide myself

even when I say I'm talking about myself

but since we are all part of one another

I believe I'm talking about you

I'm talking about us

our individualism is universal

I talk about everything

it's a mess, it's confusing, insurrectional

it's spontaneous

explicit lyrics stand corrected

for in the face of the order's jokes

I am the force of the brothel

an impromptu bazaar

hard to explain myself

I'm not clear, nor concise

I'm like your life, I'm complicated

a poor man who calls himself bourgeois

a pagan who says he's from good faith

a sugar that says it's bitter

a Frenchman who calls himself Cameroonian

convoluted thinking

in Europe I'm a bikot [black]

in Africa I'm a béké [white]

but I keep on travelling

loosing myself, finding myself

talking slang, talking patois

I've got the flavour of a brown zebra

a bit hot and a bit cold

a bit black and bit white

always confused

because they don't believe me when I say I'm métis under my curly baldness

a bit like this, a bit like that

a bit like all schizophrenics

my folly uses my joy to shed my sorrows

I've made my modesty public

fucking nonsense!

I want to be known

but I can't stand them infuriating me

I'm an artist like you

an artist like everybody

but when I sing under a shower

sometimes the light abounds

and I might be sweaty, I'm still expecting to glisten

lurking in the shadows, waiting becomes a day-job

to wait: it teaches me to temper my haste

when we've got all, at once, it is hard to know how to fight

so I don't listen to the ones who flatter me too much

those who chat to much

the gaze of the neophyte is worth more than the sermons by the professional

professorial, paternalistic flukes

and I need to keep reminding myself I'm not the child of those industrials

my only links in the world of music

are with my sister Touria and my brother Picaflore

I'm not demagogic

I'm not saying the audience is my family

that my living room is a concert hall that sizzles

that I'm affiliated with a department

despite my cryptic thinking, I can't say whatever, never mind how

contradictory

like a heart against a brain

if I had to judge Men, the first would serve me as a provost

and reproach me for having too many affects

time would have us write poems with calculators

it's not what you want but you choose to undergo it

and I'm like you, a pseudo-martyr when my texts show their tariffs

but I accept the complexity of my incoherence

I am the nail that jams the machine that made it

my rap is the theatre of the absurd

in the end all this is a spectacle

it's true but I assume

you see, I've grown up and so did you

I've become an adult while shouting my adolescent writings

Here (in French).

*You know the track they did with South African Tumi & The Volume: Rise Up.

Media freedom in South Sudan

Oh dear. The new nation of South Sudan is already sprouting some early teething troubles about media freedom.

Apparently, President Salva Kiir Mayardit (above) "handed over his beloved beautiful elder daughter," one Adu Mayardit, to her husband in a wedding ceremony held in the Catholic Cathedral at Rajaf.

One would usually imagine that this would be a joyous occasion, though full of tears appropriate for the tradition of "handing over" (and thereby "losing") an elder daughter. Instead, Dengdit Ayok, the deputy editor for The Destiny newspaper in the capital Juba, wrote in a now ill-fated column, that the wedding was

attended by a small crowd of people with clouds of sadness gathered in their hearts as it was clear from their faces…because they were upset by the decision taken by the President to give his daughter in wedding to a stranger.

Ayok felt the Sudanese could have exploited the wedding the same way the British monarchy and media did to their young earlier this summer. Instead Ayok only "… witnessed a disappointing social episode." He claimed the wedding "was found disgusting and denounced by many patriotic South Sudanese across the country."

Why so disgusted? Was the man a pariah of epic proportions? A war criminal, perhaps?

Nope. She married a "foreigner" when "… many nationals suit her profile for marriage." And, for good measure, it goes "without saying that it matters not how long she may stay in her father's house."

It turns out the groom is a political refugee from Ethiopia.

So there you have it: Xenophobia in the first portion of the sentence, followed by creepy patriarchal rhetoric about how long a daughter may stay with her father (never mind later stuff about the editor's bafflement about why this father permitted his daughter to marry an alien and a stranger).

After sounding like he was sort of parodying a combination of Albert Camus, the Tea Party, and maybe an Indian Uncle best left behind in another era, Ayok concluded by stating that "because Kiir is a patriotic leader that fought two wars for the well-being of his people," he is a "valued and highly respected by South Sudanese." But now that he shunted off his daughter to some interplanetary visitor, said great leader has "… to some extent reduced himself in the eyes of his people" – so much so that our editor's "heart…is in pain."

As if all that was not maudlin enough, Ayok added this paragraph:

What else is left if an alien could penetrate all the hedges and invade the house of our President, elope and impregnate his daughter? Where were the security presidential personnel when that strange guy entered the house of the President?

Small wonder, then, that the editor of The Destiny, Ngor Aguot Garang (also a reporter for the Sudan Tribune) was promptly arrested.

So there you have it: the deputy editor is a xenophobe, a male chauvinist and a sexist, but we should all fight for his press freedom now. Like we should.

We have a question for the president's office: don't they know about Lindsy Lohan's PR team? People. Just hire a good publicist and a writer. How much better a response would it have been if the President and his daughter (and perhaps the husband, too) wrote a letter to be published in the same paper –clarifying the joy of being the daughter of a father who fully supports her ability to make strong, healthy, autonomous decisions, and being a part of a new nation that welcomes all–in marriage and otherwise. They would have looked like beacons of family love and national unity, and the deputy editor a gibbering idiot.

H/T: Sbongile Mbiko