Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 593

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

Hulk Hogan in Kinshasa

Kinshasa's unique brand of professional wrestling culture has suddenly attracted a number of artists and photographers to the city. They include Colin Delfosse (above), Benedicte Kurzen, Gwenn Dubourthoumieu, Vincent Boisot, Pieter Hugo and Keith Harmon Snow. Like you, we also want to figure out why. It must be the costumes and the lively crowds or the references to "black magic." Anyway, we went looking for these photographs when the music video for rapper Baloji and fellow Congolese Konono N°1′s collaboration "Karibu Ya Bintou" was posted on Youtube yesterday (watch from the 3.05 mark especially), this time with English subtitles:

That's also our music break.

Liberian Demo-crazy

There's been a lot of rumors and propaganda flying around related to the Liberian run-off election, so it's hard to get a sense of what's really happening on the ground. But international and local news show that the police have killed three people, radio stations are being closed, and burnt down, and votes are being counted invalid.

Worst of all the tense atmosphere and a boycott by the CDC party has led to low voter turnout. If anything, this should be a wake up call to all those that thought having democratic elections would sweepingly solve a post-conflict country's problems. Let's hope that these dark days are just a short detour on the long road to the empowerment of the Liberian people.

Photo Credit: Glenna Gordon

African rugby isn't just the Springboks

By Elliot Ross

A couple of weekends ago, just before the Rugby World Cup final kick off, the French rugby team memorably faced down the New Zealand All Blacks' haka. They joined hands and advanced towards the furious New Zealanders in an arrowhead formation. At the point of the arrowhead was an Ivorian, France's captain Thierry Dusautoir (that's him at 28 seconds in this video looking very angry indeed).

Dusautoir's team narrowly lost the final, but there was no argument over who was the outstanding performer, even though one local journalist got his Thierrys all muddled up during the post-match interview. The man dubbed "The Dark Destroyer" scored his team's try and put in a bone-crunching 22 tackles. (Four years ago he managed 38 against the same team, more than the entire All Blacks side combined)

A couple of days after the final, Dusautoir was announced as the 2011 IRB Player of the Year, rugby's equivalent of the Ballon d'Or. It was the second time a Frenchman had won the award, but nobody seemed to notice that Dusautoir is also the third African (after South Africa's Schalk Burger and Brian Habana) to win the game's top individual prize. (BTW, Some of Thierry's best performances have come against the South Africans.)

The best rugby player in the world today is a product of French settler colonialism.

He was born in Abidjan to an Ivorian mother and a French father. His grandfather Jean was an "adventurer" who crossed the Sahara before settling down on the cocoa and coffee plantation on which Thierry grew up. Aged ten, Dusautoir left Cote d'Ivoire for the rural Dordogne region of France, and a few years later, he picked up a rugby ball for the first time.

As has long been the case with the French football team (Zinedine Zidane is of Algerian descent, Patrick Vieira is Senegalese, Marcel Desailly was born in Ghana, Thierry Henry and Lilian Thuram are from Guadeloupe), France's rugby team has become the means by which top athletes from France's former colonies compete at an elite level.

Dusautoir inherited Les Bleus' "Number 6" shirt from the awe-inspiring Cameroonian flanker Serge Betsen. And when Dusautoir eventually retires he will most likely hand the shirt to a Burkinabè, Fulgence Ouedraogo.

Music Break. Alec Lomami

Dapper Congolese-American rapper Alec Lomami (interviewed here by MTV Iggy) shout outs his old hometown Kinshasa over a disco beat.

Photo Credit: Shako Oteka

Found Objects No. 17

'Mr. Mkhize' is a short documentary of a three-month journey photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin undertook in 2003, commissioned by the South African government. What makes it remarkable is not just the silence in between the portraits, usually reserved for a photography exhibition's catalogue, but also the fact that some parts in the series (some of them very intimate) seem to carry the subjects that were later picked up by other (South African) photographers (such as in Pieter Hugo's The Bereaved, Jodi Bieber's Real Beauty, or Mikhael Subotzky's Beaufort West and Ponte City).

Good doses of pan-Africanism*

Since it first came out last year I've had Nas and Damian Marley's concept album "Distant Relatives" on repeat. There are some lapses on the album, but I really like the track "The Promised Land." Basically Marley and Nas updates Dennis Brown to big up Africa.

Nas doesn't make much sense, but Damian Marley stays true to Brown's sentiments:

Imagine Ghana like California with Sunset Boulevard

Imagine Ghana like California with Sunset Boulevard

Johannesburg would be Miami

Somalia like New York

With the most pretty light

The nuffest pretty car

Ever New Year the African Times Square lock-off

Imagine Lagos like Las Vegas

The Ballers dem a Ball

Angola like Atlanta

A pure plane take off

Bush Gardens inna Mali

Chicago inna Chad

Magic Kingdom inna Egypt

Philadelphia in Sudan

The Congo like Colorado

Fort Knox inna Gabon

People living in Morocco like the state of Oregon

Algeria warmer than Arizona bring your sun lotion

Early morning class of Yoga on the beach in Senegal

Ethiopia the capitol of fi di Congression …

Okay, I know, what with "Magic Kingdom inna Egypt"? Or maybe that's deliberate going by the video for another track "Patience." (That video is something to behold with its mix of Egyptology, "The Never Ending Story," Indiana Jones, Shaka Zulu, and "Coming to America" references.) And why model African cities and countries only after the highly unequal glitz of north America?  But we'll forgive them those lapses. To the Promised Land.

* This is hopefully a new meme on AIAC.

Photography. Fatoumata Kande Senghor

Information.

Music Break. The Funk League

An older song by The Funk League, but it comes with a new video. Featuring Brand Nubian's Sadat X.

South Africans 'going into Africa'

My friend Chipo recently sent me this pilot of a documentary travel series entitled Going Native. Not only was I pleasantly surprised to find Chipo in the pilot as one of the characters, but also found the concept and execution totally refreshing.

Tshego Molete, one of the show's creators, describes Going Native as

"a travelogue series looking at the continent through the eyes of three young Southern African women. It explores notions of African being, not through conflict or strife, but through celebration… these three young women set out to 'explore' the motherland by visiting various cultural festivals and gatherings, hoping to learn how they too are a part of the continent as opposed to being separate from it.

What I found most poignant about the pilot (besides the fact that it's a female led endeavor) was the admittance and interrogation of how South(ern) Africans see themselves as somehow different to the rest of the continent. I remember how, growing up in Cape Town, people used to talk about going "into Africa."  This is also where the title comes in. Tshego explains it as a satirical take on the notion of "Going Native", which was a term used in colonial Africa describing Europeans who came to Africa who then proceeded to acquire some "native" traits. "We take that notion and subvert by applying it to people of the continent, who have been born and bred here, but somehow manage to make the distinction between themselves and the continent."

Going Native is a Happy Brown Babies production. They are currently working on developing the show into a full series. I can't wait to see it. Check out more of their work here.