Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 600

Lone Stars Shining

It seems that the election atmosphere remains tense, but word from Liberia is people are taking it all in stride.

Beyond mainstream politics, it's time for celebration.

The Lone Stars Vol. 1: Hipco and Gbema compilation is out! The album was released this past Tuesday, and is available for purchase by digital download at Bandcamp, iTunes, or Amazon.

The above video is for David Mell's "Hero", one of the songs featured on the compilation. I think the album really shows the amazing talent working in both Liberia, and the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. Support these artists by buying their music!

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'Wildlife in Black and White'

Slightly off topic from yesterday's conversation about Africa as "Paradise" and Eden and men in elephant suits.

Check out the work of award-winning Johannesburg photographer Heinrich van den Berg, which makes the rounds of British newspapers, travel magazines and those focusing on wildlife. These are from his most recent project, "Shades of Nature." They are stunning. Two more:

Here and here.

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Gandhi in Somalia

By Abdourahman Waberi

I have known Professor Mohamed Abdi Mohamed aka Gandhi for many years. I read his books and pamphlets devoted to the history of his native Somalia. A longtime resident of Besancon, France, we occasionally met in Paris or in Djibouti. A former researcher at the IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement) in Paris, Gandhi, have suddenly become an international political figure.

On April 3 2011, Professor Gandhi was sworn in as the interim president of the newly-created state called Azaaniya in Nairobi. Originally known as Jubaland, Azaania comprises lower and middle Juba and Gedo regions on the Kenya-Somalia border, a region partly occupied by Al Shabaab troups and inhabited by 1.3 million people and the focus of media attention in the last few weeks.

Professor Gandhi hardly engaged publicly in politics before 2000 when he became an active member of the Peace talks held in Arta, Djibouti, and resulting in the establishment of the Transitional National Government of Somalia (TNG). Yet I can't still imagine the soft-spoken, mild mannered and almost sly scholar in the roughest political arena of East Africa.

When I heard he was nominated Minister of Defense of the TNG in 2009 I was speechless. A few months later he was dismissed. I thought he would soon vanish in the the slippy soil of Somalian politics. I was wrong.

It is no secret that Professor Gandhi lacks both experience and charisma. Gandhi is the mere creation of Nairobi and not the face and voice of a tangible grassroots movement similar to the experience of Somaliland. But again I might be wrong.

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Azania is a buffer zone

By Abdourahman Waberi

I have known Professor Mohamed Abdi Mohamed aka Gandhi for many years. I read his books and pamphlets devoted to the history of his native Somalia. A longtime resident of Besancon, France, we occasionally met in Paris or in Djibouti. A former researcher at the IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement) in Paris, Gandhi, have suddenly become an international political figure.

On April 3 2011, Professor Gandhi was sworn in as the interim president of the newly-created state called Azaaniya in Nairobi. Originally known as Jubaland, Azaania comprises lower and middle Juba and Gedo regions on the Kenya-Somalia border, a region partly occupied by Al Shabaab troups and inhabited by 1.3 million people and the focus of media attention in the last few weeks.

Professor Gandhi hardly engaged publicly in politics before 2000 when he became an active member of the Peace talks held in Arta, Djibouti, and resulting in the establishment of the Transitional National Government of Somalia (TNG). Yet I can't still imagine the soft-spoken, mild mannered and almost sly scholar in the roughest political arena of East Africa.

When I heard he was nominated Minister of Defense of the TNG in 2009 I was speechless. A few months later he was dismissed. I thought he would soon vanish in the the slippy soil of Somalian politics. I was wrong.

It is no secret that Professor Gandhi lacks both experience and charisma. Gandhi is the mere creation of Nairobi and not the face and voice of a tangible grassroots movement similar to the experience of Somaliland. But again I might be wrong.

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The Striker from Mauritania

Fans and announcers alike chant "Domoneek Domoneek Domoneeeeek!" each time Dominique da Silva scores a goal for the Egyptian club team Al Ahly (and he scores a lot). 'Da Silva' is relatively pronounceable in Arabic, but Egyptian football chants must also translate to car horns and "DOMONEEK!" is adequately rhythmic.

Da Silva is from Mauritania (he is probably the only decent player in the national team) and has charmed Egyptians with his beautiful performance as Al Ahly's newest striker.

When asked about Da Silva, my brother Karim stated "He's a BEAST!" My father also adores him, and my father usually doesn't adore anyone besides Pelé (and Mahmoud al-Khateeb, also known as Bibo, but that's a post for another time). Egypt has not qualified for the World Cup or the African Cup of Nations this year (we were until this point the CAF reigning champions), but football still speaks to those continuing the struggle for an anti-colonial democratic state. And da Silva is, frankly, kicking ass on our behalf. He's our hero.

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The Chronic

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Fresh off its Euros prize from its €100,000 prize from the Dutch Prince Claus Fund, Chimurenga launched "The Chronic" yesterday:

Chimurenga's new publishing project takes the form of a once-off, one-day-only edition of a fictional newspaper to be released on "Black Wednesday", October 19th 2011 – a historic day in South Africa that marks the banning of numerous Black Consciousness organisations and independent newspapers by the apartheid regime. Please see attached for more details.

Titled the Chimurenga Chronic, the project is an intervention into the newspaper as a vehicle of knowledge production and dissemination. Editor Ntone Edjabe explains, "Knowledge produced by Africans is always curtailed towards simplicity because we are trapped in the logic of emergency. At Chimurenga we're constantly trying to create beyond this shut hole of relevance. There is indeed famine and war but there is also life. There is also innovation, thinking, dreams – all the things that make life. Our project is to articulate this complexity."

With over 90 contributors, The Chronic is a pan African production that locates itself directly inside the crisis of relevance by provoking and challenging mainstream perceptions, accounts, representations and narrations of history.

"The objective is not to revisit the past to bring about closure," says Edjabe, "but rather to provoke and challenge our perception, in order to imagine a new foundation from which we can think and act within our current context."

Here.

The Dutch Disease

What is it with the Dutch that fascinates them about South Africans?

The last time I travelled two hours to watch an opera, it was on horseback. A self-declared pig farmer I was staying with was invited to attend a private opera function at his neighbor's place, and decided I'd come along. The ride took us through swamps and empty veld. Living on the other side of the ridge, the neighbor turned out to be an emigrated Dutchman. Not much farming happening on the estate he bought some years ago. "We're thinking of growing some vines. And push the opera scene here in the Cape as well." Where better to do this than on a farm a good three hours drive outside of Cape Town.

This scene came back to me when I drove up to Nijmegen in Holland on Saturday to attend the South African Afrikaaps hiphopera. The play was exceptional. Exceptional not only because it hit all the right notes (the cast of self-defined coloured artists proved itself to be the multi-talented group of musicians and activists they are lauded for back home), but also because the show stands out in the throng of South African artists visiting the Low Countries each year. I didn't do my maths properly, but I'd say seven out of ten of South African artists visiting us here each year are white (and Afrikaans).

Language, obviously (the standing ovations for the Afrikaaps plays over the last two weeks being a fair indicator); history, possibly (Dutch colonialism in the 17th century); guilt, maybe (with the exception of some leftist groupings in the Netherlands, the Dutch populace and their government were not all that critical about the Apartheid state); and religion, sure (disciples from the same protestant root).

Then there's the thrill of the clash between white and black? One would sure think so when browsing the Dutch papers lately. There is the essay about Afrikaners being the victims of a new apartheid (by a Dutch right-wing politician in a 'respected' newspaper), Afrikaners feeling alienated (a guest column by Afrikaner "civil society activist" Flip Buys in De Volkskrant of all places), reviews of the Festival for (the) Afrikaans (language) in Amsterdam (at the 'Tropics Theatre' — the usual Afrikaans suspects show up: yesteryear's authors and musicians), there is the Africa in the Picture festival (where one third of the featured films was South African), talks about Shooting the Boer, and articles on the trial of Eugene Terre'Blanche's murder 'dividing the country to the bone' (it sure does – but only in the foreign press).

So when I came across this essay and photo series in the Dutch newspaper Vrij Nederland about a right-wing Afrikaner commando-style training camp ('There's Afrikaner blood running through my veins,' republished in the Belgian paper De Standaard over the weekend under the title 'Afrikaner training camp: afraid, white and bullied'), I can no longer feel surprised.

They are all Afrikaners, with Dutch, French or German roots, these youths of the so-called born free-generation.

Cue: rape, murder, ANC and Malema. It makes you wonder who pays for these articles. And why.

Soon, our mainstream media will feature an article on South Africa without those four words, but not just now.

Read and watch the 'multi-media production' here.

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Music Break. Sayat Demissie

Ethiopian pop from this past summer. Sayat Demissie is a former beauty queen. Her decision to embark on an acting and singing career divides the Ethiopian blogosphere.

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Coldplay's "Paradise"

Coldplay's new video for the song "Paradise" was released on Youtube today.  It is about an elephant (well, Chris Martin in an elephant suit) escaping from a zoo in London, smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town.  With few exceptions there are no people in this elephant's world. Mr Elephant buys a unicycle in Cape Town (Woodstock says Tom) and heads out to the Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members) they get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd–turns out in Johannesburg–and play out the song. Paradise indeed.

Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.

We have to work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:

Tom: Paradise is Cape Town's central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.

Sean: Is this Coetzee's Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the's video director] too much credit?

Herman: Yep, I think this is Coetzee plain and simple: paradise is sunny skies, open grasslands and winding roads, all devoid of people. However, as far as touristy depictions of sunny South Africa ('See the world in your own country!') go, it's rather restrained (no sandy beaches or penguins at Boulder's Beach [in Simon's Town], for instance.

Neelika:  I see an 'artificial' elephant trapped, imprisoned. Counting the days, like a hostage. Desperate to be let out.  Plots escape … a reversal of the economic escapees from Africa …

So: the modern man is like an artificial version of the Real African. He smuggles himself back! (instead of out of there, as we know from people who've hidden in wheel shafts, etcetera.)

He gets there. No one gives him a break (no rides). But then! More of his own people–fellow escapees from the rigors of modernity. And then, they play sweet, cheesy music.

I liked the lyrics of I used to rule the world a lot better. It made me think of Idi.

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Photography. Sam Buk

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Here.

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