Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 680
February 18, 2011
'The Admiral and Akin'
Yeh, not Siskel and Ebert.
I'm waiting for these Johannesburg-based guys–film director, producer and actor, , and Andy Kasrils, who sometimes goes by DJ alias, The Admiral–to put their new movie review show (now on African satellite TV service DSTV) online. They promised they would. For now, those of us not living on the continent have to do with their Facebook page.
The Youth of Mali
Old Master Boubacar Traoré (also known as Kar Kar, "the one who dribbles too much") has a new album out titled "Mali Denhou". He has some advice for Mali's youth in the above promo video. In the 2001 documentary I'll Sing for You you'll hear Ali Farka Touré say: "If the maximum is 5, I give 10 to Kar Kar." - Tom Devriendt.
February 17, 2011
'A World Class African University'
Late last year (in November) The New York Times ran a news piece on how the University of Cape Town is "now resplendently multiracial" despite the paper noting that white students still outnumber blacks "almost two to one" on the campus. This in a country where "only 9 percent [of the people] is white." The piece did not say much about what the faculty looked like except that white men make up 70% of all professors.
We were reminded of that piece when our inboxes were flooded with forwarded emails (and petitions) about a decision by the University to downgrade its Center for African Studies (CAS) - founded in 1976 - by incorporating it into a hodgepodge department incorporating Anthropology, African Languages and Literature and Gender Studies. The building space that CAS occupied – including a gallery, and a public lecture and performance space (at one time, CAS was also home to a resident dance company, and hosted book launches and groundbreaking conferences) - is already being partially occupied by a new Institute the Huminaties in Africa (HUMA), with some costly renovations. In many ways, a centre for "African Studies," and an institute to foster the "Humanities in Africa" replicate each other in their continental ambitions for subjecting the whole of "Africa" to comprehensive study. So why would one institution, established in the mid '70s, and fought hard-for, be quietly divested of its faculty over the past couple of years, only to be replaced by a twin by another name?
There's a lot of rumors and whispers speculate on what is making these moves possible. However, there's little reporting on this situation in Cape Town or elsewhere. And in its public statements, the university is coy about the politics in which this move is submerged. But to some observers, there's a couple of things that stick out: though the university boasts that 40% of its students are black, not many of its faculty are; new hires often leave for positions in other universities, citing the problematic racism pervasive within their departments. In fact, at the higher levels of management, this disparity is even more noticeable: the director of CAS, Harry Garuba, is one of only three black heads of departments–out of about 40–at the university. The other two are Francis Nyamnjoh in Anthropology and Abner Nyamende, who is the head of African Languages in Literature (two of the departments about to be merged with CAS).
The university insists CAS is past its sell by date (it's a relic of Apartheid, which made it necessary for a centre dedicated to the study of all things "African") and anyway, "the study of Africa is deeply rooted across the institution" (and now that those bad days are over, all things African are freely incorporated across the curriculum). Not so fast, say defenders of CAS and critics of the university's curriculum. Some faculty–in informal conversations–scoff at such a suggestion. They note that it is no coincidence that the last significant public confrontation around how connected UCT's curriculum was to its surroundings ended in the director of CAS at the time, Mahmood Mamdani, being pilloried. Mamdani eventually left, but CAS survived, remaining one of the few departments that welcomed visiting scholars and provided a space for free-flowing ideas and interdisciplinary research. Some of us who've walked into the Department of English at UCT, for example, only to encounter a willful lack of interest–accompanied by those mild expressions of resentment found in peculiarly colonial spaces–found, to our delight, that CAS not only provided us with office space and access to libraries, but introductions to fellow scholars and opportunities to share our work with UCT faculty and students.
This is all happening at a "world class African university."
Music Break
A little Luso Rap infatuation I've been harboring for a while has led me down interesting paths throughout the years. The attention that I've given to sounds like Kuduro, House Angolana, and Tarraxinha has led me away from good old Hip Hop like Kid MC's track above.
Time to pay more attention.–Boima Tucker
Book Review: The Caine Prize
We are now in the season of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. But if it weren't for the encouragement set up by the Caine Prize for African writing, we wouldn't have had the same early recognition of talent from African countries.
The master of the short story, Raymond Carver, is known for the damage he creates with the small artillery of economised words. Nothing happens in his blue-collar characters' lives–language is sparse here, too dear to be jabbered out in the manner that popular, first person fiction is now known for in north America (for an excellent rant on the poverty of the worlds inhabited by contemporary novelists' imaginations, see Siddhartha Deb's response in "Gentrified Fiction" ).
Check out the 2010 Cane Prize for African Writing, A Life in Full and Other Stories, for an antidote to that horrible trend in story-writing.
The characters sometimes remain silent, not because they are unaware of the their own volatile emotions, or the triggers that detonate quiet worlds – but because the external world is often not ready to comprehend complexity. Included in the collection are the finalists Ken Barris (South Africa) for "The Life of Worm", Lilly Mabura (Kenya) for "How Shall we Kill the Bishop," Namwali Serpell (Zambia) for "Muzungu," Alex Smith (South Africa) for "Soulmates," and Olufemi Terry (the eventual 2010 winner in the picture above) for "Stickfighting Days."
Lilly Mabura's "How Shall we Kill the Bishop" is a meditation on the life of Father Yasin. In the dusty, soldier-infested Kenyan town in which Fr. Yasin, other priests, bishop, and their cook, who is "no less of a priest than any of them" still carried out the ceremonies of Christiandom – singing the 5th century poet Sedulius' Easter song, wearing the regalia appropriate for each rank – they encounter little, other than their own unbearable attachments. That, is, until the day Fr. Yasin intervenes in the affairs of soldiers: he walks in to a strobe-lit "joint." He is not there to partake, but to untangle a scrawny girl from this place – she who had, until recently, surprised them with a wellspring of soprano. Early in the story, Yasin realises that the "condition of man" is his attempt to "forget" – whether is his addiction to cigarettes (Fr. Ahmed); a woman (Fr. Seif); that he was tested the most before admission into priesthood (Fr. Dugo). Their determination to absent themselves of something then intruded into every space they entered. For Fr. Yasin, the elephant that accompanies him is his attempt to forget that he is without a father: the son of a prostitute, he has no image of a father to place on a shelf. Here, in his attempt to take the church songbird out of the place in which she cannot sing, the burden that has accompanied him his whole life arrives to do battle with him.
In "The Life of Worm," Ken Barris chronicles a dog's life – through the owner's obedience to his dog's whims, aggression, and quivering needs. The narrator is a man ensconced behind electrified fencing and alarms, trapped behind fears of intrusion and intruders. Worm supposedly exists in order to make the owner fear less about the loss of his possessions, but because he requires vigorous exercise – it is his aggression and energy for which he is employed, but those are the same characteristics that enslave his master, who must endure sleepless nights while Worm shuffles around, barks at random noises, simultaneously alarmed and alarming.
Namwali Serpell's "Muzungu" takes place in the blearly thirst of the sundowner set: she's captured the near-still life of expatriate life, replete with pool, sunburn, cigarettes in beer-bottles, and parental oblivion. It is this neglect that leads Isabella to the excluded "servant's quarters" behind – to discover her difference: that she is mzungu, ghost-girl. Unseen by the white-expatriate set, but very visible to those others who, themselves existed beyond a certain line of vision.
Olufemi Terry's "Stickfighting Days" is story about virility, skill, youth, and life – but also about rules, boundaries, discipline necessary to excel, the enforcers – the "judges" – of the limits within which we can play games, and how, at times, those enforcers are removed from the game, so that rules do not have to be followed.
"Soulmates" chronicles the love story of two who came together before the time allowed it – a Dutch peasant girl sold by her family to a violent farmer in South Africa meets the love of her life: Titus, a fellow-slave on the farm. Their "godless lust" is still recorded as a crime – but writer Alex Smith's reveals that they rescued each other by discovering, for each other, the beauty that the body can provide – rather than the violence that one body can do to another.
Also included are the stories completed by a select group of writers who took part at the CDC Caine Prize Writers' Workshop, held at the Gellmann Conservancy at Ol Nyoriro, Laikipa Province, Kenya. Why do writer's retreats take the writer out of their urban environments, and place them in idyllic locations that is more reminiscent of the 19th Century's vision of the safely romantic? What did these writers – many of whom are combatants of urban landscapes – make of the "puff adder settled right by the entrance to the workroom" and the impala, elephant, and lion who "showed a close interest" in their proceedings? There's a good story.–Neelika Jayawardane
Kenny Kunene is a Marketing Genius
You have to admire the shameless smarts of Kenny Kunene. In the last two months, the relatively obscure club promoter–unknown before the start of 2011–has assured himself some valuable, free publicity. Who is Kunene? A 40-year old owner of trendy nightclubs with a penchant for bling, extravagant bashes, and eating sushi off half-naked models at his parties. Local media reports his every move since his guests include top ANC and government figures; he now has the honour of being the subject of indignant editorials in South Africa's press. (One editor was particularly upset that he ate sushi off a white model.)
But Kunene has now graduated from being solely subject matter for the South African press: the "international" (basically British and American) media - including the BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times - has recently provided us with "analyses" of his excesses. His Bacchanalian lifestyle is usually offered up as a sign of what's wrong with the new South Africa, and his bling is referenced as a reflection of the growing inequality in the country.
The truth is that there is nothing special in the behavior of the small group of black billionaires or showmen. In fact, in South Africa, inequality will only get worse, regardless of who is on top, or who's eating raw fish. And where are the stories about all the White Billionaires who do vile injustices to the bodies of women? Are they only subjects in William Kentridge films? They've been around a lot longer, and there's more of them. In fact, recent research still points out that old racial inequalities stay largely intact: The South African Institute of Race Relations–hardly an anti-white organization–recently revealed that whites still earn eight times more on average than their black counterparts and make up the bulk of the manager and CEOs in that country.
But I could not stop wondering where I had read this whole line about the special characteristics of Black crass-spenders before.
Then I remembered. Political scientist Mahmood Mamdani wrote what is probably the template for a takedown of this kind of sloppy "analysis" way back in 1997–in a review of a (very bad) book on black capitalism:
The conclusion [of Comrades in Business by Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley and Van Zyl Slabbert] is appropriately titled "The Underclass versus the Liberation Aristocracy". The authors are clearly worried that their selective vision may be seen as racism: "Criticism of black fat cats without including white fat cats smacks of racism indeed." But they go on to do just that. "Comparative extreme inequality remains South Africa's ticking time-bomb". But they do not see this as reason enough to explore the political possibility of social justice and economic redistribution. One wonders why.
They both bank on "the extraordinary patience of the poor amid extreme affluence" and are clearly worried that this patience may be wearing thin. The optimism stems from the fact that "the underclass is generally not a political threat through organised political opposition", though "its size in South Africa hugely increases the cost of containing, policing and caring for the outsiders". And yet, there is reason to worry: "The South African underclass does not suffer from a sense of relative deprivation because rich whites are not necessarily a reference group, but wealthy blacks may well become one."
It is this last bit of reasoning that underlines the core worry of the authors, that the sight of white fat cats may not stir a black rebellion, but that of black fat cats just may. In a mocking tone, they relate page after page of episodes illustrating the nouveau riche black leadership of post-apartheid South Africa, for whom "anything less than a white bourgeois lifestyle would have appeared unequal". Though they do not say it in so many words, the authors presume a clear and continuing division of labour between white fat cats as economic entrepreneurs and black fat cats as political supervisors.
This is why white cats can afford to look fat and act greedy; but black cats must at all times look lean and act mean. The old nonracial question, who will bell the cat?, is recast in a racialised South Africa: Who will bell the black cat?
– Sean Jacobs; Neelika Jayawardane.
February 16, 2011
Interview: Filmmaker Yoruba Richen
Yoruba Richen's new documentary film, "Promised Land," about postapartheid land politics in South Africa–"a ticking time bomb" since only 5% of all claims have been processed since 1994–was screened at The New School last Friday. The film tells the story of land claims by two black communities removed from their land during colonialism (by the end of Apartheid, whites–who make up less than 10% of the population owned nearly 90% of the land.) The film also tells the story of the white farmers who currently own the land. For some background, see here. The PBS style documentary captures well the tensions of the process. For me at least (I was a post-screening discussant at the event) the film raised three key issues of the land reform process: whether reconciliation excludes justice (i.e. comprehensive land reform); what is the position of whites after Apartheid (some of the whites in the film are tone deaf about the after effects of colonialism and Apartheid); and whether land reform will be the undoing of the ANC government (sadly, I don't think so, unless we're doing about urban land hunger; not covered in the film). The film suggests the government lacks the political will to puss for comprehensive land reform. It's worth seeing.
After the screening AIAC's brand new contributor, Anni Lynskaer (Danish journalist; New School student), sat down with Yoruba (that the 2 of them in the picture above) and asked her about some of the issues raised by the film:
–Anni Lyngskaer, Sean Jacobs
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