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Archive for May, 2008




The murderous pogrom against migrants and refugees in South Africa has now claimed 62 people murdered and thousands homeless at last count. I have been struck by the haphazard official response by the South African government (apart from rhetorical commitments) and the country’s political leadership (President Thabo Mbeki, hiding in a TV studio, to this day has not visited a single area affected by the violence or publicly stood next to migrants reassuring migrants that they’re welcome.) While South African media have a dubious past when it comes to covering immigration issues, some creatives are exception. A group of Johannesburg-based filmmakers — angry and disappointed at the outbreak of violence, bigotry and ignorance — has just announced an effort to produce eight 30-second public service announcements for broadcast on South African public television. They also plan to make six 30-minute documentaries around this theme. For more information on the project, see here). [BTW South African filmmakers have not shied away from this theme in the past. From "God is African" by Akin Omotoso, "Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon" by Khalo Matabane, the short film "The Foreigner" by Zola Maseko to more recently Darrell Roodt's new film "Zimbabwe" (I have not seen the last film).]

* The images above are from the photographer Dulce Pincon’s photo series, “The Real Superheroes,” that elevate immigrant workers, if only in photographs, to larger than live figures. See here.

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Table of Contents here.

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I woke this morning. Rosa went to music class. I put on Joe Henderson. For Fidel and Nkosi and all the new babies in South Africa. (Oh, the record, see here.)

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DJ Chief Bouma, West Coast purveyer of Ivorian Coupe Decale adds to the myried remixes of Usher’s “Love in this Club.” You can hear it here.

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Original reference.

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Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest nations, has become a major transshipment hub and the epicenter in Africa for the cocaine trade, according to U.S., European and U.N. officials. The shift demonstrates how the flow of drugs adapts not only to law enforcement pressure but also to the forces of global economics.

View the video report by Washington Post reporter Kevin Sullivan here and the print version of the story here.

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The Christian Science Monitor‘s Johannesburg correspondent Scott Baldauf (I am a real fan of the paper’s Africa reporting) on the link between cross-border movement between South Africa and Zimbabwe as a result of a food crisis against the backdrop of a meltdown in Zimbabwe and widespread xenophobia (that turned violent and murderous) in South Africa. Here.

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In late April … President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa — Zimbabwe’s influential neighbor — addressed a four-page letter to President Bush. Rather than coordinating strategy to end Zimbabwe’s nightmare, Mbeki criticized the United States, in a text packed with exclamation points, for taking sides against President Robert Mugabe’s government and disrespecting the views of the Zimbabwean people. “He said it was not our business,” recalls one American official, and “to butt out, that Africa belongs to him.” Adds another official, “Mbeki lost it; it was outrageous.”

Full context in Washington Post.
Remember Mbeki’s letter to Clinton about HIV/AIDS in 2000 where he repeated nutty AIDS-origin theories? Deja Vu.

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A 6-page spread in Harper’s Magazine, a monthly periodical known for its “emphasis on fine writing and original thought.” You need a subscription to see the article so the writer, Frank Brunes, has kindly created a link to the article on his blog. If you still can’t access it, an editor over at Slate gives a glimpse of the article’s contents:

“… An essay reflects on the widespread reports of “magical penis loss” in Nigeria and Benin, in which sufferers claim their genitals were snatched or shrunken by thieves. Crowds have lynched accused penis thieves in the street. During one 1990 outbreak, “[m]en could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets.” Social scientists have yet to identify what causes this mass fear but suspect it is what is referred to as a “culture-bound syndrome,” a catchall term for a psychological affliction that affects people within certain ethnic groups.”

Enjoy.

See also this profile of Brunes.

HT: Ibn Battutta and Naijablog

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In my day job, I teach university-level courses in African Studies. Occasionally I have to teach introductory courses that aim to cover the continent’s long and diverse history. One problem lecturers often have in teaching courses that include Africa’s pre-colonial past — a period when Africa’s interaction with Asian societies was more intense than it was with Europe and preceding the arrival of white traders, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and colonialism — is the lack of access to primary written sources. The best we often do is the tale of the 12th century Malian king Sundiata, or the 18th century recollections of the freed slave Olaudah Equiano (which has attracted its fair share of detractors but still retains its potency), or the secondary accounts of the life of the North African traveler, Hassan al-Wazzan also known as Leo Africanus, who inspired this blog (see for example Amin Maalouf or Natalie Zemon Davis’ books on the life of Leo Africanus). That brings me to the news that South Africa’s government funded a project to digitize thousands of books and manuscripts recovered in Timbuktu in Mali. The materials — estimated number: 30,000 — will be available for on the internet by scholars and students. For much of the period before whites arrived on the continent, Timbuktu served as a “crossroads in Mali for trade in gold, salt and slaves along the southern edge of the Sahara.” The first batch of the rare manuscripts have been digitized and made available online to scholars and students. At least 300 are expected to be available online by the end of 2008. The documents are mostly in Arabic — they’ll be translated into Western languages — and cover “… the sciences of astronomy, mathematics and botany; literary arts; Islamic religious practices and thought; proverbs; legal opinions; and historical accounts.” Full New York Times story here.

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