Posted in South Africa, tagged comedy, humor, Jacob Zuma, Jonathan Shapiro, Nelson Mandela, Nhlanhla Nene, politicians, SABC, South Africa, Zapiro on November 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
South African TV just debuted this commercial, below, for a popular chicken fast food chain. It features the character Evita Bezuidenhout, a kind of South African Dame Edma played by satirist Pieter Dirk Uys. My hunch is it will be well-received as with much of Uys’ satire and comedy (he even got a free pass from Apartheid’s junta)
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The same can not be said for how South African politicians usually respond to humor.
Posted in politics, tagged arms trade, Benjamin Pauker, Democratic Republic of Congo, guns and war, PBS Frontline, UN MONUC on November 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Show we a factory in the DRC that produces AK 47s. They don’t exist,” a UN colonel tells reporter Benjamin Pauker in this short PBS Frontline news piece on the source of the arms in that regional war (it implicates Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1998 at least 4 million have died in the conflict. A big problem is the availability of guns. The funs are increasingly coming from one particular source. Here’s a clip.
Posted in Music, tagged African music, Asa, Asha, funk, Music, music videos, Nigeria, Soul on November 26, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Posted in Music, tagged Gwen Gill, Jazz at Columbia University, lectures, Music, New York events, South African jazz on November 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“You Think You Know Me…” Jazz Broadcasting Under Apartheid
Gwen Ansell
Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor, Columbia University Fall 2008
In 1955, the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s controller of ‘Bantu Music,” Dr. Yvonne Huskisson, had declared that the aim of official cultural policy was to wean Africans away from jazz. By 1969, however, she was praising the SABC for “leading” Africans towards this “sophisticated” music (at least a third of documented working black composers were working in jazz by that time), and by the mid ‘70s, she was taking a credit as producer on SABC transcription recordings of jazz. How did South African jazz survive, thrive and win this war of the airwaves under the highly unfavorable conditions of the apartheid police state – and what was it about jazz as a music that put it at the center of this struggle?
Thursday, December 4, 2008, 7:30 pm
620 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
116th and Broadway, New York City
Posted in South Africa, tagged AIDS South Africa, denialism, Harvard University, health, New York Times, Thabo Mbeki on November 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Front page of The New York Times today:
A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.
The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.
Coming in the wake of Mr. Mbeki’s ouster in September after a power struggle in his party, the African National Congress, the report has reignited questions about why Mr. Mbeki, a man of great acumen, was so influenced by AIDS denialists.
Posted in Music, tagged Abdullah Ibrahim, jazz, Music, Senzo, South African jazz, The National Abu Dhabi on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim talks to Philippa Kennedy in (the Adu Dhabi-based) The National about musical education:
“… Ibrahim spends so much time in schools and colleges talking to young music students … He wants them to feel the music, not just play it. He talks about music as a holistic process that takes in body, soul and all the references to the past. For example, he says, “Art Tatum is an incredible piano player. He would walk in and people would say ‘God is in the house’. He wrote a piece called Elegy and one day he went to a bar where a young man was playing his tune. Tatum didn’t even listen. He said: ‘He knows what I play but he doesn’t know why I play.’ “
Posted in South Africa, tagged Ernie Els, Gary Player, golf, Natal, Papwa Sewgolum, South Africa, sport, The Lost Dream of a South African Golfing Legend, Trevor Immelman on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
[Gary] Player’s website declares that he is “the most successful international golfer of all time.” But there is something extravagant about Mr. Player’s self-promotion, and not just because U.S. stars such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus have won more majors. His claim of supremacy outside the U.S. must also be qualified … During the prime of Mr. Player’s career there was another South African who was his equal on the links, who defeated him in 1965 at a sensational provincial open championship in Durban and who won several European championships.
Posted in Music, tagged funk, jazz, Ntjapedi, Sesotho, South African music on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in film, tagged Black Adam The End of the White Guy, film, racism, South Africa, whiteness on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A number of people have forwarded me the URL for the trailer and website of “Black Adam The End of the White Guy,” a film about whiteness in South Africa. I even recognized a few of the people in the trailer.
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The point of the film, according to its website, is to “dismantle the White Guy and put him back together as a Human Being.” The publicity suggests the main character, Dominic, would meet and be interrogated by a group of people over dinner or in informal settings while being filmed.
In principle it sounds like an interesting concept. It also comes with heavy intellectual backing (former Idasa head Wilmot James likes it).
However, it’s still unclear what the whole point is. It also does not help that the trailer includes such irritating statements such as “He [the white] guy is now the other [in South Africa].”
However, I can’t make up my mind based on the trailer. I need to see more as sometimes a film turns out different than the trailer.
