AfricaIs aCountry

The Proper Use of a Vuvuzela

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Proper Use of a Vuvuzela

By
Sean Jacobs

Geert Wilders, the rightwing Dutch politician was in New York last week to lend support to his American counterparts at a rally in lower Manhattan near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Then this happened:

On a packed block of demonstrators between Murray and Warren streets, Wilder’s words were drowned out when a slim woman with brown curly hair blew one of those long plastic horns that blared throughout the South African soccer games in June. A big man with a bald head tried to grab it. There was pushing and shoving. A row or two behind, a man in shorts and a red polo shirt bellowed for police. “Get her out!” he screamed. “Grab her by the neck and force her out!” A pair of cops, both African-American women, eventually unhinged the metal pens and escorted the woman with the vuvuzela and two of her friends away. “Pull your bushels over your head and go home,” yelled the man.

The Village Voice.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.