AfricaIs aCountry

The Indians are coming

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

The Indians are coming

By
Sean Jacobs

Image credit Tourism Victoria via Flickr CC BY 2.0

This is an ad to promote the wares of Willow TV—the California-based portal for live Internet streaming of big cricket matches—ahead of India’s tour of South Africa, a tour that kicks off today. I’ll let the stereotypes of South Africa (Afrikaner farmers, coloured klopse and Zulu fighters) and the idea of cricket as a white sport (at the crease and on the oval at least it is the preserve of white men and boys), impugn itself. Or maybe the client or the creatives behind the commercial were just trying to be honest. (BTW, I am going to hedge a bet: this commercial was conceptualized and made by a South African production company. I hope I am wrong.)

H/T: Omar Karim

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.