AfricaIs aCountry

This is the sound of Cecil John Rhodes falling

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

This is the sound of Cecil John Rhodes falling

By
Sophie Woolley

Historic moments get a lot of phone camera coverage these days, but I wondered if radio could better capture the atmosphere at the rally to celebrate the removal of the Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town. As the #RhodesMustFall movement said repeatedly, it’s not just about a statue. So I recorded what people were saying and singing.

I took a portable digital recorder to the mass rally outside the Azania House (the renamed administration building occupied by the student activists). The rally featured powerful speeches from students, academics, workers and school children. There was poetry, song, and then the mass surge to upper campus to see old Cecil the statue being taken down and driven off on the back of a lorry.

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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.