http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2I9D2yDCfc&NR=1 Rapper Stalley, late last year, channels Muhammed Ali. He could have done without the racial epithet.

This Facebook group page is worth visiting. The administrators collect photographs, including video and sound bytes, "... depicting scenes and people from Nigeria between 1960 and 1980." Here

The daily word of inspiration (cut and pasted from Contemporary Literature) from my favorite, comtemporary Communist, Jeremy Cronin:

... At present I am inclined to make my poems much more actively disruptive within themselves, to foreground contradiction and paradox, to enact interruption, to celebrate the parenthetical, to make manifest the unresolved. In the first post-1994 decade of democracy in South Africa, public discourse was overwhelmed with the notions of harmony and self-congratulatory contentment. We had achieved a “political miracle,” we were a “rainbow nation,” we had finally “rejoined the family of nations,” we were “a winning nation,” internationally we could “punch above our weight,” we were at the cutting edge of a global “third wave of democracy,” our own achievement heralded an “imminent African renaissance.” Of course, there is much to be proud of in the South African democratic transition. The public discourses of the time were certainly flattering to all of us in the new political elite (myself included). But the tendencies towards excessive contentment and therefore closure have been even more helpful to the old, the well-entrenched economic elite in the mining houses and financial institutions, the very entities that helped to shape a century of racial segregation and apartheid. They were perfectly happy with a message that said the black majority has got the vote now, uhuru (independence) is upon us, the struggle is over, a luta discontinua!

To my discomfort, some of my own earlier poetry, written in the spirit of a counterhegemonic project, risked being anthologized into the discourse of this shallow, postcolonial triumphalism. A poem like “To learn how to speak / With the voices of the land . . .,” which I performed frequently in the 1980s, and which was intended as a relatively defiant expression of unity in diversity (in opposition to apartheid’s diversity in unequal diversity), is all too easily decontextualized in the present.

However, the present also has other dangers and temptations. Many South African intellectuals, novelists and poets among them, have slipped into the individualistic comfort zone of “speaking truth to power.” I say “comfort zone” because the political power reality to which the truth is supposedly spoken is a relatively benign and often disorganized power reality. Recently I was asked to participate in a television series on dissident artists from around the world. I declined: I like to think of myself as being critical, but I don’t think of myself as a South African dissident—although that’s exactly how some of my ideological opponents within the broader ANC would be happy to label me and other like-minded left activists.

During the apartheid period we were not endeavoring to speak truth to power, as if we were petitioners. We were trying to contribute, in small ways, including through poetry, to forging an alternative hegemonic power. Surely the struggle, then and especially now, is not so much to speak truth to power as to make truth powerful and, the hardest of all, power truthful ... I think that the strategies deployed in my post 1994 poetry are somewhat different to those in the preceding period, but there is still the same ultimate, aspirant trajectory towards trying to build a sense of a collective “us” in my poems. I want to be part of a democratic hegemonic project, not a prophet in the wilderness.

Source: Contemporary Literature.

Simon Kuper in the FT Weekend, takes shots at "the news," maybe also at his own newspaper:

... [N]ews has become news about rich people. Today’s economic inequality is reflected and driven by inequality of news.

Much of this news about rich people is produced by just a few English-language sources. A wire service will put out a story, a newspaper will get a scoop or BBC.com will run a headline, and within seconds the “news” gets parroted by websites, TV channels and newspapers from Warsaw to Waikiki. It saves them hiring their own reporters. Lady Gaga sings at a gay pride rally in Rome and the whole world simply reprints the story.

And so news becomes news about a small global elite of athletes, entertainers, royals and politicians ...

These celebrities are overwhelmingly Anglophone. Only stories in English get duplicated around the world. People who write in English prefer celebrities who speak English. In Forbes magazine’s recent list of the “World’s Most Powerful Celebrities”, the highest-ranked non-native-English-speaker was Cristiano Ronaldo at number 43, and even he had created his brand while playing in England.

The global elite has grown fantastically rich in recent decades: the average person on Forbes’s list pocketed an estimated $45m last year. Consequently, we’re forever reading about rich people. Indeed, being rich has become almost the criterion for being newsworthy. A sportsman or artist who isn’t rich is not counted as successful and therefore not given airtime. And if you get airtime, you can generally convert it into more money through endorsements, speaking fees or reality TV (the future for New York’s Congressman Anthony Weiner). Everyone in the news is rich, or soon becomes so. (Cognoscenti call this the Sarah Palin Effect.)

... [W]e forget the poor. They may always be with us, but not in the media. The perhaps 2.5 billion people with less than $2 a day get ignored, due to the triple whammy of being poor, non-white and non-Anglophone.

For instance, there’s a new treatment that stops the spread of Aids, but rich countries are reluctant to fund it. This has generated a few worthy editorials in highbrow publications, but otherwise is considered too boring to tweet.

Even the white Anglophone poor struggle for airtime ... When poor people did get airtime, it was often as objects of derision on Jerry Springer-like shows ...

At best, the poor get covered as a faceless group: young Spanish demonstrators, or foreclosed Americans in tent cities, or African Aids orphans. Rich people appear as individuals, and are therefore more vivid. Even when we depict them as “fat cats”, they are the story. In fact, we’ve become exactly the media that an unequal world requires.

Source.

Jeremy Cronin is my favorite Communist. Astute, intellectual and a poet. Cronin is a former political prisoner and now ANC member of Parliament in South Africa. "Even the Dead" is still my favorite poem. I recently chanced upon a 2009 interview he did with the academic Andrew van der Vlies (featured on this blog here) in Contemporary Literature. (You need a subscription or access to an academic database to read it.) Much of it is about Cronin's poetry (more for diehard literature types), but in-between the interview contain some great insights about political life and political art in South Africa now. I'm going to cut and paste a few of them here. For starters:

... [I]n the present South African situation, it is particularly important to reconsider many things in the light of the new reality. The ANC-led movement is no longer a persecuted formation; it is in power, at least in political power. Walter Benjamin writes somewhere that fascism systematically introduces aesthetics into political life. It marshals art into what he describes as “the production of ritual values.” He suggests that we should respond to fascism’s rendering politics aesthetic by politicizing aesthetics. I certainly do not think that we are on the brink of fascism, not even remotely. But the dangers of the aesthetic, including poetry, now being pressed into the service of a lulling complacency, a ritualistic sentimentalism that loses the zip and edge of the collective self-emancipatory struggles of the previous period, are very real. The aesthetic runs the danger of becoming anesthetic ...

Source.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzbvPa5npmo&w=560&h=349] UPDATE: This video, "I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad," by a group of American high schoolers focusing on Nigeria in an AP Comparative Politics class, is a minor Youtube hit. The song is a tongue in cheek rip-off of "Billionaire" by Travis McCoy and Bruno Mars. Why Nigeria? "Our teacher has gone to Nigeria multiple times and helped create the documentary Sweet Crude."  (A few lazy blogs, cutting and pasting, kept writing that they were Russian.) The video has had more than 10,000 views since it was posted on June 6.  Some decent political insights, but what's with the guy in the loincloth? On that, one of the students who made the video has responded on Youtube:

... the guy in the "diaper" has nothing to do with the video more of a way to make our class laugh. We know there are not all villages it just fit with the original song ... This video in no way was meant to offend or make fun of Nigerians or their culture. We are sorry to all we offended.

If in London next Friday. Press Statement from the Victoria and Albert Museum:

On 24 June the V&A presents Friday Late: Afropolitans, a free evening of music, workshops and performance celebrating African photography, fashion, and style. The evening will host the first UK show by South African house musician Spoek Mathambo and band. Mathambo will perform a live set of his own brand of ‘Township Tech’ in the V&A’s John Madejski Garden.

Friday Late: Afropolitans will take its cue from the current V&A exhibition Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography. It will explore how Africans living across the world view themselves and their visual culture.

Visitors can enjoy photographs and video projections by South African photographer Chris Saunders and soak up the atmosphere in a north African-style salon especially created by Morroccan designer Hassan Hajjaj. Ghanaian photographer Sal Idriss will have a Malick Sidibé-esque photographic studio where visitors can have their portraits taken and textile designer Emamoke Ukeleghe will run a workshop to design Dutch wax print inspired scarves to take away.

Further highlights include a guided tour through the display of David Goldblatt photographs Lifetimes: Under Apartheid, a special installation of contemporary African fashion by Minna Salami of MsAfropolitan blog with stylist Ola Shobowale as creative director; and an interactive installation by South African designers Heidi Chisholm and Sharon Lombard. There will also be panel discussions, film screenings and contemporary African house and electro music courtesy of DJ Vamanos from London’s Secousse Sound System.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTQprlBAmKQ Real World Records has just released (this past Monday) the new album "In Trance" by JuJu, a collaboration album between Brit Justin Adams and Gambian Juldeh Camara. This is the song "Nightwalk. Thoughts?

http://vimeo.com/20921317 A clip from Ann Buford's new film, "Elevate," about four high school athletes recruited from Senegal to play basketball at upscale prep schools in the US. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9lkc394gdY Then there's "The Redemption of General Butt-Naked" directed by Eric Strauss and Danielle Anastasion. From the film PR: "... Once a brutal warlord who mercilessly slaughtered men, women, and children during Liberia’s bloody civil war, Joshua Milton Blahyi (General Butt Naked) led his child soldiers into battle in the nude, believing their bare skin to be impenetrable. This riveting documentary follows Blahyi as he reinvents himself as an evangelist and seeks forgiveness from the survivors of his victims, raising difficult questions about the limits of forgiveness and the possibility of deliverance." The video above contains an interview with the directors as well as clips from the film. (The video was shot at Sundance 2011.) Here's a link to another video interview with the directors of the film. Both films are screening next week at the BAM Cinemafest (link to the program) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I am hoping to see both films as well as the documentary film about Brooklyn street photographer, Jamal Shabazz.

EDITED: Useful summary of the South African government's ambitious plans for the first high-speed commuter train line in Sub-Saharan Africa; it's from a story in The Globe and Mail about the large Canadian firm, Bombardier's attempts to get their hands on much of the contracts on offer:

South Africa has announced an ambitious plan to upgrade its decaying rail system, with $14-billion to be spent on rolling stock over the next 18 years ...

The 80-kilometre Gautrain line, the first high-speed train line in sub-Saharan Africa, is scheduled to be finished by the end of June, allowing passengers to zip between Johannesburg and Pretoria in as little as 26 minutes, with more than 100,000 daily passengers expected. Bombardier's share of the project is worth more than $2-billion.

The first phase of the project was launched just days before the beginning of the World Cup last year, wowing tourists with its sleek modern trains between the international airport and the Johannesburg business hub of Sandton. But the final phase this month is much bigger ... providing a full commuter service to compete with a traffic-clogged expressway.

The South African government will be looking for foreign financiers to support its railway upgrade plan at an investment conference in Cape Town [yesterday and today]. Nearly all of its existing rail fleet was built in the 1950s and 1960s, and its system is aging so rapidly that it was forced to curtail some of its intercity passenger services last year.

The government hopes to buy up to 9,000 new trains and carriages over the next 18 years, beginning next year. Most of the new rolling stock would be for commuter rail lines within the major urban areas ...

... Rail companies from around the world, including China, will be bidding for the South African contracts. Some observers suspect that Chinese suppliers will have the edge, especially after a railway investment agreement was announced during a trade mission to China last year by South African President Jacob Zuma ...

... Job creation is the top priority of the Zuma government, and it hopes to create up to 100,000 jobs for skilled and semi-skilled workers from its railway upgrade program.

There are also media reports that South Africa could approve a $30-billion high-speed railway between two of its biggest cities, Johannesburg and Durban, with a Chinese company seen as the likely winner of the deal after lobbying hard for it ...

Meanwhile, local officials in Johannesburg say they would like to extend the Gautrain high-speed line to the east and south of its existing terminals.

"The Minister of Finance," one of a series of over the top, mock portraits by Zimbabwean-born, Johannesburg-based artist  Kudzanai Chiurai. The work was first exhibited as "Dying to be Men" and is currently on show in London (at the Victoria & Alibert Museum as part of a big show on contemporary South African photography) as "The Parliament." Below is the PR from the Victoria & Albert. You can also see the full series on the website of his South African gallery's website:

His satirical series The Parliament depicts the fictitious characters of an imaginary government cabinet in a parody of media representations of masculinity and political power. The series draws upon the conventions of African studio portraiture, dramatised magazine features, hip-hop, film and fashion as well as the story lines, stereotyped characters and plots of soap operas.

Here's the Minister of Education: And, the Minister of Defense:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGNBS6_0CCw The video for "All the Same" by Vieux Farka Toure, son of Ali, from his new album, "The Secret." The song features the singer Dave Matthews (born in South Africa). Yes him.

"Nigeria is the world's 8th largest producer of crude oil, yet remains one of its poorest nations -- an estimated 70 percent of its 150 million residents live below the poverty line. The environment is paying a steep price as well. An estimated 500 million gallons of oil have spilled into the delta -- the equivalent of roughly one Exxon Valdez disaster per year," according to The Atlantic. The American magazine has printed 31 images (from various sources) that illustrate the negative effects of oil production, both "legal" and illegal, on the environment and the people of Nigeria's Niger Delta. So bad is the practice of gas flaring that the flares are so prevalent, the Niger Delta appears brightly lit (the lower left) in a detail from a NASA image of the Earth taken at night. Below is that image and a few others from the set.

South Africa has an openly gay Judge serving on its highest court, The Constitutional Court. The Judge, Edwin Cameron, who has written a book about his sexual orientation also happens to be HIV positive and previously served for 8 years on the country's High Court of Appeal. That's an anomaly for court systems on a continent; a place where homophobia is rife. Now Kenya's Judicial Service Commission (they make recommendations to government) have nominated a pro-gay-rights chief and a deputy chief justice to the country's courts. As Peter Anaminyi writes on The Guardian's Comment is Free site:

Dr Willy Mutunga [in the picture above], the nominee for the chief justice position, is the current east Africa representative for Ford Foundation and was involved in facilitating the registration of a gay rights organisation. [He is also Muslim, is divorced and wears "a stud" in one ear.] As if this was not enough, Kenya's Judicial Service Commission also went on to nominate Nancy Baraza as the deputy chief justice. What is her crime? Nancy has been outed. Not for being gay but for doing her doctoral research at Kenyatta University on gay rights. Needless to say, these nominations have generated the most intense debate surrounding any public appointment in living memory. It has forced a discussion on the issue of gay and gay-rights-affirming people and their suitability for public office.

A new constitution--passed last August--resulted in the former Chief Justice resigning and a need for new appointments. The commission's recent hearings have been televised live. There's tons of video of the hearings online including of commission members' obsession with Mutunga's earring and going on about "activist judges" (rightwing propaganda originating in the US of course). Here's an example from NTV Kenya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X19rNcQT7fM Here's another from Citizen TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVazGooPjY Not surprisingly, conservative church leaders oppose the nominations, but both the president, Mwai Kibaki, and the prime minister and " more significantly, the people of Kenya with an 80% affirmative vote in a poll," support Mutunga and Baraza's nominations. Anaminyi, writing on Comment is Free, predicts that:

What may follow in the next 18 months is a constitutional challenge to the laws that criminalise homosexuality, based on the provisions of Kenya's new constitution, which a legal expert has argued protects gay rights and even gay marriage. This will make Kenya, which is the highest single national recipient of US aid for HIV and Aids, the continental centre for a fully inclusive, evidence-based approach to the prevention and management of HIV/Aids.

H/T: Bombastic Elements * In case you wondered (someone asked me on Twitter), the title of this blog post is deliberate; it lampoons some members of the Commission (with their questions) as well as conversative, mainly Christian, "clerics" in Kenya.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FfCxlApXI I first saw Kesivan Naidoo play at the Independent Armchair Theater in Observatory. I was living around the corner at the time. He played drums in Tribe, a band fronted by pianist Mark Fransman. Much has changed since then. Naidoo is now sought after and fronts his own bands. These include Babu and Kesivan and the Lights. The video above, from a 2008 performance in Grahamstown in South Africa's Eastern Cape, shows Kesivan and the Lights taking on "Timelessness," a composition by the late Bheki Mseleku. And since it is Sunday, here's a link to a 15 minute Youtube video of Kesivan and the Lights being joined on stage by trumpeter Feya Faku. BTW, that's Fransman on the piano. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmyQm59bgxA&NR=1

Michael Kirkpatrick, the blogger known as International Global Citizen, has an idea:

There is an amazing amount of diversity on the continent of Africa. Unfortunately the focus of western media seems to be on death, destruction, danger, and disease in Africa. Americans would be offended if the world defined America through sensational murders, natural disasters, misguided political leaders, and epidemics. That's exactly what we do to other parts of the world. The book cover "Understanding Africa for Dummies" is my tongue-in-cheek attempt to get people to think about how we perceive the rest of the world, especially Africa. I would like to see the book become a reality. Ignorance and misunderstanding is only alleviated through fair and objective education. I would like to bring together some of the finest Africans to be able to accurately represent the African narrative. Each chapter would focus on a unique subject matter: climate, the environment, education, government, history, trade, aid & development, politics, the arts, music, food, etc. Each chapter would be written by a respected African personality who is qualified to write about the subject matter.

Comments?