The Mexican writer Alma Guillermoprieto declared this World Cup "the best ever." Few can disagree. A total of 136 goals were scored in 48 group matches and another 18 in the 8 matches of the last round.  Not everything is surprising: with the exception of Costa Rica, all the top seeds made it to the quarterfinals. The big hit is Colombia; everyone's favorite team with its stars James Rodriguez and Juan Quadrado in every fantasy team. Los Cafeteros is seen as the new France 1998 (but with its own racial baggage) . Colombia may still upset Brazil's coronation later today. Off the field, the South American fans have stolen the show. Boima Tucker's on the ground World Cup Diaries are very good on all this. But there's also been some off-key notes. Some Neo-Nazi Croatian fans, homophobic Mexican supporters,  French and German fans in blackface (and FIFA's tepid response to this racism), as well as--what has been a major talking point--the strange site of overwhelmingly white crowds in the stadiums whenever Brazil play.  FIFA is partly too blame (ticket prices) and so is the harsh reality of Brazil: the most unequal country in the world where race and class divides coincides to a large degree. Outside the stadiums, where public viewing mostly comes free, the crowds are more representative of Brazil's "mixed character." The Brazilian blogosphere have been good on this. (It's media, less so.) There's also been a few excellent pieces in English language media this; go read them: Alex Bellos in The Independent, Musa Okwonga on Monocle (he gets profiled by cops too) and Stephanie Nolan in The Globe & Mail, among others. Outside the stadiums, at public viewing areas things are better.  But then none of this should be surprising: It’s worth noting what happened in the lead-up to the Cup, which is perhaps more illuminating about the ordinariness of racism in Brazil. For the official tournament draw in November, the organizers decided to change the two main presenters at the last minute. Some defenders of FIFA’s decision suggested it had to do “with sponsorships” and “standards of English.” But Brazilians, especially black Brazilians used to this kind of thing, could not help noticing that the original presenters—two well-known soap actors—happened to be black and mixed race. Their replacements happened to be white and blond. More here at The Medium.

Too many people have forgotten about the one Naira coin, and the chap on that coin. This is a big disservice to Nigeria. Today's History Class is going to be about that fellow, the one who has roads named after him in Lagos and Abuja, but who, sadly, is slipping away from our national consciousness. Herbert Heelas Macaulay was born on 14 November 1864 in Lagos. He was the seventh child of his Sierra Leonean parents. His father, Tom Babington Macaulay, was the first principal of CMS Grammar School in Lagos. His mother's father was Sam Ajayi Crowther. Back then, Lagos was a segregated town. Europeans stayed in the best parts of town, migrants from Brazil and Sierra Leone stayed elsewhere, natives, elsewhere. Herb attended his father's school, CMS, then Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He returned to Lagos in 1882 and got a job in the Department of Public Works. In July 1890, he left the Lagos Colony for Plymouth in England, to study Civil Engineering under G. D. Bellamy. He was there for three years. When Macaulay returned to the Lagos Colony in 1893, he was appointed Surveyor of Crown Lands by the colonial government. However, he resigned five years later, because of what he termed "racial discrimination against indigenous civil servants by the European elite". Following his 1898 resignation from the Department of Works, Herb Macaulay established his own private practice in Lagos. However, Macaulay's venture was not a success, and faced with financial distress, he defrauded a family dependent, and was caught and sent to prison for two years. This prison stint, effectively barred him from ever running for public office under the colonial administration. Upon his release from prison in 1908, Macaulay became more involved in the political arena, and began contributing a weekly column to the Lagos Daily Times. His articles were often critical of government policy, the liquor trade; the water-rate scheme; taxation; racial segregation; attempts to deny indigenous land ownership; and a free press. In 1915, Macaulay led protests which became known as the water rate riots and also led agitation against colonial plans for land reform. His articles often skirted the edges of sedition, and finally, he crossed the line, giving the government the chance it needed to put him in prison again. This second visit to the jailers (for six months) involved the publication of a rumour concerning a plot to assassinate the exiled Eleko of Lagos. After his release from prison, Macaulay took a somewhat more cautious line, but his writing remained highly critical. In 1921 he went to London with the Eleko of Lagos to act as his translator in the legal appeal of a local land tenure case. Macaulay proclaimed that the British colonial government was eroding the power and authority of the Eleko, who, he said, was recognized by all Nigerians as the rightful king of Lagos. This episode embarrassed the British and established Macaulay as a leading advocate of the rights of traditional leadership in Lagos. A brief synopsis of the Oluwa Affair: the colonial authority had bought a large parcel of land(255 acres) from the Oluwa Family, and underpaid for it. Chief Oluwa sued for better compensation, and following that trip to London, on 14 June 1921, the Privy Council ruled in favour of Chief Oluwa. The Privy Council's ruling said that communal land-ownership was legally recognized and that due compensation should be paid. The Eleko Affair: Macaulay campaigned for the rights of traditional rulers within the colonial structure, and alleged that the colonists wanted to kill the Eleko. Again, the Privy Council, also on the same trip to London, ruled in favour of Macaulay's side. These victories hardened political lines. In 1922 a new Nigerian constitution was introduced providing for limited franchise elections in Lagos and Calabar. In 1923, he started the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which contested the very limited elections of African members of the Legislative Council. The NNDP's motto was "salus populi suprema lex", "the safety of the people is the greatest law" and it called for universal compulsory education for Nigerians. NNDP candidates won all the elective seats in the Nigerian legislature between 1923 and 1938. But then in 1938, things changed. The NNDP's dominance was cut short in 1938 when the Nigerian Youth Movement beat them in the elections for the Lagos Town Council. Following that defeat, Macaulay, who up until the time was not too interested in politics outside of Lagos, adopted a more pan-Nigeria outlook. He saw prospects in Nnamdi Azikiwe's NCNC's struggle for independence for all of Nigeria, and by August 1944 had reached an agreement with Zik. Many of his own party members did not want to join forces with the NCNC, but he threatened to resign if they didn't, so they played ball. By the time Macaulay's merger with Zik's NCNC was complete in August 1944, Macaulay was already 80 years old and in failing health. In 1946, Macaulay suffered an acute attack of rheumatism during a tour of Kano, and was brought back to Lagos. Herbert Macaulay died, aged 82, on 7 May 1946. Let us get one thing straight. Herbert Macaulay was no saint. He had an opportunistic streak. He was, in his time, certainly very controversial. Obafemi Awolowo described him as “ultra-radical, intensely nationalistic and virulently anti-white”. Piers Brendon described Macaulay in later life as “an angry old man in a white suit and a white moustache that stuck out like cat’s whiskers”. Fred Lugard, who was in many ways Macaulay's greatest adversary consistently passed bitter comments about him and called him duplicitous. Macaulay was rumoured to have popped a bottle of champagne when he heard of Lugard's passing in 1945. Margery Perham, Lugard's biographer, who visited Macaulay in 1931, described him as "one of the ablest Africans I have met, and at one both dangerous and pathetic". What is certain is that Herbert Macaulay was no saint. He did what had to be done, when it had to be done, and if needed, in a Machiavellian fashion. Macaulay once wrote a response to claims by the British that they were governing with “the true interests of the natives at heart”. Macaulay wrote: “The dimensions of “the true interests of the natives at heart” are algebraically equal to the length, breadth and depth of the white man’s pocket.” My thoughts: it is tragic that a lot of young people do not know about Herb Macaulay. He was the kind of leader that Nigeria needs today. Macaulay, like any other human, had his weaknesses. When faced with financial ruin, he moved towards the dark side, but he redeemed himself. He also recognised the value of education, unlike a lot of the excuses for leaders that we have parading around these days. He also showed that he was flexible. For much of his life, Macaulay was concerned with Lagos. But when the moment was right, he became national. Most importantly, the recognised the value of the law, and used it against the colonists to devastating effect.

I came across this image taken by a press photographer in May 1990 after one of the first public meetings between the last white minority government and the liberation movement (led by the ANC), to negotiate a new political order. This was the ANC delegation to that meeting in Cape Town. The people in the image are front Cheryl Carolus (UDF leader), Cyril Ramaphosa (National Union of Mineworkers), Rose Sonto (Cape Town civic leader) and Aubrey Mokoena (Soweto activist). Standing at the back are Dali Mpofu (young lawyer and, so the gossip goes, the man who caused the divorce between Nelson and Winnie Mandela), Bulelani Ngcuka (Western Cape UDF leader), Murphy Morobe (Johannesburg UDF leader), Trevor Manuel (Cape Town UDF leader), Rolihlahla Mandela (!), Nomzamo Winnie Mandela (no introductions needed), Moses Mayekiso (leader of metalworkers and and civic leader), Sister Bernard Ncube (Soweto civic leader), Albertina Sisulu (!), Christmas Tinto (Cape Town UDF leader), Walter Sisulu (!), Bulelwa Tinto (Cape Town UDF leader) and Frank Chikane (Johannesburg cleric and UDF leader). Then I was an undergraduate student at the University of Cape Town (and a journalist at the campus paper, "Varsity") and the ANC (and its internal allies in the mass democratic movement and the unions) represented the demands of the majority of South Africans. Those negotiations--punctuated by state proxy violence against black people in the townships, assassinations of ANC leaders, etcetera--would eventually culminate in the April 1994 elections. I remember voting for the first time in those elections in the township where I grew up in the Western Cape--for the ANC, both in national and provincial elections. I would do the same in 1999--voted ANC. I couldn't vote in 2004 (I was in the US when "overseas" votes were not allowed). Neither did I get to vote in 2009. But if I did, I would have voted ANC again. Today South Africans vote again. Of those people in the image, Nelson Mandela, Albertina and Walter Sisulu, Christmas Tinto and Sister Bernard Ncube have all passed away. It is also telling that of those still alive, only three are playing leading roles in politics: Ramaphosa is deputy president of the ANC; Dali Mpofu is a leading member of Julius Malema's party, the Economic Freedom Fighters; and Moses Mayekiso is the presidential candidate of a small leftist party, the Workers and Socialist Party. Of the others, Carolus is not actively involved in politics anymore, Ngcuka fell foul of Zuma, Morobe is a businessman, Manuel is retiring from politics, and Frank Chikane was last Thabo Mbeki's chief of staff. So, with the exception of Ramaphosa (implicated in Marikana and exemplar of the politically connected oligarchs connected with Zuma's rule), all of them are critics of the current ANC leadership. Last week, I went to vote at the Consulate here in New York City.  In the end, with the voting booth in sight, I was turned away because I only had one piece of ID (you needed two: passport and national ID card). But if I'd been permitted, I planned to split my vote between the ANC at the provincial level (to get the Democratic Alliance out of power--I am from Cape Town) and for the Workers and Socialist Party at a national level, as a protest vote against the current ANC leadership under Jacob Zuma and Blade Nzimande.  * From an ANC poster for the 1994 elections: "Find your Identity. Register. Vote."

Every February here schools, McDonald's, television, corporations, the advertising industry, celebrate Black History Month. The whole thing is a charade. That black people don't get a break from police brutality, red lining, profiling or plain neglect, doesn't matter. In 20o7, Gary Younge (he is an ally) suggested that what we needed was a White History Month. So, dear readers--in the service of good sense, this year March is the inaugural White History Month on Africa is a Country. Yes, we're a few days late, we know, but good things take time sometime. Stay tuned.

There's a commercial for Bell's, a popular South African whisky ("Give that man a Bells"), that is currently doing the rounds on the Interwebs and has a lot of people weeping on Twitter and Facebook. The ad was released as part of Super Bowl Weekend. No there's no Super Bowl in South Africa--it was just a marketing gimmick on the part of the creative team. The ad revolves around an elderly black man, clearly of some social standing and means (he doesn't seem to be poor) who happens to be illiterate and learning to read so he can read his writer son's book. And have a drink with his son. Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VteDp3IK-60 The whole thing reads as contrived (middle class black man can't read) and ridiculous (nothing new, one might say, in the world of liquor advertising), but this one attempts to elide obvious economic realities, idealizing generational upward mobility of black people in South Africa (largely a fantasy if social indicators can be trusted), while propping up other racial fantasies by including some odd racial politics (the people who teach our heartwarming protagonist or give him books are white women). All this sentimentality is trotted out in order to promote drinking. The ad will literally drive you to drink. These kinds of ads that appeal to hopeful but completely unrealistic egalitarian fantasies are a dime a dozen in South Africa BTW. Which brings me to another commercial that also relies on sentiment, but which I found more relatable: an ad for parastatal Telecom's mobile service, 8ta. The ad features Jomo Somo, the Pele of 1970s South African football (let's not debate that now) who has had a colorful life as a footballer in the 1970s and 1980s (starred at Orlando Pirates, the most storied club in the country; was a teammate of Pele and Beckenbauer at the New York Cosmos and played for the Colorado Caribous; and bought his own football club in 1980s Apartheid South Africa*). Sono also coached South Africa at the 2002 World Cup. Anyway, the ad--one that is up for an award*--reconstructs the story of Sono and his wife, Gail's wedding day. No need to summarize. Just watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSn4YH08mwo * After Jomo Sono came back from playing in the United States, he bought Highlands Park (the club in the video), and renamed it Jomo Cosmos. Yes, the story of Jomo Sono still needs to be told. Other contenders for best ad at the South African Sport Industry Awards this week are a bunch of less striking and more conventional ads, including one for sports channel Supersport featuring the hilarious dad of London Olympics gold medal swimmer Chad le Clos; another of those rainbow sports nation ads for beer Castle Lager; for bank ABSA; and, finally, one featuring wooden acting from members of the national rugby team.

The Fader (yes, they're still around) has been putting up a series of posts from Johannesburg (Obey You Collective: South Africa) that focuses on "artists, trail-blazers, and bright young talents from South Africa." (The series is paid for by soft drink company Coco Cola.) Much of it seems to be filmed around the part of the city marketed as Maboneng. In the latest instalment, they published an interview with Tarryn Alberts, part of dance crew, V.I.N.T.A.G.E. (If you remember, Zach Rosen interviewed them for AIAC, here). Anyway, the interview includes this illuminating passage about the Catch 22 for young black people after Apartheid:

It's unclear how big the Gun Owners of America are (the NRA predominates in the numbers and in terms of influence), but it's important enough that the organization's lobbyists write bills for congressmen, calling for no gun control, and these usually get passed in the US House of Representatives. We're also not all that surprised when GOA leaders say dumb things, but there are times when we're left speechless. Take these latest random comments by the group's executive director, Larry Pratt (that's him in the pic above taking aim), on a radio broadcast. The show, "Gun Owner's News Hour," was discussing the "differences" between Africans and African-Americans, the passing of Nelson Mandela, South African Apartheid, and how George Zimmerman is being persecuted in a way comparable to Apartheid South Africa. The show's host is Selwyn Duke. You can listen to them talk this offensive nonsense, here and here. But here's the gist in summary form. First, The Rawstory with those comments about "Africans from Africa":

"... Generally the African from Africa is a very pro-American person, a very happy person," Pratt opined. “I know several. And they are always just happy with a joke, pleasant smile on their face. And they clearly don’t identify with the surliness that’s all too frequently the attitude of their fellow African-Americans here.” “And they’re very conservative politically,” he continued. “The country of Ghana, it’s still illegal to commit an abortion, it’s illegal to be a homosexual. Very conservative social laws and very free market oriented as well.” Duke agreed and pointed out that the types of Africans that could afford to come to the U.S. were of “a better stripe.” “They tend to be educated, they tend to be a little more upper class than a lot of the Africans who can’t get here,” Duke said. “It’s the way we used to run our immigration system altogether,” Pratt replied. “These are folks that stand apart and hopefully they can approach some of their fellow blacks and say, ‘Hey, buddy, you got this all wrong, let me explain to you how the world really works.’”

They also discussed Apartheid South Africa (this summary from Right Wing Watch):

The two also touched on the issue of apartheid in South Africa, which both claimed wasn’t all that bad. Pratt lamented that Dutch and English settlers “neglected to evangelize the blacks,” so that now “there aren’t common values, there is certainly no Christian ethos in that country.” Duke, for his part, equated the “supposedly racist” apartheid regime with George Zimmerman. “South Africa was sort of the George Zimmerman of the geopolitical stage,” he said. “It was a situation where you had black on black crimes that were rampant and brutal that the media ignored, but this white-on-black so-called crime was disseminated far and wide … simply because it accorded with the politically correct agenda.”

It felt like hanging out in the comment sections of News24 posts.

I wrote a long piece on Zola Mahobe, a Soweto businessman who died last December (two weeks after Nelson Mandela) and who is credited with transforming Mamelodi Sundowns. The team is currently one of the "big three" South African football clubs and is owned by Patrice Motsepe, the best example of a postapartheid oligarch: he owns a football club. I had a lot of fun writing this and talking to friends about it.  The piece was published on The Far Post, a co-production between travel site Roads and Kingdoms and Sports Illustrated to publish a new feature on global soccer culture every other week until the World Cup in Brazil Here are the first few paragraphs:

On December 5th of last year, South Africans bade farewell to Nelson Mandela. In general, the new republic's founding father was remembered as a principled, but pragmatic political leader. Some media coverage, however, reduced him to a one-dimensional figure, at odds with the larger South African struggle. That Mandela advocated armed struggle and formed alliances with communists was downplayed by all sorts of political causes and personalities whose politics Mandela would have opposed while he was alive, but who now claimed him as one of their own. Mandela was also favorably compared to his former wife, Winnie Madikizela. His time in prison, presented as character-building, was contrasted with her increasing radicalism and criminal actions in the 1980s. Most black South Africans, however, were not scandalized by Mandela's one-time celebration of violent struggle or his communist leanings, or by Winnie's complicated, but flawed, legacy, which was formed in a more compromising, violent outside. As Stephen Smith concluded in the London Review of Books recently: "If any one person can stand in for the country, it's surely Winnie, half 'mother of the nation' and half township gangsta, deeply ambiguous, scarred and disfigured by the struggle." Most South Africans get this full, complicated understanding of their recent history. Zola Mahobe is another such complicated figure, part gangster, part hero. Mahobe, a legendary soccer club owner in South Africa during the 1980s, died nine days after Mandela. While his death quite rightly did not receive the same attention that Mandela's did, his life was shaped by many of the same forces. For some, Mahobe was a symptom of what was wrong with South African professional soccer. Others viewed him (and still do) as a brilliant entrepreneur, a sort of Apartheid-era Robin Hood, and a visionary that would help reshape the dimensions of South African soccer.

Keep reading here.

The BBC news presenter Komla Dumor, who passed away this weekend from cardiac arrest, was an exceptional broadcaster; read Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie's obit here. Everyone loved him. He was probably the most stylish newscaster also, and was well on his way to becoming the first globally recognized superstar news presenter originating from the continent. Dumor took journalism seriously. Just watch his last big interview where he took on Rwanda's Ambassador to the UK about that country's habit of murdering opposition figures. Dumor, known as Boss Player, also loved sport, basketball (he had skills), and, above all, the beautiful game. He especially loved his Ghana's Black Stars. Like here during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when Superman style, he ripped his shirt open to reveal his true identity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMHG11iwUYg Or last November when he celebrated Ghana's qualification for Brazil 2014 by donning a lekarapa. And he seemed genuinely happy--like a fan--around footballers; like when he met Victor Moses (Liverpool and Nigeria) or thanked Sulley Muntari (AC Milan and Ghana) for the signed shirt for his son. But it is this video, below--when Peter Okwoche, the BBC Focus on Africa sports presenter, challenged Komla to a game of keepie-uppie--that is my favorite memory of the Boss Player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XDVjSra-sg RIP Boss Player.