Dookoom Rises Up
A Cape Town hip hop group causes a huge stir with its music video "Larney Jou Poes" (roughly translated: Boss, your cunt.) depicting an uprising by farmworkers.
Culture
South African Hip Hop Series: Thoughts On The Late Rapper Mizchif
I was home alone one Friday night around 2001 watching, as was tradition, one of the music shows which came on at SABC 1 during that period. It could’ve been Studio Mix during its dying years, or Basiq with Azania, or Castle Loud with Unathi and Stoan. The first video played after a Telkom ad. […]
Dakar booms with life
The youthful and creative art scene in Senegal's capital is the subject of director Sandra Krampelhuber’s documentary film, "100% Dakar."
Ali Mazrui and Me
A fateful meeting with Mazrui, the famed Kenyan historian and broadcaster.
The Historic Legacy of Ivor Wilks
A historian of Ghana, Ivor Wilks was crucial to the founding of African history as an academic discipline in the late 1950s and to its development over subsequent decades.
Ebola: Where we are; where we should be
Is it coincidental that nation-states just emerging from brutal civil wars cannot cope with Ebola because of their broken institutions?
How do we talk about the memory of Apartheid
The fact that the choices for black people under Apartheid were either martyrdom or compromise was part of the injustice of that system.
#SAHipHop2014: Rapper Flex Boogie Live At Fingo Festival
As member of the hip-hop quartet Ba4za, Hakeem Lesolang presided over one of the most fertile yet under-appreciated eras in South African hip-hop. Capcity Rapcity as it was referred to by the bundles of heads scattered across Mzansi, fed our collective appetites the fuzzy memories of yester-year hip-hop through a steady stream of boom-bap rap […]
Is DJ Lewis’s “Stop Ebola” his “Grippe Aviaire” pt. 2?
DJ Lewis recently released a “Stop Ebola” song and video that reminds me of “Grippe Aviaire”, a song he released during the global Bird Flu pandemic some years ago: As I mentioned in my Cultural Anthropology contribution, “Grippe Aviaire” was more making fun of the disease, with a popular dance mocking the bird’s behavior more than trying to be educational […]
5 Questions for a Filmmaker: Jahmil Qubeka
The filmmaker considers himself to be a filmmaker who happens to be African: He is driven by the art of storytelling; so his context is African but his film language is global.
Why I am afraid of Ebola
I am afraid of Ebola because it is an enemy of critical and balanced thinking about Africa, about disease, about our common humanity.
What’s the matter with … Stellenbosch University
Legacies of colonialism and apartheid are etched into social dynamics of the town in the way its inhabitants occupy public space. The same goes for the university.
5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Moussa Sene Absa
Moussa Sene Absa is a Senegalese filmmaker, artist and songwriter. What is your first film memory? It happened during the school holidays the year I turned ten in 1968. As a reward for my good grades my uncle took me to the cinema to watch The Lion from Saint Marc. At one point when a […]
Niçoise with sweet potatoes
Differences can be harmonious and allow people to come together despite their background and roots.
A museum in the middle of the street
Three towering moko jumbies stroll up behind the stage, as if on cue, dressed in suits of glow-in-the-dark yellow and electric blue. The sun is setting on the second and final day of ChaleWote, Accra’s annual street art festival, but energies show no sign of fading as Burkinabe band Siaka Diarra (image immediately below) streams […]
Kampala Gets an Art Biennale
The need to move the art discussion away from Darwinian interests in gorillas to the concern for new audiences for contemporary art in Africa.
The rebirth of a literary dream
The story of Ba re e ne re, now probably Lesotho's premier literary festival as told by those involved from its start in tragic events.
Edition: Dakar
In June of 2014, My Africa Is decided to dive into Dakar, Senegal, a rarely talked about city on the West Coast of Africa. (We focused on Lagos, Nigeria in Season One). Dakar not only boast an amazingly hospitable population being the home of the “Teranga”, but is a secret gem for european tourists, and […]
5 Questions for Filmmaker: Lodi Matsetela
As a filmmaker, Matsetela wants to be an alternative voice, in a topography that’s filled with stories by others, like Django Unchained, defining black people.
Jitsvinger: Practicing, Not Preaching
“The metaphysical properties of hip-hop, the metaphors, helped me imagine a better world."