[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPfsM4yBZps&w=500&h=307&rel=0] It will get ridiculous over the next month. For now the price goes to goes to the Australian media company, Optus. This is the concept for the ad, above: “… To prepare for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the Australian football team was involved in a secret training camp. Unbeknown to anyone, the team […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsG49zXF8xk&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Driving in Soweto, film maker Dumisani Phakathi reflects on next month’s World Cup: [The World Cup] is like a wedding … You organize the wedding between you and your partner. The event is amazing, the photographs get taken. Everybody remembers the day. But the trick is about what happens after. What do you carry […]
I’m a bit late with this, but I’ll post it anyway. (Look out for lots of posts about World Cup commercials on this site over the next few days.) Another one of the myriad of commercials made to order for Coco Cola to dominate soft drink consumption during next month’s World Cup. This time […]
Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times columnist who has made Africa his beat, lectures poor Congolese about their leisure time. No word about the larger structures causing their misery in the first place.
Alexandra Fuller highlights the deeply ingrained sociological, economic, and political problems that still persist in South Africa as a result of apartheid.
Apparently on a Chicago TV station. Let’s hope this a spoof. Otherwise it explains this kind of thing and the kinds of rubbish being reported about the 2010 World Cup. Remember it’s controversial and it is in South America, which is a country. The people are brown and they play soccer, right? Via Deadspin. — […]
The one about the black model we all love to hate and the white activist we all just love.
When Canada's Globe & Mail newspaper thought it was OK to get two white, Irish men to edit a special issue of the paper on Africa.
Researchers find Europeans and Asians share 1% to 4% of their nuclear DNA with Neandertals. But Africans do not. What to do with this information?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M3Q54rPjQw&w=480&h=295] Having stripped the Somalian singer K’Naan’s protest song, “Waving Flag” of any meaning, Coco Cola now sets about to trivialize African football history. As reported by Steve Bloomfield on his blog, Africa United, Coke’s new commercial, “History of Celebration,” reduces the legacy of Cameroon’s historical run in the 1990 tournament in Italy to striker […]
The political scientist Adolph Reed Jnr on what political economy mean to cultural studies.
For those doubting South African can host a successful World Cup, the country has a long history of successfully hosting big tournaments.
In Argentina members of that country’s military dictatorship that conducted a “dirty war”) against its people way back in 1978 still go to jail for their crimes (this week actually), while in South Africa Apartheid’s generals and government ministers get amnesty and fat pensions, holiday homes in Wilderness, mansions in Pretoria’s suburbs, find Jesus and […]
Whatever The New Yorker’s rationale for commissioning a piece on Tyler Perry, the “critic-proof” producer and director of black popular theater and television (he is a darling of the mainstream), but it is good take on the race, sexual, moral and class politics of this present-day Oscar Micheaux who has formed a lucrative alliance with […]
I am still on my pre-World Cup binge. Brazil remains odds on favorites to win Africa’s first World Cup two months from now. BTW, it’s old news now but Brazil can also count on local support in South Africa: they’re South African fans’ favorite other team. Brazil play two group matches in Johannesburg–against North Korea […]
How much do young South Africans, especially college students, know about their history? Not much, if these videos are any indication.
A new website, "Islam in Africa," claims to be a scholarly. On closer inspection, it turns out to be run of the mill Zionist propaganda.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUe83JKeXAI&w=480&h=295] In his book, “Murder in Amsterdam,” about the death of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, the writer Ian Buruma provides this description of Dutch football: “Proud of their superior skills, their multicultural makeup, the almost mocking manner of their free-flowing play, maddening the players of more prosaic teams, like Germany … […]
The 1884 and 1885 meeting in Berlin of Euro-American powers to divide up the riches and territories of Africa has a new edition.
The New York Times columnist traveled to Zimbabwe and write two totally different stories for his paper: Which Zimbabwe was he writing about?