My quest for an explanation for this omission in my history education made me appreciate the magnitude of the crime… for the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. – Santu Mofokeng
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HOW THE WEST WAS LOST
If one thinks about it the whole thing goes back to amaQheya; the cultural proletariat… a proletariat with a cultural history that has taught it to be careful of an African existence…
Colossal KOUROUMA
What could have happened in his head to take literally this type of injunction quite common in lands of Africa? A sense of the word given? The desire to take seriously the hopes of children who usually have little voice? Mystery.
Chimurenga 1 (Published – April 2002)
“Music Is The Weapon” “…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in […]
Writing Nervous By Brian Chikwava
One can argue that great literary works are rarely about good sentences […]
Myriem
an excerpt from Myriem by Boris Boubacar Diop … Fire embassies, it […]
It Begins with a Place
t would be a very idiosyncratic Harlem! Years ago when I was a teenager I did a course where they had us make maps of places, highlighting what drops out just based on personal experience of a place. I think of this book very much like that – a personal map of the places I went or that caught my eye.
Asia in My Life
I have always felt the need for Africa, Asia and South America to learn from each other. This south-to-south intellectual and literary exchange was at the center of the Nairobi Literature debate in the early sixties, and is the centerpiece of my recent theoretical explorations, in Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing.
The Spark of Life: Where Novels Come From
wani? Manuscript Project, Kwani Trust’s new literary prize for African writing. Including contributions from Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela, Ellen Banda-Aaku and Helon Habila, the articles offer advice and inspiration for developing your novel manuscript over the next 2 months. In this, the first article in the series Aminatta Forna explores where the ideas for novels.
Ten Pieces of Advice for the Writing Life
Read to become a better writer. This sounds like “eat to become stronger” and in a way reading is the food of the creative process. Read for all the reasons a reader reads but also read for inspiration, read to be influenced, read in order to pick up tricks and techniques, read in order to answer the questions, “How on earth did the author pull this off? How on earth did he/she get away with this?”
Chimurenga 16 (Published – October 2011) “The Chimurenga Chronicle”
A once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in […]
De l’art de vivre l’art
Goddy Leye nous a quittés. C’était le 19 février 2011, peu après minuit. A Karachi, au bord du désert, où jamais il ne pleut en cette saison, le ciel s’est ouvert. Averse. A l’aube, à l’heure du premier appel des muezzins, il pleuvait encore. J’écris là-bas ces mots pour l’ami, le mentor, le camarade Goddy. Douleur sourde, de celles qui ne passent pas. Qui ne peuvent et ne doivent pas passer.
Like Words For Weapons
I contacted Comrade Fatso a poet and social activist and founder of MAGAMABA Projects and bandleader of Chabvondoka who is also internationally renowned for blogging for CNN’s on the ground coverage of the controversial 2008 Zimbabwean elections; to gauge his attitude about the current power sharing arrangement and his opinion on the political climate in his country.
Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée
« Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée ». Tel est le titre du dernier livre d’Achille Mbembe qui paraît aux Éditions La Découverte à Paris le 14 octobre. J’ai eu le privilège de lire de manière attentive cet ouvrage riche et très documenté écrit en mémoire de Frantz Fanon et Jean-Marc Éla, deux « penseurs du devenir illimité ».
Fifty Years Of African Decolonisation
In the half-century to come, one aspect of the role of intellectuals, cultural practitioners and African civil society will be to help in articulating a concept of democracy that takes the current struggles as a point of departure, and in addition to ‘internationalise’ the question of African democratisation
Mafika Gwala speaks to Andrea Meeson about not living in the shadows.
“I have been always where I am today. Why do they speak of me as if I am emerging from the dark?” Mafika Gwala speaks to Andrea Meeson about not living in the shadows.
Chimurenga 15 (Published – May 2010) “The Curriculum Is Everything”
What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the […]
The Aesthetics Of Vulgarity
(With Thanks To Achille Mbembe)
Chimurenga 14 (Published – April 2009)
Everyone has their Indian The latest issue of the Cape Town based […]
Chimurenga 12/13 (Published – March 2008) “Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber”
#12 : An all-faxion issue on black technologies no longer secret. It […]