The Nigerian superstar bandleader Fela Anikulapo-Kuti hosted a covert summit meeting in the summer of 1977.
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Author Archive | Chimurenga
New York, USA: 7-11 November 2015
At Performa 2015, the Chimurenga Library took the form of a library-of-people, […]
Showroom Gallery London, UK: 8 October – 21 November 2015
For the first UK presentation, Chimurenga infiltrated The Showroom’s building in the […]
San Francisco Public Library San Francisco, US: 24 May – 29 June 2014
Presented as part of the exhibition Public Intimacy, Chimurenga Library offered a simple system that […]
MU, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 21 May – 1 August 2010
Chimurenga Library exhibition at …for those who live in it: Pop-culture politics and […]
Cape Town Central Library, Cape Town: 2 May – 21 June 2009
An introspective of Chimurenga Magazine Presented in and around the Cape Town Central […]
Who Killed Kabila
On January 16, 2001, in the middle of the day, shots are […]
New Cartographies
Since its launch in 2011, every edition of The Chronic has engaged with this question: […]
Who invented truth
Tired of truth, I am. And metanarratives and more truth and post colonies.
A Day in the Life of Idi Amin
The hot dry breeze is lazy. It glides languorously collecting odd bits of paper, they tease the ground, threaten to take flight, tease the ground.
Where Is This Place
Keguro Macharia asks how might one describe where One Day I Will Write About This Place lives as it travels?
DISCOVERING HOME
by Binyavanga Wainaina(Winner of The Caine Prize 2002) Cape Town – June, […]
The Most Authentic Real Black Africanest Togo Soccer team Story
by Binyavanga Wainaina (photographs by Philippe Niorthe) I meet Alex at breakfast […]
Nothing was impossible for a writer like him
Billy Kahora on Binyavanga Wainaina’s Work
How To Be A Dictator
Binyavanga Wainaina presents 16 Rules for Big Man aspirations
An excerpt from ‘Hell Is In Bed With Mrs Preprah’
Binyavanga Wainaina charts the aesthetics of black hair, beership and Rumba, via the Atlantic passage.
Pass Me the Microphone: Phoebe Boswell
Stories and sounds from the Swahili coast… sampling Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write about Africa.
Not in My Neighborhood Film Screening
Saturday, April 27, 2019 at 8 PM Keleketla! Library,6 Verwey Street, Troyeville, […]
PASS presents DUMAMA & KECHOU ft. MADALA ‘BAFO’ KUNENE
The Pan African Space Station will host DUMAMA & KECHOU for an […]
Sankomota: An Ode in One Album – A Reflective Essay
“Perhaps outside of Fela’s Egypt 80, very few music bands have managed […]
Pungwe Sound Trails Live On PASS
Pan African Space Station hosts Pungwe Sound Trails with @machirirobert Thursday, 06 […]
PASS is going to Australia!
From 11 -13 April, as part of an exhibition hosted by Monash […]
Neo Muyanga – The Sex For Money No Power Mixtape
PASS founder, a composer and musician Neo Muyanga highlights the currents and […]
Revisit moments from the PASS landing in Amsterdam
From 11 -15 December 2016, the Pan African Space Station transmitted live […]
Udaba with Kgafela oa Mogogodi – LIVE at Centre for the Book, Cape Town (2009)
On 1 October 2009, Pan African Space Station hosted Udaba at The […]
Denderah Rising with Georgia Anne Muldrow + Thandi Ntuli Quartet + The Monkey Nuts
In April 2018, PASS welcomed back Georgia Anne Muldrow and her […]
BLACKOUT x 7 Octobre
Native Maqari and Keziah Jones Villa Medici channel Fela take on on […]
10 Paragraphs of Music Criticism
Kodwo Eshun discusses selected paragraphs of music criticism, taking in Kim Gordon’s […]
The Tyelera Moment
by Thabo Jijana On December 13, 2016, in Salem Party Club v […]
La République et sa Bête : à propos des émeutes dans les banlieues de France
par Achille Mbembe La France est un vieux pays fier de ses […]
Lindela (the winnie suite)
an excerpt from ‘Lindela (the winnie suite)’ by Dominique Malaquais car, maps, […]
Pree Under Pressure
WHITE WOMEN’S TEARS – plenty flowed at the launch of the first […]
P.A.S.S. HARARE
From 9 – 12 November, the Pan African Space Station (PASS) landed […]
Chronic Circulations Bibliography
The new addition of the Chronic asks: What is the African imagination […]
Dislocations in the Congolese World of Sound
“Dislocation” is how Congolese rumba historians describe the incessant splinterings that are […]
TO REFUSE THAT WHICH HAS BEEN REFUSED TO YOU
Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman sit down to talk about the temporal […]
The “Walking Corpse”
Thousands of Africans, physically displaced and economically disabled by postcolonial dis-order, confront […]
EVERY JOURNEY IS A READING
By Stacy Hardy My cover is easy. There are a million roles […]
FROM ORLANDO TO ORLANDO
By Roberto Alajmo Background: The ship Mendelsshon—referring to an NGO, and having […]
THE MARTYRDOM OF MAYOR ORLANDO
by Moses Marz Elected four times as mayor of Palermo over a period […]
THINGS THAT GO IN AND OUT OF THE BODY
How can we think about bodies and circulation without deferring to the […]
TO REFUSE THAT WHICH HAS BEEN REFUSED TO YOU
Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman sit down to talk about the temporal […]
PAN AFRICAN SPACE STATION – THOMAS SANKARA 31 YEARS ON
On October 15, 1987, Burkinabe revolutionary idealist and Pan-Africanist, Thomas Sankara was […]
On Circulations and the African Imagination of a Borderless World
Unify us don’t divide us unify us don’t divide us Unify us […]
THE IDEA OF A BORDERLESS WORLD
The capacity to decide who can move, who can settle, where and […]
The Nigerian Art of Patronage
Deji Toye looks at the legacy of arts funding in Nigeria and […]
Joe An Essay by Sam Kahiga June 2008
All my life, I wanted to be either a writer or a […]
HOLIDAY PLANNING WITH HEI VOETSEK!
And now for an important travel advisory. Planning to visit Johannesburg or […]
AT HOME WITH ZEBULON DREAD/SWAMI SITARAM
For over a decade, the man born as Elliot Josephs terrorised Cape […]
Civil Lines
An Essay by Achal Prabhala At some point in the 1980s – […]
FOUR GROUND-BREAKING THINGS IN FIVE ISSUES OF CIVIL LINES OR, WAYS TO GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE POSTCOLONIAL SAND
an essay by Vivek Narayanan [Note: while preparing this piece, I benefited greatly […]
Black Images – An Essay by Peter James Hudson
July 2008 The premiere issue of Black Images: A Critical Quarterly of Black […]
The Emperor of Kinshasa’s Street Comics
by Nancy Rose Hunt Beginning nearly fifty years ago, in 1968, Kinshasa […]
Spear: Canada’s Truth and Soul Magazine
by Peter James Hudson November 2010 Spear: Canada’s Truth and Soul Magazine launched […]
Staffriding the Frontline
An Essay by Lesego RampolokengMay 2008 Down from a couple years beyond […]
Staffrider
An Essay by Ivan VladislavićMarch 2008 I joined Ravan Press as a […]
Of “Brothers with Perfect Timing”
An Essay by Mike Abraham2008 Germiston station has a very long platform. […]
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 […]
WHY: An Essay by Nicole Turner
Forgive me if the facts are screwed, Y days were heady and chaotic. I […]
The Invention of Zimbabwe: Chronic launch in Harare
This and other stories available in the new issue of […]
PASS in Harare
From 9 – 12 November, the Pan African Space Station (PASS) landed […]
Home Means Nothing to Me
Tinashe Mushakavanhu talks about his mapping project, “Home Means Nothing to Me,” […]
Doctor Philip Tabane Lives On
We give thanks and praise to enigmatic, innovative seer and composer-band leader […]
Short Review – The Year of the Rat
Year of the Rat Marc Anthony Richardson FC2/ University of Alabama Press, […]
Chimurenga Library on Circulations
The Chimurenga Library is an ongoing invention into knowledge production and the […]
PORTRAITS OF POWER
Farai Mudzingwa writes about the power vested within the four corners of the presidential portrait, and the struggle not only to dislodge the presidential image, but also to claim it, to frame it anew.
“THE INVENTION OF ZIMBABWE” JHB LAUNCH
Join us in welcoming the new issue of Chronic with Kudzanai Chiurai, […]
Denderah Rising with Georgia Anne Muldrow + Thandi Ntuli Quartet + The Monkey Nuts live in Jo’burg
“Sound is defined by vibrations that travel through the air or another […]
OF TOTEMS, HISTORY AND POLITICS
In Shona cosmology, people are understood to be more than the sum […]
The Invention of Zimbabwe – New edition of Chimurenga’s Chronic available now!
14 November 2017. News breaks of a coup d’état underway in Zimbabwe. […]
Theatre du pouvoir AT the louvre – a letter from Paris
Kibafika Kakudji On 29 January 2018, the day after I turned 40, […]
THINKING TOO MUCH
Silence and dark humour seem like the most authentic way for people […]
WRITING AS AN ACT OF GENEROSITY
MAMADOU DIALLO All of our current texts in English or French were, […]
The Making of the Impossible
Review by GWEN ANSELL October: The story of the Russian revolution China […]
THE BLACK BOMB
Mamadou Diallo channels Carlos Moore, the exiled Cuban who traversed most of […]
SUNGURA STORIES
Ranga Mberi travels back in musical time to the 1980s and 1990s, […]
PORTRAIT OF MYSELF AS MY FATHER
A CONVERSATION WITH NORA CHIPAUMIRE Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe, and based in New […]
NONE BUT OURSELVES
The history of reggae in Zimbabwe echoes far beyond Bob Marley’s historic […]
NATIONAL HEROES ACRE II & III
National Heroes Acre II Photographs by Jekesai Njikizanava National Heroes Acre II […]
THE WAY I SEE IT – National Heroes Acre I
Bongani Kona Who or what haunts you? Do recurrences draw you back […]
MURIMI MUNHU
Panashe Chigumadzi travels to the rural Zimbabwe of her ancestors, onto land […]
kill me already – a letter from Luanda
Kiluanji Kia Henda After several years working as a visual artist with […]
KÀDDU- THE ECHO OF DISSONANT DISCOURSE
Ibrahima Wane Translated by David Leye When it was published by Présence […]
‘GO TO THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE!’ MURIDISM IN THE LIFE OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
While French colonialism was at its zenith, the first quarter of the […]
CHEIKH ANTA DIOP – AN AWAKENING
Ayesha Harruna Attah recounts a voyage of discovery that begins from a […]
BAHUJANAFRIQUE – A PLAUSIBLE FUTURE
Sumesh Sharma traces the circuitous roots of Afro-Asiatic history, from the world’s […]
ARMY ARRANGEMENT
News of President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s imminent ouster from office continues to […]
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHIMURENGA AS A COMMUNAL LABORATORY
by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga Since the 1970s, Zimbabweans have used the term […]
Zidane’s Melancholy
Zidane watched the Berlin sky, not thinking of anything, a white sky […]
Poverty is Older than Opulence
Maverick Serbian filmmaker, Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies; Underground), talks with […]
New Trade Routes: Soccer Cities
We make our own maps tracing the new trade routes for the […]
Zinedine Zidane and and the event of the secret
Grant Farred produces a Derridean reading of Zidane’s world-stopping head butt.
To Defend and to Question
Zinedine Zidane has described him as “the greatest footballer of all” and […]
Zidane, a 21st century portrait
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parenno’s ambitious 2006 cinematic collaboration, Zidane, a 21st […]
A Secret History of Mr. George Weah
Writing with a view from Yaoundé, Kangsen Wakai tracks football star George […]
A master of bling with feline style
Writing just after the 2011 Africa Cup of Nations, Achille Mbembe* looks […]
The Chimurenga Library: Who Killed Kabila – catalogue now available
The Chimurenga Library is a research platform that seeks to re-imagine the […]
Keorapetse Kgositsile on Johnny Dyani
Jazz was crucial to South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile‘s most influential idea: […]
Staffriding the Frontline – An Essay by Lesego Rampolokeng
May 2008 Down from a couple years beyond 30/30. it was the […]
Culture And Resistance In South Africa
by Keorapetse Kgositsile Keynote address from the Culture and Resistance Symposium (1982) […]
Crossing Borders Without Leaving
by Keorapetse Kgositsile Returning home, even though just for a short visit, […]
Le sexe de Matonge
Sony Labou Tansi À Ngalamulume, le Kinois « Nazalaka moluba. Et je […]
Who Killed Kabila?
The Pan African Space Station/Chimurenga Library at La Colonie, Paris 13 December […]
Corpse Exhibition and Older Graphic Stories
The Corpse Exhibition and older graphic stories – a special issue of […]
Down the footpath
Emmanuel Iduma in conversation with photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi On a number of […]
Home is where the music is
Hugh Masekela (talking to Mothobi Mutloatse) I remember we use to live […]
Meeting Marti, Neruda and Langa in the streets…
Amabhulu amnyama andenzel’ i-worry, Amabhulu amanyama andenzel’ i-worry andenzel’ indlala (White-blacks are […]
Felasophy Through the Years: Fond Recollections of Fela Kuti
by Tunde Giwa Growing up in post civil-war Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, in […]
De l’art de vivre l’art
Dominique Malaquais Goddy Leye nous a quittés. C’était le 19 février 2011, […]
La Puissance De Werewere Liking
One cannot avoid that vocabulary of hyper-inflation of much contemporary cultural or […]
The Divine World of Making Things with My Hands
A conversation with Jackie Karuti by Bongani Kona Jackie Karuti (1987) is […]
A Layered Way of Working
Helen Teede is a Zimbabwean painter based in Harare. She left the […]
Last Words to the Nation by Salvador Allende
This speech was delivered at 9:10 am on September 11, 1973, in […]
Dictionary of SA Elections 2014
by Willem Boshoff Aa albocracy Government by “white” men or Europeans. The […]
Some African Cultural Concepts By Steve Biko
This is a paper given by Steve at a conference called […]
The Definition Of Black Consciousness by Bantu Stephen Biko
It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.
English Language Visa
by Keorapetse William Kgositsile Some years back, when writers like Ngũgĩ wa […]
An Essay on Uneven Ribs: a Prelude
by Taban Lo Liyong [from Frantz Fanon’s Uneven Ribs ] 1 Bill […]
La Colonie, Paris: 13 – 17 December 2017
Chimurenga returned to Paris for a 5-day intervention and installation at La Colonie we […]
A Brief History of Fufu Pounding
The preparation of fufu is a far from the drudgery and waste of time bemoaned by the World Bank.
CHIMURENGA@20: NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU – REMEMBERING KENYA’S KARL MARX
Student movements in many African countries have historically confronted contradictions of colonial and post-colonial rule. In Kenya, these movements sent generations of young people into the streets, underground, into exile or death.
Download Chimurenga Magazine
Available editions include: Chimurenga 6: “Orphans of Fanon” (2004) Chimurenga 7: “Kaapstad! (and Jozi, […]
Survivor’s Guide to Smelling Naais
In the pre-Apocalypse, Zayaan Khan nurses the Apartheid hangover that carved up […]
Dagga
Rustum Kozain muses over the cultural and alternative relations built, negotiations and dealings made as a resident of Cape Town.
STORIES ABOUT MUSIC IN AFRICA – Ingoma Yomzabalazo with Iphupho Lka Biko
Recorded live at Chimurenga HQ, Cape Town, in February 2017
Debt and Study
Against the proliferation of capitalist logistics, governance by credit and the management […]
Screaming Through the Galaxy
Jamaican-born poet, musician and visual artist Femi Dawkins a.k.a. Jimmy Rage, explores pain […]
Kallio Library, Helsinki: April 13 – May 28 2016
Can a past that the present has not yet caught up with […]
The Memory of Victory
Ingrained in the DNA of every male growing up in Senegal is the tradition of Laamb, the Wolof designation for the sport – and by extension the business – of wrestling.
CHIMURENGA@20: SISTER OUTSIDER
Yemisi Aribisala rails against the new fundamentalism cresting the wave of global feminism sweeping Nigeria. She challenges the gender imperialism implicit in its aspiration to uniform ideas of celebrity, power, erudition and beauty.
Topaze
By Baudouin Mouanda Topaze is available in print as part of […]
Valladolid is not Spain, but it is
By Peter James Hudson They say that Valladolid was the only town […]
Gordon Parks Photo Essay
Katherine and Elridge Cleaver (Algiers, 1970) Ethel Sharriff […]
The Sound of Freedom
[…]For over a decade Louis Moholo has been the only surviving member […]
Shift The Goalposts Of Disadvantage
By Simon Kuper Every year, in an election you may have missed, […]
Ready, Willing and Able
Lolade Adewuyi profiles one of the continent’s most successful football coaches – […]
Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana Dominate Women’s Football
In a brief history of women’s football on the continent, Shina Oludari […]
‘YOU DON’T GET PAID FOR SOCCER IN SOUTH AFRICA’
Playing football at the highest level in South Africa requires as much […]
Liner Notes
As listening trends move rapidly to the online interface, the knowing of […]
The Curry Chronicles, Part 1
Rustum Kozain dishes up some definitives on the many incarnations of curry […]
CAMFRANGLAIS – a lexicon
By Stephane Akoa (translated by Karen Press) Avoir la godasse: avoir le […]
What We Did After We Lost 100 Years of Wealth
By Agri Ismaïl “World finance had, in 2008, a near-death experience.” The […]
Gospel Christian Porn Rap
Fucking with the puritanical social mores that pervade the world’s most religious […]
Roger and Me
Akin Adesokan writes in exaltation of the game of tennis, the sheer […]
Close encounters at the Florida 1000
Tony Mochama goes galactic for a little bump and grind, gives a […]
Invisible Borders
By Emmanuel Iduma Founded in 2009 by a group of Nigerian photographers […]
A Pan African Circle of Artists
By Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi In June 1991, Krydz Ikwuemesi, then a third-year art student […]
Mining the Biennale
In late 2012, two contemporary art exhibitions opened in the same country, […]
Boyhood and Transit
Reliving his personal journey to developing a passion for the game, Bongani […]
Love and Learning Under the World Bank
Stacy Hardy recounts seventeen stories of the hierarchies, the anti-heroes, the hard […]
A Political Economy of Noise
Kangsen Feka Wakai traces the uncharacteristic journey through a “noisy era” of […]
Q&A with Mehari Taddele Maru
By Paula Akugizibwe and Mehari Maru Mehari Maru is an Addis Ababa-based […]
Interview with Raila Odinga
The Chronic interviewed Raila Amollo Odinga at his Karen residence on the […]
Dear Chimurenga- The India-Pakistan Division
By Jon Soske The United Nation’s release of the agreement stipulating the […]
A Black Writer Must Write About Sex
By Danny Laferiere America owes an enormous amount to Third World youth. I’m […]
A Silent Way: Routes of South African Jazz, 1946-1978.
By Julian Jonker First, a warning. The writer approaching the intersections and digressions […]
Soft Power South African Style
Sean Jacobs mediates the tensions between local pleasure, global capital and cultural […]
Together in the Picture
John Peffer scans the photographic styles that image a black South African […]
My Life as a Seventh Day Adventist
By Paula Akugizibwe Jesus waits in the swimming pool. The tenth commandment […]
Land Homeland
Q&A with Mahmood Mamdani Chronic: Your book Define and Rule: Native as […]
Sounding the Horn on Reconstruction
The role of art and literature in countries of the Horn of […]
Quiet No more
Paul Goldsmith traces the sonics of Islam in Kenya and questions if […]
Queenstown
By Sandile Dikeni The grass in Queenstown was pink in 1996. Or, […]
A Brief History of Monuments
By Stacy Hardy Abbasid Caliph Abu Ja’far al-Mansur, the founder of the ancient city of […]
Rumble in the Nile
The Nimeiri era remains one of the most beguiling and contradictory in the country’s history. It defined so much of what was to come.
Islam between Françafrique and Afrabia
Needless to say, Françafrique was not the only constellation of capital and culture on offer at the time of African political independence.
CHIMURENGA@20: RELUCTANTLY LOUD
Cape Town is a city with a waiting list of more than 450,000 families for low-cost housing, but delivering about 11,000 units a year and criminalising those who attempt to put up their own structures.
CHIMURENGA@20: SECULAR STORIES
Authenticity counts for something; the confidence that authenticity bestows counts for even more.
CHIMURENGA@20: WAITING FOR WAME
I am hungry. Tempted. In pain. I reach for the pack. Pop out another capsule. One minute. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. The pain has reduced to a dull throbbing. I am floating.
A Petition for Mongo Beti
Patrice Nganang recalls the duel between politics and the literary sphere in 1990s Yaoundé – a time when the campaign for ‘democracy’ exposed the chiasmus that is the Cameroonian intelligence, and the words of Mongo Beti ignited a movement for dissent, return and reconstruction.
A Brief History of Mapping
by Stacy Hardy. In 1921, the independent Polish scholar Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski […]
CHIMURENGA@20: BEASTS OF NO NATION
Whether immigrating, emigrating or just passing through, Africans suffer among the greatest indignities of cross-border travel, abroad and on the continent. Paula Akugizibwe recounts how the hand-me-down tools of divide and rule perpetuate the abuse.
The cosmic lives and afterlives of Zebulon Dread
byAchal Prabhala Part 1: Elliot Josephs Elliot Josephs was born in 1958 […]
Read the Chimurenga Chronic in German
A special German-language edition of Chimurenga’s pan African gazette, the Chronic is […]
Happy Valentine’s Day
Exactly twenty five years ago today, Salman Rushdie received an unusual Valentine: a […]
Method After Fela
by Akin Adesokan “You reckon a guy just goes and cuts […]
Activist, poet-playwright Amiri Baraka dies at 79
Amiri Baraka, militant man of letters, leader of the 1960s Black […]
Translations – A Call For Proposals
This call is published in the December 2013 edition […]
Woza Moya
Maakomele R. Manaka revisits a soundtrack of his dreams, long and rhythmic […]
The skin I’m in: Afro-Bengali solidarity and possible futures
Naeem Mohaiemen reviews Vivek Bald’s Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of […]
‘Nation Is A Skin Stretched Over The Bones Of The State’
Jon Soske struggles to pin down Hamid Parsani, the elusive, mercurial Iranian archaeologist, […]
A Letter from Laura Bush
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:43:12 -0700 (PDT) From: “Laura Bush” <laurabush@hotmail.com> […]
A Letter from Home
by E. C. Osondu My Dear Son, Why have you not been […]
“I’m Not An African Writer, Damn You!”
by Akin Adesokan One is an African writer, or rather one becomes […]
Number 11
Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño muses on writing, borders, Latin American literature and the […]
The Hyphenated African
Teju Cole takes a break from Twitter to speak to Sean O’Toole […]
Birthing the American
Yemisi Aribisala explores, with mixed emotions, the enduring opportunism of a Nigerian elite that ensures that generations of children claim US birthright. Despite the assumed status that goes with being born “abroad”, the American dream, she argues, is in fact only a Nigerian backup plan.
The Chronic (December 2013)
The new edition of pan African quarterly, the Chronic, offers forays into […]
Protected: Tawfiq Saleh: To Rise and Fall on One’s Own Terms
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
A History of Blacks on the Green
In an attempt to dispel the myth that renders black golfers as […]
How to be a Nigerian
Peter Enahoro a.k.a. Peter Pan’s How To Be A Nigerian was first […]
A Corpse and its Jurisdiction – a letter from Lagos
Akin Adesokan tropes on the detective genre after he stumbles on an […]