When We Hear the Name of President
Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide evokes a language of high stakes, hi-jinx, and hybridity, combining code switching with scathing poltical critique to down ‘Mr. Big Belle’. Wetin our eye never see? Dey don see Oba! President na butcher e be for khaki or agbada— cobra-o, viper-o, na snake dem be; murderer na killer no […]
Washing Henry – a letter from New York
by Dave McKenzie As a memento of the process, I received a letter that begins with “Dear Fellow American” and ends with “Welcome to the joy, responsibility, and freedom of American citizenship. God bless you and God bless America.” This change in status from resident-alien to American citizen can be traced not to patriotism but […]
Che
First published in 1968 in Buenos Aires, the biography of Ernesto “Che” Guevara by Alberto and Enrique Breccia and Héctor Oesterheld sold over 60,000 copies in its first week. But the 1973 military onslaught made it a dangerous book to own – most copies were hidden, and subsequently burned. Oesterheld (script) was tortured and murdered – along with his 3 daughters; […]
Death by Memory [of Freedom]; Truth & Reconciliation
A tryptych in honour of Steve Biko. Firstly, Graeme Arendse, as his alter-ego Ramgee, presents In Memory of Freedom, Gail Smith then scrutinizes the remembrance of Biko in ‘post’ apartheid South Africa, before Ramgee returns with an alternative story, using words drawn from testimonies to the TRC on the death of BC leader. Twenty-five* years after four burly white supremacists pulverised Steve Biko’s brain, […]
Who’s Free, Who’s Not, Who Was, Who Wasn’t, and Who’s Dead: And, Are You Sure You Know Which Way Is Up?
A Letter from Istanbul by Ed Pavlic Trayvon remains underground, to my knowledge he hasn’t arisen. No Ascension nor Assumption. He’ll never be a free man, again. True. Last week in Douala, Cameroon, on the other hand, a crowd spent four hours lynching a suspected criminal, waking him up, and apparently lynching him all over […]